I often read comments suggesting that there is no place for realism in a game involving space elves and rips in the universe spewing demons over the far reaches of a fading (?) galactic empire with a leader in a 10,000year coma, psychic powers and aliens that drip acid, and less often I read comments that maintain that greater realism would benefit the game such as in the case of sneaky centurions and vehicle facing, blast templates and realistic line of sight targeting rules, a finer grain of detail moderating unit/terrain interactions, the sense of scale on the tabletop and so on.

So, I thought that we might open a thread in which we discuss what we take to be the role of realism in the game.

For myself, I am a proponent of greater realism for a number of reasons. Here, I will point to the most important in my opinion. Realism helps to align hobbyist expectations both on and off the tabletop. For instance, if the acid that this alien drips does not work like acid works in the real world, then I would have a difficult time understanding what this acid does in the game, and would question why it is called 'acid' at all... However, if the acid works as we all expect it to work, according to real world experience, then our expectations of how this acid works are aligned - intuitively, implicitly - by this common experience, and the game goes much more smoothly, things make more sense (note the use of the word "sense" here) and in all the hobby is better for it.

Meanwhile, abstractions that deny or that contravene this common experience are more difficult to deal with, add exceptions to the game experience that deviate from other experience, and in denying expectations can become tedious and indeed counterproductive. Any apparent benefit gained in the abstraction is lost in the fact that common intuitions about how things should work must be denied, which causes confusion and takes away from the cooperative experience that proceeds with a good game - like a dance - when participant expectations are aligned.

What do you think about the role of realism in the game of 40k?

Acid's actually a good example, because generally there's a differance between what you could call "cinamatic acid" and well.. real life acid. real life acid often tends to be a bit messy. and useally acts fairly slow. back in high school chem our teacher once showed us sulphuric acid in action (he used it on some sugar IIRC) it was notably messy, and took awhile to break it down. in the movies acid often acts fast and just effotlessly makes something vanish.

40k I've always seen as more cinimatic then realistic. in other words it has more in common with "action movie physics" then real physics.

BrianDavion wrote:
Acid's actually a good example, because generally there's a differance between what you could call "cinamatic acid" and well.. real life acid. real life acid often tends to be a bit messy. and useally acts fairly slow. back in high school chem our teacher once showed us sulphuric acid in action (he used it on some sugar IIRC) it was notably messy, and took awhile to break it down. in the movies acid often acts fast and just effotlessly makes something vanish.

40k I've always seen as more cinimatic then realistic. in other words it has more in common with "action movie physics" then real physics.

Yes, faster, stronger, but this is simply moar acid and so not contrary to expectations generated from common experience, and rather just these expectations made dramatic, turned up to 11... really powerful acid. This is a good point, because in a way it seems unrealisitc that acid should work this way, so fast and powerfully, but at the same time, without the realism at the root of things, the use of the word 'acid' to describe the effects would not make sense at all.

Maybe we can venture that the role of realism is to serve as a basis from which the sci-fi setting of 40k begins? At what point do we wish that the sci-fi setting of 40k does not diverge from this basis? When it introduces contradictions?

Realism is not important. What is important is that the setting is consistent and versimilie. So for example if the tyranids can spit superacid, that can melt tanks, then it stands to reason that any unfortunate guardsman getting spit on will also melt. Also, the setting should be versimilie, so each element should be something we can relate to in our world. So axes should be made from metal instead of playdough.

What's funny is that writers understand that realism in a Sci-Fi setting is almost a necessity. Everything follows rules of design and creation. There is no magic button.
But the GW fanbase... Well you can tell they aren't writers

 ValentineGames wrote:
What's funny is that writers understand that realism in a Sci-Fi setting is almost a necessity. Everything follows rules of design and creation. There is no magic button.
But the GW fanbase... Well you can tell they aren't writers

Exalted.

I don't think realism matters.
The game, fundamentally isn't realistic, and the more you think about it the more it breaks.

As I see it you have to have a working game system - and then you have abstraction on abstraction to make things "feel" like they would in the fluff.

These don't necessarily go together. I think for example AoS has a relatively tightly written ruleset that can be fun to play. But I don't find the abstraction *works*. I don't look at an army and think "yeah, if this world was real, this is how these armies would fight". Its just models on a table with stat lines and abilities. Its like viewing the matrix rather than real life.

By contrast while I think WHFB's "rules" became more and more of a trainwreck - I still imagined that if "fantasy battles" were real, and high elves, orcs, vampire counts etc existed then the armies would sort of look and fight like they did. So the abstraction was there even if the game system wasn't great.

Warmachine famously has the same problem. It has at times been a solid *game* - but its never been able to generate as much interest in the fluff as 40k, because its so mechanical. At least imo, armies have rarely felt *like you were there*.

But yeah, because its abstraction on abstraction, questions of "realism" are in the eye of the beholder. Unit facing for example *matters* if your abstraction from *I go then you go* is that unit are essentially "paralysed" for... however long the other player's turn is meant to represent. I don't however have a problem with abstracting that the unit is really moving around in that phase rather than stood like a statue, and so does effectively have 360 degree field of vision and movement. I'm not convinced the former would improve the game, or my imagination of it.

To me what is important is mostly that the universe should stricly follow it's in-universe logic. That a mashup universe such as 40k, that merges sci-fi with fantasy, should not be that realistic is to me not that important.

Obviously you will always need to keep in line with basic real world physics for the reader/player to be able to imagine it to themselves, so basic, everyday physics must be there to set up the scenery.

Then the writers are free to distord them as they wish but if they want their universe to remain understandable, the readers to identify to it, they must remain consistent with their own in-universe laws.

I agree with the "in universe realism". Fantasy settings establish their own world and rules for things and provided they stick to their own rules its fine. The actual physics and science of a setting is often only a backdrop to enable the story of the characters. Even when those elements are cornerstones of the story, its most often the character that we are following.




Heck this is true all over the place. Look at how popular TV series like NCIS are even though they make an utter mess of almost all the sciences in their series*. DNA tests in under a day; two people using a keyboard at once to counter a live-hacking; etc... What isn't important isn't that the DNA test takes as long as it takes in reality, but that if they establish it takes 24 hours in their series then it should stick faithfully to that timeframe unless they introduce additional elements to change it. A new method speeding it up; some oddity that delays it etc....



*(although I believe the autopsies are actually fairly accurate - the actor who plays Ducky even learned enough to give lectures on the subject).

‘Realism’ has no place in 40k, or any game. Else it would not - be - a game.

‘Realistic’, however, - is - something that games designers should aim for. If the players can’t believe the outcomes of the game mechanics, then the game fails. I’d guess this echoes the ‘internally consistent’ argument presented above.

Granted, 40K is a fictional setting but statements which claim that for this very reason the basic rules should be dumbed down to a laughable degree are just bad excuses for lazy writing.

Experiencing this immediately takes me out of the game as my suspension of disbelief is irrevocably shattered.

Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

The game's major abstractions, like units taking turns or range having no effect on shooting, have been in the game for a long time. Are we talking about those or the smaller stuff around the edges?

Aside from the basics of scientific principles, such as gravity, I think that realism should be subjective. In your example of the acid, I could get behind it. Except 40k has things that have no real world equivalents. Scrap code that can be broadcast over vox systems is one and Nurgle plagues that rot tanks is another. Sometimes you just gotta go with the crazy.

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

The game's major abstractions, like units taking turns or range having no effect on shooting, have been in the game for a long time. Are we talking about those or the smaller stuff around the edges?

Take a look at older threads on this very forum when 8th 40K started. The list of complains was endless like the Warp itself.

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

Perhaps, for example:

- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- Vehicles are equally resilient when taking hits from all sides - even those vehicles which are clearly more vulnerable from a particular direction (eg. the Basilisk)
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

Every genre needs internal consistency in order to tell an effective story. 40K does not have this, and so fails utterly.

I think that realism and consistency ground the setting so that the story can make sense.

It’s funny to listen when people say that it has no place in 40k and then complain that terminators doing backflips is wrong.
Space marines are kinda getting on my nerves, since it seems like they can be huge men in almost impenetrable Armor.
And then they can also be agile and fast even matching some of the fastest creatures in the universe to some fans and even in some material of the game itself.

Maybe this should go into the other thread :(

Some sort of "realism" and I use the term loosely because its 40k is important to me personally because personally that makes a more immersive experience for me.

I wish I was around when the OG 40k/ rouge trader was a thing where random plants had rules etc. I listened to a interview with priestly not long ago and I liked the design philosophy. The rules of the time was more like an RPG than a wargame.

I think its a great shame that someone's made a decision that "rules are bad" and somehow the players are incapable of learning things like charts & many various mechanics which represent a slightly deeper sense of realism..

I think it's important not to confuse "realism" with "believability."

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Realism is not important. What is important is that the setting is consistent and versimilie. So for example if the tyranids can spit superacid, that can melt tanks, then it stands to reason that any unfortunate guardsman getting spit on will also melt.

Like if you had a huge super laser cannon on a giant tank that could blast Knights apart with a single shot. Said super laser should be able to splat a measly Ork Warboss in a... oh wait...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
Realism is not important. What is important is that the setting is consistent and versimilie. So for example if the tyranids can spit superacid, that can melt tanks, then it stands to reason that any unfortunate guardsman getting spit on will also melt.

Like if you had a huge super laser cannon on a giant tank that could blast Knights apart with a single shot. Said super laser should be able to splat a measly Ork Warboss in a... oh wait...

in fairness given that said warboss' ability that prevents that is literally described as Divine favour.. I mean... it's not like god's protecting people from certain death isn't a thing in the setting

Yes, of course... Gork and Mork are part of the metaphysics of the universe, they make things happen, and faith in the Emperor also seems to make things happen... But, not all walls or ruins are so blessed as to afford expectation denying interferences, are they?

40K is not a sci-fi setting though.
That said, there is also realism in fluff vs on the tabletop, with the former being tenuous at best, and the latter having the additional burden of requiring a ruleset that's simple and/or intuitive enough to be understandable while simulating "realism" well enough that a game of 40K runs more or less logically.

The more realistic, the more intuitive.
Simple - no?

Apple fox wrote:
I think that realism and consistency ground the setting so that the story can make sense.

It’s funny to listen when people say that it has no place in 40k and then complain that terminators doing backflips is wrong.
Space marines are kinda getting on my nerves, since it seems like they can be huge men in almost impenetrable Armor.
And then they can also be agile and fast even matching some of the fastest creatures in the universe to some fans and even in some material of the game itself.

Maybe this should go into the other thread :(

Terminators are only doing backflips in a certain video game. Yes, it violates their background but it doesn't affect the tabletop game.
Agile marines performing acrobatics? AFAIK they don't do acrobatic shenanigans like the eldar are fond to do but I haven't read all the novels to be sure.

Bran Dawri wrote:
40K is not a sci-fi setting though.
That said, there is also realism in fluff vs on the tabletop, with the former being tenuous at best, and the latter having the additional burden of requiring a ruleset that's simple and/or intuitive enough to be understandable while simulating "realism" well enough that a game of 40K runs more or less logically.

Not a sci-fi setting... I am not sure if I can understand.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
I think that realism and consistency ground the setting so that the story can make sense.

It’s funny to listen when people say that it has no place in 40k and then complain that terminators doing backflips is wrong.
Space marines are kinda getting on my nerves, since it seems like they can be huge men in almost impenetrable Armor.
And then they can also be agile and fast even matching some of the fastest creatures in the universe to some fans and even in some material of the game itself.

Maybe this should go into the other thread :(

Terminators are only doing backflips in a certain video game. Yes, it violates their background but it doesn't affect the tabletop game.
Agile marines performing acrobatics? AFAIK they don't do acrobatic shenanigans like the eldar are fond to do but I haven't read all the novels to be sure.

That was more picking on some of the fans, as well as The Rule of Cool.
Some of the books have gone a little out there as well ;(

Science Fiction is a genre that plays with the speculative impact of future scientific developments, technology, etc.. (and related social, economic, psychological, etc.. consequences). E.g "what if robots were sentinent" or "what if we had interstellar travel" or "what if medicine overcame physical aging", etc..


In contrast, most people would classify 40K (Star Wars, etc..) more in a fantasy genre (if with pseudo-technological tropes and in SPAAAACCE) due to the very obvious fantastical element and/or large disinterest (often on purpose) to ground technology (social structures, etc.. ) in even the most speculative scientific assumptions/projections/theories.


And as mentioned, your example above is rather obvious. The perhaps most famous "sci-fi" acid in the Alien movies works precisely because the writers choose to dump realism in favour of being cinematic.

All universes have rules and anything in those universes need to have rules, this is in universe realism.

Just because you have a sci fi or fantasy setting does not mean the realism and rules go out the window, to anyone that believes otherwise I must ask you, since magic exists in Lord of The Rings, why does Gandalf not summon a Blackhawk helicopter to take him to Mordor? its "made up" and he has magic, so why cant he just ignore the rules of the universe ?

 Formosa wrote:
All universes have rules and anything in those universes need to have rules, this is in universe realism.

Just because you have a sci fi or fantasy setting does not mean the realism and rules go out the window, to anyone that believes otherwise I must ask you, since magic exists in Lord of The Rings, why does Gandalf not summon a Blackhawk helicopter to take him to Mordor? its "made up" and he has magic, so why cant he just ignore the rules of the universe ?

But sticking to established in-universe rules isn't the same as sticking to common experience as the original poster demands.

To use the example above, In an Alien movie, I expect acid blood to adhere to the in-universe rules introduced in the universe. I don't expect it to adhere to the rules governing acid in reality. That'd be absurd.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
All universes have rules and anything in those universes need to have rules, this is in universe realism.

Just because you have a sci fi or fantasy setting does not mean the realism and rules go out the window, to anyone that believes otherwise I must ask you, since magic exists in Lord of The Rings, why does Gandalf not summon a Blackhawk helicopter to take him to Mordor? its "made up" and he has magic, so why cant he just ignore the rules of the universe ?

But sticking to established in-universe rules isn't the same as sticking to common experience as the original poster demands.

To use the example above, In an Alien movie, I expect acid blood to adhere to the in-universe rules introduced in the universe. I don't expect it to adhere to the rules governing acid in reality. That'd be absurd.

I agree with you but I am talking specifically about the people that either insist no rules matter at all or that they must always be true to life, you are handling the one and my gandalf example handles the other.

I feel like Warhammer 40k shouldn't be realistic, but it should enable the players to tell a story.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

Perhaps, for example:

- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- Vehicles are equally resilient when taking hits from all sides - even those vehicles which are clearly more vulnerable from a particular direction (eg. the Basilisk)
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

This is an interesting list to me;

I think these type of things are the ones that you'd expect a fix for, the abstraction isn't there for any good reason and it just results in stupid stuff happening;
- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

These ones though are bigger design decisions which I can understand why you may not like, but the abstraction at least makes sense;
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?

If a soldier is running for its life, it makes sense to remove it from the board as it will play no more part in the battle.
Command points are an attempt at representing the effect that command and control has on battles, many games try to incorporate this element.

So I don't think the lack of realism or decision to abstract these elements in the game is intrinsically bad, it's just GW has done a poor job making fun game mechanics out of them!

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

Perhaps, for example:

- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- Vehicles are equally resilient when taking hits from all sides - even those vehicles which are clearly more vulnerable from a particular direction (eg. the Basilisk)
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

I view command points as a combination of command and control resources, plot armor, and eye of the gods. It's the fruits of pre-battle planning, a chance for divine intervention or someone's training to all come together and produce unusually powerful effects. It's the finite plot resource allowing a player to wrestle the narrative in their desired direction.

In terms of wonky rules, Running/Advancing has been consistently nonsensical.

Let's say I have 2 units of Marines, A and B. For simplicity's sake, both squads are identical and are armed just with bolter.

Squad A chooses to spend its turn running, meaning it's unable to shoot or charge. It moves 6+d6". Let's say it gets the best possible result and moves 12".

Squad B chooses not to run, so it moves only 6". It then stops to fire at an enemy unit. After shooting, it decides to charge at an enemy 12" away. Let's assume that it rolls maximum distance for its 2d6 charge move and moves 12". Most of the models now get a pile-in move of up to 3". It then wipes out the unit in melee and consolidates a further 3".

So we have a squad that spent its entire turn running and moved a grand total of 12", yet a squad that stopped to shoot and then stopped again to fight got to move at least 18" (up to 21" for models that got their full pile-in moves).

Now granted, I tool the maximum amounts on the dice, but even with more reasonable numbers we're still looking at 9.5" for a running unit and 16+" for a charging one. This seems absurd from both a realism standpoint *and* a gameplay one.

It is absurd.

Intuition should not be removed. If I move a unit of guardsmen up behind a concrete barrier, I expect to get some cover bonus... because thats "realism".

When I'm told "lolol i can see a guy's helmet, so my whole unit can shoot at your unit with no penalty", thats not realistic. Its also stupid, jarring, and a negative play experience.

Thats what "realism" means to me.

Not that "lolol there are tyranids that spit tank melting acid, anad dragons, and magic, so realism shouldn't be here, gtfo"... more that things should operate in an intuitive sense.

 auticus wrote:
Intuition should not be removed. If I move a unit of guardsmen up behind a concrete barrier, I expect to get some cover bonus... because thats "realism".

When I'm told "lolol i can see a guy's helmet, so my whole unit can shoot at your unit with no penalty", thats not realistic. Its also stupid, jarring, and a negative play experience.

Thats what "realism" means to me.

Not that "lolol there are tyranids that spit tank melting acid, anad dragons, and magic, so realism shouldn't be here, gtfo"... more that things should operate in an intuitive sense.

Pretty reasonable, imo.

Auticus is on point with the intuition or "feel" of what should work/shouldn't work, etc. That even extends to the fluff. While we realize that novels and fluff/lore cannot be identically replicated on the tabletop, 25+ years of following the 40K fluff and lore gives you an idea of what the pecking order should be with regard to units/game functions.

Look back to the beginning of 8th. If you're a 40K follower, does it make sense that Celestine and Guilliman should be leading an army of Guard conscripts? No. That's immersion breaking because it can't hide its "Meta"gaming roots. Likewise a Space Marine player would assume that an Assault Marine would be a capable close-combat unit? Nope, absolute garbage (buffed recently with some tweaks to Space Marines in general).

Without glancing at a rulebook, even a novice 40K player should "assume" that a Chaos Space Marine would be the better (or at least, stronger) troop choice than cultists...etc. Now GW has slowly remedied some of these, but there are a heap of immersion breaking contradictions in the games design, which all plays into the intuition argument.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Science Fiction is a genre that plays with the speculative impact of future scientific developments, technology, etc.. (and related social, economic, psychological, etc.. consequences). E.g "what if robots were sentinent" or "what if we had interstellar travel" or "what if medicine overcame physical aging", etc..


In contrast, most people would classify 40K (Star Wars, etc..) more in a fantasy genre (if with pseudo-technological tropes and in SPAAAACCE) due to the very obvious fantastical element and/or large disinterest (often on purpose) to ground technology (social structures, etc.. ) in even the most speculative scientific assumptions/projections/theories.


