Long time lurker and have finally decided to join in the discussion. I am getting back into the hobby and from reading tournament discussion on blogs and forums the general consensus I am getting is most games are decided by the end of turn 2. The last edition I played was 5th and that edition felt like more results were in question going into the final turns.

Is this just for tournaments with ITC-like missions or is this the norm, even for playing missions straight from the rulebook?

Thanks!

When two alpha strike armies meet, the game can be decided by the end of turn 2.

The norm is to be decided around turn 4.

Lethality is super mega ridiculously high this edition. Highly-tuned armies emphasizing lethality in 8th can absolutely vaporize so much of the enemy army in one go that things are usually over quickly.

In a more toned down meta, things survive longer, but you still have to take things designed to survive. For example, it is common and even expected that a Baneblade or Knight should be deleted in a single round of enemy shooting, even in casual play. It is possible to make a Knight more survivable through Stratagems and whatnot so it *might* last another turn.

So theres 2 armies that im gonna say YES to this for ssure. Imperial Knights and Astra Militarum. If either of them get turn 1 the likeliness of you seeing a turn 3 is not great. It's why good line of site blocking terrain is a MUST. It's the one thing that REALLY takes out Imperial Knights. That and fast/quick models able to hold down an objective out of sight.

Think of Imperial Knights as the "Filter" for competitive play. If your army can beat a Knights army you have a good chance at succeding in competitive.

Yes and no, it depends on what you are bringing and the missions you are playing. If you are focusing on damage output then you are likely sacrificing durability, which if you come up against another enemy doing the same, will most likely result in the game being decided by turn 2.

If you play missions that have continual scoring like those in the recent Chapter Approved book, and you take units that are more focused on durability and objective capping, then the game is most certainly not decided by turn 2. I play both Chaos Daemons and Space Wolves, and both factions have unit options and combinations that maximise durability.

Since my friend bought a whole primaris imperial fists army, yes.
Against another normal army like necrons or DG ? No

JakeSiren wrote:
Yes and no, it depends on what you are bringing and the missions you are playing. If you are focusing on damage output then you are likely sacrificing durability, which if you come up against another enemy doing the same, will most likely result in the game being decided by turn 2.

If you play missions that have continual scoring like those in the recent Chapter Approved book, and you take units that are more focused on durability and objective capping, then the game is most certainly not decided by turn 2. I play both Chaos Daemons and Space Wolves, and both factions have unit options and combinations that maximise durability.

Depending of course on what your army composition is, as you say.

I play Slaanesh Daemons, also from Codex: Chaos Daemons, and they have that problem. Game is over by Turn 2 against another high-lethality army (either I make it to combat and they're doomed or I get deleted). Against a durability army, Slaanesh shines - at least if they sacrifice any power. Slaanesh lethality is insane, with a 200-odd point monster featuring 10 attacks at -3 rend and 3 flat damage. Additionally, their Mortal Wound output is pretty good with how many psykers they can take, though they suffer a bit from the "+1 each time you cast Smite" ruling. Typically, a "normal" game with my Slaanesh daemons is that they use their speed and aggression to pin the enemy in their deployment zone - at least, if the enemy doesn't delete the daemons of the board with little effort given their crappy durability.

That's why I say lethality is super high; I am confident I can bring down almost any foe with my daemons. I am equally confident that the foe will bring me down, meaning the game comes down to IGOUGO. Indeed, turn 2 is sometimes too late; you can tell from whether or not the initiative was seized and who's going first which army will win, dependent on terrain.

I also play Slaanesh Daemons; my tactics are "run at it, shouting" and I have never had a game in 8th that was decided by turn 2.

That said, I play on tables that by tournament standards are utterly saturated with LoS blocking terrain against armies that are far from optimized.

The game is basically decided at that point yes. While one should try to continue playing (dice are still a thing after all) you can overall just stop a game even with casual armies.

Spoletta wrote:
When two alpha strike armies meet, the game can be decided by the end of turn 2.

The norm is to be decided around turn 4.

This is false. When two alpha-strike armies meet the game is generally decided by the role to determine who goes first, and alpha-strike is the rule rather than the exception.

I've seen games turn into four-turn slugging matches, but that tends to involve ludiculous amounts of terrain on the table. If you're not having to maneuver a lot to get line of sight at all the lethality level is stupid. I think I've seen more games end in a bottom-of-round-one concession than I've seen make it past turn three.

Not most. But a lot. Far too many. It's heavily dependent upon non-codified terrain rules.

Everybody keeps talking about "you're not using enough terrain" but that's incorrect as everyone wants units that fly and can shoot pretty far or without LoS.

No way

In my experience, yes. It's rare to see a game go to turn 3 in any meaningful state (i.e. the game is decided turn 2 if not before that).

The simple fact is that GW cranked the killyness of everything to a ludicrous degree. Hurricane Bolters and Twin Assault Cannons are the best example.

Hurricane Bolters, when first introduced in 4th edition, "consists of three twin-linked bolters". This meant they could either fire 6 shots at 12", or 3 shots at 24" if they did not move, re-rolling failed hits. Now they fire 12 Shots at 12" or 6 shots at 24" with Centuions being able to fire 12 shots at 24" regardless of if they moved or not.

Twin(-Linked) Assault Cannons went from 3 Shots re-rolling misses in 3rd edition and could jam to TWELVE SHOTS EACH.

In 3rd edition, Rapid Fire weapons allowed 1 shot at 12" if you moved; or 2 shots at 12" or 1 shot at 24" if you remained stationary, and you couldn't charge if you fired them.

Rapid Fire weapons in general have steadily become more and more lethal, starting with the range increase from the standard 24" to 30" when T'au were introduced, to making the double fire happen at half range instead of 12", to allowing two shots at 12" instead of 1 on the move, to allowing Rapid Fire weapons to fire at maximum range regardless of whether you moved. The move to save modifiers instead of the flat cover system, combined with a D6 system that basically crushes the usable dice results and has a MASSIVE impact between AP0 and AP-1, the game is simply more lethal. Grunts die quicker, which means you need to spam more grunts to survive even a single turn of shooting, which in turn makes elite models worthless to take because things such as Plasma make multi-wound models a detriment, not a benefit.

The issue is that you can build very offensive armies, that can expect to do about 40% of their points worth of damage almost from the first turn. (Some units won't do anything, but some get more than 40% by hitting optimal targets). That's on average dice - so you could roll better - but also roll worse.

This is especially true with deep striking units that arrive on turn 2.

If your opponent has lots of defensive bonuses (minuses to hit, minuses to damage, invuls, FNPs etc) then this may be mitigated. If they don't - and their army is offensively weak so doesn't do very much in return - it can often be over quickly.

On planet bowling ball:
2000 points multiplied by 40%=800 points damage. Leaves your opponent with 1200 points.
1200 points hits back at say 25% damage = 300 points killed.
So your turn two and your 1700 attacks again at 40%=680 points.
So your opponent now has 520 points left, compared to your 1700. Lets say they get 33% return and kill 200 points.

Well its turn 3, and your essentially untouched 1500 points is ready to mop up their rather sad looking 500 points, while enjoying total board domination because the opposition is all dead.

But its really about the armies you take. You can easily build armies which don't have this kind of firepower (and at the same time, avoid point pinatas that offer your opponent 100% returns from some of their units.)

LOS blocking terrain also does matter - because most armies can't just fly wherever they want - and most units can't ignore LOS for shooting. Its often not about getting "can't shoot full stop" - its about "can't put fire into the most optimal target". So your units can then respond next turn and inflict a suitable level of damage back so fewer things die next turn.

Strongly agreed with BCB on the negative impact of the changes to the cover and ap/armour save systems. One of the worst changes made in 8th imho.

Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.


But I agree that the amount of bonus and rerolls make things too reliable and lethal. Is a little sad when I see things like a full hand droping but then goes like "nah I reroll everything" so of 30 shoots 26 end up hitting and wounding or something like that.

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.


But I agree that the amount of bonus and rerolls make things too reliable and lethal. Is a little sad when I see things like a full hand droping but then goes like "nah I reroll everything" so of 30 shoots 26 end up hitting and wounding or something like that.

Wargames dilemma of a sort. If you don't bring an Alpha Strike army, and the opponent does, you automatically lose. The only winning move is not to play (or bring your own Alpha Strike list).

Rerolling everything was a bad idea. Rerolling 1s wasn't too bad, but everything? That's too much. Gw concentrated too much on increasing lethality instead of survivability.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Everybody keeps talking about "you're not using enough terrain" but that's incorrect as everyone wants units that fly and can shoot pretty far or without LoS.

Flying units don't ignore LoS, they just tend to be taller. FLYERS and Knights are really tall and you need terrain that's designed to hide them and also hide units from them.

Indirect fire is a different problem, but it only gets really abusive when you can spam it. Nine Basilisks being legal at 2000 is kind of stupid.

It depends on who you're playing, the armies you play and the level you play at.

The Newman wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Everybody keeps talking about "you're not using enough terrain" but that's incorrect as everyone wants units that fly and can shoot pretty far or without LoS.

Flying units don't ignore LoS, they just tend to be taller. FLYERS and Knights are really tall and you need terrain that's designed to hide them and also hide units from them.

Indirect fire is a different problem, but it only gets really abusive when you can spam it. Nine Basilisks being legal at 2000 is kind of stupid.

Needing such special terrain means you can't count on it. Ever. Even if you own it, opponents can refuse to play with it.

Depends what you play, what your opponent plays, what the mission is, & how much terrain you use.
Skill lv between opponents can also influence this.

Down at the shop the average game was turn 4.

It really does depend on the game and lists and missions and terrain. Here's where some games get decided:

Turn 5/6/7: Two lists and generals that are almost evenly matched, with at least one with a strategy based on getting to objectives more than on killing enemies.

Turn 4: Two lists and generals that are pretty well matched.

Turn 3: Generals that are pretty well matched, but one list runs out of steam early.

Turn 2: Two lists that are not well matched, or two generals where both lists run out of steam early (though these can quickly slip into Turn 5/6/7 territory if they're good enough).

Turn 1: Two lists that are lopsided, where both are susceptible to alpha strikes, and the game is won by whomever goes first.

Deployment: List where the better general has a trick and the opponent doesn't have a means of countering it.

Before game: A bad player, with a bad list, against an opponent with a list based on alpha strike.

It's usually just a tournament problem. And also depends on armies, the mission, points values, amount of terrain and which terrain rules are used and so on. A normal game usually lasts until turn 4 or 5 in my experience, sometimes longer, sometimes at the end of turn 3 not much is left, but the game can still move on for some turns.

I can't remember any game where the winner wouldn't be known at the end of round 3. the only difference is how big of win it is going to be, which is important to those people playing at tournaments, but to someone like me not much.
turn 4+ is in general one person mucking up the survivours and the other one trying to hide and lose as few points as possible, at least in store events. In no event games, may as well GG.

Karol wrote:
I can't remember any game where the winner wouldn't be known at the end of round 3. the only difference is how big of win it is going to be, which is important to those people playing at tournaments, but to someone like me not much.
turn 4+ is in general one person mucking up the survivours and the other one trying to hide and lose as few points as possible, at least in store events. In no event games, may as well GG.

I feel like you should put a disclaimer in most of your posts that you play in an incredibly competitive meta and have no experience of anything else.

I'm a little confused by the consensus here. It's out of whack with my own experiences, amd with the tournament games I watch. Turn 4 is often the round that breaks either way, assuming the game isn't one-sided. In ITC what you do in the late stages of the game is hugely impactful.

At the highest level, games are rarely ever decided before turn 4

At the general skilllevel this forum, I imagine a significant number of games are pretty much decided before the models hit the table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 grouchoben wrote:
I'm a little confused by the consensus here. It's out of whack with my own experiences, amd with the tournament games I watch. Turn 4 is often the round that breaks either way, assuming the game isn't one-sided. In ITC what you do in the late stages of the game is hugely impactful.

You’re not talking to players who play this game at your level. This forum is largely for semi-comp players, who understand number efficiency on units but don’t have a deeper level of game knowledge to keep them in the running the instant those numbers start to fail for them, playing against players of similar skill. So of course their games will feel unwinnable to them much earlier.

Rahdok wrote:
So theres 2 armies that im gonna say YES to this for ssure. Imperial Knights and Astra Militarum. If either of them get turn 1 the likeliness of you seeing a turn 3 is not great. It's why good line of site blocking terrain is a MUST. It's the one thing that REALLY takes out Imperial Knights. That and fast/quick models able to hold down an objective out of sight.

Think of Imperial Knights as the "Filter" for competitive play. If your army can beat a Knights army you have a good chance at succeding in competitive.

Nah mate your data is out of date at this point, Knight are not and have never been an alpha strike list, they are a higher durability list more than an Alpha list.

Ironhands used to be, slighly more leaning into durability but still impressive damage potential.
Imperial fists are just bonkers alpha/raw damage output list
Darkangels can also bring fairly big turn 1/2 alpha damage too.
Raven guard can bring some not so much alpha strike list more deploment schenanigans list.
GSC

Ultramarines can bring the pain damage wise but they are kore beta strike as they sing turn 2-3.
Blood angels, wolfs Scars are all turn 3+ armies.

Tau
Knights
A lot of choas lists
All depend on durability to keep pounding your list turns 2,3 &4 while you can't do enough damage to break their list.

Gaurd
Sisters
GK
All function more on a raw damage/survivability curve which just means they can win the game any turn as dictated by terrain and matchup.

Eldar are well just eldar and annoying and at their lowest power competitive as it has been.

Games featuring alpha lists are generally done faster, durability and other lists can keep a game going longer

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Rerolling everything was a bad idea. Rerolling 1s wasn't too bad, but everything? That's too much. Gw concentrated too much on increasing lethality instead of survivability.

I think this is certainly the case with the marine codex. If you look at other general re-roll rules in other armies they are usually highly specific or specialized around one unit. Necrons have access to hit and wound re-rolls.... but only with a stratagem that affects one unit. Craftworlds can do it, but even then it's only with a psychic power that targets one unit or with a stratagem that, again, only affects one unit type. Where Marines break the game is having access to giant re-roll all auras that everything within range can benefit from, against every single target you choose. With other armies, you actually have choices and decisions to make as to how, when and where you want to apply these buffs, but with Marines a lot of that decision making is just completely absent.

Jimbotron wrote:
Long time lurker and have finally decided to join in the discussion. I am getting back into the hobby and from reading tournament discussion on blogs and forums the general consensus I am getting is most games are decided by the end of turn 2. The last edition I played was 5th and that edition felt like more results were in question going into the final turns.

Is this just for tournaments with ITC-like missions or is this the norm, even for playing missions straight from the rulebook?

Thanks!

This isn't overall true, but there are some CA EW missions that can be actually decided by turn 2 or turn 3 due to their scoring scheme. That said, I rarely see games over on T2 or T3.

There's a couple of factors in making the end turns meaningless, but chief among them is Progressive Scoring, which I was previously in favor of but am now increasingly against. There will reach a point where one player cannot score enough points to overcome an accumulated lead. Even if I was only leading by 1 point [a very narrow margin such as "holds center of board"], all game, the accumulated 5 point lead by turn 6 means that you'd be hard pressed to [or it might be even outright impossible to] score enough points in that last turn to win.
5e era missions were "competitive to the end" because points were only scored in the last turn, and thus the winner was decided by who held the objectives on the last turn. It could shift suddenly with a last turn push effort to take the lead.
However, we've moved away from that model because the general lethality of the game has changed: while everything is tougher [well, arguably not vehicles], in response the cost of firepower has gone down and weapons have become more versatile and more destructive.
To combat lists that were taking a policy of "it's easier to shoot the enemy off the board and move out and cap on the last turn [or outright table the enemy]", progressive scoring was implemented so that you had to do more than trade heavy fire in the early game, and had to at least make an attempt to move out.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
At the highest level, games are rarely ever decided before turn 4

At the general skilllevel this forum, I imagine a significant number of games are pretty much decided before the models hit the table.

It would be interesting to run some numbers on this. You'd need some sort of objective measure for deciding when a game is over.

Because I agree - good players, with good lists, will tend to go 4+ rounds. Anyone who thinks 40k has no skill, and its just flailing away with big numbers should watch the LVO finals, or something equivalent, if they are out there. Its a precise game where players are constantly making measured bets based on what happens. Much like poker, top players don't just go "I'm all in, hope it works".

But... we also know a lot of people got smashed by say Centurions or unkillable Ironhands in two turns - and I'm not sure you can say they are all bad players. It also raises the question of whether you are bad if you don't bring a top list?

If we are going down the alpha strike hole - it would also be useful if there were lots of stats from tournaments for win% for going first and second. Mainly because you get a lot of anecdotes on this (often with "weaker" players saying its the most decisive factor, while good players say going second is fine or even the superior option) but data would be more interesting.

But then this might be a good player/bad player thing (and list functionality). A good player will say backline/LOS block so the majority of short range weapons can't do anything in turn 1, and their critical units can barely be touched. So the opponent's turn is effectively wasted. Whereas bad players often seem to think they are duty bound to deploy on the starting line, and just eat the bullets.

Tyel wrote:


If we are going down the alpha strike hole - it would also be useful if there were lots of stats from tournaments for win% for going first and second. Mainly because you get a lot of anecdotes on this (often with "weaker" players saying its the most decisive factor, while good players say going second is fine or even the superior option) but data would be more interesting.

