Recent discussions among friends has sparked a thought in my mind, and after giving it a few night's sleep and a couple days of consideration, I wanted to run the idea by you.
Warhammer 40,000 started life as a wargame, but now has become a game that's vaguely military related. It's also gotten more and more popular since then. I suppose I should define exactly what I mean:
A wargame is, to some degree, about simulating war. It's not exactly a simulation altogether (we don't have the computing power for that at our tables) but generally things operate according to some "reality" (in our case, I'll be putting reality in air quotes, since it's an artificially constructed reality - the fictional 41st or 42nd millenium). For example, in any wargame it is generally the case that units maneuver on a battlefield and interact with each other in ways that approximate (or abstract, if you will) the way they would be expected to in "reality". It also inherently includes being a game, in that it is a state of structured play to facilitate fun and fooling around. (Some people argue wargames must necessarily be adversarial, though I personally think you could play one solo against yourself, and anyway that particular facet of the definition is irrelevant to the OP).
A game is really just a structured mode of play, with no necessary anchor to anything save the imaginations of the players and imaginations of the designers.
To take it one step further and explain my title: a war(game) is a game that seeks to downplay 'gameyness' (I'm sure we all know the definition but I am prepared to answer if we don't) in favor of "realism" while a (war)game seeks to be fun to play first and "realistic" second.
Now, to 40k more properly. The original draw for 40k, at least for me (and for many others based on the "reasons you play" conversations I've had) was the lore. Why not play a better wargame? Because their "realities" weren't as cool as 40k's "reality". This is typically the reason that's thrown out when other games are brought forwards as candidates for community play but don't grow as popular. However, it is my opinion that the actual draw for 40k, and I've seen this admitted much much more lately, is its own momentum. So many people play it simply because it's easy to find a game.
Plus, "gamey" is actually desired. 8th edition was the most popular edition so far (or at least so I have been informed). The public is disinterested in a war(game), they like (war)games. "Funness" is more important than "realism." And I don't begrudge anyone that; in fact, I'd say that's quite sensible. But it does starkly divide the narrative players (or at least me, and I self-identify as one) from the casual players - the less "realism" the game possesses, the harder it is to picture the happenings going on in the mind. Originally, in early 8th, I was a defender of GW's chosen abstractions. I could perceive what they were thinking about in "reality" when they wrote the rules, but I realize now that I was mistaken. Their rules justifications seem to be ex post facto, as in "It's just simpler to draw LOS from anywhere on the tank..." "alright, um, do that, and - oh I know, we'll make a big deal about how it's a mobile battlefield and minis aren't static, etc." I was mistaken; GW was designing a game, not a wargame, from Day 1, and their justifications had no anchor in "reality" at all.
Not to say that earlier editions of 40k were terribly "realistic" mind. There's always been some idiosyncrasies (I still don't understand why twin-linked gives you a RR to hit instead of two hits from one roll), but I think it was better than it is. The narrative was easier to construct. It is easier to justify "the twin linked weapons hit more betterer" than it is to justify "the Land Raider could see the Malcador, but the smaller Malcador could not see the Land Raider" (9th edition obscuring terrain!). Or, perhaps I mean, it was easier to overlook. My immersion was preserved, and the theater of the mind could picture the events as they unfolded. I'm happy to have a discussion about how people feel about older editions of 40k and how well they conformed to 40k's "reality" as well.
Lastly, I want to emphasize this isn't a critique (though it may come off that way due to my personal biases) but rather an attempt to spark discussion on the nature of 40k, and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game. Furthermore, I'd like to hear if you think if that's good or not. I know it's popular, and that's awesome, so I suspect a lot of answers will be YES!. But my disillusionment requires validation () so if anyone thinks no out there other than me, sound off.
Meanwhile I'll go be a grumpy old grognard in the corner, talking about how things were "better back in my day".
In all seriousness, it was questions like these that eventually led me down the path of starting to create games for myself, and play the type of games I wanted to play.
Where they fit on the simulation vs game spectrum is not set, but at least I knew I would want to play it wherever it landed.
Haha, well, sometimes I think it's useful to have a discussion about the 'identity of a thing' when long-term fans are involved, and discuss what might be best for it.
For a "game", I'll play 8th edition. For more crunch and detail in the 40k stables, I'm going with HH for 30k and 5th ed (with house rules). But even the latter are still "games", they just feel less "gamey". When I played 8th in the later stages, it was like playing MTG and WM/H, not 40k.
When I want to play a war(game), I play Piquet, Battlegroup, or any of a host of games that fall differently along the "simulationist" spectrum. Nothing is obviously going to be a pure simulation, I'll leave that to something like Harpoon on my computer, but it feels more "realistic" than nu-40k.
I want a game where I don't actually have full control over my models, where there is friction on the battlefield, and where I'm in command of forces as they "might have appeared", not the cherry picked best stuff in my list o' options. I've played historical games where I've managed to maneuver my army into the optimum position, had the optimum formations, all the commands fell into place, had flanking cavalry get in to the rear of the enemy, and.... betrayed by a die roll. My entire front collapsed. It was one of those moments that sticks with me in a good way. Clearly the enemy got the volley of fire to our front first, disrupted our lines, and the troops panicked. If I was playing 40k, I would have been rolling 132 dice, re-rolling all misses. Instead, I was rolling one d12 against my opponents defense of d4. He rolled a 4, me a 1. C'est la Guerre.
I love Battlegroup because its so hard to kill enemy soldiers. You have to pin them, and use the combination of troops and equipment you have to achieve the scenario, since you can't just "kill em all". And in order to shoot them, you need to see them first. Which isn't always a given. And the way the game records VPs is amazing. I've never had a blow out game, they've all come down to the last couple of chit pulls.
I continue to play 40k because it is easier to pick up (or should I say its easier to teach my son how to play - he still can't make heads or tails of the actual rules), we have the models, we both like sci-fi, but we pick and choose how we play it - small scenarios, hand picked models with whatever wargear, and we roll dice to see what happens. Its almost Combat Patrol or Kill Team, but even less structured. Plus we throw in trench lines and bunkers, and play in and around them. Its much easier than actually playing the actual rules nowadays - not a buff or strategem to be seen.
40k in 3rd edition, playing a 1500 point list from the base lists that came out with the edition, on a 6x4 table with 6 games turns felt like an open expanse of maneuver, enemies were just as dangerous as you, you could pick up and move your heavy weapons to better firing position (because you had 6 turns! It felt like forever), and there was room to move around the battlefield. Now, armies take up 30% of each side of the board, and many just sit or maybe move a little, and drop 60 shots with rerolls of everything and the kitchen sink. Very little maneuver, removing handfuls of models each shooting phase, huge models with huge footprints, etc. Meh.
At the same time, I do realize I'm a grognard now, and have been playing GW games for far too long, and I'm not the target audience. So I look elsewhere, don't buy GW much anymore, other than the more war(game) offerings like Adeptus Titanicus. I'll still play Mordheim, Gothic, old Necro, etc., but not AoS, nor nu-40k.
I'm going back to my rocker on my porch so I can yell at the youngsters running on my lawn.
So, Cruentus, I don't disagree, obviously. But why do you think the "games" are more popular? Do you think what you remember (a dice roll betraying you in the fog of war!) is a mechanic most people wouldn't like?
Similarly, do you think recovering the feel of 3rd edition with the new rules is do-able? You mention size, but surely you could play smaller games with older units... is there something more fundamental that's different or?
I disagree with the assessment and I like 8th much more than 6th and 7th. I'd say the abstractions from 8th account for the increased scale of todays 40K and stratagems, which surely are pretty "gamey" are a result of the crap that happened in 7th. GW wanted to preserve all the fluffy special rules but realized when you clump more and more onto the game it breaks at some point, so they made them based on a limited Ressource.
Concerning the scale it's similar to Lotr and war of the Ring, where the latter was a larger rank and File system and because of that used a lot of abstractions and seemingly "gamey" aspects. I remember one game where Dain killed 48 Goblins in one go, which... nearly broke my immersion but was also pretty funny.
Also, since you brought Lotr up as a wargame - Lotr had stratagems before it was cool, they are called might over there. I'd say 8th edition actually came closer to Lotr than prior editions, which I don't mind as Lotr is still GWs best system.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I disagree with the assessment and I like 8th much more than 6th and 7th. I'd say the abstractions from 8th account for the increased scale of todays 40K and stratagems, which surely are pretty "gamey" are a result of the crap that happened in 7th. GW wanted to preserve all the fluffy special rules but realized when you clump more and more onto the game it breaks at some point, so they made them based on a limited Ressource. Concerning the scale it's similar to Lotr and war of the Ring, where the latter was a larger rank and File system and because of that used a lot of abstractions and seemingly "gamey" aspects. I remember one game where Dain killed 48 Goblins in one go, which... nearly broke my immersion but was also pretty funny. Also, since you brought Lotr up as a wargame - Lotr had stratagems before it was cool, they are called might over there. I'd say 8th edition actually came closer to Lotr than prior editions, which I don't mind as Lotr is still GWs best system.
So you believe 8th edition is more "realistic" and less "gamey"? Or do you mean 8th edition is more fun, while also being more gamey? Only the first disagrees with my assessment, and if you think 8th edition 40k is more realistic than say, 3rd or 5th or 7th, that's something I disagree with but I can understand.
And LOTR's "realism" comes from the way armies interact. The rules encourage things to operate the way they "should" without forcing them to. For example, Warhammer Fantasy simply forced units to be in ranks. LOTR, on the other hand, gives pikes and spears the ability to poke other models, and allows bowmen to fire over one model in front of them - and this purely model-based interaction leads to the creation of units like pike or spear blocks that rank up and move in squares as an emergent property of the rules, rather than simply being forced to. 40k doesn't have anything that causes 'emergent realistic behavior' if you will like that, nor does AOS. Other examples from LOTR include the way cover works, the way siege engines work, the way models interact with each other and terrain... basically everything. War of the Ring I haven't played, so I won't comment.
8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I assumed you meant that.
I don't see much difference, to be honest with you. 'We suck/we don't even try' is a motive you're assigning them, I don't think it reflects actual design decisions.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games.
Eh. Fair. It was more about comparing types of games, but its wandering far enough off the main thrust that it doesn't matter.
I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
No.
Seriously no. All movement/positioning/line of sight rules are abstractions, you can't get around that. They're not reflective of how people actually behave and interact with their environments or the enemy. (or their friends, given there's no blue on blue possible). And that doesn't even touch things like logistics, without which you can't even pretend to be simulating warfare, and 40k has never really touched on that in a meaningful way.
The issue seems to be what level of abstraction you're willing to accept, and if 8th/9th is 'too far' there really isn't anything to be done about that.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I assumed you meant that. I don't see much difference, to be honest with you. 'We suck/we don't even try' is a motive you're assigning them, I don't think it reflects actual design decisions.
Fair enough. It is a motive, but if you think they're honest-to-god trying their best with 8th and small arms in the 41st millenium really do have a solid chance of hurting a main battle tank (for example) then I suppose that's fine. They didn't before, so someone wasn't trying somewhere.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games.
Eh. Fair. It was more about comparing types of games, but its wandering far enough off the main thrust that it doesn't matter.
I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
No. Seriously no. All movement/positioning/line of sight rules are abstractions, you can't get around that. They're not reflective of how people actually behave and interact with their environments or the enemy. (or their friends, given there's no blue on blue possible). And that doesn't even touch things like logistics, without which you can't even pretend to be simulating warfare, and 40k has never really touched on that in a meaningful way.
I think you're confusing my points. They are abstract, and always will be. Even in a computer simulation, they're 'unrealistic' in many ways. I think you're not giving enough credit to the abstractions.
In DOD modeling and sim (and wargaming for that matter) there's several levels of war (engineering level, engagement level, mission level, etc. all the way up to campaign and theater level modeling) and if you went to someone trying to model, say, a single engagement between 2 aircraft and said "this can't be real, you're not simulating logistics!" then they'd be very confused, because that's not relevant at the level of war that is being modeled. If the aircraft runs out of missiles, then it runs out of missiles. There's no modeling of how it is resupplied, no modeling of where it should land - there's not expected to be, because that's an entirely different question from the analysis of the singular A2A engagement.
Similarly, saying a "mini's game doesn't model logistics" isn't convincing, because logistics is outside the scope that a typical minis game is concerned with (beyond a few token things, like for example if you are tracking special, exquisite munitions that a model may only have one of).
As for abstractions, you're correct that everything is an abstraction, but I don't think that invalidates the attempt. You're essentially arguing that it is impossible to do accurate small-scale modeling of war, despite it being a useful training tool for commanders since long before computers existed. I think there is a degree of abstraction that is necessary, but that doesn't mean you can throw the baby out with the bathwater and abstract badly. (Or, as I think happened with 8th, give up on abstraction entirely and just make a game utterly disconnected from any reality at all.) Curious to hear your thoughts, though, on this. It's certainly eye-opening to see some people believe this way.
Voss wrote: The issue seems to be what level of abstraction you're willing to accept, and if 8th/9th is 'too far' there really isn't anything to be done about that.
No, that's why I mentioned what I did. It's not the level of abstraction I'm terribly concerned with, but rather the abstraction itself. To pull from the same example above, 40k used to have rules that made tanks immune to small arms. 8th edition threw away those rules. What level of abstraction changed that suddenly made tanks vulnerable to small arms? What scale shift is that? What is being abstracted there?
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
So essentially you're saying that the older games had the "reality" they were trying to abstract wrong, and the newer games have a different, more believable (for you) "reality"? That's a fundamental shift in the underlying setting.
If you're saying the setting was originally a place things operated like they do in 8th, and the earlier editions simply got it wrong, then that's certainly not how I took the setting; it at least had some basis in intuitive reality (i.e. tanks can bog down in difficult terrain, humans have a heart and two lungs, wolves aren't bulletproof). I recognize I could be wrong.
EDIT: Oh no, it didn't append the posts like it usually does D:
As for abstractions, you're correct that everything is an abstraction, but I don't think that invalidates the attempt. You're essentially arguing that it is impossible to do accurate small-scale modeling of war, despite it being a useful training tool for commanders since long before computers existed. I think there is a degree of abstraction that is necessary, but that doesn't mean you can throw the baby out with the bathwater and abstract badly. Curious to hear your thoughts, though, on this. It's certainly eye-opening to see some people believe this way.
Wow, you're inferring a LOT. I'm not entirely certain where to start.
'Abstract badly' is a weird judgement call. I kinda see how you want to get there, but you've pretty much taken it as an 'a priori' given without establishing, well, anything, and its overwhelming everything else.
I don't think abstraction makes a wargames training tool invalid (or why computers would be relevant here). But awareness of the abstractions and how they relate (or fail to relate) to the real world is super-important if you to use a wargame as a training tool. I mean, people have been exalting chess for over a thousand years, but its about the mode of thinking, not actually leading troops.
But in any case, 40k isn't a training tool. If it was, it'd be a really bad one, no matter which edition you hold as superior. It would get people killed unnecessarily. 'Drive me forward, I want to hit them with my sword' isn't a recent meme.
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As for logistics... No. The starting point of 40k is the army list, with various limitations and theoretical logistical elements. It isn't realistic to real world army composition, but its a fundamental aspect of the starting point of the game.
To pull from the same example above, 40k used to have rules that made tanks immune to small arms. 8th edition threw away those rules. What level of abstraction changed that suddenly made tanks vulnerable to small arms? What scale shift is that? What is being abstracted there?
Most tanks weren't immune in older editions, land raiders, monoliths and other exceptions aside. You just had to get behind them and attack the weak rear armor (or get in melee, in which case you were always attacking the weakest armor).
The abstraction just shifted from 'rear' to 'weak points,' partly for game purposes, partly for the 'models aren't really sitting still' abstraction.
As for abstractions, you're correct that everything is an abstraction, but I don't think that invalidates the attempt. You're essentially arguing that it is impossible to do accurate small-scale modeling of war, despite it being a useful training tool for commanders since long before computers existed. I think there is a degree of abstraction that is necessary, but that doesn't mean you can throw the baby out with the bathwater and abstract badly. Curious to hear your thoughts, though, on this. It's certainly eye-opening to see some people believe this way.
Wow, you're inferring a LOT. I'm not entirely certain where to start.
'Abstract badly' is a weird judgement call. I kinda see how you want to get there, but you've pretty much taken it as an 'a priori' given without establishing, well, anything, and its overwhelming everything else.
I don't think abstraction makes a wargames training tool invalid (or why computers would be relevant here). But awareness of the abstractions and how they relate (or fail to relate) to the real world is super-important if you to use a wargame as a training tool. I mean, people have been exalting chess for over a thousand years, but its about the mode of thinking, not actually leading troops.
But in any case, 40k isn't a training tool. If it was, it'd be a really bad one, no matter which edition you hold as superior. It would get people killed unnecessarily. 'Drive me forward, I want to hit them with my sword' isn't a recent meme.
I agree, it's for entertainment, not training. I only brought that up to disprove the notion that sand-table exercises / miniatures games in general couldn't abstract "reality". With that notion disproven, then I seek to emphasize that 40kcould abstract its "reality" if the designers wished, since we've successfully proven that it's possible to do so. However, the designers have decided not to - and this is distinct from doing so badly. In other words, I believe the designers no longer have a picture of the reality they seek to abstract in their mind - or that the picture has changed.
Voss wrote: As for logistics... No. The starting point of 40k is the army list, with various limitations and theoretical logistical elements. It isn't realistic to real world army composition, but its a fundamental aspect of the starting point of the game.
I never took the army list to be related to logistics; I took it to be based more on army structure, i.e. what the "reality" of an army might look like in the 41st millennium. Having logistics be the reason you have limitations (as it would be today) rather than, say, religious adherence to some sort of book or the like is certainly a good idea, though - it'd be cool if army building reflected that. As it stands, I think balance concerns impact points cost more than logistical concerns - again going back to the war(game) vs (war)game. Balance is a game term, not a military term. I recognize it is important, but there has to be some semblance of balance written into the background or one faction would just win all the time. Therefore, the tabletop could reflect the "reality" of the setting but seems not to (or the reality of the setting is broken, which is possible but weakens the "reason to play 40k is for the lore" argument).
To pull from the same example above, 40k used to have rules that made tanks immune to small arms. 8th edition threw away those rules. What level of abstraction changed that suddenly made tanks vulnerable to small arms? What scale shift is that? What is being abstracted there?