And as mentioned, your example above is rather obvious. The perhaps most famous "sci-fi" acid in the Alien movies works precisely because the writers choose to dump realism in favour of being cinematic.

I disagree that the social structures are not a focal interest in 40k, as well as the for instance important policies regarding the use of AI in the Imperium and so on... the different approaches to technology that characterize each different race (or should, or at least DID) are also important, if not crucial to understanding both the so-called fluffy differences between races as well as how they should perform on the tabletop ... Seems pretty much a what-if and then fast forward 40000 years to me. Sure, some fantasy, but even fantasy demands realism, else it is hallucination at best and escapism at worst.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
All universes have rules and anything in those universes need to have rules, this is in universe realism.

Just because you have a sci fi or fantasy setting does not mean the realism and rules go out the window, to anyone that believes otherwise I must ask you, since magic exists in Lord of The Rings, why does Gandalf not summon a Blackhawk helicopter to take him to Mordor? its "made up" and he has magic, so why cant he just ignore the rules of the universe ?

But sticking to established in-universe rules isn't the same as sticking to common experience as the original poster demands.

To use the example above, In an Alien movie, I expect acid blood to adhere to the in-universe rules introduced in the universe. I don't expect it to adhere to the rules governing acid in reality. That'd be absurd.

But, the acid does do what we expect acid to do, it just does it really really well! MOAR ACID!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Iracundus wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

Perhaps, for example:

- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- Vehicles are equally resilient when taking hits from all sides - even those vehicles which are clearly more vulnerable from a particular direction (eg. the Basilisk)
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

I view command points as a combination of command and control resources, plot armor, and eye of the gods. It's the fruits of pre-battle planning, a chance for divine intervention or someone's training to all come together and produce unusually powerful effects. It's the finite plot resource allowing a player to wrestle the narrative in their desired direction.

I frankly do not like command points at all - once the troops are placed, there should be direct consequences and little opportunity for the chip-stained hand of the godz to swoop down and shuffle resources around...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:
In terms of wonky rules, Running/Advancing has been consistently nonsensical.

This seems absurd from both a realism standpoint *and* a gameplay one.

absolutely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Intuition should not be removed. [...] things should operate in an intuitive sense.

My feeling too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
Auticus is on point with the intuition or "feel" of what should work/shouldn't work, etc. [...] but there are a heap of immersion breaking contradictions in the games design, which all plays into the intuition argument.

Are we beginning to see a consensus forming here?

Heeeeeeeeeere's where Scotsman gets to talk about simulation wargames vs competitive wargames, wheeee!

Most old-school wargames like the early edition of Warhammer and 40k were based on older historicals, which were all about simulating the conditions of a battlefield as realistically as possible in a board game.

On a battlefield, generally, it is understood that one side nearly always has some sort of in-built advantage over the other, and often historical wargamers will understand this when constructing that scenario. of course the rebels had several major disadvantages in winning the battle of Gettysburg, of course the germans had a disadvantage in the Battle of the Bulge, but would things have gone differently if YOU were the general in command?

As such, wargamers in those days often didn't have this instinctive dislike of any highly random or uncontrollable mechanic. Instead, such moments were generally the highlight of a simulation style wargame - a tank exploding catastrophically or careening out of control, a crucial unit retreating into a rout, or an elephant going berserk into a roman shieldwall are all commonplace mechanics you'll find in various historical games. None of them are particularly fair or balanced, and many of them are the kind of thing that players love to complain about as needlessly random and annoying when it comes to the current edition of 40k.

That's because as tabletop miniature wargames have become more mainstream, so too has come this concept that they should operate like a highly balanced, abstracted board game.

Part of the tension within all games workshop games is this split between the intended audience. Some people might bemoan a mechanic like vehicles not caring about facing or TLOS as unrealistic because they want more of a simulation-style game, while others might consider the slim chance that an opponent's character might pop into a daemon prince for free super obnoxious because they want a more balanced board game style competitive wargame. Other games, like Warmahordes, Xwing, and Infinity, were designed as competitive abstracted wargames from the ground-up, and contain far fewer of these tensions within the community or the design team.

Martel732 wrote:
It is absurd.

it's warhammer 40k of course it's absurd, thats the point.

It can be taken too far. And it does.

the term "too far" in a universe such as 40k, sounds absurd.

The point I made earlier wasn't a case of 'this has been taken too far!', it was a case if 'this makes no sense even in-universe and is a terrible game mechanic to boot'.

Racerguy180 wrote:
the term "too far" in a universe such as 40k, sounds absurd.

There are always limits.

I can say with certainty that realism is not intuitive. Reality is messy, strange, and often works on concepts that most people only understand at basic levels.

Lets use an example that comes up a lot in in realism discussions: Tank armor. The "common sense" idea of a tank is that if you cannot penetrate through the armor plating of a tank then it should have a 0% chance of doing anything and even medium strength weapons like autocannons and krak grenades should bare little threat to a vehicle (even though both are designed on real life anti-tank weapons, but whatever that's not important to this discussion). If it can't go through the armor, it shouldn't matter and particularly not weapons designed for anti-infantry.

Enter real life, where one of the deadliest things a tank crew could face was napalm. As in, from a flamethrower, a grenade, or airstrike. This is because napalm doesn't give a flying about armor, because most tanks around when flamethrowers were still in use weren't waterproof, the internal components aren't fire proof and the crew still need to breathe even if they don't catch on fire. Under the same mechanics that would makes a flamethrower dangerous to a bunker works the same on a vehicle.

Similarly, a large enough force can dent armor, even if it can't penetrate through. That in itself is not a problem for the tank, but because energy needs to go somewhere, this results in fragments of the armor breaking off at high speeds; which can then injure or kill crew. This is known as spalling and there was anti-tank ammo built on this process. In both cases, the crew is not considered for how weapons effect vehicles. since most people think of crew as inherently save against anything that can't pierce though the armor; The same people only think of things that are clearly anti-tank as something that that should be dangerous to tanks regardless of if that's true. And that includes GW, considering the punisher cannon being str 5 would have rarely been a threat to vehicles other than trukks/raiders, while in real life the M61 Vulcan was made to take down enemy aircraft and the GAU-8 Avenger eats tanks like they're butter.

The OTHER common example, which was brought up in thread, is "why can't I shoot/kill this model with this ranged weapon". The idea being that it's unintuitive when something has special protection against weapons that normally break things considered much tougher or when you can't shoot at them despite being in the open. It logical from our perspective as the players that we can shoot at anything in the board as long as we're in range and can see it, and then do damage. That's intuitive, and anything that prevents that feels arbitrary even when there's an in-universe reason for it. But there's two problems with that:

1) This is a decision being made from the omnipotent prospective of a player, who can see all, knows what's the most optimal targets are, and can control everything to a fine detail. All in the comfort of a garage or FLGS. That's much different from making the same decision when in the battle itself. Soldiers have their own motivations, particularly "living after this", so things that make sense from a game perspective would be Zapp Brannigan levels of suicidal. Or similarly some choices would only make sense due to the existence of game stats, ie firing anti-tank weapons at infantry rather than at tanks because it was more cost effective to do so, or at some infantry but not at others (IE it was more optional to fire your Str 8 weapons an ork nobs because of Instant Death. The justification being there were "big threatening monsters that clearly need bigger weapons to kill", but you wouldn't do that to Ogryns because they were toughness 5 and couldn't be instant death by Str 8 weapons.
2) Gameplay wise there's not really a way to make that actually fun. If everything is targetable and lacking in damage reduction, then that makes boring gunline alpha strikes even more powerful than they are. If a character is important to the enemy army, then without restriction there's 0 reason to not shoot them until dead (See: Synapse in Tyranids). The reason footslogging melee units are nonviable is because there's no way to split that damage across units without bodyguard mechanics, instead getting dismantled piecemeal. Being unable to shoot into melee is often complained about for not being realistic, but then if it existed it'd make the game less tactical and less risky. It feels like the only option to keep something from dying immediately is to keep it off the table, which defeats one of the selling points of the game which is having the models on the table!

I know some people are going to say "Doesn't that just prove the game isn't realistic", but the point I'm trying to make isn't that 40k is and isn't realistic (it isn't), but that realism isn't always intuitive or fun, and when tried to be applied it can be flawed, uneven, or even unfair. And while I'll concede that a game can be fun and realistic, but it should be done from the ground up and not added to a pre existing setting. Especially one that's focused on spectacle and homage to older, goofier sci-fi like 40k.

And to the people saying Sci-fi needs to be realistic, no it doesn't. Science Fiction is a speculative fiction, what scientific or futuristic it explores not necessarily *need* to be possible to pose the question (sometimes science fiction is even done specifically to challenge our current understanding of things). And because science marches on, things that may have been possible at some point are impossible now; that doesn't mean stories based on those ideas stop being science fiction (such as say, Frankenstein, which is the progenitor of science fiction) . So stop calling things "science fantasy" just because it's not Contemporary with shiny baubles.

Consistency and verisimilitude are key.

There's nothing wrong with the metaphysics of the setting saying 'orks can do x', so long as everything works around this consistently.

When people discuss 'realism' they generally mean 'basic physics' - things fall from the sky, planets have days and nights due to rotation, air pressure keeps your blood inside you etc.

This kind of realism isn't 'well space marines can't exist so they shouldn't', its 'well a space marine fell off a 1 km high building and hit the ground, physics means they will be paste inside their armour.
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These are not the same thing.

Illogical systems still have logical consistency within them.

Structure and form.

40k background and fiction used to have a better grasp on its own metaphysics and the 'setting rules' that everything abided by (those setting rules include most basic physics assumptions from our real world).

When GW decided back in 5th ed that adding a character called THE sanguinor to the game was a good idea, they published Ward's story where he carried Ka Banda iirc up into the air. This is a break in those rules for the sake of THE COOLZ.

This has continued as GW has continued pushing a DBZ style of special character centric storyline where characters do inconsistent things in order to make them look cool.


Something that is somewhat unique about 40k though is that the combat prowess of the characters is measured, so you also get conflict between fluff and rules, as they are basically coming from opposed perspectives - super cool pimp my character vs notionally balanced to play a game.


GW has continued to break its verisimilitude because of its focus on special characters and making them seem cool. The game has become a marketing exercise for each character.

The strength of a setting is as much what people CAN do inside it, as what they CAN'T.

Limitations are very important. And not the mary sue 'my weakness is actually a mighty strength' type of limitation.

The consequences of making characters more badass is that they Worf big bad monsters. A hero is only as cool as his enemy is formidable.

Killing avatars or greater daemons left right and centre doesn't make characters look cool, it makes monsters look lame and by extension makes those characters lame.

Martel732 wrote:
Every genre needs internal consistency in order to tell an effective story. 40K does not have this, and so fails utterly.

40k is a game, not a story. It has different needs.

But internal consistency isn't particularly lacking. Orks do ork things, the warp does warp things, marines do marine things, etc. Nothing really jumps out at me as doing things they aren't capable of, with bizarre bits of novels like backflipping terminators being the sole fault of terrible authors and editors not paying attention.

What I am seeing in all of these posts is that realism is a necessity for any game that depends on real world experience to be able to work on the table top. Where rules abstract away from what might be intuitive, the game either loses something ("immersion") or becomes something else (a so-called" competitive boardgame").

What seems most repugnant to most respondents has been internal inconsistencies, ostensibly introduced in the abstraction away from realism and into the realm of the so-called competitive boardgame.

One advantage with the so-called competitive boardgame is that rules can be simplified.

However, in the loss of realism, I would argue that the game is not then easier to learn. Instead, it takes the shape of a set of proprietary ("in universe") constraints that do not leverage common intuitions and in practice go against them.

This results in for one thing the loss of "immersion" and for another the common experience that makes a game accessible to people on the basis of common, real-world experience and intuitions that derive from that.

So far as realism and tanks hit by napalm, there is no reason for us not to have rules which specify that some vehicles are vulnerable to napalm-like weapons, e.g. open topped.

There is also nothing stopping us from having rules that represent the damage that can be done to tanks, or more specifically tank crew - by weapons that fail to penetrate armor but that still hurt the squishy living and piloting critters hiding inside, e.g. crew shaken or worse.

All of this has to do with realism. Where realism goes, so goes the game. When it goes away, we are left with a so-called competitive boardgame. I for one am not interested in playing boardgames.

sure but if we had a realistic rules set the warhammer 40k rules would be pretty long and complex. one thing 40k has going for it is it's simplicity. you can sit down and play a largish game in an afternoon. super highly complex but realistic would make this difficult. that said, if there was sufficant demand for it, GW could certainly produce rules supplements allowing people to use more realisim etc in their game, but it's likely only appeal to narrative gamers and sell poorly.

for example, if GW produced a rules option for say... lower or higher gravity worlds, perhaps one that allowed you to move faster on a lower grav world if you make a toughness save how often would people use that ruleset?

BrianDavion wrote:
sure but if we had a realistic rules set the warhammer 40k rules would be pretty long and complex. one thing 40k has going for it is it's simplicity. you can sit down and play a largish game in an afternoon. super highly complex but realistic would make this difficult. that said, if there was sufficant demand for it, GW could certainly produce rules supplements allowing people to use more realisim etc in their game, but it's likely only appeal to narrative gamers and sell poorly.

for example, if GW produced a rules option for say... lower or higher gravity worlds, perhaps one that allowed you to move faster on a lower grav world if you make a toughness save how often would people use that ruleset?

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. Making 40K rules palatable for vets doesn't need rocket science but common sense.
I play the video game Age of Wonders-Planetfall for a couple of months now and I will just point out three simple things which this game does and which would benefit 8th 40K:

1. Proper Cover system.
2. Flanking.
3. Proper Overwatch.

BrianDavion wrote:
for example, if GW produced a rules option for say... lower or higher gravity worlds, perhaps one that allowed you to move faster on a lower grav world if you make a toughness save how often would people use that ruleset?

Probably never.
But definitely not for the reasons you're thinking.

GW has always bought out new added rules, new ways of playing, new game types etc.
They aren't ignored because they are complicated or add more stuff to remember.
They're ignored because it upsets the META.
They're ignored because all of a sudden the mathematics you used to craft your force of WarmaHorde combos changes.
They're ignored because of the fear it might add a dynamic you were unprepared for in your game winning master plans.

The player base over the years has gotten lazier and lazier despite the complexity and time they put into sifting through rules to break the game.

Look back at when City fight came out and it was impossible NOT to play it.
Now look back on the past 5 to 10 years of people not giving a gak.

We should not view realism and abstraction as diametrically opposed in game design - we aren't taking about art styles. Any wargame will need some level of abstraction to be playable. As a 30-year professional military officer I have participated in many "wargames" over the years and we have computers to handle the simulations that strive for detail at the tactical level. I don't think we want that in a tabletop miniatures game. Even the most "realistic" military wargames I have participated that account for reaction time, spotting factors, ballistics etc can produce unrealistic results because they miss that very important factor that people generally don't want to die. Computer icons do incredibly brave things, as do soldiers who are firing lasers at each other.

For three years I taught wargaming at my Army's Command and Staff College. These wargames are to aid decision making and plan refinement. They are incredibly "abstract" but can produce realistic, credible results. We'll "black box" details of how things happen in an engagement to focus on inputs and outcomes.

The art in wargame design (and I am not a wargame designer!) is determining the right level of abstraction. This will vary with the focus of the game. A game with four or five miniatures per side putting the player in the role of a Sergeant might have more detail and have things like "facings" and firing arcs. A game with one hundred miniatures and the player in the role of Captain or Colonel might choose to abstract things that are not the Captain's business.

For a tabletop wargame I don't want to break my immersion - the less flipping through the rulebook the better. As such I enjoy the design decisions made for 8th edition. As an armour officer I do miss vehicle facings in terms of side armour etc. I do not, however, miss the shenanigans that went with that!

Is it "realistic" that you can shoot a whole squad because of one model's head being in line of sight? Not sure. Is it realistic that we take turns shooting? Is it realistic that we move, confirm that we've all stopped moving and then shoot at exactly one moment in time? I prefer realism in results/effects and not the micro details of the process in obtaining them. When a twin-assault cannon mows down a squad of infantry I am content with the outcome and will overlook/forgive mysterious mechanics that got us there.

I do agree that there should be some consistency in how the game operates. I am happy, though, with 40K having cinematic moments,and I expect the game to have fantastical elements. Its kinda the point. Like art appreciation, though, I am sure that the community will not be in 100% agreement. Sales figure, though, indicate that 8th Ed design decisions are working for the majority.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
I can say with certainty that realism is not intuitive. Reality is messy, strange, and often works on concepts that most people only understand at basic levels.

Lets use an example that comes up a lot in in realism discussions: Tank armor. The "common sense" idea of a tank is that if you cannot penetrate through the armor plating of a tank then it should have a 0% chance of doing anything and even medium strength weapons like autocannons and krak grenades should bare little threat to a vehicle (even though both are designed on real life anti-tank weapons, but whatever that's not important to this discussion). If it can't go through the armor, it shouldn't matter and particularly not weapons designed for anti-infantry.

Enter real life, where one of the deadliest things a tank crew could face was napalm. As in, from a flamethrower, a grenade, or airstrike. This is because napalm doesn't give a flying about armor, because most tanks around when flamethrowers were still in use weren't waterproof, the internal components aren't fire proof and the crew still need to breathe even if they don't catch on fire. Under the same mechanics that would makes a flamethrower dangerous to a bunker works the same on a vehicle.

Similarly, a large enough force can dent armor, even if it can't penetrate through. That in itself is not a problem for the tank, but because energy needs to go somewhere, this results in fragments of the armor breaking off at high speeds; which can then injure or kill crew. This is known as spalling and there was anti-tank ammo built on this process. In both cases, the crew is not considered for how weapons effect vehicles. since most people think of crew as inherently save against anything that can't pierce though the armor; The same people only think of things that are clearly anti-tank as something that that should be dangerous to tanks regardless of if that's true. And that includes GW, considering the punisher cannon being str 5 would have rarely been a threat to vehicles other than trukks/raiders, while in real life the M61 Vulcan was made to take down enemy aircraft and the GAU-8 Avenger eats tanks like they're butter.

The OTHER common example, which was brought up in thread, is "why can't I shoot/kill this model with this ranged weapon". The idea being that it's unintuitive when something has special protection against weapons that normally break things considered much tougher or when you can't shoot at them despite being in the open. It logical from our perspective as the players that we can shoot at anything in the board as long as we're in range and can see it, and then do damage. That's intuitive, and anything that prevents that feels arbitrary even when there's an in-universe reason for it. But there's two problems with that:

1) This is a decision being made from the omnipotent prospective of a player, who can see all, knows what's the most optimal targets are, and can control everything to a fine detail. All in the comfort of a garage or FLGS. That's much different from making the same decision when in the battle itself. Soldiers have their own motivations, particularly "living after this", so things that make sense from a game perspective would be Zapp Brannigan levels of suicidal. Or similarly some choices would only make sense due to the existence of game stats, ie firing anti-tank weapons at infantry rather than at tanks because it was more cost effective to do so, or at some infantry but not at others (IE it was more optional to fire your Str 8 weapons an ork nobs because of Instant Death. The justification being there were "big threatening monsters that clearly need bigger weapons to kill", but you wouldn't do that to Ogryns because they were toughness 5 and couldn't be instant death by Str 8 weapons.
2) Gameplay wise there's not really a way to make that actually fun. If everything is targetable and lacking in damage reduction, then that makes boring gunline alpha strikes even more powerful than they are. If a character is important to the enemy army, then without restriction there's 0 reason to not shoot them until dead (See: Synapse in Tyranids). The reason footslogging melee units are nonviable is because there's no way to split that damage across units without bodyguard mechanics, instead getting dismantled piecemeal. Being unable to shoot into melee is often complained about for not being realistic, but then if it existed it'd make the game less tactical and less risky. It feels like the only option to keep something from dying immediately is to keep it off the table, which defeats one of the selling points of the game which is having the models on the table!