But then this might be a good player/bad player thing (and list functionality). A good player will say backline/LOS block so the majority of short range weapons can't do anything in turn 1, and their critical units can barely be touched. So the opponent's turn is effectively wasted. Whereas bad players often seem to think they are duty bound to deploy on the starting line, and just eat the bullets.

I don't think stats for win% for first or second play would be very useful, because it's incredibly variable and isn't going to be "always go first" or "always go second".

Whether I want to take first or second turn varies strongly based on how the points are scored, what units I have in my army, and what units my enemy has in theirs. As a general rule, scoring at the end of the battle round makes me want to go second, and either side having a lot of reserves makes me want to go first. Taking second if you have some good fast melee against somebody relying heavily on melee is also a good plan, since they either have to come forward into your charge threat but at a distance they can't charge, thus giving you the charge on them, or they have to stay back from your melee threat unit, thus keeping them away from your gunline while you blow them to bits.

I wouldn't say most, but a significant proportion are, too many to really be healthy. As many have noted, 8E is by far the most lethal edition of the game ever. The markedly non-competitive Grey Knights list I'm building will average almost a third again as many dead Space Marines at 24" as my 5E IG Alpha Strike list with 15 tanks would on its alpha strike turn. Likewise, there's a lot of armies that can effortlessly obliterate a single key unit, no matter how resilient, in one turn if they need to, and a lot of lists break when that happens. The sheer variety of types of armies (from superheavy lanes, tank companies, infantry hordes, to mega elite infantry like custodes, etc) also means a lot of awkward mismatches.

8E has be really heavily alpha strike oriented. This has wobbled over time, from turn 1 deep strike assault and plasma spam to gunline domination and other such things. Average damage output rises with every release with new easily exploitable blanket army wide rules (and rerolls everywhere), and we have weapons and units commonly seen on tables in this edition that were previously seen as the realm of large scale expansions or entirely different scales of game to begin with.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, there's a lot of armies that can effortlessly obliterate a single key unit, no matter how resilient, in one turn if they need to, and a lot of lists break when that happens.

Honestly, I think this is a feature, not a bug. Nothing should be invincible, and armies should not be built around single key units. That's what lead to death stars of the past, and that's what's led to some of the mot egregiously powerful units of this edition.

I played a game today with my mech orks versus vs a competitive-ish IG army.
By the end of turn 2 the only things alive were a single tank commander, a LRBT at 2 wounds, a manticore at 3 wounds and a half-dead valkyrie, as well as multiple (five or so) half-dead infantry squads. In addition, I was holding four objectives and contesting a fifth.
If we had played turn 3, I would have had enough shooting and melee units close to the castle to wipe it out or at least lock it completely down.

If you get lucky in your first shooting phase, or your opponent makes a mistake you can capitalize on, it has become quite common for me decide games by turn 2 or 3.
Only evenly matched armies with evenly matched generals tend be decided in turn 4 or later, and even then a string of good/bad rolls can still decide the game early.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, there's a lot of armies that can effortlessly obliterate a single key unit, no matter how resilient, in one turn if they need to, and a lot of lists break when that happens.

Honestly, I think this is a feature, not a bug. Nothing should be invincible, and armies should not be built around single key units. That's what lead to death stars of the past, and that's what's led to some of the mot egregiously powerful units of this edition.

Then GW shouldn't have designed some army rules, so that running a 10 man paladin unit with support is more or less the way to play the army..
I would love to have a legit army of multiple termintor unit that doesn't die turn 2 and hits like a wet noodle.

Tyel wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
At the highest level, games are rarely ever decided before turn 4

At the general skilllevel this forum, I imagine a significant number of games are pretty much decided before the models hit the table.

It would be interesting to run some numbers on this. You'd need some sort of objective measure for deciding when a game is over.

Because I agree - good players, with good lists, will tend to go 4+ rounds. Anyone who thinks 40k has no skill, and its just flailing away with big numbers should watch the LVO finals, or something equivalent, if they are out there. Its a precise game where players are constantly making measured bets based on what happens. Much like poker, top players don't just go "I'm all in, hope it works".

But... we also know a lot of people got smashed by say Centurions or unkillable Ironhands in two turns - and I'm not sure you can say they are all bad players. It also raises the question of whether you are bad if you don't bring a top list?

If we are going down the alpha strike hole - it would also be useful if there were lots of stats from tournaments for win% for going first and second. Mainly because you get a lot of anecdotes on this (often with "weaker" players saying its the most decisive factor, while good players say going second is fine or even the superior option) but data would be more interesting.

But then this might be a good player/bad player thing (and list functionality). A good player will say backline/LOS block so the majority of short range weapons can't do anything in turn 1, and their critical units can barely be touched. So the opponent's turn is effectively wasted. Whereas bad players often seem to think they are duty bound to deploy on the starting line, and just eat the bullets.

I think other than the absolutely OP lists like pre-nerf Iron Hands, you should be able to make a list for any army that is capable of hanging with the best armies in the game for 4 turns, more games than not. The balance issues really aren’t as pronounced as most people imagine a lot of their problem is their skill or game knowledge or list or all the above. Getting smashed in tourney by a few good rolls from alpha strike Raven Guard doesn’t make you a bad player - but getting smashed off the board every game by it every game might suggest it. Outside of bad match ups of course, which do exist. A good player builds a list with the tools they need to play somewhat flexibly and adapt to the game in front of them.

It also depends on the matchup. A squishy army against a gunline (DE v. Guard, for instance) might be over a lot faster than two tough melee armies (Custodes v. Space Wolves, for instance).

I know that in my anecdotal experience of playing a variety of armies (Deathwatch, AdMech, Custodes, Corsairs, CSM, Thousand Sons) against a variety of armies in 8e both players usually know who's going to win on turn one or turn two, and when we play it out to the end they're seldom wrong. Whether or not the game can be competitive and interesting to tournament players who are happy to buy models they may not like and switch armies with the meta every 3-6 months I don't know since I've never been a meta-chaser, but I find at casual tables where people want to play with minis they like the game is often won during list-building.

Yarium wrote:

Spoiler:

It really does depend on the game and lists and missions and terrain. Here's where some games get decided:

Turn 5/6/7: Two lists and generals that are almost evenly matched, with at least one with a strategy based on getting to objectives more than on killing enemies.

Turn 4: Two lists and generals that are pretty well matched.

Turn 3: Generals that are pretty well matched, but one list runs out of steam early.

Turn 2: Two lists that are not well matched, or two generals where both lists run out of steam early (though these can quickly slip into Turn 5/6/7 territory if they're good enough).

Turn 1: Two lists that are lopsided, where both are susceptible to alpha strikes, and the game is won by whomever goes first.

Deployment: List where the better general has a trick and the opponent doesn't have a means of countering it.

Before game: A bad player, with a bad list, against an opponent with a list based on alpha strike.

for my gaming group (or at least my games) the only reason anything is decided by T2 is actual running out of time.

By time I mean since we are not going full throttle from T1 if we are having more fun chit chatting we won't get to T2. Otherwise we go to T4/5 and sometimes 6 since we play w a ton of terrain and cities of death rules.

 Jimbotron wrote:
Long time lurker and have finally decided to join in the discussion. I am getting back into the hobby and from reading tournament discussion on blogs and forums the general consensus I am getting is most games are decided by the end of turn 2. The last edition I played was 5th and that edition felt like more results were in question going into the final turns.

Is this just for tournaments with ITC-like missions or is this the norm, even for playing missions straight from the rulebook?

Thanks!

That's a good description. in 5th things could change where random game length could see you go from winning to loosing by the game going that extra turn. With 8th the ridiculous amount of attacks(and re-roll bubbles) coupled with the armor reduction system and a general lack of terrain doing much to add to the game it is very likely the player going first is going to win the game. the reason the turn 2 is called is because once you get to far down the curve coming back is very hard to do. also if you use the card system the way you tally points gets absurdly high unlike old fixed objectives or kill points.

It is not so bad using 8th at an epic scale level because there is just so much stuff it doesn't hamper an army as much(that and ranges are seriously reduced so you cannot do much turn 1 unless you have artillery or some big superheavy guns).

I am at the point now i only play 8th with my small 1k mechanicus force or super big with 10K points using epic scale minis. otherwise i am playing 30K or 5th edition with friends(because 5th is superior to 8th even without the few house rules we added)

My experience is that good players will build strong lists, and strong lists in this edition come mounted on highly mobile platforms, so that terrain is less impactful than previous editions, coupled with overall weak terrain rules in the first place.

So yes, I think that 90% of games can be called at the bottom of the 2nd turn with near-perfect accuracy. There are ways out and back in that clever play can mitigate... but if both players are fairly skilled and capable, they can counter-play each other to the predicted outcome.

Lethality is ok, but the ranges and relative mobility make counter-positioning very difficult and there are ways around that make it effectively impossible. In a casual environment, I don’t think a game would go past turn 3 without being decided.

Anecdote from the London, ON GW. Games are capped at 4 turns, for time and community consensus that *it just doesn’t matter after that*. So at my local GW, you can’t play past 4 turns. Anecdote is anecdote.

turn 2 to 4 probably should be the most active turns for most games anyway.

And its where i would consider most of the games fall into for determining win verse loss.

More of and issue i think is how often turn one alpha strikes can be so effective, as well as the reach so much of the game has for lethal power.
This is spread out a lot, and not very well designed. And i think is the main issue with this rather than how fast games can end specifically :(

Honestly we need to differentiate between the pahses of 8th.

Index era was diffrent from CA 1 and that from CA 2 era.

overall tho, lethality is up and has forced a lot of groups to adapt better terrain rules and or use more terrain then normal.

with how much LoS ignore stuff there is in the game and alfa strike stuff, even with a lot of terrain, it is hard to have a strong turn 1, if your opponent is an alfa strike army. Specialy if you play a non horde or worse elite type of army.

I sometimes deploy more then 50% of my army on the table to avoid getting tabled turn one, by RG or RG succesors or RG soups.

 grouchoben wrote:
I'm a little confused by the consensus here. It's out of whack with my own experiences, amd with the tournament games I watch. Turn 4 is often the round that breaks either way, assuming the game isn't one-sided. In ITC what you do in the late stages of the game is hugely impactful.

This is my experience too. The games decided early tend to be exceptions rather than the norm.

I'd say that games are usually decided by turn 3. Heavy terrain, including line of sight blocking terrain, helps greatly.

That, and playing game types that require a great deal of mobility to capture key objectives or fulfill criteria that doesn't allow a castle to sit stationary.

Alot depends on the terrain setup. The less terrain there is, the more the lethality of long distance shooting becomes obviously disturbing.

But even then, I think rerolls all around, rule-breaking stratagems , transformed a game of chess into a random shooting fest, and that 48+ firing range needs to go, along with superheavy units.

But we all know it ain't happening since the primary driving force behind GW is selling miniatures, not balanced rules and gameplay.

I would say that in my experience, turn 3 is about the average where it's "over but for the crying", and if an opponent brings a heavily alpha-strike oriented list it's almost always turn 2.

It would be turn 1/turn 2 if deep strikes came in turn 1, though. The fact that deep strikes come in turn 2 is the ONLY thing keeping the game going til turn 3 in my experience.

The problem IMO is that GW went too hard on some decisions designed to address common complaints. Kind of like how, in competitive online games, you almost always see any kind of character class with a burst-damage type playstyle nerfed into the ground because people hate playing against it, in 40k those two common pet peeves were "I don't like when my named character dudes die" and "I don't like when I can't kill big thing in my opponent's list."

That led to a situation where it became way too easy to kill everything, and way too difficult to kill small characters (compared to the points they cost). The value that a single 75pt captain upgraded with the Chapter Master stratagem brings to a space marine list is way more than a 350+ point land raider, and the captain is much, MUCH, MUUUUUUUCH harder to take out with a normal list.

And it's not like the community particularly learns from this. The second some unit shows up that can be fairly survivable, or who can take characters down a peg, the kneejerk reaction from the community is instant and apoplectic. The new big knight you could get a 3++ save, the vindicare assassin, the nurgle combo that made for a super tough 2k point list, the GSC gunslinger assassin guy, the time period Tzeentch stuff could combo up to a 2++ save, nothing gets an angrier reaction than durability and character assassinating.

the_scotsman wrote:
I would say that in my experience, turn 3 is about the average where it's "over but for the crying", and if an opponent brings a heavily alpha-strike oriented list it's almost always turn 2.

It would be turn 1/turn 2 if deep strikes came in turn 1, though. The fact that deep strikes come in turn 2 is the ONLY thing keeping the game going til turn 3 in my experience.

The problem IMO is that GW went too hard on some decisions designed to address common complaints. Kind of like how, in competitive online games, you almost always see any kind of character class with a burst-damage type playstyle nerfed into the ground because people hate playing against it, in 40k those two common pet peeves were "I don't like when my named character dudes die" and "I don't like when I can't kill big thing in my opponent's list."

That led to a situation where it became way too easy to kill everything, and way too difficult to kill small characters (compared to the points they cost). The value that a single 75pt captain upgraded with the Chapter Master stratagem brings to a space marine list is way more than a 350+ point land raider, and the captain is much, MUCH, MUUUUUUUCH harder to take out with a normal list.

And it's not like the community particularly learns from this. The second some unit shows up that can be fairly survivable, or who can take characters down a peg, the kneejerk reaction from the community is instant and apoplectic. The new big knight you could get a 3++ save, the vindicare assassin, the nurgle combo that made for a super tough 2k point list, the GSC gunslinger assassin guy, the time period Tzeentch stuff could combo up to a 2++ save, nothing gets an angrier reaction than durability and character assassinating.

preach. So on the ball.

I used to be terrified of going second and having my whole army blasted off the board before I got a chance to go. But only a few armies can do that, and it's even rarer if you play with a lot of terrain.

Now I find that things rarely die on Turn 1, due to cover, LOS, and defensive stratagems. Range can also be an issue, depending on the deployment zones. It's only on Turn 2, when the armies have closed, that casualties start to mount. By the end of Turn 3 one or both armies are staggering around, punch drunk and out of CP, and try to finish off the game with scraps.

Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

How are you finding Slaanesh in 8th? Not aware of many people running them.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

How are you finding Slaanesh in 8th? Not aware of many people running them.

I only run mono-Daemons, which is a sin against chaos or something (apparently) but unless you hate people it's kinda meh.

If you make it to their army Turn 1, you get to systematically dismantle everything they hold dear without much effort. Keepers of Secrets have 10 attacks at -3, 3 damage. They also have good protection in melee (-1 to hit, always strike first, etc). Slaanesh has good tools to prevent fallback as well, but they're super fragile.

If you don't make it to the enemy quickly, you get evaporated off the board because T7 with a 5++ save is not strong in an era where people table Knights in two turns (as you can see in this battle report).

So basically it's a decisive engagement either way, but someone's going to feel bad at the end by losing all their stuff without feeling like they can do much. I don't think I've had a "close game" yet, except in games of unequal skill where big mistakes are made by the player who is way ahead and the give up some ground.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

I built a 24 inch long, 10 inch wide defenseworks piece I can hide a landraider behind. It helps cut back on the rampant long range and reroll problem this edition has.

 iGuy91 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

I built a 24 inch long, 10 inch wide defenseworks piece I can hide a landraider behind. It helps cut back on the rampant long range and reroll problem this edition has.

My brain groans trying to figure out how to run Keepers, Seekers, and Fiends all the way around it. It may cut down on shooting, but I'm not going to get there anytime soon. :(

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
<-- I have no idea why the URL tag isn't working but the link is there for copypasta.

You're missing the last letter in the closing tag. this battle report

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
<-- I have no idea why the URL tag isn't working but the link is there for copypasta.

You're missing the last letter in the closing tag. this battle report

Thanks, bud; fixed. I clearly am the worst at troubleshooting.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

How are you finding Slaanesh in 8th? Not aware of many people running them.

I only run mono-Daemons, which is a sin against chaos or something (apparently) but unless you hate people it's kinda meh.

If you make it to their army Turn 1, you get to systematically dismantle everything they hold dear without much effort. Keepers of Secrets have 10 attacks at -3, 3 damage. They also have good protection in melee (-1 to hit, always strike first, etc). Slaanesh has good tools to prevent fallback as well, but they're super fragile.

If you don't make it to the enemy quickly, you get evaporated off the board because T7 with a 5++ save is not strong in an era where people table Knights in two turns (as you can see in this battle report).

So basically it's a decisive engagement either way, but someone's going to feel bad at the end by losing all their stuff without feeling like they can do much. I don't think I've had a "close game" yet, except in games of unequal skill where big mistakes are made by the player who is way ahead and the give up some ground.

Thanks for the info. Props to you for sticking to your favorite. You mind sharing your list? Might be a good example of what contributes to games being over by turn 2, and I'm interested to see what a mono Slaanesh list would look like. Bet it looks dope on the table

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't forget that "use more terrain" is not a panacea. Ruins are the best thing that block LOS, but ruins also slow down non-infantry assault armies (e.g. my Slaanesh with monsters and beasts and cavalry).

Having 14" move is not helpful if most of it is spent running around the perimeter of a 12" box ruin.

How are you finding Slaanesh in 8th? Not aware of many people running them.

I only run mono-Daemons, which is a sin against chaos or something (apparently) but unless you hate people it's kinda meh.

If you make it to their army Turn 1, you get to systematically dismantle everything they hold dear without much effort. Keepers of Secrets have 10 attacks at -3, 3 damage. They also have good protection in melee (-1 to hit, always strike first, etc). Slaanesh has good tools to prevent fallback as well, but they're super fragile.