Most tanks weren't immune in older editions, land raiders, monoliths and other exceptions aside. You just had to get behind them and attack the weak rear armor (or get in melee, in which case you were always attacking the weakest armor).
The abstraction just shifted from 'rear' to 'weak points,' partly for game purposes, partly for the 'models aren't really sitting still' abstraction.
Well, it depends on how you view small arms (which is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about). Strength 2 or 3 weapons couldn't hurt any tanks in the game, and these were analogous to small pistols (needle weapons / flechette blasters for example) and modern assault rifles (lasguns/autoguns/stub carbines for example). And some tanks were immune to larger, anti-material weapons like HMGs (bolter/heavy stubbers/etc) from any facing, while being vulnerable to autocannons (e.g. Leman Russ Demolishers, Malcadors, Baneblades etc). while still more armored vehicles were immune even to autocannons and grenade launchers, requiring even the heaviest weapons to destroy (monoliths and land raiders, etc).
That sort of abstraction is just gone. Shooting at a Rhino with a lasgun, shooting at a Baneblade with a lasgun, and shooting at a Monolith with a lasgun all has exactly the same percent chance of damaging it. Shooting at a Leman Russ, a Monolith, and an Imperial Knight with a Boltgun all have exactly the same percent chance of damaging it. Conversely, shooting at a Rhino with a lascannon, shooting at a Baneblade with a lascannon, and shooting at a Monolith with a lascannon all has exactly the same percent chance of destroying it (that is, 0%).
If you think 8th edition has done a better job of abstracting this than the earlier editions did, then I accept that point of view and respectfully disagree; but it's a subjective thing. My thread is more about the designer's intent - or, at least, was intended to be. I just don't think they put as much thought into abstracting the "reality" of 40k as they used to, and that's because they fundamentally see it now as a (war)game, rather than a war(game). (And then to address the apparent success of that model, where the public seems to want a game and not a wargame - or at least, a more "gamey" wargame).
Unit1126PLL wrote: So, Cruentus, I don't disagree, obviously. But why do you think the "games" are more popular? Do you think what you remember (a dice roll betraying you in the fog of war!) is a mechanic most people wouldn't like?
Similarly, do you think recovering the feel of 3rd edition with the new rules is do-able? You mention size, but surely you could play smaller games with older units... is there something more fundamental that's different or?
I realize the conversation has moved on from these points, but I just wanted to respond.
I think "games" are more popular, because when you dig into the older rulesets - Avalon Hill was brought up - they had pages and pages and pages of sometimes dense rules, basic, intermediate, advanced rules, plus optional rules, intended to simulate warfare based on ratios and chart lookups. I was raised on the Avalon Hill games, and contrasted those with playing green army men and using rubber bands to shoot at the other side (I had rules for machine guns, mortars, firing AT weapons at tanks), all using a rubber band, with nothing written down. To me, one was a game - AH - the other was play.
There has been a change in rules development to make things abstract, elegant, "simpler" for people to pick up, and I think GW jumped on that train with AoS, and 40k. Everything is there on the card - What do I need to hit with a ranged weapon = 3+, written right on the card. Simples. Even the 8th edition "core rules" were 4 pages. Doesn't get much simpler.
Now, that is not to confuse long or wordy with better. I've read some rules tomes that didn't make sense, or were super dense, and hence wouldn't make for an interesting game (to me). But other enjoy them.
All of that is to say I think "games" are more popular because they're easier to pick up, have familiar mechanics to other games. and get you from point A to point B, and a conclusion to the game (i.e. winner and loser).
Re: Fog of War and similar mechanics: I do believe that there are people who don't like those. They don't like the vagaries of dice rolls or morale preventing them from having complete control over their force, and being able to do whatever they want to. For me, having that complete control takes some of the interest out of the game, because as long as my troops are on the table, I can have them do something, and can plan accordingly, and many times its going through the motions where the only decision is which target to prioritize. In games I've played with that Fog of War and similar friction, there is no guarantee when or if those reinforcements will appear, no guarantee that unit I want to advance on the flank will do so, and with actual morale, no guarantee that that unit I just threw into the meatgrinder will stay there long enough...
A lot of that is all stuff that has been removed from 40k. Its a math exercise. This unit will survive x long against y unless z, in which case I use this unit over here to just act as a speedbump, etc.
The 8th games that I played early on with the Indexes were another fresh breath for the rules, as they tend to be every edition change - 40k used to be a new edition every 4 or 5 years, at by the end of that period, usually after half the codexes had been updated to the new edition, a "new" edition came out, and gameplay was interesting again. Until the new codexes started dropping. Its the same with 8th/9th for me. Once the codexes started dropping, the games took longer, there were more and bigger "buffs", the points changed regularly, stuff was scattered across multiple publications, etc. (not that its new, there has always been WD and Annuals from GW), but after my 7th edition change (starting 2nd to now), its requires more energy than I'm willing to put toward it to keep current or even remember "was that a 7th edition, 8th edition, or 9th edition rule?"
You can recreate the feeling of 3rd by keeping things basic within the existing framework, but this goes against all the "officialdom" that gets thrown around. I could easily play 8th with Index, and add in some of the newer terrain rules from 9th , or even go back to 4th/5th for terrain, or whatever approach I wanted to. But that's only going to get me games against like minded folks, or my son. We play 8th with Index when we play (for now), we play Warhammer Skirmish with the Ravening Hordes lists as our baseline, and then we add in castles, sieges, bunkers, etc. on the fly. I guess one could argue that we're playing a (war)game by going that route, but the results and the immersion feel the opposite.
LOTR has been mentioned also in this thread. LOTR, I find, has a great mix of heroism (albeit limited - with Might, Fate, etc.), and interactivity to keep both players interested. It does a great job in recreating the movies, and scenarios based on them. It also doesn't have the sheer bloat or faction rules and overarching "strategems" or re-producing CPs, instead you might have one model who regains 1 Might each round, but you're never getting them all back. In 8th, CP farms with the ability to recoup your CPs wasn't used by accident.
Still, everyone can have their fun how they want, and everyone wants something different from the games they play. The important thing is to know what that is, and to go for that. I'm too old to play a game I don't enjoy, particularly when the game can take 2-3 hours for a "normal" game.
Saying that, if you got me on a 12x6 table playing as part of an 'apocalypse style' campaign game with multiple forces per side, no lords of war or titans, I'd happily play that for an entire weekend.
If you think 8th edition has done a better job of abstracting this than the earlier editions did, then I accept that point of view and respectfully disagree; but it's a subjective thing. My thread is more about the designer's intent - or, at least, was intended to be. I just don't think they put as much thought into abstracting the "reality" of 40k as they used to, and that's because they fundamentally see it now as a (war)game, rather than a war(game). (And then to address the apparent success of that model, where the public seems to want a game and not a wargame - or at least, a more "gamey" wargame).
To jump into this, I don't really think they think in terms of "abstracting the reality" of 40k. Remember, it was an exercise for them to have a structure for them to push around models - (war)game - with friends. They genuinely seemed surprised with some of the things that the community would do with lists, or rules interactions. They're responses would be GW: "Why would you do that?" Player: "Because its in the rules and says I can do it." GW: "But why would you do that?" They have a fundamentally different approach to how the game translates from rulebook (or guideline) to the table. And there probably isn't going to be a time when that meshes - hence all the codified stuff - rule of 3, for ex.
Their name is "GAMES" Workshop. Their model works because they have a product (the rules), plus the support (models, magazine, paints, supplements) so that someone can come in and "one stop shop" for the total experience. There are very few successful (or successful on this scale) comparisons in mini wargaming. Maybe Battlefront, but there is huge competition in the 15mm historicals market. For GW, the rules just need to be "fun enough" and "good enough" and "easy enough" to keep people coming in the door, and the one stop shop nature of their offerings keep folks there.
When I branched off into historicals a number of years ago, you can be absolutely drowned in the number of rulesets, mini manufacturers, supplementary stuff, but its all "DIY". You have to find the rules you want to use, then track down the models to represent your armies, then find opponents who want to use those rules, find the spears to outfit your models, etc. Much harder. The only upside is that the Historical minis can be used in ANY ruleset.
Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
If being gamey means that some factions end up with not working books, then I say thank you. It is better to have a crunch game, with all its limitations, then suddenly wake up one days with a new codex that GW wrote for fun, but it isn't very fun to play with or worse GW designs it with some core rule interactions in mind, only to abandon them later or even make them illegal.
To be honest I don't really care if they do the game one way or the other, as long as the army model count doesn't go up, people aren't forced to buy faction buildings and models for their spells, and GW keeps the same design paradigma all edition.
I've just bought a 30K army pretty much for the reasons described in the OP: It has more of that oldschool wargame feel.
I'm not sure that complexity is really the defining difference. One of my favorite modern wargames is the World At War/Nations At War series, where all the stats you need are printed on the counters. No big lookup tables, no charts, and the rules aren't very complicated at all, but it delivers a reasonably realistic experience that feels 'right'. Meanwhile the glut of stratagems and faction traits and special rules in 8th/9th are anything but simple.
I would say it's more a matter of whether the game is attempting to model the realities of warfare, or whether it's using warfare as a backdrop for a set of game mechanics. Things like stratagems in 8th/9th are not a natural result of attempting to simulate warfare; they're a game mechanic that adds narrative flavor but exists for gameplay rather than simulationist reasons.
You can see the differences in approach down in the little details. For example, earlier editions of 40K had random appearance and random scatter on deep strike, which was realistic but made it unreliable. Conversely, in 8th/9th deep striking units appear exactly when and where you want them, subject to a 9" restriction. This rewards proper screening and facilitates strategies that rely on that precision (eg melta drop). Another good example is vehicles. Real AFVs tend to be alive until very suddenly they are not, and the damage tables in older editions reflected this. The 8th/9th system is more streamlined and more predictable, being less representative of real warfare but providing a more 'game-like' experience.
A lot of the YMMV factor comes down to whether you enjoy simulation for its own sake. I can completely understand someone being frustrated with a game where their star unit either shows up too late to be useful or gets wiped out by a bad scatter roll, or being frustrated when their Land Raider gets cored by a lascannon on the first turn. Conversely, I find it frustrating that basic warfare concepts like flanking don't exist in 8th/9th, and how the game is heavily focused on stratagem and ability combos.
Odd as it may sound, I find the recent Apocalypse system gives modern 40K a lot of that old-school wargame flavor. No stratagems, minimal special abilities, strong emphasis on command and control, and an alternating activation and orders system that forces you to think in advance about what your opponent is likely to do.
I think Catbarf understands what I mean, especially with this sentence: "I would say it's more a matter of whether the game is attempting to model the realities of warfare, or whether it's using warfare as a backdrop for a set of game mechanics."
Still, other minis games are simple (e.g. KoW), and yet they don't have the following that 8th edition 40k does. Furthermore, 8th edition increased in popularity. Do you think this is solely a result of 40k's momentum (as in the ability to always find a game)? Or is there some other essence of 40k that makes it popular, and made the less-realistic-more-gamey system grow in popularity?
Conversely, Cruentus, do you think it is impossible for a more realistic ruleset (such as the historicals you mention, which are indeed somewhat difficult to get groups into) to be as popular as 40k? EDIT: Also everyone be warned, I'm taking notes on other games to try, so don't think those comments go unnoticed.
Warhammer 40,000 started life as a wargame, but now has become a game that's vaguely military related. It's also gotten more and more popular since then. I suppose I should define exactly what I mean:
Interesting topic! Honestly though - you're starting from a false premise. It has never been anything but "vaguely military related". Listening to any of the original people involved talk about creating it illustrates that. They originally set it up as more of a role playing game (and indeed Rogue Trader was unplayable without a GM) where you could use the models to fight out the combat scenes. Early versions of the game had everything from atomic bombs to laughing gas (with detailed "effects" tables but nothing mentioned in the rules on how to actually deploy them), and was always silly and off the wall.
I can't remember if it was Gav or Andy C, but someone asked them about "realism" at some point during 2nd ed and the response was telling. It went something along the lines of "What? No. No this is intended as nothing but a fun time with sci-fi style soldiers. Realism went out the window the second we had a 6.6" long tank sitting next to a man with a 6" ranged pistol".
The differences become even more stark if you do actually play a war game with more realistic rules that stress the WAR part of the game. Honestly though, that's probably for the best. The GW design team seems very fixated on a certain point in time and tends to design rules with that older (Napoleanic) style of warfare in mind, which can often lead to baffling results that I don't think would mesh well with a more proper "simulator".
As far as immersion goes - I had the same issue going from 2nd ed to 3rd ed. 3rd streamlined so much that it no longer felt as tactical or interesting to me and I lost interest for quite a long time. The game needed that streamlining but they went too far IMO (Gav Thorpe himself has also said this several times), but for me, 8th hit the nerve just right for what I was personally looking for. A game that was fun, with just enough depth that I'm interested, but not so much that it feels like milsim game and I'm now tracking how far each squad can move based off of the wieght of their gear and whether or not they're under fire. 40k was never really much of a simulator like that, and I'm totally good with that.
Just to address this point, their name is Games Workshop because they were a company which published and sold boxed boardgames.
They then brought out a company called Citadel Minitures, but kept the GW brand name because it was stronger. They then slowly reduced and ultimately abandoned the boardgames part of their business and focused on the minitures and painting side of the business.
If anything the orginal 'Games Workshop' was much more at home selling Avalon Hill boxed games, of which I am a proud customer, rather than the nonsense modern GW vomits out.
The reason that I put reality in quotes in the OP is that I recognize that 40k isn't "realistic." It's hilarious, off-the-wall, it's derpy, it's grim, it's depressing, but it's forty millennia away from now in a fictional universe.
What I mean by "reality" in that context is the reality of that universe, not the reality of our universe. For example, our universe doesn't have daemons spilling from the Immaterium who want to eat our souls. But 40k does, and presumably those daemons have certain capabilities and interact with reality in a certain way.
I don't care that the rules are fun and off-the-wall, just like I don't care that the rules for daemons exist despite them being unrealistic.
I'm talking about the reality of the background of the setting - when daemons go to fight, say, Eldar, there's a battle that occurs in the setting - wave serpents attack Bloodthirsters, bloodletters stab at Dire Avengers, etc.
In the tabletop game, you could recreate this battle.
I am suggesting that the way the battle plays out in the narrative (e.g. what happens when a Wave Serpent attacks a Bloodthirster) should be consistent in at least some degree with what happens on the tabletop game (when a wave serpent attacks a bloodthirster). I don't believe in 8th edition that this is as tight as it has been in the past, and I believe this is because it is now being seen as a "game" rather than a genuine attempt to fight battles in the 41st millennium, abstracted using minis.
EDIT: followup example I can accept the 6" range pistol next to a 6.6" long tank. That just tells me that the pistols of the 41st millennium have pathetic range or that the physics of the 41st millennium is fundamentally different than ours, or, as in the case of Inferno Pistols, the technology simply is short ranged by nature of its operation. What I think is different now is that when the designers design a new pistol, they don't say "Well, infernus pistols have a shorter range than most tank lengths because the mechanism by which a melta weapon functions is short ranged, and this is only the pistol version, so shorter still" or whatever. The background doesn't even seem to go into their thinking.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I think Catbarf understands what I mean, especially with this sentence:
"I would say it's more a matter of whether the game is attempting to model the realities of warfare, or whether it's using warfare as a backdrop for a set of game mechanics."
Still, other minis games are simple (e.g. KoW), and yet they don't have the following that 8th edition 40k does. Furthermore, 8th edition increased in popularity. Do you think this is solely a result of 40k's momentum (as in the ability to always find a game)? Or is there some other essence of 40k that makes it popular, and made the less-realistic-more-gamey system grow in popularity?
Conversely, Cruentus, do you think it is impossible for a more realistic ruleset (such as the historicals you mention, which are indeed somewhat difficult to get groups into) to be as popular as 40k?
EDIT:
Also everyone be warned, I'm taking notes on other games to try, so don't think those comments go unnoticed.
Kings of War looks simple but it ends up being so deterministic that it's easy to find the perfect play by analysis, so you need a thorough understanding of the math and the geometry or you'll get eaten by a slightly more experienced player. Warmachine is great but the design space is so huge and the playerbase so competitive that the new player experience tends to involve a lot of getting crushed by stuff you weren't ready for before you start to figure out how the game works. Infinity has so many rules and so many interactions between rules that the learning curve is more of a cliff.
The thing Warhammer's always done really well is that the learning curve is quite shallow. The game contains (either accidentally or deliberately, I've never been sure) armies that are straightforward to give new players a gentle introduction, as well as convoluted and difficult armies to challenge people who are looking for it. The basic rules are short, there aren't that many interactions, and it's pretty easy to evaluate which option you want to be using most of the time. Warhammer's success is definitely at least somewhat to do with market presence/ease of finding players, and definitely at least somewhat to do with its broad exposure in video games and general culture, but I think if you saw a more simulationist game that had the kind of learning curve 40k does you'd see people playing it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I can accept the 6" range pistol next to a 6.6" long tank. That just tells me that the pistols of the 41st millennium have pathetic range or that the physics of the 41st millennium is fundamentally different than ours, or, as in the case of Inferno Pistols, the technology simply is short ranged by nature of its operation.
It tells me that the gameplay scale isn't meant to be taken literally- just as I assume that a turn is longer than 2-3 seconds and that highly trained soldiers don't panic and flee when they no longer have a buddy within six feet of them. In fact, if you play the 40K ruleset with 4-6mm miniatures, those ranges and speeds actually start to become reasonably realistic.
Epic explicitly stated that it used an elastic time and distance scale, with the assumption that distances and times compress as the forces approach each other. It's not a 1:1 simulation, but it feels 'right' in the sense of appropriately modeling the feel of two forces closing to contact. Epic was also much more of a traditional wargame than 40K, actually modeling command and control and glossing over a lot of the chrome in weapons and equipment.
Tangentially related to the inferno pistol question, one of the examples of 40K's changing design philosophy is the basic statline. Originally it was pretty straightforward- just taking defensive profile, if you were humanoid and not a heroic, larger-than-life character, you were W1. Then your Toughness represented how hard you are to kill, and your armor save represented the effectiveness of your armor.