I know some people are going to say "Doesn't that just prove the game isn't realistic", but the point I'm trying to make isn't that 40k is and isn't realistic (it isn't), but that realism isn't always intuitive or fun, and when tried to be applied it can be flawed, uneven, or even unfair. And while I'll concede that a game can be fun and realistic, but it should be done from the ground up and not added to a pre existing setting. Especially one that's focused on spectacle and homage to older, goofier sci-fi like 40k.

And to the people saying Sci-fi needs to be realistic, no it doesn't. Science Fiction is a speculative fiction, what scientific or futuristic it explores not necessarily *need* to be possible to pose the question (sometimes science fiction is even done specifically to challenge our current understanding of things). And because science marches on, things that may have been possible at some point are impossible now; that doesn't mean stories based on those ideas stop being science fiction (such as say, Frankenstein, which is the progenitor of science fiction) . So stop calling things "science fantasy" just because it's not Contemporary with shiny baubles.

Well said, although given that Fantasy as a genre is, if my Science Fiction professor lo these many years ago was right, about meaning. So when people argue that the Eagles could have just flown the Ring to Mordor, they're missing out on what the meaning of that journey is. Similarly 40k is Science Fantasy because it combines the Science Fiction 'what if...' of taking what we know and extending it (usually past all reason) with the Fantasy 'why' applied to a lack of AI, why the dystopian nature of the future is the will of the gods, and why we should wipe them (the gods) out when we get the chance.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
We should not view realism and abstraction as diametrically opposed in game design - we aren't taking about art styles. Any wargame will need some level of abstraction to be playable. As a 30-year professional military officer I have participated in many "wargames" over the years and we have computers to handle the simulations that strive for detail at the tactical level. I don't think we want that in a tabletop miniatures game. Even the most "realistic" military wargames I have participated that account for reaction time, spotting factors, ballistics etc can produce unrealistic results because they miss that very important factor that people generally don't want to die. Computer icons do incredibly brave things, as do soldiers who are firing lasers at each other.

For three years I taught wargaming at my Army's Command and Staff College. These wargames are to aid decision making and plan refinement. They are incredibly "abstract" but can produce realistic, credible results. We'll "black box" details of how things happen in an engagement to focus on inputs and outcomes.

The art in wargame design (and I am not a wargame designer!) is determining the right level of abstraction. This will vary with the focus of the game. A game with four or five miniatures per side putting the player in the role of a Sergeant might have more detail and have things like "facings" and firing arcs. A game with one hundred miniatures and the player in the role of Captain or Colonel might choose to abstract things that are not the Captain's business.

For a tabletop wargame I don't want to break my immersion - the less flipping through the rulebook the better. As such I enjoy the design decisions made for 8th edition. As an armour officer I do miss vehicle facings in terms of side armour etc. I do not, however, miss the shenanigans that went with that!

Is it "realistic" that you can shoot a whole squad because of one model's head being in line of sight? Not sure. Is it realistic that we take turns shooting? Is it realistic that we move, confirm that we've all stopped moving and then shoot at exactly one moment in time? I prefer realism in results/effects and not the micro details of the process in obtaining them. When a twin-assault cannon mows down a squad of infantry I am content with the outcome and will overlook/forgive mysterious mechanics that got us there.

I do agree that there should be some consistency in how the game operates. I am happy, though, with 40K having cinematic moments,and I expect the game to have fantastical elements. Its kinda the point. Like art appreciation, though, I am sure that the community will not be in 100% agreement. Sales figure, though, indicate that 8th Ed design decisions are working for the majority.

You bring up military wargames, and I think that's a good reference point with respect to level of simulation. As you note, you often get more realistic results from abstract systems than simulationist ones that fail to take into account certain important considerations (fear of death is a big one for IRL simulations, but fog of war/incomplete information is a huge one for recreational gaming).

Strategic military wargames generally represent the player as a single officer: If you are the general, you give orders to your subordinates. You do not steer around individual squads on the simulated battlefield. In a coordinated exercise, you might have other players as your subordinates, and then they'd be the ones actually controlling the troops- but without the bird's-eye view that the general does. These wargames are also typically refereed to facilitate fog of war.

Tabletop games, in the interest of fun, typically let the player wear two 'hats'. In a skirmish game, you might be the platoon commander, and each of the squad leaders. This means you are giving orders to the squads, but then you are also manually controlling the squads. Everything occurring above the platoon commander's level is abstracted out as objectives, off-board support, and scenario conditions.

When a game can't pick what level it works at, though, you start to have problems with realism. A game that lets you play as a battalion commander but also individually manage every single soldier will inevitably lead to soldiers behaving in unrealistic ways, having no fear of death, perfect knowledge of the battlefield, and impossible degrees of coordination.

40K used to be a small-scale skirmish game where its individual representation of troops made sense. As the game has grown, this approach has become cumbersome and continues to drift away from verisimilitude/realism. There have been other side effects of the scale creep as well, like long-range artillery parks deploying a few hundred meters from the enemy lines, and armies starting the game within effective fire range of one another.

Apocalypse uses the same models and the same battlefield scale, but pares back the granularity at the low levels to deliver a more command-oriented and, IMO, more realistic experience. As a commander, you only have to worry about what a unit can do, whether a unit is in cover, whether the unit is still combat effective- not the exact positions, status, and equipment of every soldier in the squad. You also now have to worry about actual command and control, as proximity to formation commanders is a big deal. Your decisions are more oriented around how to coordinate your forces than what special abilities to use.

Epic has the same 'player scale', but puts more complexity into higher-level systems. Now in addition to formation C&C, you also have to worry about army-wide coordination. A horde of Orks is an unwieldy but effective sledgehammer, while a formation of Space Marines is a responsive, reactive, surgical unit. They play very differently from one another, and fit the fluff better than they do in 40K.

To me, that's the 'realism' that 40K lacks. For all the nitty-gritty rules poured into weapons and equipment, endless waves of Chaos Cultists move with the same single-minded coordination as Tyranids, and there's not a huge difference between Terminators and Mega-Armoured Nobz. That feels wrong to me. Then throw in inconsistent levels of abstraction in the rules, like how you can only shoot with individual models that have LOS, but if you can see even one member of the target unit, you can kill all of them. It feels arbitrary, like a set of rules existing for its own sake rather than trying to simulate an imaginary battle.

I don't need to debate RHA values on tanks, I just want to feel like I'm making decisions appropriate to managing an army, and have that army behave in a way that feels plausible. Static Space Marine castle gunlines, hugging officers to make your plasma explode less, and seamlessly falling back an inch out of melee so everyone can blast the stranded suckers who charged you are all things that don't feel 'right'.

Voss wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Every genre needs internal consistency in order to tell an effective story. 40K does not have this, and so fails utterly.

40k is a game, not a story. It has different needs.

But internal consistency isn't particularly lacking. Orks do ork things, the warp does warp things, marines do marine things, etc. Nothing really jumps out at me as doing things they aren't capable of, with bizarre bits of novels like backflipping terminators being the sole fault of terrible authors and editors not paying attention.

BA holding off a billion bugs for more than 10 minutes?

In a wargame, for me it's a matter of striking an acceptable balance between realism and playable abstraction. This varies greatly from one's tastes to another. To argue that realism isn't critical to a wargame isn't any more accurate than saying that it's required.

For my playing group and me, the current edition is unacceptably abstract to the point that some of the abstractions aren't even attempting to mimic any real tactical effect. It's more of a glorified board game, which can be very engrossing and even challenging but it doesn't have the same appeal for me. If I'm going to paint soldiers and their equipment in a discernible manner and put them on a table depicting possible terrain, no matter how fantastical it may seem, then I want to have rules that reflect proper interaction between all those elements depicted. As others stated, the immersion comes from a common sense approach to how things might interact in a plausible and consistent way. This is not abrogated by the fact that the game has hooligan fungus soccer thugs fighting magical space elves and genetic super soldiers! This is merely the facade of the setting, not a justification for poorly written or incomplete rules.

There is nothing at all wrong with enjoying this edition for what it is, but I'd caution anyone saying that GW's financial success validates the game as a decent wargame. To me it is not, hence we've developed our own ruleset. Not everyone can (nor should) put in that kind of extra work, but for me it justifies all the other effort poured into it.

Neither position is incorrect; it may simply boil down to what you individually want out of this game.

There's a difference between something being 'good' and being 'good enough' and where that 'good enough' applies to lots of people you're going to have a successful product on your hands. GW is about more than a product though, as they're also developing an intellectual property that's still better than Star Wars, etc.

That players can tinker with the rules is part of the design, I think. The original Rogue Trader was less a game than a hodge-podge of notions and numbers crammed into a book with all sorts of art and stuff pointing you in the direction of a game you might make for yourself.

Martel732 wrote:

Voss wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Every genre needs internal consistency in order to tell an effective story. 40K does not have this, and so fails utterly.

40k is a game, not a story. It has different needs.

But internal consistency isn't particularly lacking. Orks do ork things, the warp does warp things, marines do marine things, etc. Nothing really jumps out at me as doing things they aren't capable of, with bizarre bits of novels like backflipping terminators being the sole fault of terrible authors and editors not paying attention.

BA holding off a billion bugs for more than 10 minutes?

the blood angels and all sucessor chapters. working behind extremely solid fortifications. totally belivable.

it's not like they where rushing out to fight on open terrain

Doesn't matter. Bugs could have easily destroyed those forts from orbit. There aren't enough marines in the entire imperium to stop that many Nids. It was ridiculous and BA should all be dead and deleted as a faction.

Maybe the Chapter fortress has sufficient shielding. Tyranids are not known for their orbital bombardments. And only so many at once can attack at once. At the Battle of Rorkes Drift a company of British soldiers managed to fight off 4000ish Zulu warriors. At Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters. Its just their relief came from Khorne is the contentious part. Fortifications and higher skill levels were all multipliers in the Blood Angels favour. And it was barely enough.

If any Tyranid main attack on a Space Marine homeworld is enough to eliminate them then we wouldn't have any Ultramarines.

Martel I don't know why you want to eliminate the Blood Angels as a playable faction so badly. A faction you apparently play too.

With the topic of realism; certain aspects are not modelled well. For example suppressing fire is absent.

 amanita wrote:
In a wargame, for me it's a matter of striking an acceptable balance between realism and playable abstraction. This varies greatly from one's tastes to another. To argue that realism isn't critical to a wargame isn't any more accurate than saying that it's required.

For my playing group and me, the current edition is unacceptably abstract to the point that some of the abstractions aren't even attempting to mimic any real tactical effect. It's more of a glorified board game, which can be very engrossing and even challenging but it doesn't have the same appeal for me. If I'm going to paint soldiers and their equipment in a discernible manner and put them on a table depicting possible terrain, no matter how fantastical it may seem, then I want to have rules that reflect proper interaction between all those elements depicted. As others stated, the immersion comes from a common sense approach to how things might interact in a plausible and consistent way. This is not abrogated by the fact that the game has hooligan fungus soccer thugs fighting magical space elves and genetic super soldiers! This is merely the facade of the setting, not a justification for poorly written or incomplete rules.

There is nothing at all wrong with enjoying this edition for what it is, but I'd caution anyone saying that GW's financial success validates the game as a decent wargame. To me it is not, hence we've developed our own ruleset. Not everyone can (nor should) put in that kind of extra work, but for me it justifies all the other effort poured into it.

Neither position is incorrect; it may simply boil down to what you individually want out of this game.

I think that the popularity of a wargame is an indicator of how well the designers have struck the balance between detail/playability. There are other factors, to be sure, but its hard to argue with success! I am sure that there are plenty of "perfect" wargames that don't get played. Having said that I agree with the theme of your post. It's cool that you have a cohesive group that has worked out its own rules to bring the 40K universe to life for you! Some of my historical wargaming friends are tinkerers with games systems (FOW/TY for instance). The results don't always pan out, but the ride is fun! As a D&D DM I make stuff up on the fly to suite the mood/moment.

What 40K provides, though, is a lingua franca to allow gamers from different communities to have a game.

Tygre wrote:
Maybe the Chapter fortress has sufficient shielding. Tyranids are not known for their orbital bombardments. And only so many at once can attack at once. At the Battle of Rorkes Drift a company of British soldiers managed to fight off 4000ish Zulu warriors. At Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters. Its just their relief came from Khorne is the contentious part. Fortifications and higher skill levels were all multipliers in the Blood Angels favour. And it was barely enough.

If any Tyranid main attack on a Space Marine homeworld is enough to eliminate them then we wouldn't have any Ultramarines.

Martel I don't know why you want to eliminate the Blood Angels as a playable faction so badly. A faction you apparently play too.

With the topic of realism; certain aspects are not modelled well. For example suppressing fire is absent.

it's a sunk cost fallacy, Martel dearly wants to start another faction but can't justify it unless the blood angels die.

not sure why he doesn't just sell his current collection to support buying into another table top game or something.

Tygre wrote:
MAt Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters.

Except you're talking of a 27 to 1 ratio for Rorke Drift and a 12 to 1 for Thermopylae. All the BA with all their buddies were still likely outnumbered thousands to one.

Millions to one. Its an incomprehensible situation made light of because bolter porn.

The game needs less power armor. Get rid of the snowflake marines: kill all of them off.

I mean, I've said it before-Marines just don't make sense at ~1,000,000 bodies.

Even if they're off by a factor of ten and there are ~10,000,000 Marines, they still are too few in number to matter. Like, at all. GW should've just said something like this for Marine numbers:

Marines are a rare sight in the Imperium, being few in number relative to the trillions of Guardsmen. But, despite being a small proportion of the Imperium's numbers, their impact is outsize owing to their superior equipment, training, and bodies.

BrianDavion wrote:

Tygre wrote:
Maybe the Chapter fortress has sufficient shielding. Tyranids are not known for their orbital bombardments. And only so many at once can attack at once. At the Battle of Rorkes Drift a company of British soldiers managed to fight off 4000ish Zulu warriors. At Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters. Its just their relief came from Khorne is the contentious part. Fortifications and higher skill levels were all multipliers in the Blood Angels favour. And it was barely enough.

If any Tyranid main attack on a Space Marine homeworld is enough to eliminate them then we wouldn't have any Ultramarines.

Martel I don't know why you want to eliminate the Blood Angels as a playable faction so badly. A faction you apparently play too.

With the topic of realism; certain aspects are not modelled well. For example suppressing fire is absent.

it's a sunk cost fallacy, Martel dearly wants to start another faction but can't justify it unless the blood angels die.

not sure why he doesn't just sell his current collection to support buying into another table top game or something.

So many old marines that its easy to justify. Its basically worthless at this point. I have six predator hulls for instance.

 Bobthehero wrote:

Tygre wrote:
MAt Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters.

Except you're talking of a 27 to 1 ratio for Rorke Drift and a 12 to 1 for Thermopylae. All the BA with all their buddies were still likely outnumbered thousands to one.

The British and the Greeks didn't have nuclear arsenals.

OK - if you can't take Black Library then I guess stop reading Black Library and just play the game? If you can't take the game then, well, don't play the game?

If a hobby doesn't make you happy and you persist then its not a hobby. Its a problem.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

Tygre wrote:
MAt Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters.

Except you're talking of a 27 to 1 ratio for Rorke Drift and a 12 to 1 for Thermopylae. All the BA with all their buddies were still likely outnumbered thousands to one.

The British and the Greeks didn't have nuclear arsenals.

No, but they had comparable technology compared to their aggressors. Not the same, need-be, but similar.

Marines don't really have an advantage over Tyranids. A Gaunt or Gant is far worse than a Marine, but better than a Guardsman. A Warrior is, at least, on par with a Marine, and there's a LOT of them.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

Tygre wrote:
MAt Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters.

Except you're talking of a 27 to 1 ratio for Rorke Drift and a 12 to 1 for Thermopylae. All the BA with all their buddies were still likely outnumbered thousands to one.

The British and the Greeks didn't have nuclear arsenals.

No, but they had comparable technology compared to their aggressors. Not the same, need-be, but similar.

Marines don't really have an advantage over Tyranids. A Gaunt or Gant is far worse than a Marine, but better than a Guardsman. A Warrior is, at least, on par with a Marine, and there's a LOT of them.

As a guy who also plays an army of Warriors, a Warrior is definitely better than a marine. But when it come to high tech conflicts, the ratio of meat-bags per side is basically irrelevant.

What sort of defences can be deployed by a Chapters home planet? It's not like marines lining up on their fortress walls and firing bolters at oncoming hordes will be their primary means of defence. They should be airbursting nukes over their defense fields. If they are doing something like that, a billion to one ratio can be meaningless, if they aren't doing something like that the writers are dumb.

I'd like to know what the details of the conflict are.

The so-called 'fluff' is filled with rather unlikely events, including back-flipping terminators and grey knights who party in the warp because they are just that badazz, but I typically take this to be imperial propaganda, pulp literature pushed out at a rapid pace to bolster flagging morale and to keep the fantasy-minded on the same page, pro-empire against the creepie crawlies that hunt us to harm us. Of course, these stories are overblown, hyperbolic, un-realistic because they are fictions that tear at the fabric of believability. On purpose.
This has nothing to do with the actual wargame, and less to do with what really (probably) happened.
Necrons did not actually high-five marines, rather they sped away with a single finger outstretched but the smiley face was pasted on afterWARDs to keep the kiddies at home happy and dancing for the victory, for the moment.

As for realism on the tabletop, the consensus seems clear that more is better with a few holdouts for a very expensive card/board game that is gameable and therefore 'competitive' in a way that an actual battlefield is not. Most respondents seem interested in approximating an 'actual' albeit fantastic battlefield as well as possible to allow for battles to be enacted at the scale intended.

This brings me to another question - How willing are we to discount realism in order to get so many, and so many large, models on the table?