If you don't make it to the enemy quickly, you get evaporated off the board because T7 with a 5++ save is not strong in an era where people table Knights in two turns (as you can see in this battle report).

So basically it's a decisive engagement either way, but someone's going to feel bad at the end by losing all their stuff without feeling like they can do much. I don't think I've had a "close game" yet, except in games of unequal skill where big mistakes are made by the player who is way ahead and the give up some ground.

Thanks for the info. Props to you for sticking to your favorite. You mind sharing your list? Might be a good example of what contributes to games being over by turn 2, and I'm interested to see what a mono Slaanesh list would look like. Bet it looks dope on the table

My list fluctuates depending on my opponent's competitiveness, what I'd like to try out, what I've painted recently, etc. but here's some examples:

Less Competitive (more "fun")
Zarakynel
2x Keeper
1x Syll'esske
3x20 Daemonettes (icon and musician on one unit)
Herald
Mirror (Contorted Epitome)
Infernal Enrapturess

More competitive:
3x Keeper
3x30 Daemonettes (icon and musician on each unit)
Shelaxi Helbane
Syll'esske
Mirror
3x10 Daemonettes
3x Fiends (in one unit)

Most Competitive:
2x Keeper
2x 30 Daemonettes (icon and musician on each unit)
1x 20 Daemonettes
3x Fiends
20x Seekers
Syll'esske
Mirror
Third Keeper

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

The Newman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

I would definitely say the players in that LGS do need to git gud if 5 Leman Russ are winning games on turn 1.

That seems insane to me.

 Bosskelot wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

I would definitely say the players in that LGS do need to git gud if 5 Leman Russ are winning games on turn 1.

That seems insane to me.

TBF, that list would crush my Slaanesh list on planet bowling ball, barring some bad dice rolling.

Unless I got the first turn, then I would crush it. Barring some bad dice rolling.

The Newman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

Do you mind posting the list in full, and some of the ideas people have tried to counter it with?

A picture of the kinds of tables you normally play on would also help.

Yeah, I, uh...haven't had a ton of problems with basic leman russes+bubblewrap. Seems like the win condition on that bad boy would be "turn 1 shred the infantry, turn 2 do a deep strike and get something into combat".

Which again, to be clear, is a game being over turn 2, but definitely nowhere near unwinnable.

Basically any infantry horde list should be pretty solid against all russes and infantry squads.

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I, uh...haven't had a ton of problems with basic leman russes+bubblewrap. Seems like the win condition on that bad boy would be "turn 1 shred the infantry, turn 2 do a deep strike and get something into combat".

Which again, to be clear, is a game being over turn 2, but definitely nowhere near unwinnable.

Basically any infantry horde list should be pretty solid against all russes and infantry squads.

I was thinking that you'd just start by deleting the Russes and neutering the enemy's firebase. 5 naked Russes are ~700 points and there are builds that have a good shot at wiping all 5 out with an alpha strike even through bubblewrap.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I, uh...haven't had a ton of problems with basic leman russes+bubblewrap. Seems like the win condition on that bad boy would be "turn 1 shred the infantry, turn 2 do a deep strike and get something into combat".

Which again, to be clear, is a game being over turn 2, but definitely nowhere near unwinnable.

Basically any infantry horde list should be pretty solid against all russes and infantry squads.

I was thinking that you'd just start by deleting the Russes and neutering the enemy's firebase. 5 naked Russes are ~700 points and there are builds that have a good shot at wiping all 5 out with an alpha strike even through bubblewrap.

Depends what you have in your list, I guess. A lot of my lists don't have enough long range firepower to crack russes reliably, so it's much easier for me to tie up non-fly vehicles than actually take them out.

the_scotsman wrote:
Depends what you have in your list, I guess. A lot of my lists don't have enough long range firepower to crack russes reliably, so it's much easier for me to tie up non-fly vehicles than actually take them out.

*Nods*

My own list would have to worry if the wrap managed to keep me more than 18" from the tanks. At that point, I either hunker down for a turn or make ready for some potential T1 charges.

Got a little side-tracked halfway through posting about our LGS' issues with Russ Spam and left out the important little tidbit "at 1000 points". Five Russes at 2000 wouldn't be any sort of a problem. I also intended to note that this was before Marine Codex 2.0 and PA hit.

We have all the Xenos races (although the ork player only dables with them on the side), all the snowflake Marine chapters, all the vanilla chapters, DG and vanilla CSM, and Slannesh and Khorne Daemons spread over ten players ...and I think we have an irregular TS player too. That's a lot of different forces to be chewing on that problem for a year and a half.

The Newman wrote:
Got a little side-tracked halfway through posting about our LGS' issues with Russ Spam and left out the important little tidbit "at 1000 points". Five Russes at 2000 wouldn't be any sort of a problem. I also intended to note that this was before Marine Codex 2.0 and PA hit.

We have all the Xenos races (although the ork player only dables with them on the side), all the snowflake Marine chapters, all the vanilla chapters, DG and vanilla CSM, and Slannesh and Khorne Daemons spread over ten players ...and I think we have an irregular TS player too. That's a lot of different forces to be chewing on that problem for a year and a half.

If I had to make a Slaanesh Daemons list to beat that one, I'd make it:

KOS w/ Forbidden Gem relic
Shelaxi
Contorted Epitome
2x10 Daemonettes
1x30 Daemonettes with Icon & Musician
Fiend

Battleplan:
Pregame: Put the 1x30 'nettes in Deep Strike and buy them the banner for 1 CP, costing 3 total.

1) get the KOSs, Fiends, Mirror into combat Turn 1. Use Mirror to cast Phantasmagoria, maybe throw some smites on units you're not intending to charge. On a cramped 4x4, this should be trivial, especially with the enemy DZ full of men and machines.
2) In a cramped DZ, it's very easy to attack first with the KOSs, wipe their targets, and then consolidate into other targets. Make sure not to get into B2B when charging or piling in so you can still move if there are survivors.
3) Once the KoS's swing, pile in&consolidate with the fiend and mirror. Touch as many guardsmen as possible with this 6" of free movement - make sure to touch the same squads the KoSs consolidated into.
4) The squads not with the Fiend need to roll under a 6 on 3d6 should they choose to fall back, and the squad locked with the fiend cannot fall back.

If you did this correctly, the KoS's should be immune to shooting. If morale or a passed LD check exposes one KoS, don't forget to pop Warp Surge for a 4++ to try to keep it alive. Use the Forbidden Gem relic to shut down any Tank Commanders so they can't shoot or give orders; should be within 12" after a 14"+3d6" move.

Next turn,
0) Deep strike 30-girl unit to fully pin the enemy in their DZ and finish off infantry screen/charge tanks if a hole has opened up; should only be an 8" charge with the musician.
1) Cast hysterical frenzy with the mirror and smite with the other psykers to break out of combat with the locked squads.
2) Charge tanks.
3) Victory.


EDIT:
5 LRBTs is something like 750 points at cheapest, leaving only enough points for about 30 guardsmen or so. Should be trivial on a 4x4 to blenderize the Guardsmen in one turn, then deep-strike the 30 girls Turn 2 to wrap the tanks and GG.

The Newman wrote:
Got a little side-tracked halfway through posting about our LGS' issues with Russ Spam and left out the important little tidbit "at 1000 points". Five Russes at 2000 wouldn't be any sort of a problem. I also intended to note that this was before Marine Codex 2.0 and PA hit.

We have all the Xenos races (although the ork player only dables with them on the side), all the snowflake Marine chapters, all the vanilla chapters, DG and vanilla CSM, and Slannesh and Khorne Daemons spread over ten players ...and I think we have an irregular TS player too. That's a lot of different forces to be chewing on that problem for a year and a half.

That's a pretty nasty skew list at 1k points, but the solution is to play at a proper points level. The game is designed around 2,000 point games. 1,500 should still allow enough answers to keep skew in check, but 500 and 1,000 point games are always going to be a bit crap in terms of balance.

This is no different than taking a front AV 13 dreadnaught in a 500 point game in earlier editions, except that you can actually hurt the tanks now.

The Newman wrote:
Got a little side-tracked halfway through posting about our LGS' issues with Russ Spam and left out the important little tidbit "at 1000 points". Five Russes at 2000 wouldn't be any sort of a problem. I also intended to note that this was before Marine Codex 2.0 and PA hit.

We have all the Xenos races (although the ork player only dables with them on the side), all the snowflake Marine chapters, all the vanilla chapters, DG and vanilla CSM, and Slannesh and Khorne Daemons spread over ten players ...and I think we have an irregular TS player too. That's a lot of different forces to be chewing on that problem for a year and a half.

Russes were gak then. A "Russ Spam" list is a strictly worse [and much strictly worse] Imperial Knights list. It will be over fast... for the tanks


At 1000 points, I can only see it being worse. 5 Leman Russ Tanks at 1k doesn't leave a lot of room for not-tanks to protect them, even less if they're kitted with sponsons and stuff, from being tagged and the game being over.



Also, your games will be over faster if you use smaller armies. That's just a given.

Yeah 1k is really not a good indicator of how the game plays or is meant to be played. GW do make an attempt to balance for all points values but it's just an inherently impossible thing to do and sometimes their efforts have the opposite effect, where trying to balance stuff for lower points values causes huge issues in 1.5-2k games (Necrons being the prime example)

Plus I can think of plenty of ways to deal with Russ spam at lower points values. I'm fairly sure Tau would eat it for breakfast with one Riptide and 30 drones.

Marines, IG, and Tau are still too good at crippling enemies at range with little to no effort or movement needed. They have so many shots they don't even need good target selection much of time. Their general plan is to give points on turn 1 and 2 and then soak all the points on turn 3+ because the opponent has nothing left to oppose them.

BA, as currently played, are one of the worst offenders. If they get critical tripoints turn 1 and 2, it's really bad for the opponent. If not, they disintegrate. BA are now codex: tripoint and I suspect other assault lists have similar problems unless they have crazy durability like grotesques. So BA can easily beat that Russ list about half the time, which is when they go first. The question is that a worthwhile game to be playing.

Canadian 5th wrote:The game is designed around 2,000 point games.

(citation needed)

GW uses 1,750pts for their tournaments. What was 2K back in 4th/5th is typically 1250-1500 now, so I've found 1500pt games to be my preference in 8th: More room on a 6x4 board to maneuver, more hard decisions about what to take in a list, and big things like Knights and Land Raiders feel appropriately significant rather than something you can delete at least one of every turn. Oh, and it plays faster too.

I've never seen it explicitly stated that 8th Ed was designed around 2,000 point games, nor any compelling evidence from a balance perspective that that's where the game is most fair.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
At 1000 points, I can only see it being worse. 5 Leman Russ Tanks at 1k doesn't leave a lot of room for not-tanks to protect them, even less if they're kitted with sponsons and stuff, from being tagged and the game being over.

Also, your games will be over faster if you use smaller armies. That's just a given.

In terms of actual time, sure, but we're talking about turn counts, and there is no reason a smaller game should be more lethal than a larger one.

If anything, I find the reduced access to high-powered stratagems, improved ability for units to hide and maneuver without the board looking like a parking lot, and fewer stacked auras tends to make low-points games less alpha-strike-y than larger ones.

Also, re: Leman Russ spam, you can quite comfortably fit 2 Tank Commanders, 3 normal Russes, and 50-60 infantry in a 1K list. It's a skew list but it's not short on bubble wrap.

Imperial guard are one of the best armies at low point games because they can basically spam artillery and tanks and still have points for a "ton" of very good infantry. The higher points you play, the worse they become because they run out of "good " options before they run out of points to fill.

2000 is the current tourney size, so it's what the balance data is collected from. That's why it's designed around 2k games.

That said, I think 1500 would be a better size to use for competitive games for a bunch of reasons that are not pertinent to the thread, but 2k is pretty standard so I'm not going to push it too hard.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
2000 is the current tourney size, so it's what the balance data is collected from. That's why it's designed around 2k games.

GW's Grand Tournaments are played at the 1,750pt level. Lots of third-party tournaments have various tweaks on the game (eg ITC secondaries) that I think most would agree GW is not designing their game around, despite collecting data from those events.

1000 and 5 russes will have a field Day for any other non skew list otoh as soon as that list runs into any mobile melee list Gilles with deepstrikers or at tools then good knight irene.

But as it is said,it's a skew list so normal for them.

 catbarf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
2000 is the current tourney size, so it's what the balance data is collected from. That's why it's designed around 2k games.

GW's Grand Tournaments are played at the 1,750pt level. Lots of third-party tournaments have various tweaks on the game (eg ITC secondaries) that I think most would agree GW is not designing their game around, despite collecting data from those events.

I think your statement is incorrect, given that IIRC GW officially set their Spring FAQ to be close to right after Adepticon so that they can issue their FAQ's based off of Adepticon results.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
1000 and 5 russes will have a field Day for any other non skew list otoh as soon as that list runs into any mobile melee list Gilles with deepstrikers or at tools then good knight irene.

But as it is said,it's a skew list so normal for them.

Or anything that's like it but better. Which there's a lot of. Knights for example. A more efficient Guard list. Iron Hands guncastle.


5 Leman Russes isn't the epitome of a skew list design. It's pretty low on the totem pole, I'd say. 1000 points might kick some of the ones above it, but even then it just has too many weaknesses to actually be that good, I think.

 catbarf wrote:
GW uses 1,750pts for their tournaments. What was 2K back in 4th/5th is typically 1250-1500 now, so I've found 1500pt games to be my preference in 8th: More room on a 6x4 board to maneuver, more hard decisions about what to take in a list, and big things like Knights and Land Raiders feel appropriately significant rather than something you can delete at least one of every turn. Oh, and it plays faster too.

I've never seen it explicitly stated that 8th Ed was designed around 2,000 point games, nor any compelling evidence from a balance perspective that that's where the game is most fair.

Every major non-GW tournament runs at 2k. There are vastly more of these events to gather data from than there are GW tournaments. We've seen GW react to solve problems that pop up mainly in ITC that aren't nearly as problematic at events running CA missions.

Regardless of it being a specific targeted points total, they clearly have to design around 2,000 points being competitive.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Also, re: Leman Russ spam, you can quite comfortably fit 2 Tank Commanders, 3 normal Russes, and 50-60 infantry in a 1K list. It's a skew list but it's not short on bubble wrap.

Can that few guard bodies bubble wrap out to 18"? If not, it does nothing to stop Plasma Talons from tearing into them.

If I were to trim my 2k list down to 1k it would look something like.

HQ - 380 points
Sammael in Sableclaw
Talonmaster

Troops - 175 points
2x Min Scouts
1x Min Scouts w/ Sniper Rifles

Fast Attack - 442
10 Ravenwing Black Knights
3 Ravenwing Black Knights

997 points

I have all the mobility in my favour while also being able to delete pretty much anything at will.

In an ideal scenario, I can delete 3 Russes turn 1 and charge their screen while keeping at least 2 units of scouts between his tanks and my HQ cluster. Otherwise, I'd hide out of LOS for a turn, and get him on turn 2.

Unless my dice go cold or we play on literal planet bowling ball there's no way that list beats mine. In theory at least.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
2000 is the current tourney size, so it's what the balance data is collected from. That's why it's designed around 2k games.

GW's Grand Tournaments are played at the 1,750pt level. Lots of third-party tournaments have various tweaks on the game (eg ITC secondaries) that I think most would agree GW is not designing their game around, despite collecting data from those events.

I think your statement is incorrect, given that IIRC GW officially set their Spring FAQ to be close to right after Adepticon so that they can issue their FAQ's based off of Adepticon results.


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Not Online!!! wrote:
1000 and 5 russes will have a field Day for any other non skew list otoh as soon as that list runs into any mobile melee list Gilles with deepstrikers or at tools then good knight irene.

But as it is said,it's a skew list so normal for them.

Or anything that's like it but better. Which there's a lot of. Knights for example. A more efficient Guard list. Iron Hands guncastle.


5 Leman Russes isn't the epitome of a skew list design. It's pretty low on the totem pole, I'd say. 1000 points might kick some of the ones above it, but even then it just has too many weaknesses to actually be that good, I think.

Tbf skew list are regardless most of time the bottom of the totem Pole in regards to design.

Fitting in a squad of 10 bubblewrappers per tank, with couple of those being Tank Commanders, is entirely possible.

With current LoS rules and the terrain most games are played with (not necessarily planet bowling ball, but often without extensive solid LoS blocking terrain sufficient to hide everything at deployment from 72" guns, and lots of tall GW terrain has holes and windows to draw LoS through), I can very easily see that Ravenwing list getting absolutely obliterated by that Russ list, as I've done almost exactly that a couple of times, the firepower output at 72" is entirely capable of killing every Black Knight in one round of shooting if given the chance (especially so if playing something like Hammer & Anvil deployment) with marginally favorable rolling.

More generally however, I think that matchup going to come more down to "who gets the first turn" than anything else I think, both lists are entirely capable of deciding the game in the first turn or two with a modicum of luck and is indicative of the Alpha strike issue in general on both ends, at least as far as can be in a 1k game.

There isn't a huge difference between 1750 and 2000. I think GW moved down to 1750 after on of their tournaments ran on too long?