Now if you're humanoid you're W1, unless if you're a big humanoid (Primaris) you might be W2, but you also might not be (Immortal). Then Toughness represents how hard you are to kill, unless it doesn't, because that might be instead represented as a FNP save (Plague Marines), an invulnerable save (Haemonculi), or a stratagem that makes you tougher (Transhuman Physiology). Then your armor save represents the effectiveness of your armor, but it also might not, because if it's Gravis then it increases your T and W instead.
The old approach is a simulationist model, a formula where each characteristic has a corresponding stat, and that core statline drives the game. The new approach is a more abstract design where there are numerous ways to represent a particular characteristic, often through bespoke special rules, without being constrained to a consistent formula. The interplay between the different special rules is what provides depth, rather than the core mechanics as facilitated by comparatively simple statlines.
A game can be wildly fantastic in its subject matter and still take a simulationist approach to design- it's just a different design philosophy.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I think Catbarf understands what I mean, especially with this sentence: "I would say it's more a matter of whether the game is attempting to model the realities of warfare, or whether it's using warfare as a backdrop for a set of game mechanics."
Still, other minis games are simple (e.g. KoW), and yet they don't have the following that 8th edition 40k does. Furthermore, 8th edition increased in popularity. Do you think this is solely a result of 40k's momentum (as in the ability to always find a game)? Or is there some other essence of 40k that makes it popular, and made the less-realistic-more-gamey system grow in popularity?
Conversely, Cruentus, do you think it is impossible for a more realistic ruleset (such as the historicals you mention, which are indeed somewhat difficult to get groups into) to be as popular as 40k? EDIT: Also everyone be warned, I'm taking notes on other games to try, so don't think those comments go unnoticed.
Kings of War looks simple but it ends up being so deterministic that it's easy to find the perfect play by analysis, so you need a thorough understanding of the math and the geometry or you'll get eaten by a slightly more experienced player. Warmachine is great but the design space is so huge and the playerbase so competitive that the new player experience tends to involve a lot of getting crushed by stuff you weren't ready for before you start to figure out how the game works. Infinity has so many rules and so many interactions between rules that the learning curve is more of a cliff.
The thing Warhammer's always done really well is that the learning curve is quite shallow. The game contains (either accidentally or deliberately, I've never been sure) armies that are straightforward to give new players a gentle introduction, as well as convoluted and difficult armies to challenge people who are looking for it. The basic rules are short, there aren't that many interactions, and it's pretty easy to evaluate which option you want to be using most of the time. Warhammer's success is definitely at least somewhat to do with market presence/ease of finding players, and definitely at least somewhat to do with its broad exposure in video games and general culture, but I think if you saw a more simulationist game that had the kind of learning curve 40k does you'd see people playing it.
The question then is what game is that, lol. I want to get my group into it; otherwise, I'm interested in designing one (possibly) or at least giving it an evening of thought. You think the learning curve is it? Some armies are easy to parse and understand, while other ones are difficult? That could be it, I can see your point.
catbarf wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote: I can accept the 6" range pistol next to a 6.6" long tank. That just tells me that the pistols of the 41st millennium have pathetic range or that the physics of the 41st millennium is fundamentally different than ours, or, as in the case of Inferno Pistols, the technology simply is short ranged by nature of its operation.
It tells me that the gameplay scale isn't meant to be taken literally- just as I assume that a turn is longer than 2-3 seconds and that highly trained soldiers don't panic and flee when they no longer have a buddy within six feet of them. In fact, if you play the 40K ruleset with 4-6mm miniatures, those ranges and speeds actually start to become reasonably realistic.
Epic explicitly stated that it used an elastic time and distance scale, with the assumption that distances and times compress as the forces approach each other. It's not a 1:1 simulation, but it feels 'right' in the sense of appropriately modeling the feel of two forces closing to contact. Epic was also much more of a traditional wargame than 40K, actually modeling command and control and glossing over a lot of the chrome in weapons and equipment.
Tangentially related to the inferno pistol question, one of the examples of 40K's changing design philosophy is the basic statline. Originally it was pretty straightforward- just taking defensive profile, if you were humanoid and not a heroic, larger-than-life character, you were W1. Then your Toughness represented how hard you are to kill, and your armor save represented the effectiveness of your armor.
Now if you're humanoid you're W1, unless if you're a big humanoid (Primaris) you might be W2, but you also might not be (Immortal). Then Toughness represents how hard you are to kill, unless it doesn't, because that might be instead represented as a FNP save (Plague Marines), an invulnerable save (Haemonculi), or a stratagem that makes you tougher (Transhuman Physiology). Then your armor save represents the effectiveness of your armor, but it also might not, because if it's Gravis then it increases your T and W instead.
The old approach is a simulationist model, a formula where each characteristic has a corresponding stat, and that core statline drives the game. The new approach is a more abstract design where there are numerous ways to represent a particular characteristic, often through bespoke special rules, without being constrained to a consistent formula. The interplay between the different special rules is what provides depth, rather than the core mechanics as facilitated by comparatively simple statlines.
A game can be wildly fantastic in its subject matter and still take a simulationist approach to design- it's just a different design philosophy.
Right, right right. Good points, especially about the sliding scale; that's a common one in other games too and I completely forgot it! The comment about design philosophy is exactly where I am trying to go with this thread. What's GW's design philosophy now? At the beginning of 8th, I swallowed the tale that it was "simplification" but 9th complicates things again (and 8th turned out not to be all that simple anyways). Can you identify why they'd be so much less simulationist than before? Because I agree, obviously, that they were. What changed, philosophically, and what are they doing now?
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...I am suggesting that the way the battle plays out in the narrative (e.g. what happens when a Wave Serpent attacks a Bloodthirster) should be consistent in at least some degree with what happens on the tabletop game (when a wave serpent attacks a bloodthirster). I don't believe in 8th edition that this is as tight as it has been in the past, and I believe this is because it is now being seen as a "game" rather than a genuine attempt to fight battles in the 41st millennium, abstracted using minis...
I don't know how much the fluff of the game matters here; you can always rejigger the fluff to match the game. The problem is "verisimilitude" (the quality of seeming real) rather than realism.
To explain the difference I'm going to talk about Legolas for a moment: Consider the Lord of the Rings versus the Hobbit movies. One of the silliest stunts in LotR is the scene at Helm's Deep where Legolas surfs an Uruk shield down a staircase while shooting peopel. We sort of accept that one because we could easily accept someone surfing the shield down the stairs (we could probably do that), and we could accept Legolas shooting people quickly at close range since we see him do that all the time, so to us that doesn't really break our understanding of the scene, it's just some great multi-tasking. Fast forward to the Battle of Five Armies, though, and Legolas is gaining altitude by jumping off falling bricks, which our intuitive understanding of physics tells us isn't possible. He goes from "superhuman elvish reflexes" to "mystical powers over gravity" there; it isn't foreshadowed or explained, and doesn't make sense to us. Legolas is magical, unrealistic, and physics-breaking in both movies, but in Two Towers the writers succeed in tricking us into accepting the physics-breaking as reasonable while in Five Armies the writers failed to do so.
The problem I have with Warhammer as abstract "game" in 8e/9e is that it has started doing things that break that verisimilitude. Plasma that overheats more at night in 8e. My tank's antenna shooting your tank's antenna. Area terrain that blocks line of sight to one Land Raider but not another Land Raider despite the fact that they're the exact same size. Flamers as anti-aircraft weapons. Killing a Titan by shooting it with enough riflemen. The writers could easily go through and rejigger the fluff to make all of these make sense, but then the story would just follow the game in being unbelievable because it'd challenge our intuitive understanding more.
I am suggesting that the way the battle plays out in the narrative (e.g. what happens when a Wave Serpent attacks a Bloodthirster) should be consistent in at least some degree with what happens on the tabletop game (when a wave serpent attacks a bloodthirster). I don't believe in 8th edition that this is as tight as it has been in the past, and I believe this is because it is now being seen as a "game" rather than a genuine attempt to fight battles in the 41st millennium, abstracted using minis.
I gotcha. This makes sense. I definitely misunderstood your original point. Thank you for the follow up. I'd agree that in a lot of cases 8th doesn't capture it quite right, but I'm ok with that too. For me, I just want to see that I can play my army "to the fluff" and have them be competitive. Take 7th edition's Gladius formation for Space Marines for example. Admittedly, it was too strong, and I'm NOT advocating for that, but it did represent how Marines have traditionally been portrayed in the fluff. It was a really good example of a rule that rewarded you for playing a "fluffy" list. BUT, once that army hits the table top, I'm fine if some things don't quite pan out like in the fluff. That's too hard to manage imo.
I think part of the issue is that the tournament scene is huge now and they need to decide how best to support that. I think you're right in that the game has moved far beyond its roots as a system that allowed you to recreate battles in a certain setting, and is now more game oriented, but I don't how to manage that effectively. I've found that, players who prefer that approach are happy to tinker with rules on their own, and since that tends to happen in a small social group, everyone is typically ok with the results, whereas you haveto try as best you can to make sure the tournament rules are balanced (even if it means an outcome unlikely to happen in the fluff). I'm ok with this too. Since I play tournaments and narrative, I can see both sides. I could go on all day as I do find this a really interesting topic.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...The question then is what game is that, lol. I want to get my group into it; otherwise, I'm interested in designing one (possibly) or at least giving it an evening of thought. You think the learning curve is it? Some armies are easy to parse and understand, while other ones are difficult? That could be it, I can see your point...
Games I could pick out that are comparable to 40k in learning curve tend to have less nice minis, and the question of scale/theme does come up as well. The closest thing to Warhammer that isn't Warhammer is probably Bolt Action; it's a purely historical WWII game written by ex-Warhammer designers, and has a weird-WWII sci-fi mod (Konflikt '47) and a sci-fi version (Beyond the Gates of Antares) as well.
Yes, that's part of what I am talking about, though I am assuming the fluff goes out of its way to preserve the verisimilitude as a middle step.
I can conceive of (really bad admittedly) fluff that permits all those rules interactions you say aren't realistic - voila, they're "realistic" within the fluff. Since it's entirely fictional, anything is possible. So I think we're saying the same thing, but I'm taking an extra step and assuming the fluff is written to have some connection to our understanding of the world as humans - just like how the scene with Legolas climbing up the bricks was jarring precisely because it didn't have any connection to our understanding.
Tycho wrote:
I am suggesting that the way the battle plays out in the narrative (e.g. what happens when a Wave Serpent attacks a Bloodthirster) should be consistent in at least some degree with what happens on the tabletop game (when a wave serpent attacks a bloodthirster). I don't believe in 8th edition that this is as tight as it has been in the past, and I believe this is because it is now being seen as a "game" rather than a genuine attempt to fight battles in the 41st millennium, abstracted using minis.
I gotcha. This makes sense. I definitely misunderstood your original point. Thank you for the follow up. I'd agree that in a lot of cases 8th doesn't capture it quite right, but I'm ok with that too. For me, I just want to see that I can play my army "to the fluff" and have them be competitive. Take 7th edition's Gladius formation for Space Marines for example. Admittedly, it was too strong, and I'm NOT advocating for that, but it did represent how Marines have traditionally been portrayed in the fluff. It was a really good example of a rule that rewarded you for playing a "fluffy" list. BUT, once that army hits the table top, I'm fine if some things don't quite pan out like in the fluff. That's too hard to manage imo.
I think part of the issue is that the tournament scene is huge now and they need to decide how best to support that. I think you're right in that the game has moved far beyond its roots as a system that allowed you to recreate battles in a certain setting, and is now more game oriented, but I don't how to manage that effectively. I've found that, players who prefer that approach are happy to tinker with rules on their own, and since that tends to happen in a small social group, everyone is typically ok with the results, whereas you haveto try as best you can to make sure the tournament rules are balanced (even if it means an outcome unlikely to happen in the fluff). I'm ok with this too. Since I play tournaments and narrative, I can see both sides. I could go on all day as I do find this a really interesting topic.
I'd love you to go on. The part that bothers me in general about how "gamey" it is is that I don't want to have to rewrite the entire rulesset to make it more narrative. In earlier editions, I could write a narrative mission about rescuing an immobilized tank with a small force of infantry without also rewriting the rules for how armor penetration works so the enemy didn't just blast the tank with small arms until it died (for example). So even though narrative players are willing to "tweak" the rules, that's not an excuse for making the rules as narratively-disconnected (if you forgive the turn of phrase) as possible and then just expecting them to fix it, lol. IMHO.
I think if you want balance in tournaments, find balance in the fluff, and then write to that fluff. For example, if a Tau army stops an Imperial army in a story, look at why and how it did so, and then try to replicate that in the rules for the game and respective armies - and then look at an example of how the Imperium defeated the Tau in another battle, and the same. This of course requires consistency in the fluff, but that's something to be encouraged, IMO.
AnomanderRake wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...The question then is what game is that, lol. I want to get my group into it; otherwise, I'm interested in designing one (possibly) or at least giving it an evening of thought. You think the learning curve is it? Some armies are easy to parse and understand, while other ones are difficult? That could be it, I can see your point...
Games I could pick out that are comparable to 40k in learning curve tend to have less nice minis, and the question of scale/theme does come up as well. The closest thing to Warhammer that isn't Warhammer is probably Bolt Action; it's a purely historical WWII game written by ex-Warhammer designers, and has a weird-WWII sci-fi mod (Konflikt '47) and a sci-fi version (Beyond the Gates of Antares) as well.
I've looked into them and come away kind of ambivalent, to be honest. We can talk about why here, but this is a good point and thank you for bringing it up.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...The question then is what game is that, lol. I want to get my group into it; otherwise, I'm interested in designing one (possibly) or at least giving it an evening of thought. You think the learning curve is it? Some armies are easy to parse and understand, while other ones are difficult? That could be it, I can see your point...
Games I could pick out that are comparable to 40k in learning curve tend to have less nice minis, and the question of scale/theme does come up as well. The closest thing to Warhammer that isn't Warhammer is probably Bolt Action; it's a purely historical WWII game written by ex-Warhammer designers, and has a weird-WWII sci-fi mod (Konflikt '47) and a sci-fi version (Beyond the Gates of Antares) as well.
I've looked into them and come away kind of ambivalent, to be honest. We can talk about why here, but this is a good point and thank you for bringing it up.
On dakka I've read a lot of things about past editions that sounded like interesting mechanics (like guessing ranges, only firing at the closest targets, primary and secondary weapons on tanks, tanks not having hull points etc.) that make me wonder if pre 6th Edition actually felt more "realistic ". But I started in 6th and there I can say what was left of these rules only bogged down the game without feeling realistic or necessary at all.
Nearly all the tank rules only made tanks bad the moment they got hull points and because of those died faster than a Space Marine. I don't know if it's more realistic bringing a tank down by hitting it with your giant fist or by letting a troop of 10k year old veterans of the long war fire their Lascannons on it.
Yes, 8th Edition has strange, gamey moments, but prior editions did too.
And since the OP also raised the question about what's more fun, definitely 8th. Many rules in 6th and 7th slowed the game down without actual purpose or feeling more realistic. Take tank shock as an example. Step 1: read the rulebook again because the rule came up very rarely and was worded terrible.
Step 2 realize you announced your tank shock too late, but ask your opponent to do it anyway because it's fun
Step 3 resolve the tank shock and realize that nothing actually happens if your opponent doesn't want to sacrifice his Sgt.
8th Edition? Move your tank into CC as usual and laugh if it actually rolls over 2 enemys.
I find that many things in the game that were ruled fiddly in prior editions are now more elegant. Sometimes that might seem bland (I saw complains about Daemons now falling to morale and losing their instability when they actually work exactly the same as before), but it's just streamlined.
What I'm missing is more impact of morale, but again, morale was totally irrelevant in 6th and 7th already because just like today 70% of the units ignored it. Suppression and fear could be interesting and they were in older editions, but only filled pages in the rulebook without having really an effect on the game.
Other things to mention that I don't miss and didn't make the game any more realistic were Initiative and weapon skill tables. These are also much more elegant now and account for the larger scale of the game.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...The question then is what game is that, lol. I want to get my group into it; otherwise, I'm interested in designing one (possibly) or at least giving it an evening of thought. You think the learning curve is it? Some armies are easy to parse and understand, while other ones are difficult? That could be it, I can see your point...
Games I could pick out that are comparable to 40k in learning curve tend to have less nice minis, and the question of scale/theme does come up as well. The closest thing to Warhammer that isn't Warhammer is probably Bolt Action; it's a purely historical WWII game written by ex-Warhammer designers, and has a weird-WWII sci-fi mod (Konflikt '47) and a sci-fi version (Beyond the Gates of Antares) as well.
I've looked into them and come away kind of ambivalent, to be honest. We can talk about why here, but this is a good point and thank you for bringing it up.
What sort of game are you looking for?
I don't mean to mislead that I'm looking for a specific game (my game group is wild and free and will try anything once). Just trying to find the essence of what makes 40k so accessible, even when it was more simulationist. I think so far I've got "learning curve" (as in easy to get into, your point) and "accessible" (as in very common to play/see being played, easy to get the models). I would also like to add "creative" or "narrative" to that list, personally, as your dudes can become Your Dudes much more easily than, say, the 21st Panzer dudes can. But that last one is the one being damaged so badly by the unwillingness of the designers to engage with the setting - I've had a few different "Your Dudes" now, all of them completely identical in composition and lore but wildly variant in how they live in the world. The latest iteration is they can't see through terrain but can be seen through the same terrain.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
Irkjoe wrote:Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
This is exactly how the game started(albeit w more RPG elements). This is exactly the appeal for me, the game is something cool to do with my incredibly detailed & well painted miniatures rather than just sitting there collecting dust.