My preference would be for 40k to inhabit the place between Kill Team and Apoc, and Apoc to inhabot the place between 40k and Epic. So, 1000 points in 8th edition model equivalents, seems maximal. Ideally, this would involve a return of a movement stat, with most movement much less than 6", of a decent overwatch mechanic, of more realistic terrain and cover interactions, less killy shooting for the most part, and many many fewer heavy weapons. In the original bacjground with the failing empire, failing eldar, sometimes wonky chaos tricks, and rising subfactions like Tau and Nids, super weapons and super high=tech super killy stuff was all at a premium and there was a lot less of it. Some of this can be put down to the fact that plastic moulds were not ready for GW to produce lots of super pretty big models like knights, but this was part of the background for 40k and it helped to tone down the killiness at range and balance the killiness at CC distances with pistols and melta bombs and so on. I can remember so many times that the drama ramped up because the only way to kill that tank was with a melta bomb, or to take position somehow behind the tank... now, that is all gone, and we just spam railguns and mega meltas. People have to roll so many dice, they just use their phones. Something important was lost, imho, and realism on the tabletop was part of it.

I'm personally willing to have a bunch of superheavies on the table becauae the table itself is very abstracted. Weapon ranges are waaaay out of scale with the models, and theres no way a 6" inch move represents only the "in world" length of a Rhino.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I mean, I've said it before-Marines just don't make sense at ~1,000,000 bodies.

Even if they're off by a factor of ten and there are ~10,000,000 Marines, they still are too few in number to matter. Like, at all. GW should've just said something like this for Marine numbers:

Marines are a rare sight in the Imperium, being few in number relative to the trillions of Guardsmen. But, despite being a small proportion of the Imperium's numbers, their impact is outsize owing to their superior equipment, training, and bodies.

There's a fair amount of fluff that more or less says Space Marines don't matter, and it's the Imperial Guard that win the Imperium's wars. Marines are supposed to be the surgical strike element that are deployed when a one-week operation carried out by the best of the best can avoid years or decades of conventional siege.

This got screwed up by Black Library writing bolter porn novels about Marines destroying entire armies in pitched combat and singlehandedly engaging in protracted campaigns. It's like taking Navy SEALs, who are certainly able to affect the outcomes of entire conflicts despite their small numbers, and writing stories about 100-man SEAL teams fighting the entire militaries of foreign countries in open combat- of course in that context you'd conclude that there aren't enough SEALs to matter at all, and that their long recruitment program couldn't possibly replenish their casualties.

Marines work fine in a Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Dirty Dozen, or Black Hawk Down kind of narrative, where their small numbers don't strain the plausibility of their feats. It's when they get treated as regular infantry that they start to have problems.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm personally willing to have a bunch of superheavies on the table becauae the table itself is very abstracted. Weapon ranges are waaaay out of scale with the models, and theres no way a 6" inch move represents only the "in world" length of a Rhino.

That is fine for a larger scale low rez game like an Epic Apoc where you remove entire squads with a single large blast...
40k proper should see one superheavy on a side max and for a narrative, kill the tank sort of mission...
At least, that is the 40K that I would like to play, rather than listen to the roar of dice hoses spraying all over the table for an hour while someone gets tabled in two turns of macro cannonry.

 Bobthehero wrote:

Tygre wrote:
MAt Thermopylae 6000ish Greeks held off for days 70,000+ Persians. It was a siege, and in a siege the goal is to hold off the foe long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they managed that, but with heavy casualties. Along with the planets PDF, the Chapters Serfs, and their successor Chapters.

Except you're talking of a 27 to 1 ratio for Rorke Drift and a 12 to 1 for Thermopylae. All the BA with all their buddies were still likely outnumbered thousands to one.

It seems to me that you can improve the ratio by improving arms and armour. So somebody armed with a machine gun shooting what are effectively rockets at an incredible rate can do a lot more damage alone than a Spartan. Especially when the thing they're shooting at just runs and stabs.

Not enough. A billion is a such a huge number, and Nids probably had more than that.

 jeff white wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm personally willing to have a bunch of superheavies on the table becauae the table itself is very abstracted. Weapon ranges are waaaay out of scale with the models, and theres no way a 6" inch move represents only the "in world" length of a Rhino.

That is fine for a larger scale low rez game like an Epic Apoc where you remove entire squads with a single large blast...
40k proper should see one superheavy on a side max and for a narrative, kill the tank sort of mission...
At least, that is the 40K that I would like to play, rather than listen to the roar of dice hoses spraying all over the table for an hour while someone gets tabled in two turns of macro cannonry.

i mean, at this point armies are getting tabled just as quickly by basic space marines now.

Who knew, throwing on free AP, reroll to hit, shoot twice reroll to wound double damage nonsense on everyone leads to games being short and unsatisfying?

At this point, Apoc gives you a more fun small-scale game. Even with "Removing whole squads at once" your stuff dies way, way slower.

One thing I must congratulate GW on is how their handwave for the more odd theoretical physics ie. FTL and wormholes is certainly more nuanced and interesting than most scifi where those things are taken as granted without consideration for their implications.

As to should Blood Angels still exist, no. It really waters down Tyranids and the setting as a whole to allow some space marines and khorne to just lmao the largest hive fleet out of existence.

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
One thing I must congratulate GW on is how their handwave for the more odd theoretical physics ie. FTL and wormholes is certainly more nuanced and interesting than most scifi where those things are taken as granted without consideration for their implications.

As to should Blood Angels still exist, no. It really waters down Tyranids and the setting as a whole to allow some space marines and khorne to just lmao the largest hive fleet out of existence.

it was a TENDRIL of the largest hive fleet. A TENDRIL. and if the IoM winning any victories agaisnt hive fleet tendrils is a problem, then I'd argue the problem is with the Tyranids not the marines.

A very large tendril. Tyranids are supposed to be an ever encroaching end of the world scenario, so they should be almost never beaten in battle by anything other than exterminatus. If you don't like a setting with such features I would recommend checking out other less fatalistic and grimdark settings.

BrianDavion wrote:

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
One thing I must congratulate GW on is how their handwave for the more odd theoretical physics ie. FTL and wormholes is certainly more nuanced and interesting than most scifi where those things are taken as granted without consideration for their implications.

As to should Blood Angels still exist, no. It really waters down Tyranids and the setting as a whole to allow some space marines and khorne to just lmao the largest hive fleet out of existence.

it was a TENDRIL of the largest hive fleet. A TENDRIL. and if the IoM winning any victories agaisnt hive fleet tendrils is a problem, then I'd argue the problem is with the Tyranids not the marines.

IoM should not be able to beat a tendril with just marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Alkaline_Hound wrote:
A very large tendril. Tyranids are supposed to be an ever encroaching end of the world scenario, so they should be almost never beaten in battle by anything other than exterminatus. If you don't like a setting with such features I would recommend checking out other less fatalistic and grimdark settings.

Nah, the IG work fine. Fight numbers with numbers. There's nothing fatalistic about 40K b/c GW will always pump out the minis.

My argument about marines is this:

there are more plasma guns in the imperial guard than space marines in the imperium. VASTLY more. There are more lascannons, there are more missile launchers.

There are more ork nobz than there are space marines. There are more power klaws, more rokkit launchas, more kustom mega blastas and shokk attack guns than there are marines.

Basically the whole marines are badass thing makes no sense when they've got more anti tank weapons floating around than marines.

Because even with Ward levels of Wankitude, marines still die to lascannons to the face.

therefore the whole thing is stupid.

"Marines" includes guys with bolters, all the way up to fleet assets with biosphere annihilating weapons. (Strike Criusers can enact Exterminatus) It's not just 1000-odd guys running around unsupported. You dont measure the battle effectivness of a carrier fleet by counting the number of SEALs.

Their lore at least used to be about how very, very, very smart and fast they were at deploying their assets effectively. Sadly I don't hear so much about this anymore.

Hellebore wrote:
My argument about marines is this:

there are more plasma guns in the imperial guard than space marines in the imperium. VASTLY more. There are more lascannons, there are more missile launchers.

There are more ork nobz than there are space marines. There are more power klaws, more rokkit launchas, more kustom mega blastas and shokk attack guns than there are marines.

Basically the whole marines are badass thing makes no sense when they've got more anti tank weapons floating around than marines.

Because even with Ward levels of Wankitude, marines still die to lascannons to the face.

therefore the whole thing is stupid.

What they should have kept Marines at is concentration of firepower, toughness, and skill into a small space. For example, Terminators are meant to be maximum survivability in a small enough package to still fit through the tight corridors of a space hulk or starship. That makes Marines suitable for actual surgical strikes and special ops, where the enemy has no time or space to bring their heavier weapons to bear.

The problem is when GW starts writing Superman fantasies of having Marines acting like invincible line infantry on the open battlefield, instead of being buried under an avalanche of artillery and other enemy fire.

"where the enemy has no time or space to bring their heavier weapons to bear."

There's always room for plasma guns. That's the problem.

Martel732 wrote:
"where the enemy has no time or space to bring their heavier weapons to bear."

There's always room for plasma guns. That's the problem.

The prevalence of plasma weaponry on the tabletop is actually not representative of the supposed relative rarity of plasma weaponry in the background. Certainly the older editions of the IG portrayed grenade launchers and flamers as the more common special weapons.

So the idea would be that Marines teleport or drop down and chances are the enemy (such as a rebel human force) are not going to have ready plasma weapons on hand, and the Marines can complete their objective and get out before those troops with plasma weapons can be brought to bear, or the Marines can take them out as they trickle in.

There's still way more plasma guns than marines. And everyone knows the marines might be coming. They aren't exactly subtle. No one is going to be surprised by these guys.

Well, this may be the case about weaponry but then again not every injury is a casualty, marines and their armor likely survive being "killed" in-game often enough.

All of this is very much in-line with the realism discussion, but the realism that we might focus on is that which plays out on the tabletop during a game. I am in full agreement that the availability of super-killy guns should help to offset the relative squishiness of troops, especially marines.

The trouble for the in-game experience seems to be that the background regarding failing and falling tech across the galaxy, met with brute force and numbers in orks and nidz and also devious schemes of chaos, has been replaced with a general arms race that sells the new models I guess, the big new plastic ones that cost a fortune most especially, while doing damage to the game experience.

As a consequence, the in game experience does not seem to match the background, while the changes to the background to make room for new models (and often enough their flashy new trademarked guns) and more bigger shootier models have done some violence to the in game experience.

As someone noted above, the fact that assault marines are terrible at assault is one example of the complete disconnect in game experience. Marines are not supposed to be glass cannons, but that's basically all 1W marines now.

If there's enough plasma on every table to pick up my marines like grots, it hardly matters what the background claims. What matters is what GW and TOs codify.

The tabletop scenario just doesn't establish the tactical advantages marines have in the lore. Blinding, gas and many obfuscation weapons have little or no effect on marines. In 2nd Ed, you could have gone ahead and loaded Guardsmen up with plasma. Then the marine player could have killed half of them outright with a virus grenade, blanketed the firing lanes with smoke, and shot through the smoke like it wasn't there using auto-senses. Guardsmen would be stuck waiting for the wind to clear the smoke, and would have to hope there weren't marines on overwatch waiting for them.

Because guardsmen don't have optic technology? Modern western armies of the 21st century do. Marines couldn't see through blind grenades in 2nd, either.

Even if this were the case, non-codified advantages aren't advantages. Just bolter porn.

Martel732 wrote:
Because guardsmen don't have optic technology? Modern western armies of the 21st century do. Marines couldn't see through blind grenades in 2nd, either.

Modern armies don't number in the billions, spread across an entire galaxy, get supplied by crazy people and have the distinct advantage of their lives having value while Guardsman are basically meat sacks with a gun.

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because guardsmen don't have optic technology? Modern western armies of the 21st century do. Marines couldn't see through blind grenades in 2nd, either.

Modern armies don't number in the billions, spread across an entire galaxy, get supplied by crazy people and have the distinct advantage of their lives having value while Guardsman are basically meat sacks with a gun.

We also don't have entire planets dedicated to production, either. I know 40K tries to be edgy, but it's just silly at this point.

Martel732 wrote:
Because guardsmen don't have optic technology? Modern western armies of the 21st century do. Marines couldn't see through blind grenades in 2nd, either.

In 2nd Ed, Guard did not have optics. Marines could see through Smoke, but not Blind.

Martel732 wrote:
Even if this were the case, non-codified advantages aren't advantages. Just bolter porn.

Are we trying to reconcile why so few Marines can have an in-universe effect or are we just complaining again?

"Are we trying to reconcile why so few Marines can have an in-universe effect or are we just complaining again?"

They can't. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter what the bolter porn says.

Guard had targeters in 2nd. Sounds like optics to me. Just because they couldn't see through smoke doesn't mean they shouldn't have been able to.

It's not my fault that GW wrote absurd justifications to make their zealot warrior monks relevant in a galactic conflict. Marines were much better as space cops.

Martel732 wrote:
"Are we trying to reconcile why so few Marines can have an in-universe effect or are we just complaining again?"

They can't. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter what the bolter porn says.

Guard had targeters in 2nd. Sounds like optics to me. Just because they couldn't see through smoke doesn't mean they shouldn't have been able to.

It's not my fault that GW wrote absurd justifications to make their zealot warrior monks relevant in a galactic conflict. Marines were much better as space cops.

Guard did not have Targeters on personal equipment in 2nd Ed. You could give one model a Targeter by way of a Wargear Card. Otherwise their only Targeters were on tanks. A Targeter was still different than auto-senses or other optical device.

I think they should have had such equipment given the technology we have today in 2020. I can only suspend disbelief so far. I realize others can do it more.

Martel732 wrote:
I think they should have had such equipment given the technology we have today in 2020. I can only suspend disbelief so far. I realize others can do it more.

Actually, looking it up they did have optical sensors on their troops, so you can count that advantage out. However they were still vulnerable to virus, toxin, scare/hallucinogen, and photon flashed. Orks and Tyranids were the majore factions who could not see through Smoke.

I don't think this makes up for being outnumbered quadrillions to a million. Nor the prevalence of weapons that penetrate power armor easily.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't think this makes up for being outnumbered quadrillions to a million. Nor the prevalence of weapons that penetrate power armor easily.

Well, most of the time they're on the same side, and when they're not Marines have orbital superiority and start bombing. Numerical superiority takes a back seat to theater control and the willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.

So, the IG doesn't have a navy?

Martel732 wrote:
So, the IG doesn't have a navy?

No, they don't. The Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy were separated after the Heresy as one of the steps to prevent too much power being concentrated in one force. The guard is reliant on the navy for all transport.

Space marines, however, have their own warships, specifically designed for planetary assault. Part of that is the ability for mass orbital bombardment. Marine ships specifically give up some ship to ship firepower for the ability to pound planetary forces and assets into glass in order to make way for their ground forces.

So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

As far as realism goes, about the only thing in tabletop 40k I have trouble hand-waving away as a gaming abstraction, is tanks not being able to shoot when touched by infantry (especially the chaff infantry).

Quasistellar wrote:
As far as realism goes, about the only thing in tabletop 40k I have trouble hand-waving away as a gaming abstraction, is tanks not being able to shoot when touched by infantry (especially the chaff infantry).

You are very generous.

Martel732 wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
As far as realism goes, about the only thing in tabletop 40k I have trouble hand-waving away as a gaming abstraction, is tanks not being able to shoot when touched by infantry (especially the chaff infantry).

You are very generous.

Indeed, I am, but I do understand that--on the tabletop--concessions have to be made for gameplay.

I think the fiction should be written to more closely match the tabletop.

Martel732 wrote:
So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

Humans and servitors. 20+ years a Space Marine player and you don't know this?

Martel732 wrote:
So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

Yes, chapter serfs. Remember that much of the work of the crew is basically pure grunt work. You wouldn't expect astartes to drag torpedoes into place. And obviously repair and maintenance would be handled by mechanicus personnel.

And the legions use slaves for crew, before you throw that one in there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

Humans and servitors. 20+ years a Space Marine player and you don't know this?

I think he's just being obtuse on purpose.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

Humans and servitors. 20+ years a Space Marine player and you don't know this?

I think he's just being obtuse on purpose.

For what purpose even, to merely excuse griping?

Martel732 wrote:
I think the fiction should be written to more closely match the tabletop.

You mean every so often the battle ends because "Fluffy the Orange Godbeast space cat" descends upon the battle and chooses to nap upon the main field of war.

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the fiction should be written to more closely match the tabletop.

You mean every so often the battle ends because "Fluffy the Orange Godbeast space cat" descends upon the battle and chooses to nap upon the main field of war.

I'd love that myself. That or for tanks from incredibly advanced aliens be able to shoot accurately and move.

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the fiction should be written to more closely match the tabletop.

You mean every so often the battle ends because "Fluffy the Orange Godbeast space cat" descends upon the battle and chooses to nap upon the main field of war.

Better than their current fiction lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So in a chapter of 1000 marines, who is crewing these ships? Humans?

Humans and servitors. 20+ years a Space Marine player and you don't know this?

I think he's just being obtuse on purpose.

For what purpose even, to merely excuse griping?

Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

*Ahem* "Chapter Serfs" and "Servants" please. Only Chaos Space Marines have slaves.

They're slaves. The space marines all deserve to die in a fire. They're primarily a power fantasy. At least that is reflective of reality.

 Nurglitch wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

*Ahem* "Chapter Serfs" and "Servants" please. Only Chaos Space Marines have slaves.

You are aware that the difference between a serf and a slave is pretty much spelling? In fact the etymology of the word comes from the Latin word "servus" which translate to "slave" in modern english and "serf" in middle french.

epronovost wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

*Ahem* "Chapter Serfs" and "Servants" please. Only Chaos Space Marines have slaves.

You are aware that the difference between a serf and a slave is pretty much spelling? In fact the etymology of the word comes from the Latin word "servus" which translate to "slave" in modern english and "serf" in middle french.

But there is a significant difference between them in-universe. Serfs have a pretty privileged position, are well treated and get above average quality of life. Slaves can be killed whenever a Chaos Marine has a tantrum.

I guarantee the same goes for serfs. Or would go for serfs, regardless of the bolter porn.

Martel732 wrote:
I guarantee the same goes for serfs. Or would go for serfs, regardless of the bolter porn.

It doesn't bar some outliers like Space Sharks.

We have different ideas of bolter porn...

Isn't that a weird statement to make though? "Regardless of bolter porn" which translates to: "Regardless of what the writers and designers of the lore say....", as if you have a unique perspective on a fictional universe? That's a pretty head-scratching statement.

You're making it sound like you have inside information on what really happens...in a fictional setting which is solely dictated by a game company which designed it?

pm713 wrote:

epronovost wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

*Ahem* "Chapter Serfs" and "Servants" please. Only Chaos Space Marines have slaves.

You are aware that the difference between a serf and a slave is pretty much spelling? In fact the etymology of the word comes from the Latin word "servus" which translate to "slave" in modern english and "serf" in middle french.

But there is a significant difference between them in-universe. Serfs have a pretty privileged position, are well treated and get above average quality of life. Slaves can be killed whenever a Chaos Marine has a tantrum.

I'd say it depends on the chapter or legion in question. I wouldn't want to be a Flesh Tearers serf or a Word Bearers slave. Ultramarines or Night Lords (at least 10th company, if you can stay away from Uzas) probably wouldn't be any worse than how your average lower class hive city citizen has it.

 Elbows wrote:
Isn't that a weird statement to make though? "Regardless of bolter porn" which translates to: "Regardless of what the writers and designers of the lore say....", as if you have a unique perspective on a fictional universe? That's a pretty head-scratching statement.