I guess its sort of turning into a pile on, but I'm mystified how 5 Russes can dominate a meta for 18 months. It seems like you could stack the odds in your favour with almost every faction I can think of with a bit of list tailoring. I guess if the guard player "always" went first for some reason - but still. As people have said, knights, flyers, horde infantry lists (maybe if all the Russ have punishers - but then you have range problems versus plenty of things.) Basically anything beyond "Timmy's first army" - which back in the day would be say 3 tactical squads, an assault squad, a devastator squad, a captain and a librarian.

But then meta does matter. I'm not convinced the whinge was that Castelans could get a 3++ (although this was too cheap). Its that they totally warped the meta into "do you have a chance to kill this, if not gg, because a ludicrous number of lists in any tournament will be bringing one". Which isn't surprising - because if you can't beat them, join them. If its damage wasn't so bad it would be fine - but yes, destroying two Russ a go was very likely, more if you could get it across the table to clear something in assault as well.

This why GW had to bring in the Marine FAQ, because the obvious meta effect was just to make every good player play Marines (and everyone else whinge about marines).

The comparison with computer games is that if a certain faction or class is overpowered, it will likely become very popular very quickly. Now admittedly you can say "maybe it isn't overpowered, you just haven't found the answer from amongst the various other options" - but this assumes such an answer exists. List building in 40k tends to be about the alchemy of finding a list with no hard counters. I'm highly suspect anyone found a list which had say a 70% win rate versus the traditional Castelan list in its peak - or the various Marine lists in theirs. You can say those lists were outliers and therefore deserved to be nerfed - but its quite common for meta dominance to reach that point. You build to compete with, not to crush such lists.

In 40k's long history, can anyone thing of a relatively natural organic shift to the meta, that wasn't cause by GW adding or changing rules?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Fitting in a squad of 10 bubblewrappers per tank, with couple of those being Tank Commanders, is entirely possible.

With current LoS rules and the terrain most games are played with (not necessarily planet bowling ball, but often without extensive solid LoS blocking terrain sufficient to hide everything at deployment from 72" guns, and lots of tall GW terrain has holes and windows to draw LoS through), I can very easily see that Ravenwing list getting absolutely obliterated by that Russ list, as I've done almost exactly that a couple of times, the firepower output at 72" is entirely capable of killing every Black Knight in one round of shooting if given the chance (especially so if playing something like Hammer & Anvil deployment) with marginally favorable rolling.

More generally however, I think that matchup going to come more down to "who gets the first turn" than anything else I think, both lists are entirely capable of deciding the game in the first turn or two with a modicum of luck and is indicative of the Alpha strike issue in general on both ends, at least as far as can be in a 1k game.

Yeah, deployment, terrain, and turn order are going to be huge factors in any game between those types of lists.

Tyel wrote:
In 40k's long history, can anyone thing of a relatively natural organic shift to the meta, that wasn't cause by GW adding or changing rules?

It's never been given enough space to breathe for a given - relatively balanced - meta to be fully solved. Even a shakeup for a new codex every few months drastically changes things.

You'd need a StarCraft like game state where there was a lot of high-level play for a long time after the last balance changes were made to see if an organically shifting meta could emerge. You'd also need balance tight enough and enough room for skill expression to allow for that to emerge and I'm not sure 40k has ever had that.

The Newman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

Yes, your entire LGS does need to git gud if 5 Russes is ending every game turn one. That's pretty low level. Russes aren't even the best thing you could take there. This is such a good example of people assuming the strongest stuff at their own local must be representative of the strongest stuff in the entire game and thinking it's a measure of high level balance - it's not. Don't worry, you're not the only one doing it, but probably the most obvious one. 5 Russes doesn't even kill a single Tyrannofex out of my list. 1k points is neither representative of any sort of competitive meta, but I don't care what value you are playing at - this is not some bully list.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Bad games are decided by turn 2 or even 1.

By bad games I mean games were players play full alpha strike lists and don't think about how to engage the enemy to maximize their chances of winning so they go all out on an early offensive leaving the game to basically a coin flip.


In tables were you see players that actually know how to play, games aren't decided as early. Normally they come down to turn 3-4.

It bothers me how easily that can be parsed down to "You're losing turn 1-2? Git gud.", especially when an entire LGS has tried and failed for 18 months to try to come up with even one list that doesn't get utterly shredded turn one by 5 Leman Russ tanks and some bubble wrap, and that's including the guy who came up with that list and loans it to other players to stress-test his BA and DG lists.

Yes, your entire LGS does need to git gud if 5 Russes is ending every game turn one. That's pretty low level. Russes aren't even the best thing you could take there. This is such a good example of people assuming the strongest stuff at their own local must be representative of the strongest stuff in the entire game and thinking it's a measure of high level balance - it's not. Don't worry, you're not the only one doing it, but probably the most obvious one. 5 Russes doesn't even kill a single Tyrannofex out of my list. 1k points is neither representative of any sort of competitive meta, but I don't care what value you are playing at - this is not some bully list.

Yeah, there's a dude at my club whose thing has always been "Maximum tanks, minimum everything else" and he's been pretty intensely frustrated since the very start of 8th just due to how much vehicles without fly get shut down by tagging them in melee. and we have a blessedly uncompetitive meta by pretty much any standard.

Fortunately IG get infinite dudes for free to stand in the way. Not quite, I know but it sure seems like it.

Given the lethality of 8th edition, would it be better served going to a 4 turn game like 2nd Edition?

Would a shorter game force the incentive to play more optimized armies knowing that you only have 4 turns to win the game?

Also, losing on turn 2 or 3 might not feel as bad knowing that you only have 4 turns vs 5,6 or 7? Sometimes there is that embarrassment factor of getting tabled when you still have 5 turns to play vs 2.

1st turn tablings were not uncommon in 2nd, though. GW has always had this problem.

 Jimbotron wrote:
Given the lethality of 8th edition, would it be better served going to a 4 turn game like 2nd Edition?

Would a shorter game force the incentive to play more optimized armies knowing that you only have 4 turns to win the game?

Also, losing on turn 2 or 3 might not feel as bad knowing that you only have 4 turns vs 5,6 or 7? Sometimes there is that embarrassment factor of getting tabled when you still have 5 turns to play vs 2.

Almost all the missions I design for events are 4-turn. It seems to work pretty well.

Well, my last game was on TTS and it came down to, literally, the last dice rolls. Very end of turn six, if I killed his chaplain I'd get a point for headhunter. My autarch got four wounds through with his laser Lance, he had his 4++ and no CP, he made two, I got my headhunter point resulting in a 27 point draw.
If not for the terrain it would have been turn two, maybe three. We were forced to be cautious because we both could output a lot of damage and we couldn't afford to just rush out.

The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

Martel732 wrote:
1st turn tablings were not uncommon in 2nd, though. GW has always had this problem.

Virus Bombs anyone?

Not just that. Noise marines and eldar were notorious for causing turn 1 tablings.

 iGuy91 wrote:
The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

I agree and with that it makes unit choices more enjoyable instead of needing to field tons of redundancy as insurance that you can actually use that interesting unit instead of it being wiped off the board turn 1 or damaged so badly that it's practically useless for its original purpose. With that it allows for smaller point games that still have variety because again you don't need to spam as much redundancy to be able to play the unit combo you want in your list.

 Vankraken wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

I agree and with that it makes unit choices more enjoyable instead of needing to field tons of redundancy as insurance that you can actually use that interesting unit instead of it being wiped off the board turn 1 or damaged so badly that it's practically useless for its original purpose. With that it allows for smaller point games that still have variety because again you don't need to spam as much redundancy to be able to play the unit combo you want in your list.

Well, let's throw some ideas around. I can give you some that I've used, to pretty good effect.

1) Bring back "Dawn Fight" rules where turn 1 everyone starts with a blanket -1 to hit. Simple, easy, helps curb some early-game power

2) play with obscurement in addition to regular cover (from Cities of Death). I.e. if all models in a unit are obscured with respect to the firing unit, the firing unit suffers -1 to hit.

3) play on a larger board/more restrictive deployment zones. Obviously, this one primarily works if the problem you're having is units slamming into one another too fast, rather than gigantic artillery gunparks

4) Give each player a number of "reinforcement points" they get to spend each turn bringing back units that were destroyed. Spend 'em or lose 'em at the top of each turn, the units you bring back must be legal sized and can't be named characters/other Unique units. I've played a nids vs guard stalingrad-style mission taking place in a manufactorum map, and frankly it was a blast.

5) I've played with one once that we called "Temporary Injuries" - all infantry units at the beginning of the player's turn were allowed to heal 1 wound, or bring 1 model back with 1 wound remaining, and vehicles were allowed to regenerate 1 wound. This was specifically a 2k game with necrons when they were bottom-tier, so we also allowed destroyed squads to bring 1 model back if it was the first time the unit was destroyed (Therefore allowing the unit to roll Res Protocols even if it got wiped)

6) Vehicles/Monsters may move and fire heavy weapons without penalty, but must target things in their front 180 degree arc, and non-vehicle/monsters suffer -1 to hit if they're targeting something that isn't the closest enemy target. We did this one to give players a little more agency in what gets shot, and also to make vehicle maneuvering a little more interesting.

^note that all of these suggestions I am NOT PROPOSING AS UNIVERSAL SOLUTIONS. Obviously, for each one, there are some units that could be taken to abuse them. When implementing them, we had a general idea of what we wanted to bring in our lists, so we were able to look at that and say "OK, this seems like a good adjustment to reduce deadliness and let us play a satisfying 4-5 hour game that goes to the end of turn 6-7."

Martel732 wrote:
1st turn tablings were not uncommon in 2nd, though. GW has always had this problem.

I recall 2nd being much more of a grind. Slower movement (4" typical), shorter range, fewer models, almost nobody had FW stuff. Heck, I remember getting a "land raider" kit from GW mailorder which was two other tank hulls and bits (from which I built a couple of marvelous tanks as "predator" variants) and that was late... the point is that that there was no landraider. Yeah, some assassins were a pain and scratch built ork trucks and battlewagons loaded with boys sucked. My eldar lost most every game to a friend's orks, for about 5 years I think.. one guy even went so far as to buy more than 30 dark reapers to try to beat the green rush plus blood angels and space worlves were popular in that group. Anyways, I don't remember a single 1st turn tabling but that was 30 years ago, so maybe it happened but not often enough for me to remember it as a thing that happened.


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 iGuy91 wrote:
The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

absolutely this ^^
I do not understand the fast game fetish, as if three bad games is better than one good one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1st turn tablings were not uncommon in 2nd, though. GW has always had this problem.

Virus Bombs anyone?

Who used that card? srsly...

 jeff white wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1st turn tablings were not uncommon in 2nd, though. GW has always had this problem.

Virus Bombs anyone?

Who used that card? srsly...

You really have to ask here?

the_scotsman, I would also suggest as two more possibilities:

1. Add the long range to-hit modifier from Kill Team. Combined with obscurement, it would be much easier to avoid heavy attrition on turn 1. The problem, though, is that anything impacting to-hit penalties disproportionately impacts armies with poor BS to begin with, while armies with high BS and easy access to re-rolls are hardly affected, so this would mean some major rebalancing would be needed. Ork shooting would be in the toilet, Marines wouldn't really care.

2. AoS-style gradual accrual of CP, rather than the all-up-front allocation, would make turn 1 much less of a maximum-damage CP blowout.

I'd start at 2CP/turn base plus 1CP extra for each Battalion/3CP for each Brigade, making Battalions/Brigades less critical to generating CP than they are currently. Stratagems that are used before the game starts could just reduce from your turn 1 starting value, or even create a multi-turn deficit if you really spent a lot.

That would make stratagems more of a trade-off against each other (eg if I take two extra relics for 3CP, I might not be able to shoot-twice on the first turn), which I think would make for a more interesting play experience on top of reducing the lethality of the first two turns.

As far as other ways to reduce the negative qualities of alpha strike, I remain a big fan of Bolt Action-style alternating activation. It provides more decision points since you can be constantly reacting to your opponent, and all but guarantees that your shiny toy will be able to act before getting wiped off the board. Apocalypse and Kill Team both did something similar with a phased alternating activation mechanic, and I really enjoy the greater opportunity for counterplay it provides over IGOUGO.

 catbarf wrote:
the_scotsman, I would also suggest as two more possibilities:

1. Add the long range to-hit modifier from Kill Team. Combined with obscurement, it would be much easier to avoid heavy attrition on turn 1. The problem, though, is that anything impacting to-hit penalties disproportionately impacts armies with poor BS to begin with, while armies with high BS and easy access to re-rolls are hardly affected, so this would mean some major rebalancing would be needed. Ork shooting would be in the toilet, Marines wouldn't really care.

2. AoS-style gradual accrual of CP, rather than the all-up-front allocation, would make turn 1 much less of a maximum-damage CP blowout.

I'd start at 2CP/turn base plus 1CP extra for each Battalion/3CP for each Brigade, making Battalions/Brigades less critical to generating CP than they are currently. Stratagems that are used before the game starts could just reduce from your turn 1 starting value, or even create a multi-turn deficit if you really spent a lot.

That would make stratagems more of a trade-off against each other (eg if I take two extra relics for 3CP, I might not be able to shoot-twice on the first turn), which I think would make for a more interesting play experience on top of reducing the lethality of the first two turns.

As far as other ways to reduce the negative qualities of alpha strike, I remain a big fan of Bolt Action-style alternating activation. It provides more decision points since you can be constantly reacting to your opponent, and all but guarantees that your shiny toy will be able to act before getting wiped off the board. Apocalypse and Kill Team both did something similar with a phased alternating activation mechanic, and I really enjoy the greater opportunity for counterplay it provides over IGOUGO.

Denied, too many armies need a lot of CP for pregame strats to make some units/detachments viable (GSC, Orks come to mind), therefore you can't arbitrarily kill some armies just because you don't like current CP allocation

The biggest fundamental problem is scale. GW wants its whole universe to be playable and represented under the same ruleset, no matter how ludicrous. We get a game where ICBM's, bayonets, divisional or corps-level artillery, simple handguns, automatic rifles, and fusion powered energy cannons bigger than battle tanks are all portrayed in the same design space, often attempting to portray each individual gunshot or blade stroke or to differentiate between different blade types of close combat weapon. We have creatures like Grots (the size of household pets) being portrayed as individual distinct elements in the same battle space as tank companies and Titans, and have armies that may numbers as few as five models or as many as a couple hundred.

There's a reason most games don't try to do this. In order to get all that stuff to work together in a game that can be played in a couple of hours, you have to abstract most mechanics to their simplest possible form and you end up with a game where balance and unit capability is almost entirely valued on an attritional basis (e.g. how many points of stuff will this thing kill on average for the points invested in it) and incentivizes extreme lethality to fit that allotted timeframe.

Other games don't try to do everything at every scale. If you look at something like say, Heavy Gear or Dropzone Commander or Infinity, where armies are typically going to be 10-15 models, and 20 models is a true horde that's very difficult to construct, we get a lot more depth of design space and play, and substantially less emphasis on obliterating everything turn 1. These games pick a scale and stick with it, and as a result can abstract the small stuff, ignore the bigger stuff, and focus on delivering deep(er) tactical gameplay. For example, in HG, instead of getting rerolls just for being within 6" of a commander, the commander actually has to specify a specific target and actively do something to give rerolls to their squad (spend an action) and an opponent with ECM can attempt to jam those communications. Likewise, your big artillery unit in the backfield isn't worth squat if there's no forward observers to direct fire, and an enemy player with an ECM equipped unit can likewise jam forward observer attempts to relay targeting data. 40k generally doesn't attempt anything like this as a result of the scale, or when it does, it comes off as gimmicky and awkward and often unintended (e.g. Tripointing).

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
the_scotsman, I would also suggest as two more possibilities:

1. Add the long range to-hit modifier from Kill Team. Combined with obscurement, it would be much easier to avoid heavy attrition on turn 1. The problem, though, is that anything impacting to-hit penalties disproportionately impacts armies with poor BS to begin with, while armies with high BS and easy access to re-rolls are hardly affected, so this would mean some major rebalancing would be needed. Ork shooting would be in the toilet, Marines wouldn't really care.

2. AoS-style gradual accrual of CP, rather than the all-up-front allocation, would make turn 1 much less of a maximum-damage CP blowout.

I'd start at 2CP/turn base plus 1CP extra for each Battalion/3CP for each Brigade, making Battalions/Brigades less critical to generating CP than they are currently. Stratagems that are used before the game starts could just reduce from your turn 1 starting value, or even create a multi-turn deficit if you really spent a lot.

That would make stratagems more of a trade-off against each other (eg if I take two extra relics for 3CP, I might not be able to shoot-twice on the first turn), which I think would make for a more interesting play experience on top of reducing the lethality of the first two turns.

As far as other ways to reduce the negative qualities of alpha strike, I remain a big fan of Bolt Action-style alternating activation. It provides more decision points since you can be constantly reacting to your opponent, and all but guarantees that your shiny toy will be able to act before getting wiped off the board. Apocalypse and Kill Team both did something similar with a phased alternating activation mechanic, and I really enjoy the greater opportunity for counterplay it provides over IGOUGO.