If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: On dakka I've read a lot of things about past editions that sounded like interesting mechanics (like guessing ranges, only firing at the closest targets, primary and secondary weapons on tanks, tanks not having hull points etc.) that make me wonder if pre 6th Edition actually felt more "realistic ". But I started in 6th and there I can say what was left of these rules only bogged down the game without feeling realistic or necessary at all. Nearly all the tank rules only made tanks bad the moment they got hull points and because of those died faster than a Space Marine. I don't know if it's more realistic bringing a tank down by hitting it with your giant fist or by letting a troop of 10k year old veterans of the long war fire their Lascannons on it. Yes, 8th Edition has strange, gamey moments, but prior editions did too. And since the OP also raised the question about what's more fun, definitely 8th. Many rules in 6th and 7th slowed the game down without actual purpose or feeling more realistic. Take tank shock as an example. Step 1: read the rulebook again because the rule came up very rarely and was worded terrible. Step 2 realize you announced your tank shock too late, but ask your opponent to do it anyway because it's fun Step 3 resolve the tank shock and realize that nothing actually happens if your opponent doesn't want to sacrifice his Sgt. 8th Edition? Move your tank into CC as usual and laugh if it actually rolls over 2 enemys. I find that many things in the game that were ruled fiddly in prior editions are now more elegant. Sometimes that might seem bland (I saw complains about Daemons now falling to morale and losing their instability when they actually work exactly the same as before), but it's just streamlined. What I'm missing is more impact of morale, but again, morale was totally irrelevant in 6th and 7th already because just like today 70% of the units ignored it. Suppression and fear could be interesting and they were in older editions, but only filled pages in the rulebook without having really an effect on the game. Other things to mention that I don't miss and didn't make the game any more realistic were Initiative and weapon skill tables. These are also much more elegant now and account for the larger scale of the game.
Awesome, so you do think 8th edition is more "realistic" than the earlier series, though your primary argument centers around gameyness being more fun (because it's simpler and faster). That's generally in line with what I've heard, except the first part. Popularity defined in terms of ease-of-use (though personally I think 8th is really hard to use because it's counter-intuitive in so many places, but that's subjective I'll grant).
Racerguy180 wrote: If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
The problem is that it sells itself as "fight the battles of the 41st millennium!", which it isn't. I also disagree that a 'cinematic representation' is an excuse; even cinema has to obey verisimilitude (just look at the Legolas-brickrunning example mentioned earlier). And those RPG elements you mention in your post? That's realism.
Think about if you read the Drizz't series or another DND book where longswords impaled people with the pointy bit, and then bought into DND, made a character with swords, and then found out that their best and most effective game-mechanic employment was being thrown like a dart. I think you'd be forgiven for being confused and disappointed, even if it's "for cinematicness". It'd feel gamey and unnecessary. That's kind of what I mean by 40k not fitting it's background - the most effective employment for a Land Raider, for example, isn't to deliver Terminators. In fact, the most effective employment for a Land Raider is to sit on the shelf unused so you can buy the Next Big Thing! which is what apparently the game is supposed to prevent in the first place
Sgt. Cortez wrote: On dakka I've read a lot of things about past editions that sounded like interesting mechanics (like guessing ranges, only firing at the closest targets, primary and secondary weapons on tanks, tanks not having hull points etc.) that make me wonder if pre 6th Edition actually felt more "realistic ". But I started in 6th and there I can say what was left of these rules only bogged down the game without feeling realistic or necessary at all...
I went back through a bunch of old rulebooks recently and found that very little in the core rulebook actually changed between 4e and 7e; I think the thing that made the game so unnecessarily complicated by the time 7e rolled around was that the Codexes didn't really pay attention to how they interacted with the rules. To pick on Hull Points as an example, for instance, 40k converted a lot of things to HP badly in 6e so that you ended up with people grumbling about how monstrous creatures were just better than vehicles; go to 30k, though, and you'll find higher AV, more hull points, and vastly weaker MCs (compare a 185pt T6/5W/2+ ion-Riptide with an AP2 large blast and the 3++ off the nova reactor to a 175pt T7/W4/3+ Domitar with a 5++ that only works at range, no jet pack, and one missile launcher).
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Unit1126PLL wrote: ...I don't mean to mislead that I'm looking for a specific game (my game group is wild and free and will try anything once). Just trying to find the essence of what makes 40k so accessible, even when it was more simulationist. I think so far I've got "learning curve" (as in easy to get into, your point) and "accessible" (as in very common to play/see being played, easy to get the models). I would also like to add "creative" or "narrative" to that list, personally, as your dudes can become Your Dudes much more easily than, say, the 21st Panzer dudes can. But that last one is the one being damaged so badly by the unwillingness of the designers to engage with the setting - I've had a few different "Your Dudes" now, all of them completely identical in composition and lore but wildly variant in how they live in the world. The latest iteration is they can't see through terrain but can be seen through the same terrain.
Ah. I sort of waffle on how much the Your Dudes thing really matters; nobody's that bothered by the writers pushing special characters more and more aggressively every edition, and I find it's still pretty rare to find armies not painted as one of the stock paint schemes in the book. That said it is true that most games don't have the wide-open setting with a bunch of variations on the "same army" that Warhammer does.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Can you identify why they'd be so much less simulationist than before? Because I agree, obviously, that they were. What changed, philosophically, and what are they doing now?
It's hard to boil it down to just one thing because it's not just a GW thing, it's market-wide. The old Avalon Hill style of wargame is very much a rarity now, replaced with faster-playing, less simulationist games as a market trend.
A big part of that is definitely demographics. Grognards with an interest in military history are, and always have been, a pretty niche audience. Videogames and TCGs, on the other hand, have become extremely popular, and so board games (and wargames by extension) have tapped into those markets by leveraging familiar concepts and mechanics. You also have to consider design intent, and what game designers are looking to as inspiration- a game that is designed to evoke the look and feel of a WW2 war movie is going to be built very differently from one designed to replicate how WW2 actually was fought, and so you get Bolt Action versus Advanced Squad Leader. The former is exciting, easy to get into for casual players, and has imagery and ideas that are appealing to a broad audience. The latter, well, not so much. D&D is another great example; plenty of MMORPGs have copied from D&D, and then in turn D&D has copied from MMOs.
As well, videogames in particular have largely displaced the niche of complex board games. I mean, if I want to play a detailed historical simulation of the politics of medieval Europe, I could take the time to learn a complex, simulationist, nitty-gritty wargame... or I could fire up Crusader Kings and let the computer do the work. Wargames have, in that respect, done a hard pivot towards social experiences and ease of play. If you want to simulate flying a biplane, you boot up Rise of Flight. If you want to play out a fun dogfight against your best friend on the kitchen table while drinking beer, you break out Wings of War. There are still games like The Burning Blue out there, but they're a rarity.
I've noticed a tendency in some circles to shake one's fist and lament how kids these days have too-short attention spans and demand instant gratification, but I would wager that the kids who are interested in military history and willing to dive into an Avalon Hill game to get that fix have always been the rarity. It's more that the popularity of videogames provides a much more mainstream inlet into tabletop gaming, so just as tabletop RPGs pivot to embrace MMORPG gamers, so too have tabletop wargames pivoted to embrace RTS gamers. When the overwhelming majority of videogames use their setting more as window dressing for fun mechanics than as the core inspiration for the experience, tabletop games follow suit.
Going back to 40K, I think it's important to remember that 40K has more or less always been 'something to do with your cool models', which means that from a design perspective it has always been about fun rather than simulation. In that context, it makes perfect sense that when miniature wargaming was a pastime for military history nerds, it borrowed ideas from historical wargames, because that's what the largest demographic found fun. Now that it's pivoted more towards a pastime for videogamers, it borrows ideas from videogames, to match what they expect from a game.
It is what it is. As someone who appreciates the more simulationist style I've been starting to get into HH, but I've also toyed with the idea of rewriting 40K as a pet project. I expect 40K to stick around, but not as a wargame in the traditional sense; that demographic will always still exist but not as the primary market share.
Racerguy180 wrote: If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
The problem is that it sells itself as "fight the battles of the 41st millennium!", which it isn't. I also disagree that a 'cinematic representation' is an excuse; even cinema has to obey verisimilitude (just look at the Legolas-brickrunning example mentioned earlier). And those RPG elements you mention in your post? That's realism.
RT is my favorite game(next to Super Mario 3)ever, so in totally down with them reincorporating a GM back into the game, but kinda hard to have a pickup game with one tho. everytime I field my Salamanders, I'm visualizing all of the dice rolls, movement, etc as a big fething movie and its plenty cinematic for me.
Think about if you read the Drizz't series or another DND book where longswords impaled people with the pointy bit, and then bought into DND, made a character with swords, and then found out that their best and most effective game-mechanic employment was being thrown like a dart. I think you'd be forgiven for being confused and disappointed, even if it's "for cinematicness". It'd feel gamey and unnecessary. That's kind of what I mean by 40k not fitting it's background - the most effective employment for a Land Raider, for example, isn't to deliver Terminators. In fact, the most effective employment for a Land Raider is to sit on the shelf unused so you can buy the Next Big Thing! which is what apparently the game is supposed to prevent in the first place
My Helios will continue to used for the foreseeable future. Its also kinda hard to play a game in m38 with the next big thing.
FWIW - I get the point raised. Mainly because I felt it during the rather sad demise of WHFB. Back in idk, 4th and 5th it felt like "this is how armies of elves, and orcs, and wizards and dragons would actually fight in a medieval or classical era". It then slowly turned into "I've managed to dodge 3 millimetres out of your charge arc so your useless haha victory is mine". Partly though that might have been the evolving... mentality of the playerbase.
I'm afraid going all the way back to 2nd I've always found 40k fundamentally *Gamey* rather than trying to portray what faction X or Y would "actually" be like if they fought each other. So... idk, through the editions, I've never really been that bothered with abstraction on abstraction. Its just about whether the game runs smoothly and is fun. I felt the 5th->6th->7th evolution resulted in an incredibly clunky mess, and didn't represent... anything really. Its just rules on rules.
I agree that 40k has been moving more and more to the gamey side over the editions (I started at the end of 2nd). Some examples:
Blast weapons only ever hitting squad A, even though the models removed are in base to base contact with squad B.
Tank facing no longer being important and removal of the vehicle damage charts for hull points / wounds& degradation
Morale no longer doing anything. We used to be able to pin and rout units!
The addition of reroll auras
The addition of stratagems with no downsides and no counterplay; strats that do not promote any type of decision making in game (not all of them)
The general upping of movement speed/mobility further lessening the value of fast units
Not all of these are bad imo, and some of them are necessary to facilitate increasingly large armies (whether that is desirable is another question). But I do miss actually having fast units maneuvre to get at side armor and having weapons dedicated to glancing tanks or pinning units. These changes have definitely made the game simpler and more gamey, which also made it more accessible and successful. However, it was already plenty accessible to me, and I generally liked the extra depth of the old days
I think modern wargames are only now trying to use the innovative design ideas that fueled the modern boardgame revolution just like boardgames learned about those ideas from video games (which are easiest to study for player experience due to the availability of data). I'd say token&hex wargames are probably the most anachronist of them all, relying on very outdated - but apparently sanctified by wargamer geezer tradition - concepts
Buzzword concepts like "elegant rules", "player agency", "depth vs complexity", "streamlined resolution", "interesting choices", "decision-driven mechanics" "meaningful counterplay", "catch-up mechanisms" etc. are probably going to be implemented more and more in innovative wargame designs, despite the opposition of the "roll dice and then more dice and see what happens" old guard. I think wargames will keep moving from their decision-light, RNG-heavy era, just like modern boardgames left Monopoly and Snakes&Ladders behind.
shortymcnostrill wrote: I agree that 40k has been moving more and more to the gamey side over the editions (I started at the end of 2nd). Some examples:
Blast weapons only ever hitting squad A, even though the models removed are in base to base contact with squad B.
Tank facing no longer being important and removal of the vehicle damage charts for hull points / wounds& degradation
Morale no longer doing anything. We used to be able to pin and rout units!
The addition of reroll auras
The addition of stratagems with no downsides and no counterplay; strats that do not promote any type of decision making in game (not all of them)
The general upping of movement speed/mobility further lessening the value of fast units
Not all of these are bad imo, and some of them are necessary to facilitate increasingly large armies (whether that is desirable is another question). But I do miss actually having fast units maneuvre to get at side armor and having weapons dedicated to glancing tanks or pinning units. These changes have definitely made the game simpler and more gamey, which also made it more accessible and successful. However, it was already plenty accessible to me, and I generally liked the extra depth of the old days
Blast being able to be targeted anywhere near where friendly troop positions are is already pretty gamey, especially for Sisters, Marines, and Eldar, who wouldn't just throw their own units away. Theoretically a whirlwind shouldn't be fireable on the same table as another marine unit.
The vehicle charts were gamey nonsense. Why is a meltagun more likely to make a vehicle immobile than a lascannon? They also just served to make vehicles universally useless. The new degradation chart is an abstraction but it's also just a far superior system. Also, I seem to recall there being a period where putting an extra gun on a land raider was essentially adding an extra hull point. And don't even get me started on fish of fury.
I could talk about the game-y ness of old morale too, but honestly between ATSKNF and Fearless, 99% of the usable units in the game were immune to morale anyway. Setting wise, morale SHOULDN'T matter for anyone except guard and Orkz because everyone else is some sort of thousands years old supersoldier, or mind wiped slave warrior, or billion year old automaton, or a hive mind drone. The fact that Morale was a bigger deal before is...wait for it...super gamey for 40k.
The rest of it is either revisionist history or comes from much earlier editions because in the editions I played vehicles facings never mattered because you'd just walk a meltagun up to the front of a tank and pop it instantly. No one ever bothered to hit side armor because it was a negligible benefit the vast majority of the time. No one bothered to try and pin anything because everything was immune or close enough.
None of that stuff created extra depth either, it just created extra pages in the rule book. Nothing was lost when vehicle facings or templates left the game other than tedium and arguments about where exactly the front of a wave serpent ends.
ERJAK wrote: Blast being able to be targeted anywhere near where friendly troop positions are is already pretty gamey, especially for Sisters, Marines, and Eldar, who wouldn't just throw their own units away. Theoretically a whirlwind shouldn't be fireable on the same table as another marine unit.
8th edition doesn't fix this, and as pointed out, makes it worse.
Plus, it's plausible that targeting systems or doctrines have changed in the future.
ERJAK wrote: The vehicle charts were gamey nonsense. Why is a meltagun more likely to make a vehicle immobile than a lascannon? They also just served to make vehicles universally useless. The new degradation chart is an abstraction but it's also just a far superior system. Also, I seem to recall there being a period where putting an extra gun on a land raider was essentially adding an extra hull point. And don't even get me started on fish of fury.
A meltagun isn't more likely to make a vehicle immobile than a lascannon; this is a flat-out lie. They're both 16.7 percent after a penetrating hit. One is a 4, the other a 5 to do so, but in both cases the next higher number (5+ and 6+ respectively) outright makes the vehicle explode, which is plausible. In fact, certain weapons making vehicles more likely to be one-shot than other weapons is a virtue, not a vice. The rest of your stuff is just complaints about the codex, not about the rules; the number of hull points could be tweaked, for example. Do you really think the current degradation is a far superior system? A literally unstoppable Twin Heavy Flamer Chimera is a-go, then; after all, it doesn't degrade in any meaningful way, because the abstraction doesn't make sense. (Track Guards + autohit weapons means the Chimera ignores the entire degradation chart, something that was never accomplished by anything except the superheavy vehicles during earlier editions, and superheavies suffered from the explodes result). I have no idea where the "meltagun is +1 hullpoint" thing comes from, but the number of outright lies in here it isn't surprising you'd throw in one more.
ERJAK wrote: I could talk about the game-y ness of old morale too, but honestly between ATSKNF and Fearless, 99% of the usable units in the game were immune to morale anyway. Setting wise, morale SHOULDN'T matter for anyone except guard and Orkz because everyone else is some sort of thousands years old supersoldier, or mind wiped slave warrior, or billion year old automaton, or a hive mind drone. The fact that Morale was a bigger deal before is...wait for it...super gamey for 40k.
Morale has always been a bit crap in 40k, this is true. 8th edition doesn't fix this.
ERJAK wrote: The rest of it is either revisionist history or comes from much earlier editions because in the editions I played vehicles facings never mattered because you'd just walk a meltagun up to the front of a tank and pop it instantly. No one ever bothered to hit side armor because it was a negligible benefit the vast majority of the time. No one bothered to try and pin anything because everything was immune or close enough.
Earlier editions, methinks, or you had a playgroup that didn't actually execute tactics, which is a valid way to play (but isn't an excuse to remove the ability to use tactics from anyone else).
ERJAK wrote: None of that stuff created extra depth either, it just created extra pages in the rule book. Nothing was lost when vehicle facings or templates left the game other than tedium and arguments about where exactly the front of a wave serpent ends.
It's a bit about depth but the argument here is about narrative "realism" within the setting - and simulating that "realism" on the tabletop.
I think modern wargames are only now trying to use the innovative design ideas that fueled the modern boardgame revolution just like boardgames learned about those ideas from video games (which are easiest to study for player experience due to the availability of data). I'd say token&hex wargames are probably the most anachronist of them all, relying on very outdated - but apparently sanctified by wargamer geezer tradition - concepts
I grew up on Air-Cav and Western Front Tank Leader. Really good fun for their time, but yeah - can't imagine rolling that out today - here's a hexmap and 6000 flat pieces of cardboard. There are no pictures. What do you mean you can't do basic algebra? Well how to you expect to calculate your shooting?! It really was a different time ....
I'd love you to go on. The part that bothers me in general about how "gamey" it is is that I don't want to have to rewrite the entire rulesset to make it more narrative. In earlier editions, I could write a narrative mission about rescuing an immobilized tank with a small force of infantry without also rewriting the rules for how armor penetration works so the enemy didn't just blast the tank with small arms until it died (for example). So even though narrative players are willing to "tweak" the rules, that's not an excuse for making the rules as narratively-disconnected (if you forgive the turn of phrase) as possible and then just expecting them to fix it, lol. IMHO.
Well, you asked for it ...
I completely understand where you're coming from with that example, and it's a really good example of exactly what I'm talking about as well. The narrative gamer ends up (unintentionally) getting punished since that style of gaming tends to have that implied social contract whereas this isn't possible for a tournament so rules are written in that vein. I for one hate that small arms can whittle down a tank, but I also remember the days when you could have things (a surprising amount of things) that were immune to too many weapon profiles.
I don't disagree with you either, but it becomes a problem of nuance, and nuance appears difficult for the GW team. If 40k is a game where 2-5 squads and MAYBE a vehicle fight against same, then ok - let's have real armor (where your auto-pistol can't hurt my tank no matter how many 6's you roll). But if 40k is to be a game where Titanic units are just a part of everyday life, um, I don't know where to go with that. I've often thought that, if they want things to represent the fluff better, they would do well to add one additional restriction to army building - that of "you can only have so many of these at this points level".