You're making it sound like you have inside information on what really happens...in a fictional setting which is solely dictated by a game company which designed it?

A bunch of superhuman donkey-caves are gonna treat humans like gak based of how things actually work in reality.

Martel732 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Isn't that a weird statement to make though? "Regardless of bolter porn" which translates to: "Regardless of what the writers and designers of the lore say....", as if you have a unique perspective on a fictional universe? That's a pretty head-scratching statement.

You're making it sound like you have inside information on what really happens...in a fictional setting which is solely dictated by a game company which designed it?

A bunch of superhuman donkey-caves are gonna treat humans like gak based of how things actually work in reality.

So this is just an excuse to gripe.

Whatever man. Just calling like i see it.

Quasistellar wrote:
As far as realism goes, about the only thing in tabletop 40k I have trouble hand-waving away as a gaming abstraction, is tanks not being able to shoot when touched by infantry (especially the chaff infantry).

This is a good example of immersion breaking that might work in epic, if a tiny tank on an expansive battlefield were completely surrounded by tiny units of infantry which may be assumed to also have grenades and even mines or melta bombs, so the tank is busy trying to keep the troops pinned down, and being surrounded is unable to move away because to do so would open a rear end or underside to attacks of opportunity. I could see this, at such a scale, but at the 40k scale I do not understand the reasoning behind this mechanic at all besides it is over "simple" that makes the game more difficult to understand because it breaks from intuitions which we learn through our daily engagement with our shared reality. Honestly, this runs so contrary to intuition that it does hurt the game. It hurts my head, also, but this is beside the point, I guess.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nurglitch wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I forgot that. I don't get into the lore much. I forgot the marines had slaves.

*Ahem* "Chapter Serfs" and "Servants" please. Only Chaos Space Marines have slaves.

And cats, also... cats also have human slaves, err... serfs, or, servants. Whatever. Dogs too. Orange godbeasts who nap on battlefields.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I think the fiction should be written to more closely match the tabletop.

You mean every so often the battle ends because "Fluffy the Orange Godbeast space cat" descends upon the battle and chooses to nap upon the main field of war.

Martel732 wrote:
There's still way more plasma guns than marines. And everyone knows the marines might be coming. They aren't exactly subtle. No one is going to be surprised by these guys.

I think you under estimate the speed at which a marine strike force can hit.

Sure, whatever. Marines exist. People would prepare counter measures if they were a big problem. That's the way conflict works. Maybe they aren't a big problem, but given the effectiveness of so many weapons against power armor, I don't see what the big deal is.

I really hope they make the lore like the table top, hoping for the novels where every weapon has a range of 40 meters and people get bionic augmentation that disappears after five minutes.

BrianDavion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
There's still way more plasma guns than marines. And everyone knows the marines might be coming. They aren't exactly subtle. No one is going to be surprised by these guys.

I think you under estimate the speed at which a marine strike force can hit.

Martel prefers to ignore what the lore is in favour of his fanon it seems.

It's all fanfic. What difference does it make? I just prefer less marine fanboy masturbatory fanfic.

Martel732 wrote:
It's all fanfic. What difference does it make? I just prefer less marine fanboy masturbatory fanfic.

By definition it's not. The difference is one of them derails attempts to converse with you and the other does not.

The point is sound though.

Everyone knows about space marines, everyone knows they could appear. They also know their enemies deploy tanks as well

Ergo, no one is going to be surprised if tanks and or marines show up in combat at some point.

And as there are more tanks in the galaxy than space marines, there will always be enough anti tank weapons lying around to use against them.


The thing is that marines are conceptually designed for asymmetric warfare, where they control the how of a battle meaning they deliberately only attack areas of the enemy that are advantageous to do so. Ie ones that don't have a lot of anti marine weaponry.

But the game doesn't play like this.

And the sheer amount of materiel makes it impossible for them to do this realistically.

The thing is that the 100 to 1 propaganda works against them. Because if they are facing 100 opponents, that's 10 squads of guard with up to 20 anti tank weapons for 1 marine.

They're supposed to be going through those 100 guard a handful at a time, to maximize their armour and power. No5 facing down 100 at once

But anti-tank weapons are designed to be used against tanks. It's a hell of a lot harder to hit a single roughly human sized target with one. Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes.

Not to mention the fact that those targets are deploying right in your face from tank sized missiles from orbit, dropping in on jump packs, or teleporting. And did anyone mention that they're armed with guns that fire explosive rounds that bore into your buddies flesh before bursting them into bloody shrapnel that showers all over you? That would probably add to the difficulty of hitting those targets.

And of course this all happens after the aforementioned orbital bombardment.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
But anti-tank weapons are designed to be used against tanks. It's a hell of a lot harder to hit a single roughly human sized target with one. Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes.

Not to mention the fact that those targets are deploying right in your face from tank sized missiles from orbit, dropping in on jump packs, or teleporting. And did anyone mention that they're armed with guns that fire explosive rounds that bore into your buddies flesh before bursting them into bloody shrapnel that &showers all over you? That would probably add to the difficulty of hitting those targets.

And of course this all happens after the aforementioned orbital bombardment.

That works when dealing with Guardsmen.

What about when dealing with Tyranids? Necrons? Orks?

 JNAProductions wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
But anti-tank weapons are designed to be used against tanks. It's a hell of a lot harder to hit a single roughly human sized target with one. Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes.

Not to mention the fact that those targets are deploying right in your face from tank sized missiles from orbit, dropping in on jump packs, or teleporting. And did anyone mention that they're armed with guns that fire explosive rounds that bore into your buddies flesh before bursting them into bloody shrapnel that &showers all over you? That would probably add to the difficulty of hitting those targets.

And of course this all happens after the aforementioned orbital bombardment.

That works when dealing with Guardsmen.

What about when dealing with Tyranids? Necrons? Orks?

Argh, the original argument was hundreds of guardsmen. Do I really have to go through every fething faction?

Of course there are ways for everyone to beat marines. Otherwise the game wouldn't work, unless it was hh.

But there's also ways for marines to win. But in a straight up all of one faction vs all the others without any of the elite factions getting to use their elite tactics? It'd come down to guard, orks, or nids just because of numbers.

How many Tyranid warriors do you think there are?

 JNAProductions wrote:
How many Tyranid warriors do you think there are?

As many as the hive mind wants obviously. But against something like a full scale tyranid invasion sm wouldn't be alone. The guard would be there first. And possibly other imperial assets.

Is this about that Blood Angels book? Because I haven't read it, but I know Guy Haley wrote it, and knowing the godawful way he writes Night Lords I wouldn't consider that to be a very good measuring point.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
But anti-tank weapons are designed to be used against tanks. It's a hell of a lot harder to hit a single roughly human sized target with one. Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes.

Not to mention the fact that those targets are deploying right in your face from tank sized missiles from orbit, dropping in on jump packs, or teleporting. And did anyone mention that they're armed with guns that fire explosive rounds that bore into your buddies flesh before bursting them into bloody shrapnel that &showers all over you? That would probably add to the difficulty of hitting those targets.

And of course this all happens after the aforementioned orbital bombardment.

That works when dealing with Guardsmen.

What about when dealing with Tyranids? Necrons? Orks?

Argh, the original argument was hundreds of guardsmen. Do I really have to go through every fething faction?

Of course there are ways for everyone to beat marines. Otherwise the game wouldn't work, unless it was hh.

But there's also ways for marines to win. But in a straight up all of one faction vs all the others without any of the elite factions getting to use their elite tactics? It'd come down to guard, orks, or nids just because of numbers.

Exactly. Those are the factions that matter. The elite ones are too small to have a meaningful impact.

" Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes."

Initiative four is not that much better than humans at init 3. And marines never had extra movement.

 JNAProductions wrote:
How many Tyranid warriors do you think there are?

A bajillion bajilliion.

But WMDs can make numbers near-moot, and marines aren't intended to directly deploy against a bajillion bajillion Tyranid Warriors. Marines are there to board Nid ships in the void while they hibernate, and destroy vital ship organs to destroy it, slow it down, disrupt the fleet, whatever.

Martel732 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
But anti-tank weapons are designed to be used against tanks. It's a hell of a lot harder to hit a single roughly human sized target with one. Especially when said target is super humanly fast with super human reflexes.

Not to mention the fact that those targets are deploying right in your face from tank sized missiles from orbit, dropping in on jump packs, or teleporting. And did anyone mention that they're armed with guns that fire explosive rounds that bore into your buddies flesh before bursting them into bloody shrapnel that &showers all over you? That would probably add to the difficulty of hitting those targets.

And of course this all happens after the aforementioned orbital bombardment.

That works when dealing with Guardsmen.

What about when dealing with Tyranids? Necrons? Orks?

Argh, the original argument was hundreds of guardsmen. Do I really have to go through every fething faction?

Of course there are ways for everyone to beat marines. Otherwise the game wouldn't work, unless it was hh.

But there's also ways for marines to win. But in a straight up all of one faction vs all the others without any of the elite factions getting to use their elite tactics? It'd come down to guard, orks, or nids just because of numbers.

Exactly. Those are the factions that matter. The elite ones are too small to have a meaningful impact.

Okie dokey, then I guess we should call the joint chiefs of staff and tell them to disband the rangers, seals, green berets, and any other special forces you can think of. Because if they can't take on a country's entire military by themselves they obviously have nothing to contribute. Never mind that they're for asymmetrical warfare.

Seriously, is your argument that marines should be able to take on an entire guard regiment or hive fleet by themselves? That's not represented in the game, unless you've ever seen a 2000 point guard or tyranid army consisting of a million models. And any book that represents that is just bad writing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
How many Tyranid warriors do you think there are?

A bajillion bajilliion.

But WMDs can make numbers near-moot, and marines aren't intended to directly deploy against a bajillion bajillion Tyranid Warriors. Marines are there to board Nid ships in the void while they hibernate, and destroy vital ship organs to destroy it, slow it down, disrupt the fleet, whatever.

Right.

ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE. It's a thing. Look it up.

"Because if they can't take on a country's entire military by themselves they obviously have nothing to contribute."

They don't matter on the grand stage. And a galactic conflict is the grandest possible stage.

"should be able to take on an entire guard regiment or hive fleet by themselves?"

No, they obviously can't. Which makes them unimportant on the grand scale.

If they can board the hive ship that controls the local tendril of Nids, and take it out, disrupting Synapse system-wide, then they matter.

Martel732 wrote:
"Because if they can't take on a country's entire military by themselves they obviously have nothing to contribute."

They don't matter on the grand stage. And a galactic conflict is the grandest possible stage.

"should be able to take on an entire guard regiment or hive fleet by themselves?"

No, they obviously can't. Which makes them unimportant on the grand scale.

They take out strategic resources and command structures, which allows conventional forces to win the bigger battles.

Honestly I don't know why we're arguing military tactics with someone who can't figure out how to deal with hordes and dreadnoughts in a game of toy soldiers.

 Insectum7 wrote:
If they can board the hive ship that controls the local tendril of Nids, and take it out, disrupting Synapse system-wide, then they matter.

They have no way of knowing which one that is, and even if they did, there are probably many redundancies. Marines work against poorly written antagonists to facilitate a power fantasy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Because if they can't take on a country's entire military by themselves they obviously have nothing to contribute."

They don't matter on the grand stage. And a galactic conflict is the grandest possible stage.

"should be able to take on an entire guard regiment or hive fleet by themselves?"

No, they obviously can't. Which makes them unimportant on the grand scale.

They take out strategic resources and command structures, which allows conventional forces to win the bigger battles.

Honestly I don't know why we're arguing military tactics with someone who can't figure out how to deal with hordes and dreadnoughts in a game of toy soldiers.

Then let's let it drop. We fundamentally disagree about the effectiveness of groups of 1000 superbois when entire planets are being fought over.

Done.

if you remove C&C infrastructure(guard commissar, synapse, etc), youd be surprised how a seemingly effective fighting force can wither and die without that in place.

Marines aren't the tip of the spear, they're the entire damn thing. they have their own supply chain, reinforcements, orbital assets, fog of war mitigation, etc...

which are all real-world analogues, I can almost guarantee any military would probably kill to have even the humble old lasgun, or if they could teleport in instead of H.A.L.O. dropping Seals/Spetsnaz out of a airplane. That's not even going into the genecraft and technomancy that 40k would present.

All oif this discussion recalls the earlier point, that the game lost something when the "lore" forgot that the empire was failing, that high-tech like plasma was old and unreliable at best, deadly at worst, that tanks and heavy machinery ran on literal prayers for lack of parts and skilled craftsmen able to repair them, that orks enjoyed guns for the smoke and noise as much as actually hitting anything, that yes, equipment matters and guardsmen have less of the good stuff and none of the best stuff, ever.

Why? The marines come and get that 5H1#

Also forgotten is that Tau individually have no personal initiative and that chaos and traitor marines have too much, and so on and so on with the critical flaws in every thing and every one in this universe... until baby Blue Bells comes back from the dead with his truescale restartes and the heretic Cawl with his floating tanks ... all heresy, all obvious chaos trickery, because the universe doesn't run that way...

Proof: the game is worse for it. All of it.

The realism, the gritty grimdark realism, made the game work. The high fantasy shiny heroes in sphaezzz just make the game into a CCG with dice cannons and the abstractions employed to make this work all take away from intuitions that were reinforced in the original resource environment.

In lore and in game, plasma is supposed to be VERY RARE and deadly
... And Marines have better intel than you do
... and better gear.
So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns.

They might drop a few thousand guardsmen instead, or a nice big orbital bombardment to melt all those plasma guns first.
Plus smoke, and radiation, and all that good stuff that made marines so badazz... this is all gone.

For what?
For cards. Gimmicks. And restartes on floating tanks. Who shoot bullets that don't need line of sight. For the lulz.

"if you remove C&C infrastructure(guard commissar, synapse, etc), youd be surprised how a seemingly effective fighting force can wither and die without that in place."

Assuming you know where that is, and there are no redundancies. Like how armies have a general with colonels below them? And then generals in charge of multiple armies? They're gonna kill all of that? Okay. With 1000 guys total?

One of the points I'm getting at is that marine resilience means very little in the open battlefield with so many opposing anti tank weaponry able to be brought to bear. Low target number high opposing fire, makes for very effective target saturation.

Their resilience means a great deal in close quarters bunker fights where stray bullets and stabs will take down less resilient foes, but the probability is in their favour because they are more able to leverage their superiority in one on one (or one on three) combats.

But the tabletop sets marines up in exactly the style of warfare that their strengths don't really shine in.

And so you get this never ending cycle of tension between how marines are supposed to appear in the fluff (where they are positioned in ways that magnify their superiority) and how the tabletop plays out.

They could fundamentally change the game and allow for assymetric warfare where the objectives are different (marines are at an advantage but the enemy starts the game with victory points already as a balance), this would allow marine resilience to shine.

Instead they just keep trying to find ways to make them tougher in their rules, rather than better reflecting how they work.

 jeff white wrote:
All oif this discussion recalls the earlier point, that the game lost something when the "lore" forgot that the empire was failing, that high-tech like plasma was old and unreliable at best, deadly at worst, that tanks and heavy machinery ran on literal prayers for lack of parts and skilled craftsmen able to repair them, that orks enjoyed guns for the smoke and noise as much as actually hitting anything, that yes, equipment matters and guardsmen have less of the good stuff and none of the best stuff, ever - the marine come and get that 5H1#, that Tau individually have no personal initiative and that choas and traitor marines have too much, and so on and so on with the critical flaws in every thing and every one in this universe... until baby Blue Bells comes back from the dead with his truescale restartes and the heretic Cawl with his floating tanks ... all heresy, all obvious chaos trickery, because the universe doesn't run that way... proof: the game is worse for it. All of it. The realism, the gritty grimdark realism, made the game work. The high fantasy shiny heroes in sphaezzz just make the game into a CCG with dice cannons and the abstractions employed to make it work all take away from intuitions that were reinforced in the original resource environment. Yeah, plasma is VERY RARE and deadly, soooo... And Marines have better intel than you do soooo... and better gear. So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns. They might drop a few thousand guardsmen instead, or a nice big orbital bombardment to melt all those plasma guns first. Plus smoke, and radiation, and all that good stuff that made marines so badazz... this is all gone. For cards. Gimicks. And restartes on floating tanks. Who shoot bullets that don't need line of sight. For the lulz.

Plasma has never been rare in the game. Ever.

"So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns. "

They have been since 5th ed. And before that, really.

Martel732 wrote:

Plasma has never been rare in the game. Ever.

"So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns. "

They have been since 5th ed. And before that, really.

Really?

I quote from a non-official source, being a bit lazy to drag out the Rogue Trader and 2ed books...
"Plasma technology is relatively rare in the Imperium as it is incredibly hard to produce and maintain properly in large quantities, and is thus scarce in both Imperial and Chaos forces. However, its power means that these forces use it every chance they get."
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Plasma

Yes, really. IG mech vet spam could field a crazy number of special weapons in 5th.

Plasma became very popular in 3rd really b/c AP 2. Plasma had more nuance in 2nd.

Martel732 wrote:
Yes, really. IG mech vet spam could field a crazy number of special weapons in 5th.

Plasma became very popular in 3rd really b/c AP 2. Plasma had more nuance in 2nd.

Bad game design not reflecting background... struck on the theme of this thread the last couple of pages of posts, now have we?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Yes, really. IG mech vet spam could field a crazy number of special weapons in 5th.

Plasma became very popular in 3rd really b/c AP 2. Plasma had more nuance in 2nd.

And again, from the same page a bit further down:
"According to the fluff, Imperial Plasma weapons are extremely rare and most are at least a few centuries old. This is due to the difficulty in mass-producing Plasma weapons on any Forge World other than Ryza,,,"
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Plasma


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jeff white wrote:
All oif this discussion recalls the earlier point, that the game lost something when the "lore" forgot that the empire was failing, that high-tech like plasma was old and unreliable at best, deadly at worst, that tanks and heavy machinery ran on literal prayers for lack of parts and skilled craftsmen able to repair them, that orks enjoyed guns for the smoke and noise as much as actually hitting anything, that yes, equipment matters and guardsmen have less of the good stuff and none of the best stuff, ever.

Why? The marines come and get that 5H1#

Also forgotten is that Tau individually have no personal initiative and that chaos and traitor marines have too much, and so on and so on with the critical flaws in every thing and every one in this universe... until baby Blue Bells comes back from the dead with his truescale restartes and the heretic Cawl with his floating tanks ... all heresy, all obvious chaos trickery, because the universe doesn't run that way...

Proof: the game is worse for it. All of it.

The realism, the gritty grimdark realism, made the game work. The high fantasy shiny heroes in sphaezzz just make the game into a CCG with dice cannons and the abstractions employed to make this work all take away from intuitions that were reinforced in the original resource environment.

In lore and in game, plasma is supposed to be VERY RARE and deadly
... And Marines have better intel than you do
... and better gear.
So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns.

They might drop a few thousand guardsmen instead, or a nice big orbital bombardment to melt all those plasma guns first.
Plus smoke, and radiation, and all that good stuff that made marines so badazz... this is all gone.