Denied, too many armies need a lot of CP for pregame strats to make some units/detachments viable (GSC, Orks come to mind), therefore you can't arbitrarily kill some armies just because you don't like current CP allocation

tbh, I think the problems that create the game's Deadliness Problem run too deep for an easy, single-rule fix to universally fix all problems in all situations.

however, when coming up with a one-time rule to make a single game more fun, a single rule CAN do that in some situations.

my all-grot ork army would definitely be hamstrung by a turn-by-turn CP allocation system. Most of my units can't actually spend CP in game, so i rely on being able to blow most of my pool on pre-game buffs and upgrades like extra relics, kustom jobs and other stuff like that. other armies I have would be perfectly fine with that and I'd probably have more fun with that stricture in place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The biggest fundamental problem is scale. GW wants its whole universe to be playable and represented under the same ruleset, no matter how ludicrous. We get a game where ICBM's, bayonets, divisional or corps-level artillery, simple handguns, automatic rifles, and fusion powered energy cannons bigger than battle tanks are all portrayed in the same design space, often attempting to portray each individual gunshot or blade stroke or to differentiate between different blade types of close combat weapon. We have creatures like Grots (the size of household pets) being portrayed as individual distinct elements in the same battle space as tank companies and Titans, and have armies that may numbers as few as five models or as many as a couple hundred.

There's a reason most games don't try to do this. In order to get all that stuff to work together in a game that can be played in a couple of hours, you have to abstract most mechanics to their simplest possible form and you end up with a game where balance and unit capability is almost entirely valued on an attritional basis (e.g. how many points of stuff will this thing kill on average for the points invested in it) and incentivizes extreme lethality to fit that allotted timeframe.

Other games don't try to do everything at every scale. If you look at something like say, Heavy Gear or Dropzone Commander or Infinity, where armies are typically going to be 10-15 models, and 20 models is a true horde that's very difficult to construct, we get a lot more depth of design space and play, and substantially less emphasis on obliterating everything turn 1. These games pick a scale and stick with it, and as a result can abstract the small stuff, ignore the bigger stuff, and focus on delivering deep(er) tactical gameplay. For example, in HG, instead of getting rerolls just for being within 6" of a commander, the commander actually has to specify a specific target and actively do something to give rerolls to their squad (spend an action) and an opponent with ECM can attempt to jam those communications. Likewise, your big artillery unit in the backfield isn't worth squat if there's no forward observers to direct fire, and an enemy player with an ECM equipped unit can likewise jam forward observer attempts to relay targeting data. 40k generally doesn't attempt anything like this as a result of the scale, or when it does, it comes off as gimmicky and awkward and often unintended (e.g. Tripointing).

Yeah, it's...one of the reasons I really like playing 40k, honestly In more contained games, I tend to find the "different" factions too similar and the strategies available too static. I kind of find myself drawn to games that are absolute unbalanceable dumpster fires because you get the benefit of no two army setups being identical.

"I recall 2nd being much more of a grind. Slower movement (4" typical), shorter range, fewer models, almost nobody had FW stuff. Heck, I remember getting a "land raider" kit from GW mailorder which was two other tank hulls and bits (from which I built a couple of marvelous tanks as "predator" variants) and that was late... the point is that that there was no landraider. Yeah, some assassins were a pain and scratch built ork trucks and battlewagons loaded with boys sucked. My eldar lost most every game to a friend's orks, for about 5 years I think.. one guy even went so far as to buy more than 30 dark reapers to try to beat the green rush plus blood angels and space worlves were popular in that group. Anyways, I don't remember a single 1st turn tabling but that was 30 years ago, so maybe it happened but not often enough for me to remember it as a thing that happened."

You had to build for it. Lots of -2 weapons made gak die really fast in 2nd.

 Vankraken wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

I agree and with that it makes unit choices more enjoyable instead of needing to field tons of redundancy as insurance that you can actually use that interesting unit instead of it being wiped off the board turn 1 or damaged so badly that it's practically useless for its original purpose. With that it allows for smaller point games that still have variety because again you don't need to spam as much redundancy to be able to play the unit combo you want in your list.

I feel like that's kind of what makes a wargame versus an RPG.

The game isn't about a single unit, it's about the collective force as an army working together. And if you have something that needs to be done, have multiple ways to do it, because the enemy is going to try to suppress your capability.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

I agree and with that it makes unit choices more enjoyable instead of needing to field tons of redundancy as insurance that you can actually use that interesting unit instead of it being wiped off the board turn 1 or damaged so badly that it's practically useless for its original purpose. With that it allows for smaller point games that still have variety because again you don't need to spam as much redundancy to be able to play the unit combo you want in your list.

Well, let's throw some ideas around. I can give you some that I've used, to pretty good effect.

1) Bring back "Dawn Fight" rules where turn 1 everyone starts with a blanket -1 to hit. Simple, easy, helps curb some early-game power

2) play with obscurement in addition to regular cover (from Cities of Death). I.e. if all models in a unit are obscured with respect to the firing unit, the firing unit suffers -1 to hit.

3) play on a larger board/more restrictive deployment zones. Obviously, this one primarily works if the problem you're having is units slamming into one another too fast, rather than gigantic artillery gunparks

4) Give each player a number of "reinforcement points" they get to spend each turn bringing back units that were destroyed. Spend 'em or lose 'em at the top of each turn, the units you bring back must be legal sized and can't be named characters/other Unique units. I've played a nids vs guard stalingrad-style mission taking place in a manufactorum map, and frankly it was a blast.

5) I've played with one once that we called "Temporary Injuries" - all infantry units at the beginning of the player's turn were allowed to heal 1 wound, or bring 1 model back with 1 wound remaining, and vehicles were allowed to regenerate 1 wound. This was specifically a 2k game with necrons when they were bottom-tier, so we also allowed destroyed squads to bring 1 model back if it was the first time the unit was destroyed (Therefore allowing the unit to roll Res Protocols even if it got wiped)

6) Vehicles/Monsters may move and fire heavy weapons without penalty, but must target things in their front 180 degree arc, and non-vehicle/monsters suffer -1 to hit if they're targeting something that isn't the closest enemy target. We did this one to give players a little more agency in what gets shot, and also to make vehicle maneuvering a little more interesting.

^note that all of these suggestions I am NOT PROPOSING AS UNIVERSAL SOLUTIONS. Obviously, for each one, there are some units that could be taken to abuse them. When implementing them, we had a general idea of what we wanted to bring in our lists, so we were able to look at that and say "OK, this seems like a good adjustment to reduce deadliness and let us play a satisfying 4-5 hour game that goes to the end of turn 6-7."

When GW insists on pointing weapons in BS skills having a situation where you spend more than 50% of the game either unable to shoot as -1, -1 and -1 means BS4+ can't hit full stop and BS 3+ units are hitting on 6's.
A 6's always hit just makes the pointing being BS based more broken.

It would be better if external hit modifiers got capped to +/- 1, so at most you'll be -2 to hit by Moving and Firing heavy weapons vs a hard to hit unit.

Or missions that require a drip-feed of units onto the table.

KurtAngle2 wrote:


Denied, too many armies need a lot of CP for pregame strats to make some units/detachments viable (GSC, Orks come to mind), therefore you can't arbitrarily kill some armies just because you don't like current CP allocation

If armies need stratagems to be good, then stratagems are the problem, and it further emphasizes the need to downgrade them game-wide, or supress them altogether.

Then again, stratagems are also a way to "fix" units without touching their datasheets, but if you need a special action to make a unit good, then there is still a flaw somewhere.

Siegfriedfr wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:


Denied, too many armies need a lot of CP for pregame strats to make some units/detachments viable (GSC, Orks come to mind), therefore you can't arbitrarily kill some armies just because you don't like current CP allocation

If armies need stratagems to be good, then stratagems are the problem, and it further emphasizes the need to downgrade them game-wide, or supress them altogether.

Then again, stratagems are also a way to "fix" units without touching their datasheets, but if you need a special action to make a unit good, then there is still a flaw somewhere.

I'm in actually in favor of making some Stratagems literally baseline for the relevant units (most of the pre-game stratagems that buff specific characters should be baseline or back to being appropriately point costed), but as lon as they don't do that I cannot endorse any different CP allocation that would screw half the armies in the game currently.

My memory of second edition was shooting most of an army into a Carnifex and it not dying.

Have to say I don't like these options - mainly because I think they just add further skews to the game. If you want less lethality, GW has to put it into the base unit interactions.

Maybe its too canned, or too formulaic - but I think "jack of all trades" (so most troops) should do about 20% of their points in shooting in close range to similar units. You would then have units which get say 40% returns on their optimal targets - but only 10% returns against suboptimal ones. So the game becomes getting your right units into their right units, while trying to avoid the opponent doing the same to you. I feel there was a brief window in the indexes when this was about right - before people realised you could optimise a list, and/or spam turn one DS and the codexes rapidly shot it out of the water.

Assault would need to be a bit more lethal - but really, if we are doing a wish list, charging should probably be changed. Give every single unit in the game roll 3d6 and pick the highest? Go back to fixed charge distances? This is more generic balance issue than making the game less lethal though. Its about keeping your (flying) castles a bit more honest.

As for game time being short/long - really it comes down to what the game "is". There is a fundamental difference between say a tournament game - or a random pick up game - that can be done and dusted in about 2-2.5 hours (including setting up the board+armies) and, at the opposite extreme, a long, sprawling game that somehow eats up an entire Saturday because neither player is being especially quick and nothing is dying so every unit is getting to move and act. I'm not really sure there is a right answer here.

Maybe its just that I don't think 8th is that bad - and I'm concerned about making it worse.

Right. You couldn't one turn the Nids. Most one turn tablings were some kind of marine or bad eldar lists.

Martel732 wrote:
Fortunately IG get infinite dudes for free to stand in the way. Not quite, I know but it sure seems like it.

It’s gotten to the point where I can recognise your posts from the content before I’ve even looked at who posted them. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen to have this difficulty dealing with mono Guard screens.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Fortunately IG get infinite dudes for free to stand in the way. Not quite, I know but it sure seems like it.

It’s gotten to the point where I can recognise your posts from the content before I’ve even looked at who posted them. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen to have this difficulty dealing with mono Guard screens.

Yeah, we all have our quirks. I'm interested in what list he's coming up against that he can't beat with BA. Unfortunately, I don't have BA or a BA codex, but if I did then I'd be eager to find out and see if I can succeed where he can't. I'm not best-of-the-best remotely, but I often feel from his descriptions that he must be doing something wrong. Same with karol, but I do play Grey Knights and haven't particularly felt too bad about it.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Fortunately IG get infinite dudes for free to stand in the way. Not quite, I know but it sure seems like it.

It’s gotten to the point where I can recognise your posts from the content before I’ve even looked at who posted them. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen to have this difficulty dealing with mono Guard screens.

I can introduce you to some more. They're really good, even if you don't think they are. The only real play for me is tripointing. Anything else and I die miserably. That's why I hate them so much.


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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Fortunately IG get infinite dudes for free to stand in the way. Not quite, I know but it sure seems like it.

It’s gotten to the point where I can recognise your posts from the content before I’ve even looked at who posted them. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen to have this difficulty dealing with mono Guard screens.

Yeah, we all have our quirks. I'm interested in what list he's coming up against that he can't beat with BA. Unfortunately, I don't have BA or a BA codex, but if I did then I'd be eager to find out and see if I can succeed where he can't. I'm not best-of-the-best remotely, but I often feel from his descriptions that he must be doing something wrong. Same with karol, but I do play Grey Knights and haven't particularly felt too bad about it.

I can beat them now. I just want to cut myself after the game. I had to accept that I was playing codex: tripoint, not an actual balanced force. At least my IG opponents get to be miserable as I am as I cheese them off the table. "You can't shoot me. Because reasons. Isn't this game great?"

For the flip side, I never play my IG competitively.

I feel like digging myself out of the 8 point hole and going on to win is needlessly difficult when I'm aiming for definitive wins and could be playing Sisters of Battle, or even Space Wolves, and have a much easier time of it.


Here's my take on IG:
With all the striking power in tanks and the essential necessity of having more than 80 infantry models, you're automatically giving up Reaper and Big Game Hunter. None of your things are hard to kill, and you can actually fully give up Reaper and Big Game hunter and still have a ton of your army left. Comparatively, enemy forces like Space Marines give essentially no credit on kill objectives, and if they do, you only really get that credit when they're near tabled. You've got to score 4 on Recon or Behind Enemy Lines or something which will often put your units out of position and happen slower than somebody zonking off 80 of your infantry.
With so many easy to kill units, you can give better than you get in points and strategic situation and still lose Kill More incredibly easily. It's just trivial to wipe a couple of Infantry squad out or blow away a cheap tank to score some easy VP's while you're clawing your way through a unit of Aggressors that can be only wounded on a 4+ despite having S10 guns.
With infantry that's overwhelmingly fragile and crud in melee, taking the center can be really tough if you have the first turn, and thus it's pretty easy to lose on Hold More too. Taking the second play is better in this regard, if you're willing to trade casualties which might be counting against Kill More, since you can swarm a point after their play and right before scoring, but you often need to have the first play to avoid getting completely hemmed in and unable to even get to the middle.

So, when I'm planning what I'm going to play in League or in a tournament, I'm always like "I should play IG. They're my original army, and probably my favorite.... Eh. I'll play Sisters and get my wins."

BA give reaper real easy now. Reaper is wounds now, not models.

Also, IG get a lot of stroke back with CA 2019 missions, which are the coming rage. Or so I'm told.

Russes, for the cost, are moderately hard to kill. Cheap T8 is actually pretty good.

Martel732 wrote:
BA give reaper real easy now. Reaper is wounds now, not models.

Also, IG get a lot of stroke back with CA 2019 missions, which are the coming rage. Or so I'm told.

Russes, for the cost, are moderately hard to kill. Cheap T8 is actually pretty good.

You're saying house rules make an army worse? Say it aint so!

IT also makes some armies better. Like BA. It's different, not worse than GW's crap. Although personally, the way top BA player abuse the ITC system, and yes, it is ABUSE, makes me pretty ill. I can't quite get over SG engineers.

If there was only a way to decrease lethality from an opponent getting a whole turn to kill everything, like if units kinda did movements in tandem with the other player as though the units were alternating. That would be far too complex though and GW has given no precedence with those kinds of rules.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
If there was only a way to decrease lethality from an opponent getting a whole turn to kill everything, like if units kinda did movements in tandem with the other player as though the units were alternating. That would be far too complex though and GW has given no precedence with those kinds of rules.

Lord of the Rings?

Kill-Team?

Old-AI?

You could just blanket give any unit that has yet to move or shoot in a battle -1 to hit and +1 armor save as they're dug in and defensive. You'd need to tweak scoring so that going second doesn't become an advantage, but the whole hasn't moved or shot clause could also be used by player one with advanced deployed units that may find holding still all game and keeping the bonus a good idea.

If nothing else, it adds a layer of decision making around something other than just doing the most damage.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
the_scotsman, I would also suggest as two more possibilities:

1. Add the long range to-hit modifier from Kill Team. Combined with obscurement, it would be much easier to avoid heavy attrition on turn 1. The problem, though, is that anything impacting to-hit penalties disproportionately impacts armies with poor BS to begin with, while armies with high BS and easy access to re-rolls are hardly affected, so this would mean some major rebalancing would be needed. Ork shooting would be in the toilet, Marines wouldn't really care.

2. AoS-style gradual accrual of CP, rather than the all-up-front allocation, would make turn 1 much less of a maximum-damage CP blowout.

I'd start at 2CP/turn base plus 1CP extra for each Battalion/3CP for each Brigade, making Battalions/Brigades less critical to generating CP than they are currently. Stratagems that are used before the game starts could just reduce from your turn 1 starting value, or even create a multi-turn deficit if you really spent a lot.

That would make stratagems more of a trade-off against each other (eg if I take two extra relics for 3CP, I might not be able to shoot-twice on the first turn), which I think would make for a more interesting play experience on top of reducing the lethality of the first two turns.

As far as other ways to reduce the negative qualities of alpha strike, I remain a big fan of Bolt Action-style alternating activation. It provides more decision points since you can be constantly reacting to your opponent, and all but guarantees that your shiny toy will be able to act before getting wiped off the board. Apocalypse and Kill Team both did something similar with a phased alternating activation mechanic, and I really enjoy the greater opportunity for counterplay it provides over IGOUGO.

Denied, too many armies need a lot of CP for pregame strats to make some units/detachments viable (GSC, Orks come to mind), therefore you can't arbitrarily kill some armies just because you don't like current CP allocation

You got me. If there's a broken mechanic that some armies need in order to function, we can't change it. We certainly never could adjust balance after the fact, or maybe fix those armies that depend on the current brainless and alpha-strike-encouraging CP mechanic.

Remember when you could start with your entire army in DS, and GW never changed it because GSC needed it to function? Good times.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
If there was only a way to decrease lethality from an opponent getting a whole turn to kill everything, like if units kinda did movements in tandem with the other player as though the units were alternating. That would be far too complex though and GW has given no precedence with those kinds of rules.

Lord of the Rings?

Kill-Team?

Old-AI?

Think the sarcasm was kinda lost there so my apologies.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The biggest fundamental problem is scale. GW wants its whole universe to be playable and represented under the same ruleset, no matter how ludicrous. We get a game where ICBM's, bayonets, divisional or corps-level artillery, simple handguns, automatic rifles, and fusion powered energy cannons bigger than battle tanks are all portrayed in the same design space, often attempting to portray each individual gunshot or blade stroke or to differentiate between different blade types of close combat weapon. We have creatures like Grots (the size of household pets) being portrayed as individual distinct elements in the same battle space as tank companies and Titans, and have armies that may numbers as few as five models or as many as a couple hundred.