From there, I would even suggest three levels of rule sets (because as much as they want Kill Team to be a gateway, it isn't). Each set gets increasingly more complex and adjusts with the points to represent the level of granularity you would want at those sizes. So in the tank example, you wouldn't have to adjust how armor works because, ideally, it would already work correctly for that level. Anti-tank in particular is an interesting one because there was a time when anti-tank worked closer to what you would expect - great against armor but kind of a waste in most other spots. It feels like the previously "mid-range" weapons have suddenly become good enough at everything that the weapons on the ends of the spectrum got pushed out. Since nearly every infantry squad can take things like Plasma, and since rolling a "1" while over-charging is a lot less of a concern than it used to be, you end up with even more ways that tanks need help.
I don't mean to imply that armor is the sole thing "wrong" with the game in this regard but it's an easy example to use to support the point. Personally, like I said, I'm ok with a lot of it as long as, if I play my army to the fluff, it works. The 6th ed Chaos book is a great example because it punished the player for even picking it up. Then, the most powerful units often ended being the least fluffy units. Just a mess. I skipped two whole editions with my CSM because of that.
The other place that gets me is morale. I don't want to go back to the days when your unit actually ran away and you just kept rolling dice to see how far they move until they either got to cover, ran off the table, or actually made a successful check, but as it stands now it's also meaningless. There are plenty of examples of Space Marine armies executing tactical retreats, of IG units fleeing in panic (or performing a tactical retreat ), Dark Eldar deciding the raid isn't worth the cost and leaving, etc etc. Morale right now is still completely meaningless. I'd love to see something more done with that.
I played a different game many moons ago where, if you shot at a unit and missed, you still effected them in their turn. The idea being "fine, you didn't hit them, but they know they're getting shot at so they're not going to just stand up and run 14" across the board now". I forget how it worked but the morale system worked such that maybe they have a turn of slower movement etc. I think this would work well for those times your Catachan squad is creeping through the jungle being stalked by a squad of sneaky Eldar, etc.
^In 6th and 7th AP values lower than 2 (1 and 0) modified the result on the damage table, which could get you a result of 7, which did extra Hull Points of damage, iirc.
. . .
Overall I like this conversation. I always felt that the more 'realistic/simulationist' versions of the game were 4th Ed and Prior. I loved 4th Ed Target Priority rules, terrain sizes, etc.
Gadzilla666 wrote: ^^^ I particularly miss the target priority rules. It was a far better way to differentiate elite armies rather than "Let's give em lots of rerolls!".
And a better way to show the leadership of a SM Captain. The Rites of Battle was a default ability of Captains, and it gave every SM on the table a higher Ld, which meant they could target priority better. It made 1000 times more sense as a way of directing fire as a commander that has all the benefits of helmet comms.
I abuse the ***t out of rerolls but god I hate them.
Agreed. Though I preferred playing an army where almost everything was either L9 or L10 on its own, as befit an army comprised of ancient Veterans of The Long War.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Conversely, Cruentus, do you think it is impossible for a more realistic ruleset (such as the historicals you mention, which are indeed somewhat difficult to get groups into) to be as popular as 40k?
EDIT:
Also everyone be warned, I'm taking notes on other games to try, so don't think those comments go unnoticed.
I would never say impossible, but for the same reasons as mentioned upthread, it would be an uphill battle. Those interested in the more "simulationist" side of things/e.g. the more complicated ruleset, would be the niche within the niche. It might end up popular in some garage groups, or conventions, but not have the mass appeal that 40k currently enjoys.
@AdmiralHalsey the comment about "Games" Workshop was tongue in cheek.
With re: to older editions. I can remember deciding whether to include lascannon or other heavy anti-tank in my lists (would I need it? What if my opponent didn't bring armor), or being able to equip sarges with Krak (in case it was needed as a last resort), or equipping flamers for hordes, etc. Sure, it was crunchy, and most of the choices were useless, but I would outfit "my dudes" how I wanted. And it at least gave the appearance of having a role on the battlefield - AT was used against tanks, flamers and HBs against hordes. I remember when the Assault Cannon went to 4 shots, or was it 6, and my mind was blown. So much firepower! Now, its just a matter of how many of the most effective gun can I get on my dudes, who are all armed the same, with all the same basic equipment. They went from "my dudes" to "these dudes". Again, I know some of the wargear would be considered gamey, and they never did get the usefulness of armor/transports using Hull Points or the charts, but they felt like vehicles. Not monsters (which is the opposite argument at the time - why can't they be like monsters? LoL)
I enjoyed the crunch of the game, without all the freebie rules tacked on to entire armies, and certainly more than 8th/9th.
There was one ruleset that was leaked as a 6th edition 40k set, that had everyone abuzz, which turned out to be a fake. But at the time, I remember thinking, man, I wish this was what they were doing, it read great. LoL.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
Irkjoe wrote:Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
This is exactly how the game started(albeit w more RPG elements). This is exactly the appeal for me, the game is something cool to do with my incredibly detailed & well painted miniatures rather than just sitting there collecting dust.
If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
I collected the minis to do the table top battle simulation.
I came from RPGs and chess.
I did not begin as a toy collector who got bored looking at his toys.
Anyone who lives that way, we’ll, I don’t know what to tell them except I and the people that I came into the hobby with are not motivated by a plastic fetish and a needy imagination.
We wanted and found realism in the playing out of fictional battles in a fictional universe.
Indeed, for those who fall back on the ridiculous position that 40k cannot be realistic, ask yourselves why the miniatures have guns, stand upright, why walls should block LoS and so on... all realism imported from common everyday experience without which the game would be impossible to play.
Moreover, ask yourselves when the game would stop making sense, as 8th had stopped making sense to me.
Remove gravity?
Remove LoS restrictions?
Remove morale?
When we take away too much realism, the game stops making sense and loses appeal.
Without some realism, the game is unplayable at least because without common intuitions reflected in rules and game dynamics, players can not communicate easily and so many expectations are denied that the interactions become gamey in the sense of the OP.
40k was a tabletop battle sim.
Some abstractions are necessary, else it would be real war with real people, but by representing crucial aspects realistically, expectations from common intuitions are reinforced and the sense that a battle is being lived out on a tabletop (4x8 being the proper size for 1500pt games btw) is realized in the minds of both players, I.e. it is immersive.
8th’s excessive card gaminess plus flying tanks running contrary to deeply established background, and ridiculous marines with autocannons in jet packs (Srsly OMG stupid) completely spat in the face of the fictional reality constructed over years and years of the buildup of common expectations about what counts as reasonable in this fictional universe, and made the game unplayable for me and the hobby mostly unpalatable since.
9th at least gives us walls that mostly work like walls again, at least in some important ways. Now if the most of the card based bs and rando immersion breaking idiocy like snipers that don’t need LoS can disappear, we will have the war back in this game in a proper way.
Short story, it is a war (game) first.
It became more gamey with the rise of CCG fanatics and their video game addicted cousins, alongside the distancing of rpg enthusiasts likely due at least in part to the ccg and video addicted attitude about what counts as a good game or a reason to play 40k, e.g. collect cards/toys, look for some way to stack the deck, then look for a game system that lets them do something with this so called list of collected toys.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Insectum7 wrote: ^In 6th and 7th AP values lower than 2 (1 and 0) modified the result on the damage table, which could get you a result of 7, which did extra Hull Points of damage, iirc.
. . .
Overall I like this conversation. I always felt that the more 'realistic/simulationist' versions of the game were 4th Ed and Prior. I loved 4th Ed Target Priority rules, terrain sizes, etc.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
Irkjoe wrote:Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
This is exactly how the game started(albeit w more RPG elements). This is exactly the appeal for me, the game is something cool to do with my incredibly detailed & well painted miniatures rather than just sitting there collecting dust.
If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
I collected the minis to do the table top battle simulation.
I came from RPGs and chess.
I did not begin as a toy collector who got bored looking at his toys.
Anyone who lives that way, we’ll, I don’t know what to tell them except I and the people that I came into the hobby with are not motivated by a plastic fetish and a needy imagination.
We wanted and found realism in the playing out of fictional battles in a fictional universe.
Indeed, for those who fall back on the ridiculous position that 40k cannot be realistic, ask yourselves why the miniatures have guns, stand upright, why walls should block LoS and so on... all realism imported from common everyday experience without which the game would be impossible to play.
Moreover, ask yourselves when the game would stop making sense, as 8th had stopped making sense to me.
Remove gravity?
Remove LoS restrictions?
Remove morale?
When we take away too much realism, the game stops making sense and loses appeal.
Without some realism, the game is unplayable at least because without common intuitions reflected in rules and game dynamics, players can not communicate easily and so many expectations are denied that the interactions become gamey in the sense of the OP.
40k was a tabletop battle sim.
Some abstractions are necessary, else it would be real war with real people, but by representing crucial aspects realistically, expectations from common intuitions are reinforced and the sense that a battle is being lived out on a tabletop (4x8 being the proper size for 1500pt games btw) is realized in the minds of both players, I.e. it is immersive.
8th’s excessive card gaminess plus flying tanks running contrary to deeply established background, and ridiculous marines with autocannons in jet packs (Srsly OMG stupid) completely spat in the face of the fictional reality constructed over years and years of the buildup of common expectations about what counts as reasonable in this fictional universe, and made the game unplayable for me and the hobby mostly unpalatable since.
9th at least gives us walls that mostly work like walls again, at least in some important ways. Now if the most of the card based bs and rando immersion breaking idiocy like snipers that don’t need LoS can disappear, we will have the war back in this game in a proper way.
Short story, it is a war (game) first.
It became more gamey with the rise of CCG fanatics and their video game addicted cousins, alongside the distancing of rpg enthusiasts likely due at least in part to the ccg and video addicted attitude about what counts as a good game or a reason to play 40k, e.g. collect cards/toys, look for some way to stack the deck, then look for a game system that lets them do something with this so called list of collected toys.
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Insectum7 wrote: ^In 6th and 7th AP values lower than 2 (1 and 0) modified the result on the damage table, which could get you a result of 7, which did extra Hull Points of damage, iirc.
. . .
Overall I like this conversation. I always felt that the more 'realistic/simulationist' versions of the game were 4th Ed and Prior. I loved 4th Ed Target Priority rules, terrain sizes, etc.
Absolutely.
ok, I have a question for you, would you still play 40k w cardboard chits for units & 2d terrain?
I will totally agree that CCG & current video game influences are the worst thing to happen to 40k.
Unit1126PLL wrote: That sounds freaking awesome, if a bit tangential to the point.
Do you think modern 8th Edition's move away from the 3rd-7th model represents that?
Yes, I think it's what they were trying to achieve. Both failing and succeeding at it from my point of view
While they definitely tried to streamline the game's core rules, they didn't really achieve much depth (which WH40K never really had much of IMO). And quite soon, the relentless churn of new rules made the system clogged with miniutae, interpretations, exceptions and untested interactions. So from this point of view the move towards "less complication, more depth" was failed on both fronts. The game still has poor player agency and the ratio of time spent on playing to that spent operating the engine is still abysmal.
But...
...apparently just the well-marketed idea that the game had become more accessible, with less of a memorisation burden and more of unbridled fun made it a great success financially and popularity-wise. So a success for the company nonetheless.
I have read here recently, that WH40K only has a pool of ~20 playtesters. To be honest I am not suprised that the rules produced are more centered around randomness and not player choices. I can imagine the design team thinking about a new unit
"Let's give the player a choice of 3 interesting options when they activate this unit! It will improve player agency and emotional engagement as a result!"
"Aaaand...you want to playtest those options so that all are balanced and fair and one of them isn't an obvious choice every time?"
"Well, no, I don't have time to do this..."
"Ok, so instead of choosing anything let's make the player roll a D3 and then we don't have to balance those options at all. The dice will make this decision for our players. Please remind the marketing team to put some articles on WHCommunity and in WD describing how rolling more dice is so much fun and making decisions is boring. Thanks for the meeting, team!"
For comparison, here's the list of playtesters responsible for Spirit Island (13rd place on BGG, 1st among solo games, so, arguably, a well designed game)
And let's not forget a board game is a much more limited environment with fewer elements and interactions than a full blown wargame. 20 playtesters for a game the size of 40k (and a company the size of GW) is a joke tbh.
If 40K was more of a campaign-club game than a series of pick-up battles, I think it would have grown more as a war(game) than the (war)game it has been developed as.
Battles in this game are fought as one shots, with no mechanics that affect the construction or organization of your army in-between fights. There's no logistics, reinforcements or the like - except as optional rules in one-off products like Urban Combat.
That doesn't make things bad, but it has an affect on how people approach 40K - both to build their armies and play at the table.
I would certainly like to see GW put more effort into providing stronger campaign arcs and tools - like the Planetary Empires of old - to create a strong base for those who aren't satisfied with one-off pickup tournament games. Psychic Awakening does NOT fit that bill, though if it had been approached properly, it could have. Something more akin to the old Eye of Terror campaign, but a bit more fleshed out.
Unit1126PLL wrote: That sounds freaking awesome, if a bit tangential to the point.
Do you think modern 8th Edition's move away from the 3rd-7th model represents that?
Very much so. Table top games need to play to their advantages versus computer games to 'work'.
Resolving n+1 stages to determine if a shot hurt a target is bad. Modelling interplay between a bunch of reactive abilities (stuff like kill team tactics and 40k stratagems) is, by comparison better. Forcing both players to be engaged the whole of both turns is ideal, either by giving reactive choices, or by having alternating units in a single 'turn'.
My issue is that in many ways, Horus Heresy/7th is one of the worst examples of a 'game' - beautiful armies, especially the superheavi I know you love, but setting up 2-3000 points takes a huge amount of time and then one player spends the next twenty minutes removing casualties with no decision-making involvement whatsoever...
I'm not opposed to more simulationist and 'crunchy' games, but you can capture the 'feel' without ridiculous detail. Adeptus Titanicus is great, and - old and OOP as it may be - I love battlefleet gothic too.
I really think both kill team and apocalypse are really good games, and in many ways better than 'normal' 40k - I'd much rather see elements of them (or the old epic Armageddon, much of which formed the basis of bolt action) as the basis of the game.
And, yes. Stratagems to add choices are great. But I'd much rather have only 4-5 per army than a couple of dozen but only two that matter.... I like apocalypse's strategem-deck-building approach for that reason.
Interesting comments indeed + especially about modern game design.
I would generally disagree that 8th is "modern" in that sense. Dice are the prime determinator of things still. When a model dies, there is no player agency. In 9th, even when a model *moves*, there are so many restrictions on coherency (for greater than 5 model units) that you don't even have that much agency in moving the model, in my humble opinion.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making?
Right now, to me (and admittedly I am biased), it seems like most of the decisions are made at listbuilding, and really only Stratagems are the choices you make - everything else is just executing a combo developed in listbuilding. Even a Stratagem sometimes.
For example, my Slaanesh Daemons have exactly one way to play, and my Sororitas, etc.
unit
you are touching on many of the things that in relation to 40K specifically has driven me back to playing 5th edition core rules with a splash of house rules form other editions.
With games there has to be some level of abstract to make the game work-area terrain for example. a tree template can represent a forest or a small grove of trees as such you can use it to represent something that effects movements while also being so dense it blocks LOS like 3rd/4th ed 40K or DUST uses- unless you are in it and within a certain distance of the edge, or like 5th-7th 40K where it still has an effect on movement, does not block LOS, but does provide cover.
the big break is immersion, referenced here many times as "simulation" Internally we know how certain things function-lets take vehicles in 40K as a glaring example. outflanking vehicles used to be an important tactic because as in real life the front of an AFV always has the best armor to face incoming fire since the entire vehicle could not generally function with all armor facings being equal. next we have vehicle movement, one of my favorite set of rules from 4th that we still use in 5th was hitting vehicles in close combat based on if they moved and how far/fast they moved. this was another on table tactical trade off for the vehicle player as it directly impacted the effective shooting of the vehicle.
The next thing is of course LOS from the weapon mounts. it totally breaks me when i look at 8th/9th vehicles like the repulsor where the fixed guns point in ever direction and somehow if any part of the repulsor can draw LOS to something it wants to shoot at it can fire every single weapon at the target as if it is some kind of spinning top. weapon and armor facings are an immersive part of the game that can be ignored on larger battlefields in micro scale like epic for sake of simplicity, but it hardly fits in a larger scale setting like normal 40K in 28mm.
the final example is something that set 40K apart-vehicles are not monsterous creatures. they had a different mechanic in the damage table to better represent how vehicles behave as we understand them. giving them hull points and then just full conversion to MCs is another thing that breaks in game immersion.
DUST manages a better incarnation of a vehicle wound system, while maintaining weapon mount facing restrictions, but this is mostly due to the fact that MCs are really not much of a thing in the game. there are only 3 in one of the 4 faction blocks in the entire game. the game is also built from the ground up on a wound system mechanic unlike how 40K began.
I enjoy the lore driven rules in my games, but i also enjoy a certain level of simulated realism/immersion over simple gameyness for comp players. it is the reason why things like formations, CP, stratagems, card decks of objectives all worked to turn me off of NU-40K as it feels more like a CCG than a TT combat game where what you do with what you have on the table is more important that what super-combo gotcha you can set up.
Good input, Aphyon, but I think we should brace ourselves for more CCG-like experiences; it's modern wargame design, apparently.
And I mean that seriously - it's more popular and fun, I think. Even if it ruins things for people like you and me, who want to tell a plausible story on the tabletop.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Interesting comments indeed + especially about modern game design.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making? .
Short answer....no. Because I'm not arguing it is.
However there are a few good things. Alternating choices of units to fight, for example, means you need to balance risks of toughness vs damage output. However, I think a 'better' game would have alternating activation throughout the turn - much like apocalypse and kill team does.
I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I don't mind tight coherency. The 'playing piece' in 40k is the squad, not the model. Coherency is an issue in 7th/heresy because blasts, but "I spread out 2" to not die to quad guns" was not a tactical choice, because there was little reason not to. It was a big chunk of effort required with little actual thought behind it. In 9th, random blast values with biases for big squads achieves the same but means decisions on movement focus on "What point on the battlefield am I moving towards or away from" rather than "how do I set up an inch-perfect conga-line to get there".
Movement decisions - especially movement restrictions - drive turn-on-turn strategy a lot. It's why I think space combat games like BFG and Xwing often feel more tactical - in part because clever movement can prevent opponents getting to use some or all of their firepower, which means the smartest combo-list-building falls apart if you're out-positioned and find someone crossing your T at point blank range...