For what?
For cards. Gimmicks. And restartes on floating tanks. Who shoot bullets that don't need line of sight. For the lulz.

Above I quote my own post now clarified to avoid misunderstandings.

There is nothing in the game at all reflecting that. Never has been. They might as well have never written it. It's just like the fluff in the 7th ed BA codex when BA couldn't buy a win.

I'd be a lot more interested in the background if the game had anything at all to do with it. But...

Every single BA strat thread talks about how DC are glass cannons. No marine unit should ever be a glass cannon. And that's just for starters..

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Can you give an example of the type of abstractions in the current rules that you take umbrage at?

Perhaps, for example:

- A model can fire four boltguns and a missile launcher similtaneously, but not a single boltgun and a pistol.
- If a model flees from battle it just vanishes on the spot...
- Vehicles are equally resilient when taking hits from all sides - even those vehicles which are clearly more vulnerable from a particular direction (eg. the Basilisk)
- Models can gain wargear mid-battle by having a command point spent on them. That wargear then evaporates at the end of the phase/turn.
- What even are command points? Why does a certain number of dudes turning up to the fight generate more 'command'? How can Marines, for example, be commanded to have transhuman physiology? And where does it go when they're not being commanded to have it? How come you can spend command points even when you have no commanders?
- How come a Knight can't punch enemies on the first floor of a ruin, but it can punch enemies which stand no taller than its ankles? How is the latter apparently easier to reach than the former?

Don't forget IGOUGO being utterly unrealistic itself.

Martel732 wrote:
There is nothing in the game at all reflecting that. Never has been. They might as well have never written it. It's just like the fluff in the 7th ed BA codex when BA couldn't buy a win.

I'd be a lot more interested in the background if the game had anything at all to do with it. But...

Every single BA strat thread talks about how DC are glass cannons. No marine unit should ever be a glass cannon. And that's just for starters..

Well, 'gets hot' was one way that this was part of the game, and the rest was - early on at least - reinforced with limits how many weapons of a certain type in a unit).

Great thread!

I agree with the premise that the game has been relying more and more on gaming gimmicks and simplification and less on realism.

Many good examples include:

1) templates: whenever I see a massive blob for auras I shed a tear.

2) initiative: doubling down on I go you go is not ideal and immersion breaking.

3) fall back and shoot, touching in melee: all gaming gimmicks in my book.

4) tank rear shots: and other vehicle mechanics (do I recall incorrectly or they had shocked crew at some point).

And so on.

I think this is because they are moving away from the initial enthusiasts. At first, people playing table top wanted simulation. That’s what a certain philosophy pf war game comes from, such as chainmail and advanced dnd rules. Now we have people playing settlers of catan.

I would prefer more simulation and less of an abstraction like chess. But every day we are getting further from realism and closer to playing chess with science fiction sculpts.

Yeah, crew shaken and crew stunned used to be a thing. Though I always found it odd that it affected dreadnoughts. Made sense for tanks though. Spalling is a thing.

One of the most unrealistic things; that both sides are, generally, even in power. If you are the weaker force you screwed up; if the enemy is the weaker force they screwed up; if both sides are on equal footing then both sides screwed up.

Against Space Marines you cannot be everywhere. Disperse to cover a wider area and your command and control is picked off. If you mass; well enjoy the orbital bombardment. Heads I win tales you lose.

Tygre wrote:
One of the most unrealistic things; that both sides are, generally, even in power. If you are the weaker force you screwed up; if the enemy is the weaker force they screwed up; if both sides are on equal footing then both sides screwed up.

Against Space Marines you cannot be everywhere. Disperse to cover a wider area and your command and control is picked off. If you mass; well enjoy the orbital bombardment. Heads I win tales you lose.

That's just buying the SM propaganda. If they were so good, why was the human empire in decadence and close to defeat for so many years?

Truth is, it is hard to create rules for some of their "lore" because it reads like WWII proganda. Instead of trying to mimic that, assume that is simply an exaggeration and focus on the "real" events behind it to model it for the table top.

Martel732 wrote:
Every single BA strat thread talks about how DC are glass cannons. No marine unit should ever be a glass cannon. And that's just for starters..

'Glass cannon' means strong but vulnerable. Since a T4/3+ profile is better than the basic infantry of most factions, we're really talking about tough but vulnerable for their cost.

So, for their cost, what should they be:
-Strong but vulnerable?
-Strong but slow?
-Just equally average at all things?
-Or stronger than average for their cost but not vulnerable and not slow, therefore overpowered?

There's a trade-off here. DC take the base Marine statline and amp up the offensive power for a cost, leaving you with less durability for the total price. That's how you get a glass cannon. Going beyond BA and DC, 'no marine unit should ever be a glass cannon' is incredibly limiting. If nothing can be vulnerable for its cost, then that eliminates an axis of counterbalance that could be used for high-firepower or high-mobility units.

The problem is players approaching the game from a fluff mindset, where Marines are depicted as superior to everybody else and curb-stomp battles with ease, but in tabletop game design their capabilities have to be just average for the price in order to be fair (and, I would argue, they're already well above-average). If you want to be above the average for the cost in some areas, you become below-average for the cost in other areas.

A single Death Company Marine is not a 'glass cannon' on a one-for-one basis compared to Guard, Eldar, Ork, Tyranid, Tau, or Necron infantry. It's still tougher than all of them. A DC Marine only becomes a glass cannon when you take the necessary balancing mechanism of points into account. And that's one of the problems with trying to line up fluff and gameplay; because the fluff is written to make Marines seem like all-conquering badasses and the gameplay is written to give everyone a fair shot.

"then that eliminates an axis of counterbalance that could be used for high-firepower or high-mobility units."

This axis should be reserved for armies like GSC and Eldar. That's my main point.

Just for comparison, DC were much tougher for their cost back in 3rd and 4th. I understand the balancing factor of points, but thematically it's just painful to watch.

"The problem is players approaching the game from a fluff mindset, where Marines are depicted as superior to everybody else and curb-stomp battles with ease, but in tabletop game design their capabilities have to be just average for the price in order to be fair (and, I would argue, they're already well above-average). If you want to be above the average for the cost in some areas, you become below-average for the cost in other areas."

And this is why the fluff basically ends up meaning nothing.

 jeff white wrote:
All oif this discussion recalls the earlier point, that the game lost something when the "lore" forgot that the empire was failing, that high-tech like plasma was old and unreliable at best, deadly at worst, that tanks and heavy machinery ran on literal prayers for lack of parts and skilled craftsmen able to repair them, that orks enjoyed guns for the smoke and noise as much as actually hitting anything, that yes, equipment matters and guardsmen have less of the good stuff and none of the best stuff, ever.

Why? The marines come and get that 5H1#

Also forgotten is that Tau individually have no personal initiative and that chaos and traitor marines have too much, and so on and so on with the critical flaws in every thing and every one in this universe... until baby Blue Bells comes back from the dead with his truescale restartes and the heretic Cawl with his floating tanks ... all heresy, all obvious chaos trickery, because the universe doesn't run that way...

Proof: the game is worse for it. All of it.

The realism, the gritty grimdark realism, made the game work. The high fantasy shiny heroes in sphaezzz just make the game into a CCG with dice cannons and the abstractions employed to make this work all take away from intuitions that were reinforced in the original resource environment.

In lore and in game, plasma is supposed to be VERY RARE and deadly
... And Marines have better intel than you do
... and better gear.
So they tend not to drop down in front of 100 pasma guns.

They might drop a few thousand guardsmen instead, or a nice big orbital bombardment to melt all those plasma guns first.
Plus smoke, and radiation, and all that good stuff that made marines so badazz... this is all gone.

For what?
For cards. Gimmicks. And restartes on floating tanks. Who shoot bullets that don't need line of sight. For the lulz.

Just want to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment.

The other thing I'd add is that I think the lore has started leaning far too hard on characters. Or, more accurately, the same tiny pool of special characters. It makes the universe feel small and also subverts the whole grimdark theme when you basically have the sci-fi equivalent of knights in shining armour running round, solving every problem.

Martel732 wrote:
Just for comparison, DC were much tougher for their cost back in 3rd and 4th. I understand the balancing factor of points, but thematically it's just painful to watch.

That probably has more to do with the scale of the game then anything. We now have demon primarchs and other super heavies in normal 40k. Those things didn't exist when I first started collecting in 4th. Marines feel elite in kilteam for instance (unless you are playing against custodes). Death company would be scary in killteam, much like Khorne Berzerkers are.

Marines do not feel elite at all compared to bullgryns, grotesques, and Wulfen, all of whom have the coveted invuln save vs all the super heavies and demon primarchs.

I think marines in lore and marines in the game are two completly separated concepts. How the game is played out and how battles are illustrated in the artwork with massed line battles it would make more sense if marines and guardsmen existed in a 20 to 1 ratio or something like that. Marines are elite and functions as a rapid insertion force while guardsmen fight in trenches or in costly human wave offensives. That would make some sense within the game at least.

The lore is completely disconnected from the game and even to itself. There are just too few of these elite warriors to matter in a galaxy of warfare. They would barely impact a war against a faction like the orks or tyranids. 1000x1000 marines yea right...

Gitdakka wrote:
I think marines in lore and marines in the game are two completly separated concepts. How the game is played out and how battles are illustrated in the artwork with massed line battles it would make more sense if marines and guardsmen existed in a 20 to 1 ratio or something like that. Marines are elite and functions as a rapid insertion force while guardsmen fight in trenches or in costly human wave offensives. That would make some sense within the game at least.

The lore is completely disconnected from the game and even to itself. There are just too few of these elite warriors to matter in a galaxy of warfare. They would barely impact a war against a faction like the orks or tyranids. 1000x1000 marines yea right...

But crushing C and C... /snark

Martel732 wrote:
Marines do not feel elite at all compared to bullgryns, grotesques, and Wulfen, all of whom have the coveted invuln save vs all the super heavies and demon primarchs.

Bullgryns and grotesques are monstrous infantry and the marine equivlants wouldn't death company but terminators, gravis or centurions. Also wulfen are technically marines.

In addition the two demon primarchs that do exist dish out lots of mortal wounds which go straight through invul saves.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Marines do not feel elite at all compared to bullgryns, grotesques, and Wulfen, all of whom have the coveted invuln save vs all the super heavies and demon primarchs.

Bullgryns and grotesques are monstrous infantry and the marine equivlants wouldn't death company but terminators, gravis or centurions. Also wulfen are technically marines.

In addition the two demon primarchs that do exist dish out lots of mortal wounds which go straight through invul saves.

Bullgryns and grotesques are still much tougher than the marine equivalents you named. Wulfen are marines, but not marines. I wouldn't count on those mortals to get through a grotesque pack myself. You can explain it away however you want, but the gulf between these units is too large.

Grey40k wrote:

Tygre wrote:
One of the most unrealistic things; that both sides are, generally, even in power. If you are the weaker force you screwed up; if the enemy is the weaker force they screwed up; if both sides are on equal footing then both sides screwed up.

Against Space Marines you cannot be everywhere. Disperse to cover a wider area and your command and control is picked off. If you mass; well enjoy the orbital bombardment. Heads I win tales you lose.

That's just buying the SM propaganda. If they were so good, why was the human empire in decadence and close to defeat for so many years?

You mean, "How has humanity survived the continued onslaught of xenos and chaos scum?" Space Marines!

In spite of marines, perhaps.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Grey40k wrote:

Tygre wrote:
One of the most unrealistic things; that both sides are, generally, even in power. If you are the weaker force you screwed up; if the enemy is the weaker force they screwed up; if both sides are on equal footing then both sides screwed up.

Against Space Marines you cannot be everywhere. Disperse to cover a wider area and your command and control is picked off. If you mass; well enjoy the orbital bombardment. Heads I win tales you lose.

That's just buying the SM propaganda. If they were so good, why was the human empire in decadence and close to defeat for so many years?

You mean, "How has humanity survived the continued onslaught of xenos and chaos scum?" Space Marines!

Why aren't armies in the real world all special forces?

In their minds they probably are lol.

 Insectum7 wrote:


You mean, "How has humanity survived the continued onslaught of xenos and chaos scum?" Space Marines!

Jokes aside, I do think it is impossible to balance the odds depicted in the books and rest of the fluff. Better to treat that as war propaganda and use a tonned down version for the game.

But returning to the topic in the OP:

I think the current state of rules is the result of a very conscious effort to move away from simulation elements towards a chess-like more streamlined gameplay.

I guess that they think that videogames will always beat them at realism, so why not embrace the chess path.

I very much prefer simulation to chess but I guess I am not the dominant type of player.

Gitdakka wrote:The lore is completely disconnected from the game and even to itself. There are just too few of these elite warriors to matter in a galaxy of warfare. They would barely impact a war against a faction like the orks or tyranids. 1000x1000 marines yea right...

Martel732 wrote:But crushing C and C... /snark

There are only a few hundred US Navy SEALs. The Chinese military has over 2 million active personnel.

I guess SEALs don't matter for anything and might as well not exist. They've never been employed for special missions where their unique skills and training are valuable. They've never been instrumental in ending conflicts, or contributed in any meaningful way to conventional warfare.

Everybody knows that the only thing that ever matters in warfare is how many bodies you bring. If SEALs can't go toe-to-toe with the entire military of China then that means they're worthless.

(Sarcasm off: The problem with Marines isn't their numbers. The problem is authors trying to use them as grunt infantry instead of special forces. Surgical strike to take out a Norn Queen, yes. Fighting the entire Tyranid horde on the surface of a planet, no. Taking out the leadership and key logistical infrastructure of a rebellious planet, yes. Boltering the entire renegade military on an open plain, no. Marines having trouble on the tabletop when they're going up against superheavy tanks and massed anti-tank weapons is a natural extension of this problem.)

They matter, but not as much as bolter porn makes marines matter.

Sounds like marines should be a kill team force, not a 40K army.

Martel732 wrote:
They matter, but not as much as bolter porn makes marines matter.

Sounds like marines should be a kill team force, not a 40K army.

Epic made Marines work. The problem isn't scale, it's a lack of modeling of the elements that make Marines work in the fluff. There's no ambush scenario in 40K when you just line up on opposite sides of the board. There's no modeling of Marines' lightning-fast operational tempo, nor their coordination. There are rarely 'sudden death' style objectives where a force of Marines can get in, do what they need to do, and get out without engaging the bulk of the enemy forces.

Marines in Epic feel like proper special forces. They're fast, reliable, and can concentrate a ton of power into a small area (this is a hugely important factor- ranges in Epic are a lot shorter, so there's a lot less 'I shoot my entire army at this unit'). What Marines in Epic don't have is unlimited staying power if the enemy can concentrate artillery and superheavies (let alone Titans) against them.

The board is the same size as 40K, but the weapon ranges are far shorter, and units are able to move a lot more relative to their range. An army that can reliably activate (like Marines) can run circles around less-reliable armies, activating to get in, smash a key unit or objective, and get out before the response arrives. Maneuver actually matters. Morale matters too- so if Marines get in and inflict a decent amount of attrition on their targets, it dramatically reduces the amount of return fire they have to contend with.

The utter lack of these mechanics in 40K turns Marines into just bigger Guardsmen. And they die against superheavies and artillery like Guardsmen all the same.

So if you can think of that, why can't GW?

Its just that every game I played in 8th my marines take like 80 casualties. Spread that over three years and ive lost like 1000s of black templars. All of these battles were cannon to me. But the lore saying that there is only some 1000 dudes in my chapter at any given time, while there are also 100s of other black templar players out there participating in the galactic conflict that is 40k. There has to be alot more marines than the lore says for it to make sense.

This is the disconnect between game and the lore that I mean.

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

I don't care for bolter porn, and the massive focus on anything marine related gets on my nerves, so I really enjoy watching the power armoured chimps being gunned down by Kabalites with splinter rifles.

Martel732 wrote:
Marines do not feel elite at all compared to bullgryns, grotesques, and Wulfen, all of whom have the coveted invuln save vs all the super heavies and demon primarchs.

Well that's...probably because they're not elite compared to those units? Those units are all more elite than marines.

....Well, except that wulfen only get invuln save from a standard piece of marine wargear that you can get on MEQ and TEQ units. Unless they have something besides storm shields for invulns?

Do vanvets feel elite then? They have 3++ saves.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Grey40k wrote:

Tygre wrote:
One of the most unrealistic things; that both sides are, generally, even in power. If you are the weaker force you screwed up; if the enemy is the weaker force they screwed up; if both sides are on equal footing then both sides screwed up.

Against Space Marines you cannot be everywhere. Disperse to cover a wider area and your command and control is picked off. If you mass; well enjoy the orbital bombardment. Heads I win tales you lose.

That's just buying the SM propaganda. If they were so good, why was the human empire in decadence and close to defeat for so many years?

You mean, "How has humanity survived the continued onslaught of xenos and chaos scum?" Space Marines!

Why aren't armies in the real world all special forces?

It's a sarcastic comment illustrating how easy it is to reverse the "why is the Imperium so close to defeat?" comment.

Of course all armies in the real world (or 40K) aren't special forces. I'll in no way disregard the vast contribution of the Imperial Navy, Guard, Sororitas, Mechanicum, etc. etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Wait, why doesn't it match up? That's what the lore-marines deploy too, no?

Martel732 wrote:
So if you can think of that, why can't GW?

I mean, I didn't, GW did when they wrote Epic.

But it's 2020: Command and control, maneuver, simulation, and restrictive rules are out. Wombo combos, pseudo-deckbuilding, netlisting, and permissive rules are in. You can't make Marines feel like a better-coordinated force just by letting them shoot twice or giving them bonus AP. You can't simulate attacks on infrastructure or hit-and-run strikes with a dull, predictable, line-up-your-armies-and-shoot ITC mission set. And you can't make Marines feel elite and durable when every buff revolves around lethality, everything is in range on turn 1, and people don't want to scale back the lethality because it makes the (overcomplicated) games take longer.

I really like the Apocalypse ruleset, but when you compare it to Epic it's clear how game design has changed.

Gitdakka wrote:
Its just that every game I played in 8th my marines take like 80 casualties. Spread that over three years and ive lost like 1000s of black templars. All of these battles were cannon to me. But the lore saying that there is only some 1000 dudes in my chapter at any given time, while there are also 100s of other black templar players out there participating in the galactic conflict that is 40k. There has to be alot more marines than the lore says for it to make sense.

This is the disconnect between game and the lore that I mean.

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Realistically, casualties are not dead. Technically, anyone injured is a casualty, but for game purposes, it is anyone rendered unable to fight.

Fortunately, Astartes are super-tough and have a really good health plan. They will be back in action soon.

I guess that's one way to look at it. The other way is that GW is really bad at math.

 alextroy wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
Its just that every game I played in 8th my marines take like 80 casualties. Spread that over three years and ive lost like 1000s of black templars. All of these battles were cannon to me. But the lore saying that there is only some 1000 dudes in my chapter at any given time, while there are also 100s of other black templar players out there participating in the galactic conflict that is 40k. There has to be alot more marines than the lore says for it to make sense.

This is the disconnect between game and the lore that I mean.