This i exactly why i use 8th ed with epic scale models using half ranges for weapons/movement to play 40K on a 4x6 table because you can actually do all of those things and not have a broken game that cannot decide if it wants to be a platoon level action or an full army wide action on a 6X4 table where your ridiculously close to your enemy in 28mm scale. i mean seriously, why would you have an artillery battery START the battle within assault range of an enemy force? thats something that always bugged me about IG. 240" range(20FT) for a basalisk on at most a 4X6 table. you drop that into epic scale with a 10 foot max range even using the full 4X8 tables we have at the FLGS it just barely makes the thing use its full range across the entire table while allowing for a defense in depth as the IG like to do.. where nothing short of deepstrike, infiltration or air power can get to them comparatively quickly.

The goal should be extending the life of games, and making the game more about the experience, not encouraging people to run better lists.

Also a reason why i prefer to play 30K or 5th edition with a few house rules (incorporating the better rules from editions 3-7) to make 5th even more enjoyable for both players. this allows for a more strategic play mechanic on the table VS magic deck building stratagem reliant gotcha lists(with faction iconic traits in-built and not tied to using strats). with a much more toned down volume of fire/re-rolls in the game. remember when the biggest named characters had at most 4 wounds? the biggest monsters had 6? non-super heavy vehicles had effectively a single wound, but could also take cumulative damage? and at most dreadnoughts had 3 base CC attacks with the introduction of ironclads?(a huge deal when they got released) assuming they didn't get an arm blown off before they got there.

The games tended to last longer and be decided on a razors edge making the random turn 6 or 7 have a serious effect on the game. nobody i play with ever likes a totally one sided match especially early in turn 1/2 because it is not fun for both players. defeating the point of actually PLAYING the game to begin with.

 aphyon wrote:

The games tended to last longer and be decided on a razors edge making the random turn 6 or 7 have a serious effect on the game. nobody i play with ever likes a totally one sided match especially early in turn 1/2 because it is not fun for both players. defeating the point of actually PLAYING the game to begin with.

This is true. For older editions (and now 30k) many games were decided in later turns. Sometimes just like you say on razors edge.

What about if you had a system where the player who had to go second got to select the deployment, and the side of the board they deployed on, and got to see their opponent's complete deployment before they laid a single unit down, to give them lots of LoS blocking and cover and to set ranges? And what about if, on top of that, we made it so that a big part of the scoring for the batle-turn happened at the end of their turn, so their ability to score points for holding more objectives for example, gave the second player an advantage?

How does that all sound?

 grouchoben wrote:
What about if you had a system where the player who had to go second got to select the deployment, and the side of the board they deployed on, and got to see their opponent's complete deployment before they laid a single unit down, to give them lots of LoS blocking and cover and to set ranges? And what about if, on top of that, we made it so that a big part of the scoring for the batle-turn happened at the end of their turn, so their ability to score points for holding more objectives for example, gave the second player an advantage?

How does that all sound?

It'd improve some issues, but overall it still would be more dependant on the actual terrain and terrain rules at play no.

Also it still doesn't solve the issues that some armies fold T2 at the latest

 grouchoben wrote:
What about if you had a system where the player who had to go second got to select the deployment, and the side of the board they deployed on, and got to see their opponent's complete deployment before they laid a single unit down, to give them lots of LoS blocking and cover and to set ranges? And what about if, on top of that, we made it so that a big part of the scoring for the batle-turn happened at the end of their turn, so their ability to score points for holding more objectives for example, gave the second player an advantage?

How does that all sound?

That helps but it doesn't solve the core problem of extreme lethality. I think the best solution I've seen suggested here (other than a complete rewrite to adjust the lethality from the ground-up) is more missions that don't have your entire army start on the board in exactly the configuration you want. The problem we have right now is that a player can build an army with al these layered buffs with re-rolls and bonuses to hit and wound and, due to a combination of weapon ranges, poor terrain rules and fixed deployment, know with certainty they'll be able to buff basically everything they want from turn 1. We need to change that. I fondly remember a couple of the scenarios from 8th edition WH but one in particular was excellent because it forced players to split up their armies and think on their feet much more than 40k des right now. There was a mission in CA a few years ago that almost did this (Recon, I think) by having some of your army start off the board, but it fumbled its attempt at making an interesting scenario by having units not on the battlefield for deployment come on from turn 1.

But, if lethality was removed, at least in its extrem form, then wouldn't games with 100-200 models turn in to gigantic mosh pits. Plus powerful center pices, would be practicaly unkillable for some armies.

Now this could of course be countered by playing less points, but first I doubt GW is going to make a game system that is balanced around playing fewer models, and second there is no way for people who already bought those 2000pts amries are going to be okey with it.

Karol wrote:
But, if lethality was removed, at least in its extrem form, then wouldn't games with 100-200 models turn in to gigantic mosh pits. Plus powerful center pices, would be practicaly unkillable for some armies.

Now this could of course be countered by playing less points, but first I doubt GW is going to make a game system that is balanced around playing fewer models, and second there is no way for people who already bought those 2000pts amries are going to be okey with it.

There are ways to handle those sort of armies without needing rules that allow people to literally kill every last one of them. Morale is a big factor that 40k currently basically ignores, for example. The main point though is that reducing lethality is something that would require a complete rewrite anyway. You don't just reduce BS and AP across the board, for example, but take a more nuanced approach.

I don't think that GW is either willing to write or able to use and balance such rules.

What would happen, I think, would be that either GW would suddenly create a unit or weapn that is evaporating whole armies and gets spamed in every possible slot. While at the same time other armies, would get getting supposed anti something units that hit like a wet noodle.

nuanced and GW also doesn't seem to go hand in hand. GW things that just because something is called the same it should cost the same. And even new players like know that a RG centurion starting right in someones face, shouldn't have the same cost as a 4" moving salamander centurion starting 24"+ away.

Just look at the IH fix, instead of fixing IH, GW decided to nerf the big rule, suddenly hiting armies like DA, who were not the problem, hard. And before that almost every big FAQ or errata had changes that were nerfing GK, just because they wanted to change something in other armies.

Simple and fewer rules, is probably a safer thing with GW.

I will say No.

Games can be over on turn 2, sure. Most of mine are decided by turn 4 or cemented by 5.

When equally skilled players engage, both with optimised lists, games are rarely secured early. You get stompings when people who perhaps haven't discussed what experience they are looking for prior to a game.

Why would anyone want to speak with people they play against in the first place? it either takes up time, so others take the table, and now you can wait an hour for it to be your time to play, or more if someone else reserved the table for different hour.

And durning game talking is just distracting from following the game. Plus it somehow assumes that the people playing against each other are on neutral enough terms to talk to each other in the first place. It doesn't cover the moments where you don't want to talk to people, or when people plain and simple dislike each other.

To play games with people I hate, League of Legends is better than warhammer.

@Karol We're talking about a few messages back and forth on the club facebook page the week before game night, not taking each other out for a romantic dinner

Karol wrote:
Why would anyone want to speak with people they play against in the first place? it either takes up time, so others take the table, and now you can wait an hour for it to be your time to play, or more if someone else reserved the table for different hour.

And durning game talking is just distracting from following the game. Plus it somehow assumes that the people playing against each other are on neutral enough terms to talk to each other in the first place. It doesn't cover the moments where you don't want to talk to people, or when people plain and simple dislike each other.

Are you not capable of just saying to someone on the club facebook page "Hey what sort of game you looking for, casual or comp?"

It takes literal seconds.

Karol wrote:
Why would anyone want to speak with people they play against in the first place? it either takes up time, so others take the table, and now you can wait an hour for it to be your time to play, or more if someone else reserved the table for different hour.

And durning game talking is just distracting from following the game. Plus it somehow assumes that the people playing against each other are on neutral enough terms to talk to each other in the first place. It doesn't cover the moments where you don't want to talk to people, or when people plain and simple dislike each other.

Why are you spending hobby time with people you actively dislike? Communication can happen before you even get to the store. The only reason I ever use Facebook is to sign up for X-Wing tournaments and arrange 40k games - it's not a difficult concept to pre-arrange stuff.

OTOH, I would say the very fact you need this level of pre-game discussion is not the sign of a well-designed game. None of the other games I play require anything like that. At most there might be an agreement on points level.

Slipspace wrote:

Why are you spending hobby time with people you actively dislike?

Why are you guys assuming Karol has negative feelings toward his opponents if he doesnt want to talk to them? Maybe he is just completely neutral towards them and mostly care about the game itself?

Playing against people you dislike mostly can happen during the tournament.

Glumy wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Why are you spending hobby time with people you actively dislike?

Why are you guys assuming Karol has negative feelings toward his opponents if he doesnt want to talk to them? Maybe he is just completely neutral towards them and mostly care about the game itself?

Playing against people you dislike mostly can happen during the tournament.

Because I've talked to Karol for more than 5 seconds? Karol allegedly plays warhammer in some kind of maximum security prison gang facility where if you don't walk into the warhammer store and punch the biggest guy there, you get dragged out back by toughs with imperium tattoos and beaten with chaos dreadnoughts in socks.

the_scotsman wrote:

Glumy wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Why are you spending hobby time with people you actively dislike?

Why are you guys assuming Karol has negative feelings toward his opponents if he doesnt want to talk to them? Maybe he is just completely neutral towards them and mostly care about the game itself?

Playing against people you dislike mostly can happen during the tournament.

Because I've talked to Karol for more than 5 seconds? Karol allegedly plays warhammer in some kind of maximum security prison gang facility where if you don't walk into the warhammer store and punch the biggest guy there, you get dragged out back by toughs with imperium tattoos and beaten with chaos dreadnoughts in socks.

The statement that his local FLGS is not F and the groupings around it are also rarely friendly aswell as hyper competitive with winning above all else in a hobby, would have sufficed, no need to bring in the chaos dread sock off doom.

Bosskelot wrote:

Karol wrote:
It doesn't cover the moments where you don't want to talk to people, or when people plain and simple dislike each other.

Why are you guys assuming Karol has negative feelings toward his opponents if he doesnt want to talk to them?

Because that's what he said. Also, I've read his other posts over the years.

well said, scotsman
Honestly, Karols Post once again shows a situation of his playgroup that makes me wonder why anyone would play the game there.
And to answer his question, 40K is a social interaction between two players. It doesn't work without talking imo, or at least it would be a terrible experience for me if it was just "okay, 2000 points Maelstrom, let's go" and then two hours of nothing but rolling dice.
A good 40K game means you spend 20 minutes prior to the game making up a background story why these two forces fight against each other and why they're composed the way they are. I understand that's not what you do in a tournament because of time restraints, but if it was possible to have a proper 40K game with Trash Talk about the fluff in a tournament I'd probably attend one....

I agree.

I feel a lot of people who have issues with the social aspect would be better suited to put their time in a video game. One with no communication between players, preferably.

Karol wrote:
But, if lethality was removed, at least in its extrem form, then wouldn't games with 100-200 models turn in to gigantic mosh pits. Plus powerful center pices, would be practicaly unkillable for some armies.

Now this could of course be countered by playing less points, but first I doubt GW is going to make a game system that is balanced around playing fewer models, and second there is no way for people who already bought those 2000pts amries are going to be okey with it.

No they already had that fixed in previous editions through LD checks, templates, hit&run USR, instant death, fixed movement for all unit types and the fact EVERYTHING had far fewer wounds. important people had 2, non monster big leaders had 3, anything more was special and rare. the points creep back from 3rd through 5th went 1,500, 1,750, 1,850 and finally 2,000 so GW could get you to buy all those shiny big models. but keep in mind the points didn't always get you the same amount of stuff you have in 8th. although there were alot more options in the codex that didn't rely on CP to allow their use, just points cost.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
well said, scotsman
Honestly, Karols Post once again shows a situation of his playgroup that makes me wonder why anyone would play the game there.
And to answer his question, 40K is a social interaction between two players. It doesn't work without talking imo, or at least it would be a terrible experience for me if it was just "okay, 2000 points Maelstrom, let's go" and then two hours of nothing but rolling dice.
A good 40K game means you spend 20 minutes prior to the game making up a background story why these two forces fight against each other and why they're composed the way they are. I understand that's not what you do in a tournament because of time restraints, but if it was possible to have a proper 40K game with Trash Talk about the fluff in a tournament I'd probably attend one....

Just staring, eyes locked, silently rolling dice for four hours, engaged with your opponent in a titanic, sweaty, let me just say DEEPLY sensual battle of mental wills with your foe. The contest pauses only to reapply oil and re-set miniatures for another game.

It can go for weeks. This is how TRUE men engage in the game, nay, the glory of war-hammer forty thousand.

Sounds like someone wants to play 7th edition? Lol

Go play it

 grouchoben wrote:
What about if you had a system where the player who had to go second got to select the deployment, and the side of the board they deployed on, and got to see their opponent's complete deployment before they laid a single unit down, to give them lots of LoS blocking and cover and to set ranges? And what about if, on top of that, we made it so that a big part of the scoring for the batle-turn happened at the end of their turn, so their ability to score points for holding more objectives for example, gave the second player an advantage?

How does that all sound?

All this does is shift the incentive to going second. Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO. LOS blocking terrain as a metric for balancing the game just stagnates the game play IMO. The end result of this is very little combat because who wants to peak their head around the corner and get blasted by a whole army when you can just hide and pick around the corners. I can see some people having fun in this way but it's not the way I enjoy playing. I want both armies to meet and wither each other to pieces and I think ultimately that is the kind of game GW wants too. The issue is - the lethality is way too high. When the game is played in this way the OP is correct. Your army can only stay on the feild for a max of 3 turns before it is entirely reduced. It should be closer to 6 turns before that happens.


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 Galas wrote:
To play games with people I hate, League of Legends is better than warhammer.

Yes. If I want true competitive game play and to get adrenaline truly pumping. LOL all day. The cool thing about 40k is it is supposed to be fun for both players. In LOL - the fun is in making the other players not have fun.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

LOS blocking terrain as a metric for balancing the game just stagnates the game play IMO. The end result of this is very little combat because who wants to peak their head around the corner and get blasted by a whole army when you can just hide and pick around the corners.

That's what objective scoring is for. Strong LoS terrain rules make the movement phase more important, and that phase is probably the most skill-testing part of the game. Otherwise the game devolves into rolling dice back and forth until somebody loses, and the only skill test is target selection, which is very straight forward.

 DarkHound wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

LOS blocking terrain as a metric for balancing the game just stagnates the game play IMO. The end result of this is very little combat because who wants to peak their head around the corner and get blasted by a whole army when you can just hide and pick around the corners.

That's what objective scoring is for. Strong LoS terrain rules make the movement phase more important, and that phase is probably the most skill-testing part of the game. Otherwise the game devolves into rolling dice back and forth until somebody loses, and the only skill test is target selection, which is very straight forward.

Not in an Attacker/Defender setting, that's why tournaments are considering removing it altogether

 DarkHound wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

While I like the idea of Seizing in concept, the problem with Seizing, to me at least, is that the considerations are minimal or nonexistent in many if not most cases, you either set up like you're going first or going second, the mechanics of the game and nature of terrain rules/commonly available terrain largely make anything else pointless or there's simply is no middle ground to attempt far too often. Thus, when you actually do get seized on, it's basically "welp, I'm boned". That's not to say there's *never* considerations to be made, but, at least in my own experience, they're not common enough to really be relevant to preserve that mechanic in 8E.

If the alpha strikeyness were toned down a couple levels, and the game was less attritionally oriented and had better terrain mechanics or had reactive abilities, I'd like the mechanic a whole lot more, but as is, it's usually just handing a win to the other player. The last time I seized on someone (an unfortunate Chaos player), I blew half their army off the table turn 1 and there really wasn't anything they could have done about it short of basically deploying to go second and left a bunch of stuff off the board, which they would have had they actually planned to go second, but otherwise there wasn't much they could have done differently at deployment, and if you're gonna deploy as if you're going second, you might as well actually just go second much of the time. And if there's predetermined roles, Seizing messes with that entire concept.

It's one of those mechanics that works very well in a larger meta-sense, but abysmally on a tactical, individual game level, kinda like armies with a 50% win rate where they either table opponents or get tabled where it looks balanced in the larger picture but any individual game is going to hugely swing-ey.

 Ishagu wrote:
I agree.

I feel a lot of people who have issues with the social aspect would be better suited to put their time in a video game. One with no communication between players, preferably.

You miss the point of what social interaction is. Social interaction isn't something that should be a core of a game. It should come naturally from it, NOT in spite of the game itself.

I'm going to push this idea again as it seems people may have skipped past it:

Hunkered Down:

Any model or unit which hasn't moved, activated a psychic power, shot, advanced, charged, or fought in the assault phase of the previous turn has -1 to hit and +1 to their armor save as if they are in cover. These bonus stack with other abilities or rules that grant them.

-----

The wording could use another pass, but the idea is to allow any unit that hasn't taken an action in the last turn to hunker down and become more survivable. This would provide a defensive buff to the player moving second, but the player moving first could choose not to activate a unit if they desired to do so.

This would also come into play later in a game where an objective holding unit may be better off not taking a shot because having that extra layer of defense and staying on the objective is a more favorable option.

This rule slightly favors player 2, but allows both players options.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I'm going to push this idea again as it seems people may have skipped past it:

Hunkered Down:

Any model or unit which hasn't moved, activated a psychic power, shot, advanced, charged, or fought in the assault phase of the previous turn has -1 to hit and +1 to their armor save as if they are in cover. These bonus stack with other abilities or rules that grant them.