I also agree about stratagems. Apocalypse stratagems are quite nice - you will have a 'hand' of, say, five stratagems from a deck of thirty available to you at one time, and once used they won't be available for a turn or so. That pushes you to actually use all the different options - most of them have a 'tactical reroll' effect, but that's way worse than their 'proper' use.
As to combo-building, I agree. Thing is, it shouldn't be. Warlord traits, psychic powers, litanies, relics and stratagems are all things layered 'on top' of an army list - so there should be no reason you can't cave the same sororitas commandery list play very differently I two different games - one game loading out characters with relic melee weapons and 'deliver holy beatings' warlord traits, whilst another game they're all about buffing their troops to hold the line and die standing. Adding that option gives you a 'sideboard' effect that lets you tailor a bit to the opponent and mission, and if only one option appeals that's the fault of the faction codes, not the core rules.
Just a note: The most common definition of a "game" is something that has structured "game play" and "game play" is most commonly a series of interesting choices".
Interesting choices are choices that have consequences with non obviously favorable answers or at least answers with a cost.
Shoots and Ladders is not a game. It has no game play. You make no choices. A RNG tells you where to move and then you do what the space tell you to do and eventually someone makes it to the end and wins. It teaches little kids some fundamental game mechanics but does not in any way have any actual game play.
Tetris on the other hand has all game play. Where you place the blocks, in what orientation, destroying one line now or 5 lines later if you can, the ramping up of speed as more lines are broken.... every action you take (or don't) has consequence and thus is interesting. So tetris is ALL game play.
I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
Lance845 wrote: I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
See, I find this interesting, and I realize I'm quoting Lance845 to comment on Locarano's post.
I never paid particular attention to my squad dispersal when facing blasts. Unless I was trying to charge at something like a Demolisher. It just wasn't worth my time to measure the spread of my troops to insure 2" exactly between everyone, particularly to repeat it again and again. That is an example of something that knocks me out of the "immersion" in the game. I moved my troops vaguely in a squad formation, in coherency. The blasts, except for flamers, were random on their hits anyway, so unlikely to do massive damage. Plus, the wound rolls and such usually meant casualties weren't scooped off the board by the handful (unless you disembarked a squad of Guard or Orks into a tight space and they got a direct hit from a Battle Cannon or something).
Its also an example of something that the rules allow (measuring 2" between each and every one of your dudes) to avoid blasts being fully effective (or I should say minimally effective) while remaining in coherency, and something that the design studio guys probably never did or never thought to do, because it was gaming the game.
That being said, the difference between 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th is going to be in the eye of the beholder. Some see minimal differences, some see major issues with each one. I'm probably overlooking the major holes in 5th or 7th HH (e.g. tanking on the 2+ sarge in huge tactical squads, challenges), but to me those seemed more interesting that what I've been playing and seeing recently. Again, to each their own.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Interesting comments indeed + especially about modern game design.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making? .
Short answer....no. Because I'm not arguing it is.
However there are a few good things. Alternating choices of units to fight, for example, means you need to balance risks of toughness vs damage output. However, I think a 'better' game would have alternating activation throughout the turn - much like apocalypse and kill team does.
I agree with you here. I brought up LOTR in the OP, which has an interesting Alternating Phases design and would like to hear your thoughts.
locarno24 wrote:I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
I do like the degrading stats mechanic rather than the damage table, that's a good point, but I think some things are lacking: the ability to instantly kill tanks and the ability to instantly kill monsters. I think the biggest problem with earlier editions was the latter was absent from monsters as well, not that the former was present for vehicles. Having the ability to one-shot big things with a critical hit is both more realistic (it's exactly that sort of thing that discourages "bigger is better" designs since World War 2 for surface warfare combatants, for example) and helps with the realism aspect. The problem wasn't that meltaguns could slag tanks, the problem was they couldn't slag riptides equally well, IMHO.
locarno24 wrote:What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I think our desires for game scale are different. I love arcs of fire and armor facing - and crossfire/blast markers causing suppression would be awesome. But I don't think armor facing makes much sense at the Epic scale. But at the scale 40k is at, where individual guys matter? I think it's cool that the side or rear of a tank is easier to damage than the front. I think it's realistic, and it helps me write the narrative of "my squad couldn't hurt the front, so they worked their way around the side in a rotational flank and killed it". that sort of narrative doesn't emerge from gameplay in the current iteration of 40k.
locarno24 wrote:I don't mind tight coherency. The 'playing piece' in 40k is the squad, not the model. Coherency is an issue in 7th/heresy because blasts, but "I spread out 2" to not die to quad guns" was not a tactical choice, because there was little reason not to. It was a big chunk of effort required with little actual thought behind it. In 9th, random blast values with biases for big squads achieves the same but means decisions on movement focus on "What point on the battlefield am I moving towards or away from" rather than "how do I set up an inch-perfect conga-line to get there".
See, I also disagree with you here. Spreading out 2" wasn't the default choice, it has consequences. It makes your unit's frontage bigger, which helps my Daemons (for example) all collapse onto a single enemy unit with one charge, rather than piling on top of eachother to achieve same against a more tightly packed unit. It takes up more space, inhibiting the movement of your own large vehicles or monsters - in a recent game, my max-coherency-to-avoid-blasts Lasrifle Section inhibited the movement of my tanks so badly that I ended up clumping them up because there was no other way to get out of the way of the tanks - but it was too late, I'd already inhibited my own movement so badly that it was a mistake to spread out to max coherency in the first place. It also means infantry models from said squad may drag through terrain, reducing speed and charge bonuses and cutting them off from line-of-sight, reducing your firepower - indeed, there are a lot of good reasons to not spread out, and I think it's definitely a choice rather than a default.
locarno24 wrote:Movement decisions - especially movement restrictions - drive turn-on-turn strategy a lot. It's why I think space combat games like BFG and Xwing often feel more tactical - in part because clever movement can prevent opponents getting to use some or all of their firepower, which means the smartest combo-list-building falls apart if you're out-positioned and find someone crossing your T at point blank range...
I also agree about stratagems. Apocalypse stratagems are quite nice - you will have a 'hand' of, say, five stratagems from a deck of thirty available to you at one time, and once used they won't be available for a turn or so. That pushes you to actually use all the different options - most of them have a 'tactical reroll' effect, but that's way worse than their 'proper' use.
As to combo-building, I agree. Thing is, it shouldn't be. Warlord traits, psychic powers, litanies, relics and stratagems are all things layered 'on top' of an army list - so there should be no reason you can't cave the same sororitas commandery list play very differently I two different games - one game loading out characters with relic melee weapons and 'deliver holy beatings' warlord traits, whilst another game they're all about buffing their troops to hold the line and die standing. Adding that option gives you a 'sideboard' effect that lets you tailor a bit to the opponent and mission, and if only one option appeals that's the fault of the faction codes, not the core rules.
I generally agree with everything you've said here, save one thing: The army list shouldn't have to change to make the games different. My sororitas are a narrative force; my Warlord has one trait that she picks, she owns one relic, etc. that's hers. (Her fluff name is Anita Leotine if you're curious). There's basically one way to execute my list, without changing the list.
What I would hope for is a game that challenges me. A game that says "alright, now you're fighting in a marsh, how do your tactics change given the same resources?" "Alright, now you're fighting an armored foe, how do your tactics change?" "Alright, now you're fighting at night, how do your tactics change?" And of course there's infinite variety - one game might be 'how do I beat an armored foe at night in an industrial zone' and the next might be 'how do I defeat a sneaky infiltration force in the woods when they have orbital support?' or whatever. Right now, most of my games execute the same way over and over again. Monsters are just tanks, so my enemy has "big things" that I kill the same way whether it's a Hive Tyrant, Riptide, or Baneblade. Infantry are just infantry, so I hose them down with the same guns whether they're Termagants, Fire Warriors, or Space Marines. Terrain is just terrain, so I shoot through marsh and woods and buildings exactly the same way each time, unless it blocks LOS, in which case it's just the same as a mangrove copse or forest or building that blocks LOS now.
Lance845 wrote:Just a note: The most common definition of a "game" is something that has structured "game play" and "game play" is most commonly a series of interesting choices".
Interesting choices are choices that have consequences with non obviously favorable answers or at least answers with a cost.
Shoots and Ladders is not a game. It has no game play. You make no choices. A RNG tells you where to move and then you do what the space tell you to do and eventually someone makes it to the end and wins. It teaches little kids some fundamental game mechanics but does not in any way have any actual game play.
Tetris on the other hand has all game play. Where you place the blocks, in what orientation, destroying one line now or 5 lines later if you can, the ramping up of speed as more lines are broken.... every action you take (or don't) has consequence and thus is interesting. So tetris is ALL game play.
I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
I think there's more nuance in HH than in modern 40k - and I'd stand by that (though I agree HH has room for definite improvement still). But to use my example from earlier, spacing your guys out to avoid blasts actually has some significant drawbacks, and I oftentimes ally blasts with my Daemons of the Ruinstorm specifically BECAUSE people think this way and spread out thoughtlessly, which lets several daemon units charge this huge-frontage unit, whereas if the enemy stayed tight, I wouldn't be able to fit them all in base-to-base. Just as an example. In another recent game I tried to spread out to avoid blasts and inhibited my own movement so badly that it ended up being the wrong choice.
So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
I generally agree with everything you've said here, save one thing: The army list shouldn't have to change to make the games different. My sororitas are a narrative force; my Warlord has one trait that she picks, she owns one relic, etc. that's hers. (Her fluff name is Anita Leotine if you're curious). There's basically one way to execute my list, without changing the list.
What I would hope for is a game that challenges me. A game that says "alright, now you're fighting in a marsh, how do your tactics change given the same resources?" "Alright, now you're fighting an armored foe, how do your tactics change?" "Alright, now you're fighting at night, how do your tactics change?" And of course there's infinite variety - one game might be 'how do I beat an armored foe at night in an industrial zone' and the next might be 'how do I defeat a sneaky infiltration force in the woods when they have orbital support?' or whatever. Right now, most of my games execute the same way over and over again. Monsters are just tanks, so my enemy has "big things" that I kill the same way whether it's a Hive Tyrant, Riptide, or Baneblade. Infantry are just infantry, so I hose them down with the same guns whether they're Termagants, Fire Warriors, or Space Marines. Terrain is just terrain, so I shoot through marsh and woods and buildings exactly the same way each time, unless it blocks LOS, in which case it's just the same as a mangrove copse or forest or building that blocks LOS now.
I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
locarno24 wrote:What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I think our desires for game scale are different. I love arcs of fire and armor facing - and crossfire/blast markers causing suppression would be awesome. But I don't think armor facing makes much sense at the Epic scale. But at the scale 40k is at, where individual guys matter? I think it's cool that the side or rear of a tank is easier to damage than the front. I think it's realistic, and it helps me write the narrative of "my squad couldn't hurt the front, so they worked their way around the side in a rotational flank and killed it". that sort of narrative doesn't emerge from gameplay in the current iteration of 40k.
locarno24 wrote:I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
I do like the degrading stats mechanic rather than the damage table, that's a good point, but I think some things are lacking: the ability to instantly kill tanks and the ability to instantly kill monsters. I think the biggest problem with earlier editions was the latter was absent from monsters as well, not that the former was present for vehicles. Having the ability to one-shot big things with a critical hit is both more realistic (it's exactly that sort of thing that discourages "bigger is better" designs since World War 2 for surface warfare combatants, for example) and helps with the realism aspect. The problem wasn't that meltaguns could slag tanks, the problem was they couldn't slag riptides equally well, IMHO.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that the problem wasn't that tanks could die in one shot, it was that monsters couldn't. Though I also think hull points was one of the worst changes they made to the game.
That said, of exclusively academic significance, I don't think you're right about the assertion that critical hits are something that has discouraged "bigger is better" designs, because, well.... it's definitely not true. A modern surface combatant is bigger in every way than it's WWII counterpart with about the same likelihood or more of dying to a critical hit, because in this case, a bigger ship is a better ship. The ship classes that went away and are going away have done so because there's no tactical, operational, or strategic place for them in modern combat in the face of evolving weapons and doctrine.
Same thing for tanks. An M1 tank, or Leopard, or Challenger are as large as or large than the famously too fat to be good German Big Cats of WWII and about as heavy [A M1 tank is as heavy as the famously overweight King Tiger and about as big, but an M1 is both better engineered and has the advanced of modern engine and armor and weapons technology]. The Bigger is Better didn't work for the Germans because the tanks had unresolved engineering problems, were a bear on logistics, and were fundamentally unable to meet all the tactical requirements of them for the time.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
This is fair, though I view 40k much more on the skirmish end of things than the divisional end - in fact, I generally think that about most games that track individual models. As for 30k, I'll just say that of the last 10 games of HH my group has played, only one has been Marines vs Marines; most of the time it's Daemons of the Ruinstorm, Solar Auxilia, Imperial Militia, Talons of the Emperor, Taghmata Omnissiah, Ordo Reductor, or Legio Cybernetica vs. each other or vs. Marines, lol.
To your last sentence, though, why do you feel that way? I'm just curious; I know it's an opinion, but I typically assume opinions are informed by some experience or assessment of some kind.
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Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
I think you and I are very very different people, haha. There's a very big tactical difference between a tank and a beast, predominantly in the weapons and tactics employed, imho. This gets into the "Reality" of the universe a bit, so perhaps it's just a subjective thing, but when I see a Squiggoth or a Tyranid monster of some kind, I would typically want to bring explosive weapons to bear, because overpenetration with weapons like sabot rounds would be less harmful. Machine guns and small arms are a lot more useful as well, again assuming it isn't just a tank with different aesthetics.
Conversely, a tank is a wholly different beast, against which electromagnetic countermeasures and weapons are more likely to be effective, and against which penetration is more important than explosive power (unless you're talking REALLY BIG explosive power) because the stuff inside isn't that fragile once you get there. A tank is also easier to outmaneuver in the tactical sense, since its unidirectional treads means that it must make turns (pivot) before it can travel in a direction and can't sidestep, and its burdensome weight makes it wary of different kinds of obstacles and terrain than the types that would hinder monsters.
For example, against elephants (the closest mental analogue I have to a carnifex), a deep ditch probably won't be as effective as a field of caltrops, while an antitank ditch can bring an entire tank platoon to a halt to wait for engineers while caltrops would probably literally go unnoticed. Some unit types blur the lines - for example a walker might move more like a monster than a tank - but that's accounted for already, at least in theory. It certainly could be accounted for in other cases.
Of course, all this assumes that the setting actually treats beasts and tanks differently. I suppose it's possible for the setting to just decide that monsters are tanks and function identically, but my personal opinion is that Carnifexes are more akin to elephants than M1A2s, and that Leman Russes (for example) are more akin to M1A2s than to elephants. Needless to say, at the company level, I would bring different weapons to bear and issue different orders if I was being attacked by a herd of elephants than a team of M1A2s and mechanized carriers.
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
Irkjoe wrote:Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
This is exactly how the game started(albeit w more RPG elements). This is exactly the appeal for me, the game is something cool to do with my incredibly detailed & well painted miniatures rather than just sitting there collecting dust.
If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
I collected the minis to do the table top battle simulation.
I came from RPGs and chess.
I did not begin as a toy collector who got bored looking at his toys.
Anyone who lives that way, we’ll, I don’t know what to tell them except I and the people that I came into the hobby with are not motivated by a plastic fetish and a needy imagination.
We wanted and found realism in the playing out of fictional battles in a fictional universe.
Indeed, for those who fall back on the ridiculous position that 40k cannot be realistic, ask yourselves why the miniatures have guns, stand upright, why walls should block LoS and so on... all realism imported from common everyday experience without which the game would be impossible to play.
Moreover, ask yourselves when the game would stop making sense, as 8th had stopped making sense to me.
Remove gravity?
Remove LoS restrictions?
Remove morale?
When we take away too much realism, the game stops making sense and loses appeal.
Without some realism, the game is unplayable at least because without common intuitions reflected in rules and game dynamics, players can not communicate easily and so many expectations are denied that the interactions become gamey in the sense of the OP.
40k was a tabletop battle sim.
Some abstractions are necessary, else it would be real war with real people, but by representing crucial aspects realistically, expectations from common intuitions are reinforced and the sense that a battle is being lived out on a tabletop (4x8 being the proper size for 1500pt games btw) is realized in the minds of both players, I.e. it is immersive.
8th’s excessive card gaminess plus flying tanks running contrary to deeply established background, and ridiculous marines with autocannons in jet packs (Srsly OMG stupid) completely spat in the face of the fictional reality constructed over years and years of the buildup of common expectations about what counts as reasonable in this fictional universe, and made the game unplayable for me and the hobby mostly unpalatable since.
9th at least gives us walls that mostly work like walls again, at least in some important ways. Now if the most of the card based bs and rando immersion breaking idiocy like snipers that don’t need LoS can disappear, we will have the war back in this game in a proper way.
Short story, it is a war (game) first.
It became more gamey with the rise of CCG fanatics and their video game addicted cousins, alongside the distancing of rpg enthusiasts likely due at least in part to the ccg and video addicted attitude about what counts as a good game or a reason to play 40k, e.g. collect cards/toys, look for some way to stack the deck, then look for a game system that lets them do something with this so called list of collected toys.
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Insectum7 wrote: ^In 6th and 7th AP values lower than 2 (1 and 0) modified the result on the damage table, which could get you a result of 7, which did extra Hull Points of damage, iirc.
. . .
Overall I like this conversation. I always felt that the more 'realistic/simulationist' versions of the game were 4th Ed and Prior. I loved 4th Ed Target Priority rules, terrain sizes, etc.
Absolutely.
Agreed that the game would be improved by more "realism", but the point was that it doesn't deliver a battle simulation at all. 40k doesn't do anything you listed well, whenever I see people touting the gameplay I just think you aren't honest about what you prioritize or you just haven't played anything else to compare it to. I'm not going to pretend that whatever's left of 40ks sim elements are what keep me buying/playing. If you don't care for the hobby side you can still like the game and recognize that it's shallow.
Can I poke in and say something about scale real quick? The increase in the size of the models is a bit disappointing to me from a "simulationist" perspective. I much prefer smaller models/armies in a big world(table) rather than larger models in a small table.