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Realistically, casualties are not dead. Technically, anyone injured is a casualty, but for game purposes, it is anyone rendered unable to fight.

Fortunately, Astartes are super-tough and have a really good health plan. They will be back in action soon.

Surely that depends on the weapon and the outcome?

If the SMs lose, then it's unlikely they'll be able to evacuate their wounded, so even if some of the casualties aren't actually dead, the enemy will have ample opportunity to capture them, finish them off or (in the case of nids) devour them entirely.

Then have to consider the weapon that inflicted the casualty. Pretty sure a lot of Necron weapons reduce their targets to atoms, DE have ones that inflict some pretty horrific deaths, to the point where any Astartes who survives them would probably really wish he hadn't. You get the idea.

My point is, even if casualties don't necessarily represent lethal injuries, it seems like a lot of them are going to be lethal either because of the weapon that inflicted the injury or because the SMs weren't able to hold their ground to actually evacuate the wounded. And somehow I doubt that DE, Necrons, Chaos etc. will obligingly wait whilst the SM version of the Red Cross administer medical treatment.

 Insectum7 wrote:
...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Wait, why doesn't it match up? That's what the lore-marines deploy too, no?

I mean space marines fighting outright battles does not make sense in the fluff with their few numbers spread so thinly. With so few of them they should only do skirmishes, like 5 marines infiltrating a ship and killing everyone, or other similar commando missions. Why use marines as a mechanized force when IG could do the same? Or why put 100 marines in a blob like all those artworks when a single artillery barrage or bombing run would wipe them out?

Martel732 wrote:
I guess that's one way to look at it. The other way is that GW is really bad at math.

Funny!

Martel732 wrote:
In spite of marines, perhaps.

Also funny.

The force is strong with this one:

 catbarf wrote:

Epic made Marines work. The problem isn't scale, it's a lack of modeling of the elements that make Marines work in the fluff. There's no ambush scenario in 40K when you just line up on opposite sides of the board. There's no modeling of Marines' lightning-fast operational tempo, nor their coordination. There are rarely 'sudden death' style objectives where a force of Marines can get in, do what they need to do, and get out without engaging the bulk of the enemy forces.

Marines in Epic feel like proper special forces. They're fast, reliable, and can concentrate a ton of power into a small area (this is a hugely important factor- ranges in Epic are a lot shorter, so there's a lot less 'I shoot my entire army at this unit'). What Marines in Epic don't have is unlimited staying power if the enemy can concentrate artillery and superheavies (let alone Titans) against them.

The board is the same size as 40K, but the weapon ranges are far shorter, and units are able to move a lot more relative to their range. An army that can reliably activate (like Marines) can run circles around less-reliable armies, activating to get in, smash a key unit or objective, and get out before the response arrives. Maneuver actually matters. Morale matters too- so if Marines get in and inflict a decent amount of attrition on their targets, it dramatically reduces the amount of return fire they have to contend with.

The utter lack of these mechanics in 40K turns Marines into just bigger Guardsmen. And they die against superheavies and artillery like Guardsmen all the same.

 catbarf wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So if you can think of that, why can't GW?

I mean, I didn't, GW did when they wrote Epic.

But it's 2020: Command and control, maneuver, simulation, and restrictive rules are out. Wombo combos, pseudo-deckbuilding, netlisting, and permissive rules are in. You can't make Marines feel like a better-coordinated force just by letting them shoot twice or giving them bonus AP. You can't simulate attacks on infrastructure or hit-and-run strikes with a dull, predictable, line-up-your-armies-and-shoot ITC mission set. And you can't make Marines feel elite and durable when every buff revolves around lethality, everything is in range on turn 1, and people don't want to scale back the lethality because it makes the (overcomplicated) games take longer.

I really like the Apocalypse ruleset, but when you compare it to Epic it's clear how game design has changed.

Exalted!

Gitdakka wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Wait, why doesn't it match up? That's what the lore-marines deploy too, no?

I mean space marines fighting outright battles does not make sense in the fluff with their few numbers spread so thinly. With so few of them they should only do skirmishes, like 5 marines infiltrating a ship and killing everyone, or other similar commando missions. Why use marines as a mechanized force when IG could do the same? Or why put 100 marines in a blob like all those artworks when a single artillery barrage or bombing run would wipe them out?

A lot of the time the Space Marines are the first responders to a conflict, and they may not have time to wait for the Guard for support. Mechanized Space Marines would work the same as the five-man kill team except on a larger scale, the idea is that they're still concentrating force against an unprepared/unsupported foe in a small area of conflict, and then continuing on before retaliation can meet them, or airlifting out. I also imagine that they'd use their armored formations in feints trying to draw out the opponent for orbital bombardment.

As for the "blob of marines", I imagine those are the big drops into key portions of a larger battle. The sort of massed shock-drops onto HQ formations that will be casualty-heavy but can determine the fate of the conflict.

Dreadnoughts are an oddball, as they're too slow to keep up with the tanks. But they can be podded, airlifted via Storm Raven, and are pretty useful in urban combat with their walker status and assault capability.

I also like the idea that Space Marine tanks are built for long deployments and high penetration. They sport Lascannons for AT duty rather than ammunition-heavy Battlecannons, and at least the classic marine tanks used ammunition commonly found among IG arsenals, bolter and Heavy Bolter rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
Its just that every game I played in 8th my marines take like 80 casualties. Spread that over three years and ive lost like 1000s of black templars. All of these battles were cannon to me. But the lore saying that there is only some 1000 dudes in my chapter at any given time, while there are also 100s of other black templar players out there participating in the galactic conflict that is 40k. There has to be alot more marines than the lore says for it to make sense.

This is the disconnect between game and the lore that I mean.

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Realistically, casualties are not dead. Technically, anyone injured is a casualty, but for game purposes, it is anyone rendered unable to fight.

Fortunately, Astartes are super-tough and have a really good health plan. They will be back in action soon.

Surely that depends on the weapon and the outcome?

If the SMs lose, then it's unlikely they'll be able to evacuate their wounded, so even if some of the casualties aren't actually dead, the enemy will have ample opportunity to capture them, finish them off or (in the case of nids) devour them entirely.

Then have to consider the weapon that inflicted the casualty. Pretty sure a lot of Necron weapons reduce their targets to atoms, DE have ones that inflict some pretty horrific deaths, to the point where any Astartes who survives them would probably really wish he hadn't. You get the idea.

My point is, even if casualties don't necessarily represent lethal injuries, it seems like a lot of them are going to be lethal either because of the weapon that inflicted the injury or because the SMs weren't able to hold their ground to actually evacuate the wounded. And somehow I doubt that DE, Necrons, Chaos etc. will obligingly wait whilst the SM version of the Red Cross administer medical treatment.

Better win then!

Also, I tend to think the Scout company is less regulated in terms of size, more meat for the grinder! But seriously, the old forehead stud was for every ten years of service, iirc. I imagine the attrition rate is pretty high even with the enhances biology, healing, bionics, etc.

Gitdakka wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gitdakka wrote:

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Wait, why doesn't it match up? That's what the lore-marines deploy too, no?

I mean space marines fighting outright battles does not make sense in the fluff with their few numbers spread so thinly. With so few of them they should only do skirmishes, like 5 marines infiltrating a ship and killing everyone, or other similar commando missions. Why use marines as a mechanized force when IG could do the same? Or why put 100 marines in a blob like all those artworks when a single artillery barrage or bombing run would wipe them out?

those art works are just that art don't take them too seriously as they're designed to be visually impressive more then anything.

Bit late getting into the thread (though it looks like most of what I missed is arguing about Marines), but in my opinion, 40k generally threw the baby out with the bathwater in the drive for simplification.

This "simpler" game, where everything's just on the datasheet and there's no need to flip around (except there totally is) is actually really hard to play. My opponents oftentimes forget rules to their own detriment - though sometimes to their advantage as well. The fact that this is so common means I likely do this myself; I try to be sharp with rules but they're so counterintuitive that it's difficult sometimes.

And yes, counterintuitive. Things like tanks not being able to fall back and shoot, or worse shooting while in combat (except the ones that can of course like the Baneblade). A Valdor Tank Hunter can fall back and shoot, despite being generally smaller than a Land Raider which cannot. Why? What abstraction is that? GW please.

Another example is charges: what does the charge roll represent? Does it represent the unit beginning its charge, but failing to reach the enemy in time? Why doesn't the unit move? That's counterintuitive.

Speaking of time, what's 40k's time step? And why is it so fethed up? Is it 6 seconds of combat? That makes sense, with tanks being able to fire roughly once every six seconds or so. Though some can fire twice, and overwatch infinite times. Maybe 40k's timestep is closer to 10 or 15 seconds, but then movement ranges are all out of whack...

I think the designers lost the thread (or alternatively deliberately let go of the thread) with regards to realism in the game. They didn't start by asking what scale of combat they wanted to model, they didn't start by trying to create coherent abstractions, they didn't start by trying to build the best wargame that reflects reality/the background they could.

They just took what they had in 7th and turned tanks into monstrous creatures, basically.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Bit late getting into the thread (though it looks like most of what I missed is arguing about Marines), but in my opinion, 40k generally threw the baby out with the bathwater in the drive for simplification.

This "simpler" game, where everything's just on the datasheet and there's no need to flip around (except there totally is) is actually really hard to play. My opponents oftentimes forget rules to their own detriment - though sometimes to their advantage as well. The fact that this is so common means I likely do this myself; I try to be sharp with rules but they're so counterintuitive that it's difficult sometimes.

And yes, counterintuitive. Things like tanks not being able to fall back and shoot, or worse shooting while in combat (except the ones that can of course like the Baneblade). A Valdor Tank Hunter can fall back and shoot, despite being generally smaller than a Land Raider which cannot. Why? What abstraction is that? GW please.

Another example is charges: what does the charge roll represent? Does it represent the unit beginning its charge, but failing to reach the enemy in time? Why doesn't the unit move? That's counterintuitive.

Speaking of time, what's 40k's time step? And why is it so fethed up? Is it 6 seconds of combat? That makes sense, with tanks being able to fire roughly once every six seconds or so. Though some can fire twice, and overwatch infinite times. Maybe 40k's timestep is closer to 10 or 15 seconds, but then movement ranges are all out of whack...

I think the designers lost the thread (or alternatively deliberately let go of the thread) with regards to realism in the game. They didn't start by asking what scale of combat they wanted to model, they didn't start by trying to create coherent abstractions, they didn't start by trying to build the best wargame that reflects reality/the background they could.

They just took what they had in 7th and turned tanks into monstrous creatures, basically.

I don't think the market really cares about realism in games anymore to be honest. A good example of this is Infinity vs. killteam. Locally we had people try to start gaming nights for both those games. Infinity never took off, however Killteam? It draws 12+ people regularly. Killteam is much more streamlined rule set. A lot of players just seem to prefer that.

Infinity is about to come out with a new edition that includes a mode with more streamlined rules. So even the designers of that game seem to understand where the market is.

That's because Kill Team uses 40k models.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because Kill Team uses 40k models.

I strongly disagree. I have tried demoing infinity several times. The complexity was a huge turn off for people. Vast majority of the people playing killteam locally are new to the hobby.

I taught people to play both games. Killteam is much easier for people to grasp and play. In the current climate of tabletop games that matters a lot in my experience.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because Kill Team uses 40k models.

I strongly disagree. I have tried demoing infinity several times. The complexity was a huge turn off for people.

Gameplay complexity doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the "realism"/verisimilitude problem. You can build a game that makes a lot more intuitive sense than 40k with fewer rules (ex. Bolt Action), or one that makes a lot more intuitive sense and has a lot more rules (ex. Infinity). The ease with which you can play the game doesn't need to have anything to do with how well it simulates what it's trying to simulate.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because Kill Team uses 40k models.

I strongly disagree. I have tried demoing infinity several times. The complexity was a huge turn off for people.

Gameplay complexity doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the "realism"/verisimilitude problem. You can build a game that makes a lot more intuitive sense than 40k with fewer rules (ex. Bolt Action), or one that makes a lot more intuitive sense and has a lot more rules (ex. Infinity). The ease with which you can play the game doesn't need to have anything to do with how well it simulates what it's trying to simulate.

Not necessarily, but my point is most people playing table top games now (including miniatures) don't really care about "realism". I personally think infinity does a better job of simulating a small scale firefight than killteam, but in my experience the players locally don't seem to care about that.

I like many aspects of Infinity but one immersion breaking thing for me is the idea you can spend all your actions on a single unit. You can wind up with units sacrificing their actions to make a super ninja for a turn. It's a little goofy, imo.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I like many aspects of Infinity but one immersion breaking thing for me is the idea you can spend all your actions on a single unit. You can wind up with units sacrificing their actions to make a super ninja for a turn. It's a little goofy, imo.

It's called "Rambo-ing" and I find it's nowhere near as present in the game or as effective as people who grumble about it after reading the rules seem to think. You can do it but going back to the realism angle if one guy tries to run into the covering fire of a whole enemy team he'll discover quite quickly that he's still just one guy with no more than three hitpoints (in extreme cases) and get shot full of holes. (It does work really well on new players who don't know how to counter it but complaining about it is kind of like hearing a 40k player complain that all superheavies are busted because they're so much bigger than anything he can take; yes, a Spartan is a big scary tank, but it's wildly inefficient and easily countered.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:
... but complaining about it is kind of like hearing a 40k player complain that all superheavies are busted because they're so much bigger than anything he can take; yes, a Spartan is a big scary tank, but it's wildly inefficient and easily countered.)

Spartan beats scissors, paper beats spartan.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

...my point is most people playing table top games now (including miniatures) don't really care about "realism". I personally think infinity does a better job of simulating a small scale firefight than killteam, but in my experience the players locally don't seem to care about that.

Except for everyone in this thread who does. And everyone else who might never have played a tabletop wargame but would benefit if everyday intuitions fed into actual gamelply, rather than needing to be checked and amended in the effort to "streamline" rules with counter-intuitive abstractions.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Bit late getting into the thread (though it looks like most of what I missed is arguing about Marines), but in my opinion, 40k generally threw the baby out with the bathwater in the drive for simplification.

This "simpler" game, where everything's just on the datasheet and there's no need to flip around (except there totally is) is actually really hard to play. My opponents oftentimes forget rules to their own detriment - though sometimes to their advantage as well. The fact that this is so common means I likely do this myself; I try to be sharp with rules but they're so counterintuitive that it's difficult sometimes.

And yes, counterintuitive. Things like tanks not being able to fall back and shoot, or worse shooting while in combat (except the ones that can of course like the Baneblade). A Valdor Tank Hunter can fall back and shoot, despite being generally smaller than a Land Raider which cannot. Why? What abstraction is that? GW please.

Another example is charges: what does the charge roll represent? Does it represent the unit beginning its charge, but failing to reach the enemy in time? Why doesn't the unit move? That's counterintuitive.

Speaking of time, what's 40k's time step? And why is it so fethed up? Is it 6 seconds of combat? That makes sense, with tanks being able to fire roughly once every six seconds or so. Though some can fire twice, and overwatch infinite times. Maybe 40k's timestep is closer to 10 or 15 seconds, but then movement ranges are all out of whack...

I think the designers lost the thread (or alternatively deliberately let go of the thread) with regards to realism in the game. They didn't start by asking what scale of combat they wanted to model, they didn't start by trying to create coherent abstractions, they didn't start by trying to build the best wargame that reflects reality/the background they could.

They just took what they had in 7th and turned tanks into monstrous creatures, basically.

Exalted. Thanks for the contribution.

For me it was the hypersonic jet fighter stuck on a 6x4 board.....

Games Workshop clearly want a more "board gamey" experience, for lack of a better term and one assumes they have done their research on this and from what I hear their current games are doing better than ever.

It's not what I want from the game personally, I definitely think there is room for both at least but I do believe that it is a deliberate move.

I think it is exactly what the poster above me says. Transition from simulation war game to board game.

Board games use the fluff to make it cooler but do not attempt to simulate at all.

As a returning player, I see the current 40k iteration following that approach more Than it did in its beginnings.

 jeff white wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:

...my point is most people playing table top games now (including miniatures) don't really care about "realism". I personally think infinity does a better job of simulating a small scale firefight than killteam, but in my experience the players locally don't seem to care about that.

Except for everyone in this thread who does. And everyone else who might never have played a tabletop wargame but would benefit if everyday intuitions fed into actual gamelply, rather than needing to be checked and amended in the effort to "streamline" rules with counter-intuitive abstractions.

Yea the people on this thread care, but the results speak for themselves. GW is killing it right now with their less realistic streamlined ruleset. The average consumer doesn't seem to care or if they do it is a tertiary concern.

Another game that was doing well for awhile was warmahordes. Mk2 was a great game and I saw a lot of 40k players jump ship in 6th/7th to play it. Does warmahordes simulate actual combat well? Hell no. Did people seem to care at all in my experience? Nope.

I think the days of miniature games being war games simulating real world combat are basically over (except for historicals). The market has spoken and it wants the board game experience.

It's the end of the world and we're talking about realism and 40k ? There really isn't any as the game isn't elegant enough for it to make any realism claim.

I doubt it'll ever be realistic but the game is far too simple and the only way to add depth is to bloat it into a great unclean one of a rule set but not with depth but tacked on but just a bunch of bells and whistles.

As for this being a good thing because it's selling well. I'd like to see the numbers of units over just the cost going up and up and up to spur high profits. Doesn't mean they are really doing things right.

The only thing GW have done really well is survive and be ever present. At the end of the day, that doesn't say the system kicks butt people will buy into a poor system just to be sure they will be able to play at all.

Over all I like some other system mechanics far better but they are more niche as you can't find others willing to try them. Means nothing about the system being more wanted, it's simply for many places the only game in town and you can't under estimate how people go with the crowd as opposed to blaze a new path.

Saying no one cares about realism is pretty daft, I could care all day long and actually do but if everyone is just going to play a more meh system because everyone has it, doesn't really matter does it ?

Simpler is easier for everyone and you need to put in more thought for a realistic system and many warhammer players don't even put that much thought into an army list, let alone to learn a more complex system like infinity can prove to be for example.

All the results say is easier is easier and will be more popular on a base level because of that, especially when its often " The " game in town. Works for video games as well and ends up why more realistic, harder to learn games end up niche and easy arcade style game mechanics get huge numbers.

 ValentineGames wrote:
What's funny is that writers understand that realism in a Sci-Fi setting is almost a necessity.

*eyes Star Wars or any number of other science fantasy settings equivalent to 40k*

They sure do, pal. They suuuuuure do.

Please. People can't even agree on the details of what realism is, or what is real, in the first place. And that's just real life, without getting in to the art that is fiction.

Does the assertion that "simpler" is the same thing as "counter-intuitive and unrealistic" hold up?

Is 40k actually simpler or is it complicated in unrealistic ways?

Presumably you could make a game identical in most ways to 40k, but make a right where the designers made a left. For example, models with Fly can fall back and shoot - just add two words (monster and vehicle) and you get a more realistic rule.

Oh, 40k is definitely complicated in unrealistic ways.

Prime example: The Warp. It exists, it's completely unrealistic, and this complicates things.