-----

The wording could use another pass, but the idea is to allow any unit that hasn't taken an action in the last turn to hunker down and become more survivable. This would provide a defensive buff to the player moving second, but the player moving first could choose not to activate a unit if they desired to do so.

This would also come into play later in a game where an objective holding unit may be better off not taking a shot because having that extra layer of defense and staying on the objective is a more favorable option.

This rule slightly favors player 2, but allows both players options.

Wouldn’t this lead to more static games where movement is less important?

I’m previous edition rapid fire required a unit to remain stationary in order to fire twice and this often lead to models not moving at all and the game turning into static gun lines in my experience. the 2nd ed overwatch mechanic had a similar effect.

 DarkHound wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

If your goal is a game decided by skill and tactics, there can hardly be a worst way to determine who goes first than Seize The Initiative. The player who wins the roll to go first either setup to take advantage of his initiative or he set up to mitigate the possibility of a 1 in 6 chance of getting seized on. Either way, he is forced into making a bad choice. He has a 1 in 6 chance of being screwed by the die, or a 5 in 6 chance of having let a good opportunity to be in a better position in the game go away. That's not skill at work, that's luck.

It would be more skill based if Player A set up, Player B setup, and then Player a rolled a die 1-3 he goes for and 4-6 Player B goes first. At least then both players have to deploy not knowing if they will go first.

I really actually liked the way the game handled deployment pre-5E. Players would take turns deploying individual units and then roll *after* to see who went first. That worked a lot better in such respects, and made for much more interesting and tactical deployment. Deploying everything at once and then getting the rug pulled out from under you...doesn't feel quite as fun

 alextroy wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

If your goal is a game decided by skill and tactics, there can hardly be a worst way to determine who goes first than Seize The Initiative. The player who wins the roll to go first either setup to take advantage of his initiative or he set up to mitigate the possibility of a 1 in 6 chance of getting seized on. Either way, he is forced into making a bad choice. He has a 1 in 6 chance of being screwed by the die, or a 5 in 6 chance of having let a good opportunity to be in a better position in the game go away. That's not skill at work, that's luck.

It would be more skill based if Player A set up, Player B setup, and then Player a rolled a die 1-3 he goes for and 4-6 Player B goes first. At least then both players have to deploy not knowing if they will go first.

Last year i took my Pure quins to an ITC tournament, 2 wins good scores with quins, playing on top table for (depending on score, 1st through 4th). last game it was a TERRIBLE mission (bonus), terrain setup and deployment, it was literally everything perfect for him. But i knew i was going first and i had to set up to go first for a chance to win, or i had to set up to go second and have a large uphill battle (moreso than normal for quins). He ing seized on me. I played out turn 1 then just to him he gets max points and stopped. So stupid b.c i had a chance if he didn't seize, otherwise i had almost 0.

I hate seize so much.

Aash wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I'm going to push this idea again as it seems people may have skipped past it:

Hunkered Down:

Any model or unit which hasn't moved, activated a psychic power, shot, advanced, charged, or fought in the assault phase of the previous turn has -1 to hit and +1 to their armor save as if they are in cover. These bonus stack with other abilities or rules that grant them.

-----

The wording could use another pass, but the idea is to allow any unit that hasn't taken an action in the last turn to hunker down and become more survivable. This would provide a defensive buff to the player moving second, but the player moving first could choose not to activate a unit if they desired to do so.

This would also come into play later in a game where an objective holding unit may be better off not taking a shot because having that extra layer of defense and staying on the objective is a more favorable option.

This rule slightly favors player 2, but allows both players options.

Wouldn’t this lead to more static games where movement is less important?

I’m previous edition rapid fire required a unit to remain stationary in order to fire twice and this often lead to models not moving at all and the game turning into static gun lines in my experience. the 2nd ed overwatch mechanic had a similar effect.

It's actually worse as you now have alitoc rangers on objectives that are -3 to hit with a +3 5+ Sv.

Ravenguard scouts at -2 to hit and +2, 4+ Sv

Good luck chewing through 2+ armour with-2/-3 to hit without the reroll anything benifit only given to some lists, charge them you say oh wait the rule didn't state a range limit.

Ice_can wrote:
It's actually worse as you now have alitoc rangers on objectives that are -3 to hit with a +3 5+ Sv.

Ravenguard scouts at -2 to hit and +2, 4+ Sv

Good luck chewing through 2+ armour with-2/-3 to hit without the reroll anything benifit only given to some lists, charge them you say oh wait the rule didn't state a range limit.

So the enemy gets a really tough objective-camper that literally cannot move, shoot, assault, or do anything except sit on the objective without compromising its durability. Big deal. Hit it with flamers, charge it, get a bigger unit of Troops in to take the objective anyways, or ignore it and kill the rest of their army.

I'd say this is only a problem if you expect static long-ranged firepower to be able to deal with any threat. Having a few more things that static gunlines can't deal with sounds good to me.

So, as a counterpoint to this problem. What's the tankiest list you can possibly build? Spam ork grots with a fearless aura and FNP? Maybe an invul to add extra protection? Perhaps something from deathguard or would it be the kitted out death watch units with all their nonsense?

cody.d. wrote:
So, as a counterpoint to this problem. What's the tankiest list you can possibly build? Spam ork grots with a fearless aura and FNP? Maybe an invul to add extra protection? Perhaps something from deathguard or would it be the kitted out death watch units with all their nonsense?

2 Bats, 1 Patrol

2 Malanthropes
3 Neurothropes
372 Termagants

Traits 6++ and 4+++ when being hurt via overwatch. Rush up and charge everything.
Malanthropes makes you -1 to be hit, a Neurothrope can give out a 5+++

PS, this is a joke fyi lol

cody.d. wrote:
So, as a counterpoint to this problem. What's the tankiest list you can possibly build? Spam ork grots with a fearless aura and FNP? Maybe an invul to add extra protection? Perhaps something from deathguard or would it be the kitted out death watch units with all their nonsense?

If you can get -2 to hit on a large portion of your army most gunlines will have a really hard time with it. Mechanized Eldar with Alaitoc/Star Engines, for instance.

alextroy wrote:If your goal is a game decided by skill and tactics, there can hardly be a worst way to determine who goes first than Seize The Initiative. The player who wins the roll to go first either setup to take advantage of his initiative or he set up to mitigate the possibility of a 1 in 6 chance of getting seized on. Either way, he is forced into making a bad choice. He has a 1 in 6 chance of being screwed by the die, or a 5 in 6 chance of having let a good opportunity to be in a better position in the game go away. That's not skill at work, that's luck.

It would be more skill based if Player A set up, Player B setup, and then Player a rolled a die 1-3 he goes for and 4-6 Player B goes first. At least then both players have to deploy not knowing if they will go first.

It's not an all-or-nothing affair, and that risk management is a skill testing element. For example, the first player can deploy his forward units in cover rather than at the deployment edge. The player elects to give up a few inches of movement in exchange for mitigating the risk of getting seized. For contrast, if they were going second, they'd deploy further behind LoS blocking terrain and lose more movement in order to be less vulnerable. Both players are working from an expectation of what's going to happen and can form a coherent battle plan which manages their risk.

I don't think rolling off after deployment is wrong or worse, but it opens up a whole other host of problems and still does not solve the alpha-strike issue. You end up in a weird prisoner's dilemma. If we assume two options (deploying aggressively: max offense/min defense; or conservatively, min offense/max defense) then it breaks down like this.

If both are conservative, the second player has an advantage as the first leaves cover to move to objectives.
If only the first player is conservative, then the second player is at an even bigger advantage.
If only the first player is aggressive, then the advantage is nullified.
If both players are aggressive, the first player has an advantage.

So deploying aggressive gets you an advantage or ties in 3 of the 4 states. Being conservative gets you an advantage in one outcome, ties in one, and loses 2. So as a general principle, you should deploy aggressively and bank on either going first or scaring your opponent into deploying conservatively. Obviously there's a lot more nuance and consideration on the tabletop, but my point is you still need some mechanic like Seize the Initiative to break up the dilemma.

Vaktathi wrote:While I like the idea of Seizing in concept, the problem with Seizing, to me at least, is that the considerations are minimal or nonexistent in many if not most cases, you either set up like you're going first or going second, the mechanics of the game and nature of terrain rules/commonly available terrain largely make anything else pointless or there's simply is no middle ground to attempt far too often. Thus, when you actually do get seized on, it's basically "welp, I'm boned". That's not to say there's *never* considerations to be made, but, at least in my own experience, they're not common enough to really be relevant to preserve that mechanic in 8E.

The conundrum here is what you mean by "you always deploy to go first". If "deploy to go first" includes considerations like putting units in cover just in case you get seized, then it's a tautology. Otherwise I just disagree with your assessment that there's no middle ground in deployment.

That being said, I agree that Seize as an all-or-nothing function feels pretty bad in an individual game. To mitigate this, you could reduce Seize to activating half your units, for example. Obviously you can game the mechanic to leverage more than half your army's worth of points, but there's still a trade-off. The cheap units you ignore are often the objective holding infantry or other support who lose a turn of movement.

Amishprn86 wrote:Last year i took my Pure quins to an ITC tournament, 2 wins good scores with quins, playing on top table for (depending on score, 1st through 4th). last game it was a TERRIBLE mission (bonus), terrain setup and deployment, it was literally everything perfect for him. He ing seized on me.

That's rough man, but hey, at least according to the ITC 2020 rules you're allowed to adjust and define the terrain before the match start. It seems that if the terrain was that skewed, it was the tournament org's fault.

 catbarf wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
It's actually worse as you now have alitoc rangers on objectives that are -3 to hit with a +3 5+ Sv.

Ravenguard scouts at -2 to hit and +2, 4+ Sv

Good luck chewing through 2+ armour with-2/-3 to hit without the reroll anything benifit only given to some lists, charge them you say oh wait the rule didn't state a range limit.

So the enemy gets a really tough objective-camper that literally cannot move, shoot, assault, or do anything except sit on the objective without compromising its durability. Big deal. Hit it with flamers, charge it, get a bigger unit of Troops in to take the objective anyways, or ignore it and kill the rest of their army.

I'd say this is only a problem if you expect static long-ranged firepower to be able to deal with any threat. Having a few more things that static gunlines can't deal with sounds good to me.

Except the way you wrote the rule it applies even in the assualt phase, so it's not a counter to anything it's countrr everything.

Additionally when you can make units unchargeable through model placement allowing armies to create units that are immune to anything but psychic powers rather breaks all the armies without psychers.

Additionally marines won't care as they can reroll everything anyway, armies without rerolls by the truckload get screwed even harder.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I really actually liked the way the game handled deployment pre-5E. Players would take turns deploying individual units and then roll *after* to see who went first. That worked a lot better in such respects, and made for much more interesting and tactical deployment. Deploying everything at once and then getting the rug pulled out from under you...doesn't feel quite as fun

Yes this-i still prefer a separate roll for set-up and one for first turn. that way when set-up is done neither player knows who is going first. it removes the need for a seize roll. it also totally changes the way players approach deployment

Many games do this- battletech, DUST etc... although they also roll initiative every turn to add an additional element.


I think GW threw away many good mechanics in various edition changes that made the game far better than it is now for the sake of "something new/different" 8th is so far removed from 3rd-7th (where they were back compatible) that is effectively a completely different game.

I think full deploy, full counterdeploy, first player to deploy plays first is probably optimal for games.

The alternative deployment really empowered the first turn player a lot, but it was interesting when having fewer drops guaranteed a first turn, since it meant that you also had to think about how many drops you would have.

It would have been interesting, if all armies were build around having the same number of units.

When people start bringing tansports just to reduce their number of drops while other units/armies became unplayable because they had too many drops, you know the system is borked.

IMO the system in the current eternal war missions is as close to perfect as it gets.

Attacker deploys first, defender second. After having the whole picture, the attacker then gets to decide whether he has first turn, and if he does, the defender can seize.
Going first still has the huge advantage of being able to take out your opponent's the most dangerous unit(s) while getting guaranteed use out of your glass cannons.

You can always deploy under the assumption that your opponent might seize the initiative, it's not a gamble unless you make it one.

It will be interesting to see how ITC develops without seize.

My suspicion is that it will generally be popular. Good players will continue to build lists that "work" as either the attacker, or defender. While bad players will just hope they are the attacker, deploy as far forward as possible, and be spared the "I can't believe my opponent seized, that's a stupid rule", as if there is nothing they could do about it. (I know certain weaker factions really need to go first to have a chance - but playing a weaker faction is, to a degree, your choice.)

Be interesting to see how it warps list building though. It will likely boost armies that can comfortably backline to deny the attacker a meaningful first turn - but also have the speed/range to get in and contest the centre. Although arguably ITC already favoured such lists.

Which just carries on the trend. ITC is more precise than regular 40k. The skill involved in decision making is therefore more obvious to an observer. But this will also increase the issue that some lists are good, and some are bad, because of these rules.

I think the point about how IG suffer disproportionately due to ITC rules is a good one. I agree they suffer from giving up kill more and kill objectives really easily. This isn't usually a feature in CA19 missions - so I'd be sceptical whether guard should be "buffed" as a result of this weakness. Which creates a certain dissonance to the game.

Over by turn 2 - 3 and still takes as long if not longer to play than a full 6 turn game of yesteryear

So weird that zero of the people who responded to my 'suggestion' post on how to rebalance first turn recognised the rules I suggested as just being the current rules for ITC, the tournament model that most 40k competitive games are played with.

In ITC it's generally slightly preferable to go second. So what I'm saying is, if you don't like turn one being too powerful, try playing some ITC Warhammer 40k ...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here it is again btw: "What about if you had a system where the player who had to go second got to select the deployment, and the side of the board they deployed on, and got to see their opponent's complete deployment before they laid a single unit down, to give them lots of LoS blocking and cover and to set ranges? And what about if, on top of that, we made it so that a big part of the scoring for the batle-turn happened at the end of their turn, so their ability to score points for holding more objectives for example, gave the second player an advantage?

How does that all sound?"

It will be interesting to see how ITC develops without seize.

My money is on "different but the same".

As for the question in the OP -

Most of our local games are pretty much over by the end of turn 2. There's almost always still a chance for the "losing" player to pull off a miracle in turn 3, but that almost always involves them needing to perform a series of highly unlikely events, so generally, yeah, basically over turn 2, literally over turn 3 more often than not.

EDIT: I should add for the sake of context that my meta is what most here would classify as "semi-competitive".

I mean, outside of tournaments with super-optimized alpha-strike lists, no. But most people are going to talk about tournament play when they think of turn-one or turn-two victories.

 alextroy wrote:
If your goal is a game decided by skill and tactics...

...why play Warhammer 40k?

At the top level when both players play good factions and have good build armies, and a skew match up doesn't happen, w40k seems to be skill and tactics based. with a non small dose of random.

The problem is, how often , when two people play, their armies are on the same level. And I feel, because I have absolutly no data on this, that it maybe the case, that such situations are as common outside of top tables of tournaments.

everyone has horror stories to tell, or heard one. But lets face it sometimes your friend starts an IH army based around intercessors, it is bad for 2 years, and then one day it suddenly becomes the spine breaker of w40k and your friend turns in to an evil WAAC player. It is hard to expect that you suddenly going to step up and buy enough new stuff to have fair games against him, and it really unfair to expect that someone who had a not so good time for 2 years, is now suppose to gimp his army list, because it suddenly became good. Or worse make him buy bad stuff, so you have a chance to play.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I really actually liked the way the game handled deployment pre-5E. Players would take turns deploying individual units and then roll *after* to see who went first. That worked a lot better in such respects, and made for much more interesting and tactical deployment. Deploying everything at once and then getting the rug pulled out from under you...doesn't feel quite as fun

This is almost what AOS is - except the person who finishes first gets to choose. With the caveat that there are battalions (which cost points and have restrictions) which can reduce your drop count, meaning deployment can be part of your strategy. It is greatly preferable to 40ks approach.

Karol wrote:
At the top level when both players play good factions and have good build armies, and a skew match up doesn't happen, w40k seems to be skill and tactics based. with a non small dose of random.

The problem is, how often , when two people play, their armies are on the same level. And I feel, because I have absolutly no data on this, that it maybe the case, that such situations are as common outside of top tables of tournaments.

everyone has horror stories to tell, or heard one. But lets face it sometimes your friend starts an IH army based around intercessors, it is bad for 2 years, and then one day it suddenly becomes the spine breaker of w40k and your friend turns in to an evil WAAC player. It is hard to expect that you suddenly going to step up and buy enough new stuff to have fair games against him, and it really unfair to expect that someone who had a not so good time for 2 years, is now suppose to gimp his army list, because it suddenly became good. Or worse make him buy bad stuff, so you have a chance to play.

My feeling is the opposite. In general, at top tier play you get far more one-sided games due to the exponential increase in damage in the most optimised lists. At less competitive levels the reliability of armies is generally lowered giving space for reactive and adaptive play.

Karol wrote:
At the top level when both players play good factions and have good build armies, and a skew match up doesn't happen, w40k seems to be skill and tactics based. with a non small dose of random.

The problem is, how often , when two people play, their armies are on the same level. And I feel, because I have absolutly no data on this, that it maybe the case, that such situations are as common outside of top tables of tournaments.

everyone has horror stories to tell, or heard one. But lets face it sometimes your friend starts an IH army based around intercessors, it is bad for 2 years, and then one day it suddenly becomes the spine breaker of w40k and your friend turns in to an evil WAAC player. It is hard to expect that you suddenly going to step up and buy enough new stuff to have fair games against him, and it really unfair to expect that someone who had a not so good time for 2 years, is now suppose to gimp his army list, because it suddenly became good. Or worse make him buy bad stuff, so you have a chance to play.