Like I totally get why GW is making bigger models. More detail, easier to paint, more impressive compared to competitors, easier to take photos to share, etc. All of that is totally understandable. But In terms of the models on the table in a gaming experience, the older, smaller ones feel more immersive to me.
The increase in base size plays into this impression, too. Most of my models are still on 28mm and I find that I still prefer a lower profile base, especially when I go back and play 2nd edition. The models "sit" into the landscape a little better, while the big bases feel more like game pieces on top of the landscape.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
This is fair, though I view 40k much more on the skirmish end of things than the divisional end - in fact, I generally think that about most games that track individual models. As for 30k, I'll just say that of the last 10 games of HH my group has played, only one has been Marines vs Marines; most of the time it's Daemons of the Ruinstorm, Solar Auxilia, Imperial Militia, Talons of the Emperor, Taghmata Omnissiah, Ordo Reductor, or Legio Cybernetica vs. each other or vs. Marines, lol.
To your last sentence, though, why do you feel that way? I'm just curious; I know it's an opinion, but I typically assume opinions are informed by some experience or assessment of some kind.
Well, 5e was my past-favorite edition of 40k, and 7e was decidedly the worst. All the changes that I felt were bad were brought in in 6th: Hull Points, Flyers, Lords of War, Allies, and then 7th got even worse by doubling down on "incentives for playing 'fluffy'" with detachments.
And none of the past mechanics are something I adore enough or feel are necessary to want to go back to those days. I thought I would miss blast and vehicle facings, but... honestly, I don't. There's no real reason for them to exist at the scale of the game we play at, they didn't really add tactical value to the game. Tanks could turn freely, so like it wasn't like their facing was constrained by maneuver limitations, and the rear armor was essentially only accessible using a rule to ignore facing. Blasts were more interesting, because it was a way for low-BS armies like IG or Orks to overcome their poor Ballistic Skill, but as an area strike they didn't really mean anything anyway.unless you got really big.
And as for your versus my experience, everybody I know who did/wants to do 30k is a Loyalist Marine 1st Found Legion Fanboy who wants to field their legion's primarch and so on, and with 18 Marine factions and like 1/3'd that number of "not marine" factions, it's going to invariably be a lot of marines. I play too many Marine players in 40k, I don't need to visit the world of all marines all the time with even more mariney heroes with a world that panders to the mariney narrative even more than the modern 40k does [and also the fascist narrative, without the "hahaha fascists are stupid and funny and incompetent" that 40k has, but that's another question and another problem for another time]
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
I think you and I are very very different people, haha. There's a very big tactical difference between a tank and a beast, predominantly in the weapons and tactics employed, imho. This gets into the "Reality" of the universe a bit, so perhaps it's just a subjective thing, but when I see a Squiggoth or a Tyranid monster of some kind, I would typically want to bring explosive weapons to bear, because overpenetration with weapons like sabot rounds would be less harmful. Machine guns and small arms are a lot more useful as well, again assuming it isn't just a tank with different aesthetics.
Conversely, a tank is a wholly different beast, against which electromagnetic countermeasures and weapons are more likely to be effective, and against which penetration is more important than explosive power (unless you're talking REALLY BIG explosive power) because the stuff inside isn't that fragile once you get there. A tank is also easier to outmaneuver in the tactical sense, since its unidirectional treads means that it must make turns (pivot) before it can travel in a direction and can't sidestep, and its burdensome weight makes it wary of different kinds of obstacles and terrain than the types that would hinder monsters.
For example, against elephants (the closest mental analogue I have to a carnifex), a deep ditch probably won't be as effective as a field of caltrops, while an antitank ditch can bring an entire tank platoon to a halt to wait for engineers while caltrops would probably literally go unnoticed. Some unit types blur the lines - for example a walker might move more like a monster than a tank - but that's accounted for already, at least in theory. It certainly could be accounted for in other cases.
Of course, all this assumes that the setting actually treats beasts and tanks differently. I suppose it's possible for the setting to just decide that monsters are tanks and function identically, but my personal opinion is that Carnifexes are more akin to elephants than M1A2s, and that Leman Russes (for example) are more akin to M1A2s than to elephants. Needless to say, at the company level, I would bring different weapons to bear and issue different orders if I was being attacked by a herd of elephants than a team of M1A2s and mechanized carriers.
I disagree with all your points.
The exact material properties of Dorchester Chobham Armor or Ceramite & Adamant Composite or Tyranid Chitin or Necrodermis is effectively irrevelant, all that really matters is it's ability to resist shells. Tactically, a Carnifex and a Leman Russ fill the same tactical role: be a mobile heavy weapons carrier to support the infantry, fight other heavy weapons carriers, resist the fire of the things it fights, and conduct high speed operations in support of the breakthrough and exploitation.
And as far as weapons to fight them, I would say you would probably bring the same weapon. A gun that can kill an M1 tank, like a HEAT missile or a APFSDS shell, will absolutely kill an Elephant. And while part of that is that a 73 ton Abrams with 1300mm RHAe of armor isn't even in the same class as a 2 ton elephant with 0mm of armor, a hypothetical 70 ton armored elephant of abrams-like dimensions [so an M1 tank that, instead of being filled with 4 crewmen and hydraulics, was filled with a nervous system and meat] would also be concerned with being penetrated by high velocity penetrators and would also be pretty quickly killed when fragments of said penetrator tear through the flesh behind the armor shredding nerves, muscles, and vital organs in the exact same way that the fragments of said penetrator break things inside a tank.
Talking about the electronic warfare and feet versus tracks versus wheels is also an academic problem at basically any wargame scale. How fast does it move, and are there any special restrictions on doing so? That's really what matters. You can get into it, but if you get into it realitically then there's the problem of "Katherine, you're no fun. I wanna have a big stompy robot fight a big stompy monsters and you're here prattling on about ground pressure and front area and stabilization. Let the robot and monster fight." which really also isn't in the realm of wargames.
So anyway, I don't think any of the specific engineering differences between a Carnifex and a Leman Russ inherent to whether it made of meatiness with chitin plating or has a crew of 5 with adamatine composite plating is actually relevant. They have similar tactical roles [though a Carnifex is also a bit of a lighter unit than a Leman Russ, but anyway], similar behaviors, and similar effects on the field, and similar properties and appearance to the simulation at a higher level.
^I was just thinking about the shockwave damage caused by a high velocity shell going mach 4 through living tissue. I'm sure I could find a slow-mo video of that being simulated and it looking pretty rough on the internals.
Funny i think HH actually is a better rule set than 7th since FW basically went in and fixed most of the things wrong with 7th. having been a fan of the lore and having read all the books i also love the setting.
If i were to ever build a HH army from the ground up it would be mechanicum not marines.
When it comes to 40K game scale. it was always set as a small portion of the greater battlefront your force was fighting on. so while it may not be skirmish level of say infinity for 40K a 1,500 to 2,000 point game actually is a skirmish game in 40K scale.
If i want to go for the entire battlefront and not spend a fortune on overpriced GW minis no matter how good they look, i can play epic scale using the 8th ed index rules set with halved ranges and it works just fine with the necessary reduction in detail needed for that scale.
A side note, some games scale up or down easily. 40K had a system in 4th ed to go from kill teams to combat patrol, to standard games, to apocalypse using the 28mm scale.
Similarly DUST scales very well from a base game of 25 points all the way up to 200+ with a well written rule set with alternating activation. on the flip side infinity at its original core is designed in such a way that the game cannot function above the skirmish level.
. There's no real reason for them to exist at the scale of the game we play at, they didn't really add tactical value to the game. Tanks could turn freely, so like it wasn't like their facing was constrained by maneuver limitations, and the rear armor was essentially only accessible using a rule to ignore facing.
Wow, could not disagree with this more, were we playing the same game?
People had to trade off effective shooting for moving and defense against close combat as well as getting better LOS positions, there were very clear maneuver limitations, especially with the risks involved with difficult terrain.
Also pulling off a flank maneuver to get to the thinner side or rear armor was a reward for better tactics, or sometimes players not paying attention to where all their opponents forces were.
aphyon wrote: Funny i think HH actually is a better rule set than 7th since FW basically went in and fixed most of the things wrong with 7th. having been a fan of the lore and having read all the books i also love the setting.
Still has hull points, still has lords of war, still has flyers, so like, that's 3 points still against it and nothing really going for it mechanically, IMO. Being "somewhat better than the worst" isn't really a huge step up, particularly when that just makes it based on the second worst edition of 40k I've played.
As for wargame scale, I prefer the scale of 40k and up. Technically, I guess, Kill Team & Infinity and stuff we call "skirmish" wargames would be firefight scale, "company scale" wargames like 40k and bolt action would be at the skirmish scale, and then the miniatures pretty much stop and give way to hexes and counters at the divisional scale and then risk-like stuff at the operational and strategic scale.
The important things for a wargame I think is to be scale consistent. 40k is on the scale of platoons and companies. At this scale, it can be assumed that the tank commanders or squad sergeants are managing the details like exactly which rock Private Jimmy is hiding behind or which way the tank is facing, and the company commander is more concerned about where exactly the unit is and what it's engaging.
Wow, could not disagree with this more, were we playing the same game?
People had to trade off effective shooting for moving and defense against close combat as well as getting better LOS positions, there were very clear maneuver limitations, especially with the risks involved with difficult terrain.
Also pulling off a flank maneuver to get to the thinner side or rear armor was a reward for better tactics, or sometimes players not paying attention to where all their opponents forces were.
Uhh,,, I think we were, but sometimes I'm not sure. There is a 90 degree arc in which the AV10 rear of a tank could be engaged. I can put my tank most places on the board except like "in the middle of your army" and have my rear be unreachable. Like, the rear armor engagement cone of a tank was small and virtually only theoretically accessible to deep strike [but not practically accessible, since if it's at the front of or in the middle of my army, my army's there, and if it's at the back of my army, the board edge is there], so like, it essentially never came into play for me.
I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
As a human test subject I 100% left playing anything related to 40K/KT by mid 8th and am now playing mostly historic with a smattering of fantasy, but nothing hammer. GW does not provide quality rules for war gaming as a universal deficit so they have been ghosted by my Benjamins.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making?
Right now, to me (and admittedly I am biased), it seems like most of the decisions are made at listbuilding, and really only Stratagems are the choices you make - everything else is just executing a combo developed in listbuilding. Even a Stratagem sometimes.
Well, I said that they WANTED to move in the direction of more modern design, but rather (IMO) FAILED at this. As much as I would like WH40K to be more about players playing the game rather than what I call "the game playing the players" (the game is constantly saying what players have to do*) They failed at creating depth (multitude of meaningful options) trying to limit complication. But in the end they didn't even remove this, just think of the number of different sources of rules you need to play a game with some factions.
So, yeah, I basically agree with your opinion about WH40K being broad, but shallow, with decisions limited and often obvious and resolution much too long. While a game of, say, Warmachine, resembles a duel of two fencing swordmasters, WH40K is more like two giants standing in front of each other exchanging hits to the head with huge clubs.
*Game - "Now roll this bunch of dice. Now take all ones. Now roll them again. Now take all those 3 or more results. Now roll them again, then ..."
Player [getting bored] - "Hey, when will I do something I WANT to do!?
Game - "in about 20 minutes. Be patient. Now pick up all those 4+ results and...
aphyon wrote: I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
I mean, there were plenty of ways of killing a Knight or a Night Scythe or a whatever in 6th and 7th too. That didn't make them good introductions to the game IMO.
5th had problems, like wound allocation with multiwound model units, but all in all I would say it was okay, because it didn't have much I didn't like.
6th brought in the downhill slide, with a mechanic I didn't like [Hull Points], stuff out of scale like Lords of War and Flyers, and Allies. And also newer larger monstrous creatures that were really vehicles like Riptides but using the much better Monstrous Creature rules to just be better, and really highlighted the entirely arbitrary distinction between MC's and Vehicles.
7th decided that "fluff matters" and more special rules need to be a thing, and brought in formations and "rewards for being fluffy", which was a terrible mindset.
8th made a couple of positive change, notably entering into a self-consistent level of abstraction at a slightly higher level than before , which is a positive change even if it still has Lords of War, Flyers, and Allies. Then SM2.0 happened and Psychic Awakening happened, which were going into 7e territory, and now we're in 9th which IMO is looking to be to 8th what 7th was to 6th.
Absolutely, 40k is becoming more of a board game than a war game.
Why? Perhaps they think it will sell more that way. But I also think that the board game approach gives them far more flexibility (read doing whatever the heck they want without any regards for internal coherence or realism).
They have greatly simplified the realism aspects (turret and armor facing, armor, close combat mechanics) in favor of adding depth via gamey elements (aka stratagems).
I am not sure the game is simpler, in the end, it just emphasizes a different sort of aspects.
Personally, I prefer the simulation (approach), and I profoundly dislike stratagems. But, sadly, 30k isn't really a mainstream viable option these days.
PS . In favor of GWS; they did tone down a bit some super gamey elements in 9th (untargetable characters, conga lines, bad touching).
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Insectum7 wrote: Can I poke in and say something about scale real quick? The increase in the size of the models is a bit disappointing to me from a "simulationist" perspective. I much prefer smaller models/armies in a big world(table) rather than larger models in a small table.
Like I totally get why GW is making bigger models. More detail, easier to paint, more impressive compared to competitors, easier to take photos to share, etc. All of that is totally understandable. But In terms of the models on the table in a gaming experience, the older, smaller ones feel more immersive to me.
The increase in base size plays into this impression, too. Most of my models are still on 28mm and I find that I still prefer a lower profile base, especially when I go back and play 2nd edition. The models "sit" into the landscape a little better, while the big bases feel more like game pieces on top of the landscape.
Agreed! I think this has been particularly bad in the transition from WHFB to AoS.
I think sometimes 40k bogs down in model-level complications which make little sense to me; use the squad as the basic unit, not the miniature (what unit touches what, allocation of wounds, etc.).
Oooh. Someone said Panzer Blitz and Panzer leader. In the same sentence no less! I have those on my shelves.
I'm also getting into Empires of Apocalypse at the moment. There's a shade under 4,000 counters, and I don't even have the 4th part yet...
Someone said earlier, 'Would you play Warhammer 40k if it was just a Hex and Counters game?' - I have been desperately stalking the internet for _Years_ for someone to make a good hex & counter varient of 40k, or more specifically a good divisional scale of game. The best they've done is Final Liberation in the 90's, and its all been downhill since, and Final Liberation had some glaring flaws. [Like being based on the Epic 40k system, and not the far superior Epic Armageddon system, for example.]
Speaking of Epic Armageddon, without a doubt one of the best games I've played. I was crippled inside when they disbanded specialist games, I was always more of a BFG and Epic & Modenhiem player than I was a Fantasy player, and I was more a Fantasy player than a 40k player.
Unfortunately GW seem hellbent on blowing up whatever system I enjoy playing and suggesting one with even more space marines, and then repeatedly re-writing that one to be less good.
I never got the chance to play seventh, but from what I vaguely understand, its problems were the players, not the system, much the same as 5th. The wound allocation rules wern't a huge problem, the problem was how mind bogglingly easy they were to exploit and break - The same is true of the detachment system, the principle is fine, the execution was dire and the loopholes you could drive a landraider through.
I have a feeling GW writes simplier and simplier rules systems because they're less easy to screw up. The more simplistic the system, the less likely you are to write a rule that blows it up. Couple this with the supposedly tiny pool of testers referenced earlier, and its no wonder they want to make everything as basic as possible. When you're dealing with a balence sheet as big as GW's, you can't afford to have your rules writers experiment with complex design.
I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling.
I miss flamer templates, but likewise feel the newest implimentation [I'd of gone with 10 inch, not 12, but there we are] is probably a fine balence between praticality and realism.
I try to re-write GW's rules every now and again. Somewhere on Dakka is the complete Imperial Guard 5th edition codex I re-wrote cover to cover after the garbage they gave me. But it's a lot of work for little gain - If I go anywhere actually wanting a game, it's matched play current edition 40k or nothing, even debating the validity of legends units is painful, much less going 'Why don't we try this instead?'
Dakka's mentality seems focused on 'Good' and 'Winning' not 'Fun' or 'Narrative', because what we're selling is a 'Game' and games are played to be won, where as I think I signed up for a 'Story' that should be 'told and enjoyed'. Battlefleet Gothic was a terribly fun and narrative system of giant space cathedrals blasting bits out of each other and made for a great story. You could actually _Run Away_! There was incentive to not have your horrifically expensive battleship destroyed rather than blindly fighting to the last man every game. Likewise, Epic dealt very well with complex millitary situations with its pinning/blast markers mechanic, even handling flanking in a system with no real concept of facing.
When I play a good old hex and coutners wargame, it's a simulation and a story defined by decision making. What happens if I try this? Or did this instead of this? If I did this where historically we did this, how does this change the story?
40k is muchly about 'How do I win this game?' To which the answer is 'Roll better dice than your opponent and copy a list off the internet.' I don't know if it's just me that notices in the 'debates' on Dakka about changes to the game, much of the discussion is entirely centered around 'This now makes my faction Win Less, or it makes my opponents Win More.' not, 'Well this doesn't make for a compelling game system because it doesn't properly reflex XYZ in the narrative.'
Precious few people care that the new change to 2 Wound Mini Marines is the first time they've ever been really consistant with the fluff - They care about the impact of D2 and D1 weapons on them, how competative they'll be next to primaris, and how many dice more Imperial Guard players will need to roll to kill any of them.
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
The "line across the front" is definitely better than the former implementation in 40k.
Actually, I just like Flames of War in general, and if I could get Flames of Warhammer 40k I would be a happy Katherine.
AdmiralHalsey wrote:Oooh. Someone said Panzer Blitz and Panzer leader. In the same sentence no less! I have those on my shelves.
Speaking of Epic Armageddon, without a doubt one of the best games I've played. I was crippled inside when they disbanded specialist games, I was always more of a BFG and Epic & Modenhiem player than I was a Fantasy player, and I was more a Fantasy player than a 40k player.
I never got the chance to play seventh, but from what I vaguely understand, its problems were the players, not the system, much the same as 5th. The wound allocation rules wern't a huge problem, the problem was how mind bogglingly easy they were to exploit and break - The same is true of the detachment system, the principle is fine, the execution was dire and the loopholes you could drive a landraider through.
I love Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab-Israeli Wars. unforuntately, I don't own a copy of Arab-Israeli Wars, but I do own the others. I also own a bunch of other wargames, but PL/PB are my favorite.