 Melissia wrote:
Oh, 40k is definitely complicated in unrealistic ways.

Prime example: The Warp. It exists, it's completely unrealistic, and this complicates things.

I was thinking ruleswise, not lore wise.

Furthermore, I use realism as a shorthand for "believable within the setting", not literal realism. Like I get that a lot of things in 40k are "unrealistic".

But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

In my defense, the thread isn't clear on which it wants to focus on.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I like many aspects of Infinity but one immersion breaking thing for me is the idea you can spend all your actions on a single unit. You can wind up with units sacrificing their actions to make a super ninja for a turn. It's a little goofy, imo.

It's called "Rambo-ing" and I find it's nowhere near as present in the game or as effective as people who grumble about it after reading the rules seem to think. You can do it but going back to the realism angle if one guy tries to run into the covering fire of a whole enemy team he'll discover quite quickly that he's still just one guy with no more than three hitpoints (in extreme cases) and get shot full of holes. (It does work really well on new players who don't know how to counter it but complaining about it is kind of like hearing a 40k player complain that all superheavies are busted because they're so much bigger than anything he can take; yes, a Spartan is a big scary tank, but it's wildly inefficient and easily countered.)

For the point of the thread Superheavies aren't exactly immersion breaking while one model supercharging at the expense of his pals being able to do anything is. It's a strange occurence provided by for the core mechanics. It's more akin to the Fall Back and tri-cornering in terms of gamey manipulation.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Gitdakka wrote:
Its just that every game I played in 8th my marines take like 80 casualties. Spread that over three years and ive lost like 1000s of black templars. All of these battles were cannon to me. But the lore saying that there is only some 1000 dudes in my chapter at any given time, while there are also 100s of other black templar players out there participating in the galactic conflict that is 40k. There has to be alot more marines than the lore says for it to make sense.

This is the disconnect between game and the lore that I mean.

I like how a table top classic marine army is organized with light tanks, drop pods, rhinos, dreadnoughs, marines in their tac, dev and assult variants. I's just weird that the lore does not match this in any way that makes sense

Removed from play does not always mean KIA.

They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

It is interesting that Squad Leader was considered more "abstract" by some at the time, which is pretty hilarious. I think its a bit of a false dichotomy to think in terms of "realism vs abstraction" in game design. The games are all abstracted. As a player you have virtual omniscience. In my reconnaissance squadron commander back in "reality" I was happy when I had a general idea where my Troops were and a rough idea where the enemy might be. I was happy when my Troops followed my intent and certainly did not control their movements with the fidelity of a tabletop wargamer. As a Lieutenant I was happy when I wasn't completely lost, never mind trying to achieve the coordination required for what some call tabletop "tactics." I think that we could ask for some level of realistic "effect" in our wargames but that's about it. Details or "chrome" can be fun and add flavour but be careful calling that "realism."

Miniatures games are in a tough spot for those obsessed with "realism" when we look at scale. There is no realistic ground scale, never mind time scale. Some games like Flames of War explicitly state that they have a "sliding ground scale" to accommodate divisional artillery and squad level weapons on the same 8x6 table. Epic did something like that as well. For the record I think that the final version of Epic was the best GW game. Too bad virtually nobody played it.

I think that elegance in game design happens when you have fairly simple mechanics that portray quite complex ideas and problems. I think that DBA was elegant in that it distilled a deep understanding of ancient warfare into a simple but not simplistic game system. In terms of playability it was easy to learn yet hard to master. The design of 8th Ed is clearly leaning towards streamlining to increase playability/design elegance. Is it actually elegant? Maybe,maybe not - its certainly more elegant than 7th Ed! I can have games with a host of different types of units yet I do not have to have my head in the rule book.

Some are sad about the streamlining and that is to be expected. Wargamers are difficult to please. Some folks want more detail and are at their happiest arguing rules subsections during a game like a divorce court lawyer. Others complain about "bloat." I do feel bad for people that like a game and then get left-behind by Edition change. I've been that guy. Sometimes you gotta either suck it up and play or move the heck on.

Martel732 wrote:
They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

Heh, slap a bionic face on them & they'll be fine.

Besides, doesn't matter. How many games have you played throughout your 40k career? Whatever the #, there's been 10k+ years since the Heresy. You're games (and their casualties) are merely random samples along that timeline.
And that's assuming they're even "real" battles. Some of them might simply be Holodeck style simulations. In-fact I think that's a pretty good way to look at all this as it'd certainly explain the rules shifts & oddities.

ccs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

Heh, slap a bionic face on them & they'll be fine.

I know thats a joke, but bionics are another immersion breaker for me, to be honest, at least as 40k does it. For marines and orks, bionics are a downgrade from their transhuman and absurd fungus biology. The idea they get benefits from cyberlimbs is rather silly. I can see them as useful for normal humans, but not for transhumans derived from the flesh of warp-touched demigods.

Iron Hands should be the weakest marine chapter by a big margin, and Ghaz an utter clod, just a weaker dread that other orks point in the direction of the enemy and let rampage.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Yes you've explained the mechanical difference, but that doesn't make sense.

Why do TITANIC vehicles get to shoot while in Melee and not regular vehicles? Why only AM TITANIC vehicles can do that and not other titanic ones? Why does a Malcador have 18 wounds and a Valdor 20? What does TITANIC even mean? The distinction is entirely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have any relevance to the "reality" of the game.

fundamentally, what is different about these vehicles in "reality" (of the setting) to make them behave so differently on the battlefield?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Yes you've explained the mechanical difference, but that doesn't make sense.

Why do TITANIC vehicles get to shoot while in Melee and not regular vehicles? Why only AM TITANIC vehicles can do that and not other titanic ones? Why does a Malcador have 18 wounds and a Valdor 20? What does TITANIC even mean? The distinction is entirely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have any relevance to the "reality" of the game.

fundamentally, what is different about these vehicles in "reality" (of the setting) to make them behave so differently on the battlefield?

Rules have to set arbitrary limits. Why is the speed limit in Danish cities 50 km/h instead of 40 or 60? Was there an equation done on how it would affect traffic, GDP, public safety etc? Sometimes those equations are done before and sometimes after and things are changed, but additional people do get killed because the speed limit isn't lower and GDP might be higher if the speed limit was higher. Losing 500 pts worth of shooting from a single model tagging your Titanic model is a lot different than losing 150 pts worth of shooting from a single tag. You lose too much shooting too easily if Titanic vehicles can be tagged and put out of commission for a turn that easily.

Voss wrote:

ccs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

Heh, slap a bionic face on them & they'll be fine.

I know thats a joke, but bionics are another immersion breaker for me, to be honest, at least as 40k does it. For marines and orks, bionics are a downgrade from their transhuman and absurd fungus biology. The idea they get benefits from cyberlimbs is rather silly. I can see them as useful for normal humans, but not for transhumans derived from the flesh of warp-touched demigods.

Iron Hands should be the weakest marine chapter by a big margin, and Ghaz an utter clod, just a weaker dread that other orks point in the direction of the enemy and let rampage.

How are they a downgrade? I'm not really sure it matters whether or not it's better in a lot of cases anyway as they're replacements for missing limbs. Metal limb > no limb.

Voss wrote:

ccs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

Heh, slap a bionic face on them & they'll be fine.

I know thats a joke, but bionics are another immersion breaker for me, to be honest, at least as 40k does it. For marines and orks, bionics are a downgrade from their transhuman and absurd fungus biology. The idea they get benefits from cyberlimbs is rather silly. I can see them as useful for normal humans, but not for transhumans derived from the flesh of warp-touched demigods.

Iron Hands should be the weakest marine chapter by a big margin, and Ghaz an utter clod, just a weaker dread that other orks point in the direction of the enemy and let rampage.

Why would bionics be inferior? They use technological wargear to improve their abilities, bionics would/could do the same thing. A Space Marine doesn't ditch his Power Sword because his meat-fists are superior.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Yes you've explained the mechanical difference, but that doesn't make sense.

Why do TITANIC vehicles get to shoot while in Melee and not regular vehicles? Why only AM TITANIC vehicles can do that and not other titanic ones? Why does a Malcador have 18 wounds and a Valdor 20? What does TITANIC even mean? The distinction is entirely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have any relevance to the "reality" of the game.

fundamentally, what is different about these vehicles in "reality" (of the setting) to make them behave so differently on the battlefield?

It isn't just AM titanics, the hellforged and relic super heavys have the same rule. As for why they can do this in "reality", seeing as all are some form of super heavy tank, perhaps the reasoning is that their sheer mass and size allows them to be both stable enough while swamped with bodies as well as resistant enough to boarding actions that they can continue firing unabated. A walker, even a super heavy one, could be tripped up by bodies, a tracked vehicle weighing a couple hundred tons, not so much.

vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Yes you've explained the mechanical difference, but that doesn't make sense.

Why do TITANIC vehicles get to shoot while in Melee and not regular vehicles? Why only AM TITANIC vehicles can do that and not other titanic ones? Why does a Malcador have 18 wounds and a Valdor 20? What does TITANIC even mean? The distinction is entirely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have any relevance to the "reality" of the game.

fundamentally, what is different about these vehicles in "reality" (of the setting) to make them behave so differently on the battlefield?

Rules have to set arbitrary limits. Why is the speed limit in Danish cities 50 km/h instead of 40 or 60? Was there an equation done on how it would affect traffic, GDP, public safety etc? Sometimes those equations are done before and sometimes after and things are changed, but additional people do get killed because the speed limit isn't lower and GDP might be higher if the speed limit was higher. Losing 500 pts worth of shooting from a single model tagging your Titanic model is a lot different than losing 150 pts worth of shooting from a single tag. You lose too much shooting too easily if Titanic vehicles can be tagged and put out of commission for a turn that easily.

But points costs don't inform whether or not a model is TITANIC, you said wounds do. So that's obviously not the consideration. Plus, some units put out more firepower and cost more points than Titanic units but don't have Titanic themselves (e.g. Malcador Infernus). So that's obviously not the reason.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But in a rules sense: why can a Valdor shoot whole being locked up but a Malcador can't? What is fundamentally different about those vehicles? Etc.

Valdor has 20 wounds which brings it into GW's understanding of what a "TITANIC" unit is, because it is TITANIC it gets the Astra Militarum TITANIC ability that lets it shoot while in melee. Malcador does not. Maybe they should both be 18/20 wounds, maybe the roles should be reversed, but the why is pretty simple. You have to put your definitions somewhere, a line that separates the good from the great, the Elites from the Troops and that distinction will fail to make perfect sense sometimes.

Yes you've explained the mechanical difference, but that doesn't make sense.

Why do TITANIC vehicles get to shoot while in Melee and not regular vehicles? Why only AM TITANIC vehicles can do that and not other titanic ones? Why does a Malcador have 18 wounds and a Valdor 20? What does TITANIC even mean? The distinction is entirely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have any relevance to the "reality" of the game.

fundamentally, what is different about these vehicles in "reality" (of the setting) to make them behave so differently on the battlefield?

It isn't just AM titanics, the hellforged and relic super heavys have the same rule. As for why they can do this in "reality", seeing as all are some form of super heavy tank, perhaps the reasoning is that their sheer mass and size allows them to be both stable enough while swamped with bodies as well as resistant enough to boarding actions that they can continue firing unabated. A walker, even a super heavy one, could be tripped up by bodies, a tracked vehicle weighing a couple hundred tons, not so much.

So why, then, to return to the example, does a Malcador tank not have the shoot-out-of-combat rule while a Valdor does? The Valdor is literally just a different type of Malcador - it's even the same model in the way that the Vanquisher is the same as a Leman Russ Demolisher. Same hull, different weapon mount.

These rules make no sense, and nothing you guys have told me makes them make more sense.

Valdor Tank Hunters cost more pts than Malcador Infernus does. Units having rules that don't fit the fluff has nothing to do with this I don't think. As I said it might be the Valdor should have 18 wounds and not be titanic, but it does have 20 wounds, that means it is titanic and because it is titanic it is grouped with other more expensive vehicles and gets put into a class that get rules that remove the off-button for all the guns which normal tanks have. Some classes are arbitrary, why can you vote when you are 18 years old but not 17,9 years old? If your birth certificate is wrong and says you are 17,9 even though in the objective universe you are 18 you won't be able to vote if it says you are 17,9, that's not a fault of the system, that's a fault of whoever did your birth certificate.

 vict0988 wrote:
Valdor Tank Hunters cost more pts than Malcador Infernus does. Units having rules that don't fit the fluff has nothing to do with this I don't think. As I said it might be the Valdor should have 18 wounds and not be titanic, but it does have 20 wounds, that means it is titanic and because it is titanic it is grouped with other more expensive vehicles and gets put into a class that get rules that remove the off-button for all the guns which normal tanks have. Some classes are arbitrary, why can you vote when you are 18 years old but not 17,9 years old? If your birth certificate is wrong and says you are 17,9 even though in the objective universe you are 18 you won't be able to vote if it says you are 17,9, that's not a fault of the system, that's a fault of whoever did your birth certificate.

Agreed, wounds seem to be the cutoff for whether a unit is titanic or not, and this affects abilities.

To use walkers as an example, Wraithknights, knights, and Stompas can fall back over infantry. Gorkanaughts and Morkanaughts however, cannot, as they have 18 wounds and are not LOW.

LOW get extra rules at the expense of requiring a special detachment. Malcadors, Gorkanaughts, and other such units do not have that drawback.

Voss wrote:

ccs wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They say that, but it's another immersion breaking issue. My marines that got shot point blank in the face with plasma are probably dead.

Heh, slap a bionic face on them & they'll be fine.

I know thats a joke, but bionics are another immersion breaker for me, to be honest, at least as 40k does it. For marines and orks, bionics are a downgrade from their transhuman and absurd fungus biology. The idea they get benefits from cyberlimbs is rather silly. I can see them as useful for normal humans, but not for transhumans derived from the flesh of warp-touched demigods.

Iron Hands should be the weakest marine chapter by a big margin, and Ghaz an utter clod, just a weaker dread that other orks point in the direction of the enemy and let rampage.

Metal is still stronger than marine body parts. I'd still take a T-800 over a marine any day in terms of ease of construction, expendability, and neutrality towards planetary conditions.

 vict0988 wrote:
Valdor Tank Hunters cost more pts than Malcador Infernus does. Units having rules that don't fit the fluff has nothing to do with this I don't think. As I said it might be the Valdor should have 18 wounds and not be titanic, but it does have 20 wounds, that means it is titanic and because it is titanic it is grouped with other more expensive vehicles and gets put into a class that get rules that remove the off-button for all the guns which normal tanks have. Some classes are arbitrary, why can you vote when you are 18 years old but not 17,9 years old? If your birth certificate is wrong and says you are 17,9 even though in the objective universe you are 18 you won't be able to vote if it says you are 17,9, that's not a fault of the system, that's a fault of whoever did your birth certificate.

A malcador infernus costs more than a Minotaur, though, while a Minotaur has Steel Behemoth. So yes, the Malcador Infernus is more expensive pointswise than some tanks that cannot be locked up.

A false equivalency for 2 reasons:
1) Obviously, children can't vote, so you indeed must draw a cutoff at which point someone can vote. A tank, however, doesn't have to be locked in combat (you wrote that rule), so the idea that you have to make a cutoff where a tank is suddenly not locked in combat is your own fault.

2) If I asked why 18 was the voting age, I would be given several answers which generally live around maturity and age. So, for example, someone might say "18 is the age of maturity" or "18 is the age at which you're your own person" or "18 is the age at which people are mature enough to vote."

Having asked why "20 wounds" is the cutoff for tanks suddenly acting differently compared to a 19-wound tank... well, there's not really been a good answer given. Except that "we just picked it, and there has to be a cutoff!" (which I disagree with. There doesn't have to be a cutoff. They wrote the original rule in the first place.)

The cutoff is whether a unit is a LOW or not. So either the Malcador Infurnus needs to become a LOW and gain the ability to fire while in combat, or the Valdor would have to become a hs option and lose it to make them equal.

Tanks should be able to drive through guys and fire out of cc anyways. The idea of a Land Raider or Leman Russ being unable to fire when Guardsmen are banging on it is ridiculous.

It's the only thing they gave melee and it's dumb as hell and flying tanks ignore it.

And all primaris tanks have the fly keyword. Shocking isn't it.

Yeah. Shocking I tell you.

It's almost as though flying units falling back should suffer a decent BS penalty if they shoot, and NOBODY caught this at GW for some reason.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
The cutoff is whether a unit is a LOW or not. So either the Malcador Infurnus needs to become a LOW and gain the ability to fire while in combat, or the Valdor would have to become a hs option and lose it to make them equal.

Yeah but to draw this back to the thread...

...why? And I mean from a lore / "reality of the setting" perspective, not a rules one. Because, y'know, that's the topic of the thread. Not points costs, battlefield roles, wounds, or powerlevels - those are all "crunch". We're talking about the fluff, about how well the game meets the fluff. I am giving an example of a disconnect between the fluff in the rules, and saying more rules (e.g. bringing up battlefield roles) doesn't actually solve the disconnect.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
It's almost as though flying units falling back should suffer a decent BS penalty if they shoot, and NOBODY caught this at GW for some reason.

Or not be able to shoot at all.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
It's almost as though flying units falling back should suffer a decent BS penalty if they shoot, and NOBODY caught this at GW for some reason.

Probably the same reason they gave all primaris tanks the fly keyword.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
The cutoff is whether a unit is a LOW or not. So either the Malcador Infurnus needs to become a LOW and gain the ability to fire while in combat, or the Valdor would have to become a hs option and lose it to make them equal.

Yeah but to draw this back to the thread...

...why? And I mean from a lore / "reality of the setting" perspective, not a rules one. Because, y'know, that's the topic of the thread. Not points costs, battlefield roles, wounds, or powerlevels - those are all "crunch". We're talking about the fluff, about how well the game meets the fluff. I am giving an example of a disconnect between the fluff in the rules, and saying more rules (e.g. bringing up battlefield roles) doesn't actually solve the disconnect.

BA spend two editions not being able to accomplish a single feat described in the codex on the tabletop. DA spent like 5 editions with the same problem. The lore and game basically have nothing to do with each other.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
The cutoff is whether a unit is a LOW or not. So either the Malcador Infurnus needs to become a LOW and gain the ability to fire while in combat, or the Valdor would have to become a hs option and lose it to make them equal.

Yeah but to draw this back to the thread...

...why? And I mean from a lore / "reality of the setting" perspective, not a rules one. Because, y'know, that's the topic of the thread. Not points costs, battlefield roles, wounds, or powerlevels - those are all "crunch". We're talking about the fluff, about how well the game meets the fluff. I am giving an example of a disconnect between the fluff in the rules, and saying more rules (e.g. bringing up battlefield roles) doesn't actually solve the disconnect.

Ad I stated earlier, I think the concept is that a tank of a certain size is immune to being affected by infantry attempting to gain access from outside.

Does that concept make sense? In most cases no. If the infantry trying to get inside of a tank don't have some kind of anti tank explosives then they shouldn't even be a distraction in cc.

The most they could do is clog up the road wheels with their bodies.