Actually on that last bit. there are people in our group that are perfectly able to break anything GW puts out and we do play it from time to time understanding it is a one off proxy list to see how bad/broken it is. rather it be the 7th ed jakero/deathcult assassin list , an all bike custodus list in 8th or a harlequin flying circus in 8th. then we stop playing those lists because they are dumb and not fun gameplay for the group. Now when people play the game seriously and do this kind of thing without warning they quickly find they have no people to play with at our FLGS.

Having played since 3rd in this format i can tell you it isn't the players. i had some regular opponents who were very skilled players with powerful lists, it still wasn't as one sided "alpha strike you off the table" by turn 2. it is the game mechanics, or should i say poor design of the mechanics.joining army specific lore to command points and stratagem bloat. it is a repeat of the problem with 7th and formations. If you are super focused on just the competition side then you probably want to do the super alpha strike that 8th has become. however if you want a good game with epic fights and victory being elusive until the end of the game you are probably looking more at previous editions or 30K ..

Oh I don't claim that games on top tables can't end as brutal tabling turn 2-3. Specialy if both armies are build for alfa strike. What I mean by more balance in top tier tournaments and players with good armies, is stuff like player X started his alfa strike went off. he won. But if his opponent went first, the reverse would happen. Now to some this maybe not be fun. But it sure beats out, two players and one knowing that they are not going to win against their opponent no matter if they go first or second . I still remember a game from a year ago, when my opponent almost tabled me turn 3, I quit on my third turn. Only for both of us to suddenly notice that he forgot to deploy 400pts of reserve, and me suddenly going from 23:0 to 19:5. Which back then was my highest win in a game of w40k.

When I think of unbalance I think about something like that. One dude gets to play pre nerf IH, he bought 2 years prior, and his opponent is playing IG, he also bought two years prior. And I think we agree that for the IG player, there wasn't much in sense of a game to play.

I am not a high end tournament player, I am not even a bad tournament player. But the differences between armies and list power in the middle and at the bottom of the w40k armies are huge. I always had a good chuckle about eldar players losing their minds over IH having a 6 % or 7%, better win ratio then the best eldar this edition. where at the same time there are armies that don't have a 50% win ratio in w40k, and we can't assume that those armies were all piloted by bad players, playing bad list on purpose.

now what ever w40k should have certain mechanics or not, I don't really have a strong point of view. Maybe some armies should be alfa strike. Should everything be super killy and alfa strike centered? probably not, but I am neither a game designer, nor is my expiriance in depth enough to judge that. I can say what I don't like about my army, or the armies I play against, and the xp of people playing those armies. And that is more or less it.

Aash wrote:
Wouldn’t this lead to more static games where movement is less important?

I doubt it because to gain the benefit you have to forfeit any other action that unit may have taken for that defense buff. A unit that is covered by this rule has to already be in position and can't deliver any offense.

I’m previous edition rapid fire required a unit to remain stationary in order to fire twice and this often lead to models not moving at all and the game turning into static gun lines in my experience. the 2nd ed overwatch mechanic had a similar effect.

I think there is a difference between staying still to shoot and staying still to get a defensive buff. Your offensive units must move or you can't kill anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:
Except the way you wrote the rule it applies even in the assualt phase, so it's not a counter to anything it's countrr everything.

Additionally when you can make units unchargeable through model placement allowing armies to create units that are immune to anything but psychic powers rather breaks all the armies without psychers.

Additionally marines won't care as they can reroll everything anyway, armies without rerolls by the truckload get screwed even harder.

He didn't write the rule, I did. Try to at least get the basics right before going off on a rant.

As for the rest, if your unit is getting this buff it literally isn't doing anything else. It is literally an objective holding blob that may as well only have toughness, wounds, and a save on its profile. If you can't overpower something that can, at best, fire overwatch in response to being charged, you probably deserve to lose.

Plus, the buff only applies to the first round of assault as your units once engaged must fight. So you may need to send in a unit to flush out a hunkered unit but this again serves to create a more dynamic game.

Every time I see these discussions pop up... I get the feeling that most o the respondents don’t understand the term “casual” beyond it’s opposition to “tournament”.

Most of my games in 8th have been determined by turn 4. The only exceptions to this were my decimation by Harlies (wherein I had never played against them and was woefully underprepared) and when I was told I would be playing Blood Angels, only to play a Primaris army with cherry picked Blood Angels face stompers.

Yes, my view of the game is diametrically opposed to the majority of posters I see on these boards.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Pff - on top of all of this you can even seize the initiative which should ultimately be removed from the game at this point IMO.

The existence of seizing the initiative is extremely important for the game. It forces the player going first to consider giving up an optimal first turn due to the risk of being blown out. For a single game, it can make sense to accept the possibility and maximize turn 1, and a poor player will accidentally do this. However, in a tournament or series, it's very likely the initiative will get seized at some point, so you always have to prepare for it.

If your goal is a game decided by skill and tactics, there can hardly be a worst way to determine who goes first than Seize The Initiative. The player who wins the roll to go first either setup to take advantage of his initiative or he set up to mitigate the possibility of a 1 in 6 chance of getting seized on. Either way, he is forced into making a bad choice. He has a 1 in 6 chance of being screwed by the die, or a 5 in 6 chance of having let a good opportunity to be in a better position in the game go away. That's not skill at work, that's luck.

It would be more skill based if Player A set up, Player B setup, and then Player a rolled a die 1-3 he goes for and 4-6 Player B goes first. At least then both players have to deploy not knowing if they will go first.

Last year i took my Pure quins to an ITC tournament, 2 wins good scores with quins, playing on top table for (depending on score, 1st through 4th). last game it was a TERRIBLE mission (bonus), terrain setup and deployment, it was literally everything perfect for him. But i knew i was going first and i had to set up to go first for a chance to win, or i had to set up to go second and have a large uphill battle (moreso than normal for quins). He ing seized on me. I played out turn 1 then just to him he gets max points and stopped. So stupid b.c i had a chance if he didn't seize, otherwise i had almost 0.

I hate seize so much.

Yes following the discussion on STI. It seems that most people don't like it. The point is - you are forced to take advantage of a 5/6 chance because your opponent got to counter deploy you. You are conceding defeat or looking for a long slong at best if you don't deploy to take advantage.

Obviously going first or second need certain considerations to be made for balance BUT STI is just stupid. I would much prefer the player that goes second gets to counter deploy AND choose (not randomly determine) the deployment type AND zone + remove STI. In an ITC mission where that is all predetermined I don't know how they could handle it. Though going second in an ITC setting with tons of terrain and mission scoring is actually a huge advantage already.

Isn't that how it works in the CA2019 missions?

The "Defender" (chosen by the person who won the roll off) gets to pick what deployment zone type is used, what deployment zone they want, and deploys second.

I read it too like that the first time.

Unfortunately it is written quite badly and what it really means is that you counterdeploy and choose your zone, but can't decide the deployment type.

Still quite a massive advantage which offen offsets going second.

Spoletta wrote:
I read it too like that the first time.

Unfortunately it is written quite badly and what it really means is that you counterdeploy and choose your zone, but can't decide the deployment type.

Still quite a massive advantage which offen offsets going second.

Can't you? I remember in CA2018 you had to roll randomly because that's what the rulebook says, but in CA2019 I thought they fixed that. I guess it's still random. I don't have CA on hand to check.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
I read it too like that the first time.

Unfortunately it is written quite badly and what it really means is that you counterdeploy and choose your zone, but can't decide the deployment type.

Still quite a massive advantage which offen offsets going second.

Can't you? I remember in CA2018 you had to roll randomly because that's what the rulebook says, but in CA2019 I thought they fixed that. I guess it's still random. I don't have CA on hand to check.

Even in CA19, the deployment zone is still random. The defender "determines" it, but it's still random.

BRB Page 216 wrote:These six standard deployment maps are referenced in the matched play missions in this section. When playing matched play missions, you must randomly select one of these deployment maps. To do so, one of the players simply rolls a D6 – you then use the deployment map that corresponds to the result. The mission will typically say which player makes this roll – if not, it is made by the youngest player.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
I read it too like that the first time.

Unfortunately it is written quite badly and what it really means is that you counterdeploy and choose your zone, but can't decide the deployment type.

Still quite a massive advantage which offen offsets going second.

Can't you? I remember in CA2018 you had to roll randomly because that's what the rulebook says, but in CA2019 I thought they fixed that. I guess it's still random. I don't have CA on hand to check.

The wording's a bit stupid and definitely not the clearest, but deployment zones have always been randomly determined in these missions. It was a pretty common mistake lots of people made when that Chapter Approved came out though.

Slipspace wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
I read it too like that the first time.

Unfortunately it is written quite badly and what it really means is that you counterdeploy and choose your zone, but can't decide the deployment type.

Still quite a massive advantage which offen offsets going second.

Can't you? I remember in CA2018 you had to roll randomly because that's what the rulebook says, but in CA2019 I thought they fixed that. I guess it's still random. I don't have CA on hand to check.

The wording's a bit stupid and definitely not the clearest, but deployment zones have always been randomly determined in these missions. It was a pretty common mistake lots of people made when that Chapter Approved came out though.

Exactly. I feel like the misunderstanding would actually be a big improvement along with removing STI.

This would give both player automatic benefits - and the befits are roughly even.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
In my experience, yes. It's rare to see a game go to turn 3 in any meaningful state (i.e. the game is decided turn 2 if not before that).

The simple fact is that GW cranked the killyness of everything to a ludicrous degree. Hurricane Bolters and Twin Assault Cannons are the best example.

Hurricane Bolters, when first introduced in 4th edition, "consists of three twin-linked bolters". This meant they could either fire 6 shots at 12", or 3 shots at 24" if they did not move, re-rolling failed hits. Now they fire 12 Shots at 12" or 6 shots at 24" with Centuions being able to fire 12 shots at 24" regardless of if they moved or not.

Twin(-Linked) Assault Cannons went from 3 Shots re-rolling misses in 3rd edition and could jam to TWELVE SHOTS EACH.

In 3rd edition, Rapid Fire weapons allowed 1 shot at 12" if you moved; or 2 shots at 12" or 1 shot at 24" if you remained stationary, and you couldn't charge if you fired them.

Rapid Fire weapons in general have steadily become more and more lethal, starting with the range increase from the standard 24" to 30" when T'au were introduced, to making the double fire happen at half range instead of 12", to allowing two shots at 12" instead of 1 on the move, to allowing Rapid Fire weapons to fire at maximum range regardless of whether you moved. The move to save modifiers instead of the flat cover system, combined with a D6 system that basically crushes the usable dice results and has a MASSIVE impact between AP0 and AP-1, the game is simply more lethal. Grunts die quicker, which means you need to spam more grunts to survive even a single turn of shooting, which in turn makes elite models worthless to take because things such as Plasma make multi-wound models a detriment, not a benefit.

This.

It just adds more weight to 3rd edition (while not perfect), was the best edition that 40k has ever had. Each edition that has come afterwards has deviated further away from the elegance of 3rd edition. The end result is the bloated mess we have today, I've given up on 40k... but a return to a system that is similar to 3rd edition would probably get me back in, sadly I think there is little appetite for putting the genie back in the bottle, bloat seems (for some unbeknown reason) to be very popular with modern 40k players.

i am happy when my R&H army makes it to turn 2 in some capacity nowadays when i am not Blobbing.

For my CSM i regularly go to t3-4 as the more decisive ones but overall it depends vastly on the armies in play.

F.e. 2 nu marines list playing the ranged game, i have wittnessed turns basically into a all out slauggtherfest with the player that goes first generally having an advantage.

 stonehorse wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
In my experience, yes. It's rare to see a game go to turn 3 in any meaningful state (i.e. the game is decided turn 2 if not before that).

The simple fact is that GW cranked the killyness of everything to a ludicrous degree. Hurricane Bolters and Twin Assault Cannons are the best example.

Hurricane Bolters, when first introduced in 4th edition, "consists of three twin-linked bolters". This meant they could either fire 6 shots at 12", or 3 shots at 24" if they did not move, re-rolling failed hits. Now they fire 12 Shots at 12" or 6 shots at 24" with Centuions being able to fire 12 shots at 24" regardless of if they moved or not.

Twin(-Linked) Assault Cannons went from 3 Shots re-rolling misses in 3rd edition and could jam to TWELVE SHOTS EACH.

In 3rd edition, Rapid Fire weapons allowed 1 shot at 12" if you moved; or 2 shots at 12" or 1 shot at 24" if you remained stationary, and you couldn't charge if you fired them.

Rapid Fire weapons in general have steadily become more and more lethal, starting with the range increase from the standard 24" to 30" when T'au were introduced, to making the double fire happen at half range instead of 12", to allowing two shots at 12" instead of 1 on the move, to allowing Rapid Fire weapons to fire at maximum range regardless of whether you moved. The move to save modifiers instead of the flat cover system, combined with a D6 system that basically crushes the usable dice results and has a MASSIVE impact between AP0 and AP-1, the game is simply more lethal. Grunts die quicker, which means you need to spam more grunts to survive even a single turn of shooting, which in turn makes elite models worthless to take because things such as Plasma make multi-wound models a detriment, not a benefit.

This.

It just adds more weight to 3rd edition (while not perfect), was the best edition that 40k has ever had. Each edition that has come afterwards has deviated further away from the elegance of 3rd edition. The end result is the bloated mess we have today, I've given up on 40k... but a return to a system that is similar to 3rd edition would probably get me back in, sadly I think there is little appetite for putting the genie back in the bottle, bloat seems (for some unbeknown reason) to be very popular with modern 40k players.

You're literally the only person I've ever seen that has wanted to go back to 3rd. The closest outside of you are chaos players who want the 3.5 codex in 5th ed rules.

Also, I love the 'multi wound models are worthless' argument because it is almost always followed up by 'Primaris are op tho!!!'.

If your games are ending on turn two it's because of a couple of reasons. One is that one or the other list is purposely designed to frontload it's output at the expense of longevity. Plenty of lists, especially at the tournament level are designed this way and games with or against them end turn two because it either crippled its oppositions ability to counter attack and won, or failed and died.

Another reason is simple unfavorable matchups. If you bring Eldar Flyers+Nightspinners against Valourous Heart SoB+anything with decent damage out of deepstrike, the game is likely not going to be super fun for ou.

The reason most people see their games ending on turn two is because their opponent is just better than they are, whether in player skill or list preparation. Sorry your Salamanders assault marine/stalker/servitor list didn't pan out but that's not entirely the game's fault.

 stonehorse wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
In my experience, yes. It's rare to see a game go to turn 3 in any meaningful state (i.e. the game is decided turn 2 if not before that).

The simple fact is that GW cranked the killyness of everything to a ludicrous degree. Hurricane Bolters and Twin Assault Cannons are the best example.

Hurricane Bolters, when first introduced in 4th edition, "consists of three twin-linked bolters". This meant they could either fire 6 shots at 12", or 3 shots at 24" if they did not move, re-rolling failed hits. Now they fire 12 Shots at 12" or 6 shots at 24" with Centuions being able to fire 12 shots at 24" regardless of if they moved or not.

Twin(-Linked) Assault Cannons went from 3 Shots re-rolling misses in 3rd edition and could jam to TWELVE SHOTS EACH.

In 3rd edition, Rapid Fire weapons allowed 1 shot at 12" if you moved; or 2 shots at 12" or 1 shot at 24" if you remained stationary, and you couldn't charge if you fired them.

Rapid Fire weapons in general have steadily become more and more lethal, starting with the range increase from the standard 24" to 30" when T'au were introduced, to making the double fire happen at half range instead of 12", to allowing two shots at 12" instead of 1 on the move, to allowing Rapid Fire weapons to fire at maximum range regardless of whether you moved. The move to save modifiers instead of the flat cover system, combined with a D6 system that basically crushes the usable dice results and has a MASSIVE impact between AP0 and AP-1, the game is simply more lethal. Grunts die quicker, which means you need to spam more grunts to survive even a single turn of shooting, which in turn makes elite models worthless to take because things such as Plasma make multi-wound models a detriment, not a benefit.

This.

It just adds more weight to 3rd edition (while not perfect), was the best edition that 40k has ever had. Each edition that has come afterwards has deviated further away from the elegance of 3rd edition. The end result is the bloated mess we have today, I've given up on 40k... but a return to a system that is similar to 3rd edition would probably get me back in, sadly I think there is little appetite for putting the genie back in the bottle, bloat seems (for some unbeknown reason) to be very popular with modern 40k players.

For game play as i progressed through from 3rd through 5th i actually find 5th a better version of the game. there were some better and some worse rules in 4th and 3rd (the bad things like crystal targeting matrix, size catagories for terrain, the good like LOS from the weapon mount/range from the hull for measurments on vehicles. and difficulties hitting them in CC based on the vehicles movement). if you take them all and put them into 5th it would have been the better evolution of where the game should have gone.

P.S. assault cannons were only 4 shots in 4th-7th it wasn't until 8th that they made them 6 per gun. and having them jam with only 3 shots made them a weapon nobody used in 3rd because the heavy bolter was superior in every way, they had to fix it to make it usable, just like guess range weapons.