The problem with 7th wasn't players breaking it, it was very much with the rules. It was the stuff like "if you bring X set of units, you get a free dedicated transport for all of them!" so the suddenly a quadrillion points of free razorbacks wasn't "breaking the system" it was "working at intended".
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
The "line across the front" is definitely better than the former implementation in 40k.
Actually, I just like Flames of War in general, and if I could get Flames of Warhammer 40k I would be a happy Katherine.
I agree. I'm not completely sold on Flames of War, though I do own a few armies, and it would need some tweaking to fit the 40k verse, [Rules for Skimmers, specifically, and probably walkers.] but it would definately be a significantly better game. Unfortunately the scales off - Flames is played at a proper scale, and 40k has no idea what scale it is.
'Yes, this single imperial guard junior officer is a unit. He has a sword and a pistol.
This Warlord Titan is also a unit. It can level an entire city.
So is this Thunderhawk gunship, which is space flight capable.
Also this INTERCONTENTIAL BALLISTIC MISSILE PLATFORM. After five turns you can fire it at the Imperial Guard officer! Don't worry though, it has very little chance of injuring him.
aphyon wrote: I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
I mean, there were plenty of ways of killing a Knight or a Night Scythe or a whatever in 6th and 7th too. That didn't make them good introductions to the game IMO.
5th had problems, like wound allocation with multiwound model units, but all in all I would say it was okay, because it didn't have much I didn't like.
6th brought in the downhill slide, with a mechanic I didn't like [Hull Points], stuff out of scale like Lords of War and Flyers, and Allies. And also newer larger monstrous creatures that were really vehicles like Riptides but using the much better Monstrous Creature rules to just be better, and really highlighted the entirely arbitrary distinction between MC's and Vehicles.
7th decided that "fluff matters" and more special rules need to be a thing, and brought in formations and "rewards for being fluffy", which was a terrible mindset.
8th made a couple of positive change, notably entering into a self-consistent level of abstraction at a slightly higher level than before , which is a positive change even if it still has Lords of War, Flyers, and Allies. Then SM2.0 happened and Psychic Awakening happened, which were going into 7e territory, and now we're in 9th which IMO is looking to be to 8th what 7th was to 6th.
Sounds to me you played on tables with far to little terrain where you could gun line from the back of the table (as an infinity player i tend to go terrain heavy to force maneuver even if it is not to the infinity level.), or you didn't have many scout/outflank/drop pod units to worry about.
Formations were also not what i would classify as "being fluffy" it was a way to break core game mechanics by buying a specific set of models. it was more of a marketing play than anything else. 3rd/4th ed and for some armies 5th were the editions where "fluff/lore" were a key part of game play. where factions could both be effective and play according to fluff without breaking core game mechanics I still have great love for many of the codexes form those editions -chaos 3.5, demon hunters, witch hunters, dark angels mini dex, armageddon codex etc....and we still incorporate them into our 5th ed games.
As an old school battletech player i am a big fan of combined arms play so bringing in flyers and superheavies is not game breaking to me. i always build my forces as all around army builds to deal with a bit of everything. and often times i could just ignore those units unless opportunity presented itself to work on other targets in the enemy force as prior to 6th they just were not that scary using their original FW rules.
Played FOW in MK1 back in the day. it never really grew on me. i much prefer forces of valors "battle tactics" skirmish level game or DUST to get my WWII fix.
This has been one of the best threads I've read in a while.
I'm curious though about something that's cropped up between conversations and that's player choice (including lack-thereof) and one thing that has also been on my mind now with the new Action system in 9th, is that units may quite possibly be doing too much in a single turn.
As it stands some units, and even armies, are able to operate in the Movement, Psychic, Shooting and Charge/Fight phases of the game and that's not even including things like Warptime and Endless Cacophony. Units IMO are simply doing too much in one turn of the game. When there's no restriction, tactical choice or agency, of course you're going to do everything.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Bonus thought is that now things like the SM Captains 'Rites of Battle' and other like it can be changed from reroll Aurahammer to something like "At the beginning of your Command Phase, select a friendly Adeptus Astartes <Chapter> unit within 9". That unit can now make 3 Operations during this Battle Round."
To be clear, my intention is not to somehow nerf Jack-of-all-trades staple units like the ones I mentioned but to actually create a system that rewards them for being Jack-of-all-trades by not only allowing them to be flexible, but flexible at the Players discretion. Just thought I'd add some of my musing to this discussion.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Agreed! I would add that I think that the best way to do that would be to reintroduce "realism" in the game. By that I mean that the limitations to actions should be "realism" based, like they had been in the past for 40k.
For example, SM choosing between double tapping (rapid fire) or fire and charge; that's meaningful and strategic. Another example: in HH, terminator armors prevent you from certain combat actions.
Simulation can add depth to the game in a way that "makes sense", as opposed to some of the current strategies employed (aka stratagems).
7th flaws weren't formations, they were in the core rules. HH tried to save it and made the best of it, but it would be much better of with a stronger and more tactical base system like 9th edition has.
The AP system was bad because it resulted in every AP below 3 being irrelevant, tank rules didn't Work because of hull points and only made tank a downgrade for a unit (in HH most tanks can equip Upgrades to ignore many tank rules, and because of that they're viable there, in 40K the best antitank weapons were plasmaguns, Autocannons, Assault cannons and Eldar jetbikes) universal special rules were not so universal and partly dumb, psychic powers were a problem and the whole psychic phase was bad in that you never could defend against it and most psykers were reduced to being batteries. Unit types were very fiddly (I think at the end of 7th I had finally memorized the differences between Jet and jump).
Close combat had zero player interaction or tactics and was very hard to get to, imo the biggest improvement in 8th.
All characters were basically 100 shades of hitting people better (or shooting people better in the case of Tau). Auras aren't perfect but at least they represent Leader capabilities that simply didn't exist prior to 8th.
The terrain rules were arguably better compared to 8th, but basically you threw dozerblades on every tank to ignore them .
Morale had better rules but was totally ignored in 40K, only HH made use of them.
Didn't you start a thread some time ago where you came to the conclusions that 40k is not a wargame anymore?
In any case, WH40k has always been a complex board game for me.
I came from a background of being a competitive MtG player, playing complex board games (all the FFG stuff) regularly and enjoying RTS games like StarCraft, Warcraft 3, C&C, Red Alert and DoW a lot. Warhammer 40k seemed like a perfect fit for me as a complex strategy board game with cool miniatures and deck building elements(=army list writing). I split a box of AOBR with a friend at college and was having fun playing 5th edition in no time, rapidly increasing my collection of orks into a full blown battlewagon bash army.
When I started 40k, I also was playing P&P games twice a week, but despite veterans insisting that it was very similar, I never saw the connection between the two. The only thing 4th/5th edition and the P&P rulesets I know had in common was the low quality rules writing full of giant loopholes. Except in 40k there never was a DM/GM to whack a player insisting on exploiting a loophole in the heard with a book and tell you to stop being an idiot. I still have my 4th edition ork codex with an entire list of rules I need to clarify before the game.
Missions were(are) bland, there was no useful system to string games together and at the end of the game, the winner takes it all.
Mechanics like tank-shocks, fast skimmers, open topped and suicide meltas were what won games and not immersive at all. Neither was the need to properly space out your orks 2" because otherwise those blasts and flamers would simply pulverize your army before it did anything.
Having played most of my games at that time with orks against eldar, armor facings were one of the least immersive things. An eldar autarch standing directly in front of a battlewagon would take a small step to the right and suddenly would almost be guaranteed to destroy it in one blow, while he had almost no chance of hurting it before. And don't get me started on facings on eldar hover tanks. The rules were clearly unfit for anything that wasn't an imperial box-shaped vehicle.
The vast majority of interaction with rules many of you fondly remember like blasts, facings, fall back moves and scatter dices were arguments about how to resolve them - how many models were hit, which facing the melta guy was standing it and what not.
The closest 40k ever got to immersive rules at that time were the Imperial Armor books. Great story, great units, with missions to re-enact those stories. I still read IA:6 some times today.
Sadly the mission design was written in a way that pretty much no one but the authors themselves could hope to ever play them due to extremely specific army and unit requirements.
It certainly didn't help that veteran faction who wanted this kind of immersive play did everything alienate new players. There was this completely irrational hatred towards named characters, while legendary creatures in magic were something awesome and fun in magic. As soon as you did something that was working well in the game, like bringing a full units of lootas, having deff rollas for all of your battlewagons or if you put boarding planks onto your battlewagons from the trukk kit suddenly you were doing something "beardy". Some even insiste that, as an ork, you had to blindly rush into the enemy and die, anything else was breaking their immersion
Of course, can immerse yourself into a game of WH40k if you really want, but that is true for pretty much every game ever. I remember a drunk session of "Ticket to Ride" escalating into a full blown roleplay dispute between me (russia) and the french and british players over who would get build the railroad from Moscow to Berlin, all flinging insults at each other with faux accents.
"But jidmah, you could have done X, Y and Z to make the game more immersive!" - sure, I could have. But I saw about as much need to turn Warhammer 40k into an immersive roleplaying experiences as I did for MtG.
TL;DR: Warhammer 40k might have been a game trying to immerse yourself akin to a roleplaying game in its early years, but by the time 4th edition was written there clearly wasn't anything left for someone like me to find. It was lacking everything that makes a good roleplay system except piles of rules and stats.
As for the "modern board game" topic, I full agree with locarno24's analysis.
GW is clearly trying to move into the direction of modern gaming, because many modern games do lots of things right that 40k does wrong. And that is a good thing IMO, despite them having moderate success. It has never been a very immersive game in the first place to me, so the most expensive board game in the world might as well try to be the best one.
In the end, there will always be issues where realism is in direct contradiction to having a fun game. Having your vehicles' survival primarily solely based on luck like it was in 5th removes player agency and has absolutely no counter.play and therefore makes the game less enjoyable for most people.
Many things in the game right now are not inherently flawed mechanics, but instead just done in a bad way. In my opinion GW's ability to write decent rules is that of a four year old small studio, not that of a decades old behemoth. Which makes sense when you think about it, before 8th they never actually incorporated feedback from any of their customers into the game, they have had no proper release cycles and no long term marketing attached to their releases.
For example, let's take stratagems. No modern board game puts 20+ cards in your hand and tells you to use them at the proper time, I'm puzzled as to why GW thought this would be a good idea. Right now both my armies (Orks and DG) have been drowned in stratagems of variable quality and function. Some upgrade units before the game, some react to enemy actions, some just buff your units' damage, defense or movement and some activate an ability for a specific unit. After pretty much every game, I realize that I have forgotten to use one or the other, because they are now scattered across two books and there is no longer a card deck with all of them inside.
I think upgrade stratagems are fine, things kustom jobs, scarboyz, exalted greater daemons, prototype weapons, chosen of nurgle, contaminated monstrosity, extra relics and warlord traits and similar are great and it's fine that there is a limited resource for them which is different from points. You use those during list building and they don't bother you anymore during the game and you get more diverse armies onto the table as a result.
Stratagems that react to enemy actions are actually the best kind - it allows you to actually do something during your opponent's turn while you have to consider your opponent's possible actions during yours. Of course, this only works with a maximum of six to eight stratagems of this kind, anything beyond that will become a chore (someone above mentioned a "hand" of actions.
Abilities should just be part of the datasheet, and nothing prevents GW from having abilities on datasheets costing CP when activated. Something like "'eadbut(1CP): After this model has moved, it automatically crashes and burns. No other unit can use 'eadbut during this turn". You could even have different CP costs attached to different units, so you no longer have awkward PL thresholds which don't work.
The flat buffs? Yeah, those should go away. Turning CP into damage was a major flaw of multiple armies which severely limits how much power they can put into baseline units - for example when creating a new chaos infantry unit it always has to be designed around being shot twice.
If you go through with these changes you would have a list of upgrades you can take while writing your list and a small hand full of reactive stratagems which actually reflect a commander taking direct action. Both compete for resources with powerful abilities on some of your units so they create interesting choices, plus they return some of the realism as units don't suddenly "power up" out of nowhere and shoot three times as good as the same guys standing next to them.
On the topic of realism, I think things which are clearly counter-intuitive and going against all reason should be fixed. For example 8th edition's character targeting rules were such a case.
However, going down to a detail level like where you are arguing whether a missile has more impact on a carnifex or a LRBT? Way too detailed.
In 40k bright lances, dark lances, ork rokkits, battle cannons, missiles, lascannons, heavy venom cannons and ion cannons all have and always had a very similar impact on armor or monsters they hit despite their lore making them out as completely different weapons. There really is no point in differentiating between carnifex and LRBT if you don't have enough design space to differentiate between a rokkit and a heavy venom cannon.
Mixzremixzd wrote: This has been one of the best threads I've read in a while.
I'm curious though about something that's cropped up between conversations and that's player choice (including lack-thereof) and one thing that has also been on my mind now with the new Action system in 9th, is that units may quite possibly be doing too much in a single turn.
As it stands some units, and even armies, are able to operate in the Movement, Psychic, Shooting and Charge/Fight phases of the game and that's not even including things like Warptime and Endless Cacophony. Units IMO are simply doing too much in one turn of the game. When there's no restriction, tactical choice or agency, of course you're going to do everything.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Bonus thought is that now things like the SM Captains 'Rites of Battle' and other like it can be changed from reroll Aurahammer to something like "At the beginning of your Command Phase, select a friendly Adeptus Astartes <Chapter> unit within 9". That unit can now make 3 Operations during this Battle Round."
To be clear, my intention is not to somehow nerf Jack-of-all-trades staple units like the ones I mentioned but to actually create a system that rewards them for being Jack-of-all-trades by not only allowing them to be flexible, but flexible at the Players discretion. Just thought I'd add some of my musing to this discussion.
From a design perspective, the kind of system you propose does reward specialists over jacks of all trades- adding a rifle to a character that needs to move and melee isn't very useful, for example. But the game could be balanced with that in mind; maybe tacking on a couple of psychic powers to an otherwise fighty character isn't super useful, but would come cheap, and give it some flexibility.
In general though this is a system a lot of games use; but rather than tie it to phases in an IGOUGO system, they're often 'actions' performed during a unit's activation in an AA system. Dust Warfare is a good example, where each unit gets two actions they can use during their activation; it combines seamlessly with a reaction system that allows you to take an action immediately after the enemy at the cost of an action later.
You can also go a step further and allow spending multiple actions on the same activity. Move twice and then you don't need an Advance mechanic, you just have double movement at the cost of an opportunity to shoot. Spend two actions on shooting and some systems will let you shoot twice, while others have you only shoot once, but at +1 to hit.
Then you can start playing with mechanics that add or reduce actions. Maybe becoming 'suppressed' as a morale effect reduces you to just one action, and then becoming 'pinned' removes both of your actions (temporarily). Maybe units that are intended to be highly mobile and fight on the move get a single free Move action in addition to their other actions for the turn. If you want C&C to play a bigger role, it can be modeled as giving out free actions, allowing better-commanded armies to be faster and more reactive than worse-commanded armies.
On top of all that, things like abilities to repair friendly units or scenario-specific actions to complete objectives integrate seamlessly into the core mechanics as actions a unit can perform.
This is a perfect example of a way that wargames have innovated on mechanics over the last few decades, while GW has been slow to catch up.
i am amused you used DUST as an example. i have been actively promoting it for a while now because the mechanics of the system is so much better than the comparable system developed for 8th ed 40K.
It has the combined effects of- tactical play, hard counter balanced rules/units, reaction mechanics and enough simulation effects for grounding the immersion (vehicle have wounds, but also have weapons facing and armor classes) all while keeping both players actively involved even when it isn't their activation turn.
I should also add it does this all without bloat/power creep or poorly written rules.
aphyon wrote: i am amused you used DUST as an example. i have been actively promoting it for a while now because the mechanics of the system is so much better than the comparable system developed for 8th ed 40K.
And it makes perfect sense, because the writer is none other than Andy Chambers- who originally left GW because he wanted to iterate on the game after 3rd Ed, but the suits wouldn't let him.
It's especially interesting in the context of this thread, because despite having game elements that are more simulationist/wargamey than 40K (as you noted it has reactions, weapon facing, and armor types; I would add that it has a lot more restriction on weapon roles, with you really needing anti-aircraft guns to deal with aircraft), stylistically it's more 'gamey' than even 40K. I can field a reasonable TOE for a Marine or Guard company in 40K, but I can't even imagine what a German infantry company is supposed to look like in Dust, seeing as all the infantry units are five-man squads and most of the officers are unique/named characters.
The fact that I'm still playing 40K and not playing Dust anymore goes back to why a lot of us are still here- the cool models and setting, moreso than a tightly written ruleset. I guess I'm part of the problem.
Didn't realize Andy was involved i know it is paolo's game concept just like he did with AT43 when rackham didn't want a WWII setting for the game.
the stylistic approach to the game is pretty heavily tied to the 50s style comic book feel of the game.
As for TO&E the latest editon of the game has specific themed builds with benefits but the free build nature of the game doesn't force any kind of force org if you don't want it. this is of course another positive for the game design in the fact that you can use whatever units you want in any configuration and it still doesn't break the game.
when it comes to officers i think you are forgetting the generic command squads. that avoids your named characters and gives you an officer, medic and engineer. and they exist across the board for every sub-section of the army block. i am looking at building a german paratroop force (fallshirmjager) without their light vehicle support (they have light walkers as well as light tracked heavy weapons now) just infantry and their air dropped towed weapon teams. as i already have a themed blutkreuz laser themed force with vehicles.
it gives you the options (with or without jump packs, because weird war II) of battle squads, anti-tank squads, anti air squads and command squads. i think you could easily build a somewhat accurate unit combo to represent the actual force historically within the confines of the game mechanics.
I think the latter point is due to game community availability. i have 3 dust armies myself for the purpose of showing people how to play the game and promote it (even though i still play 5th ed 40K as well). Since it doesn't seem to be that well known in my area.
This kind of leads us circular back to the point of the sim aspect of a miniatures game allowing it to not just behaving like a board game or a CCG. that is unfortunately the feel i got from 8th ed in standard scale games and GW compounded it with the rules i have read for 9th. all i am seeing is damage output buffs at the expense of actual tactical play that doesn't rely on objective rushing to score enough early points to secure a default win.
Sounds to me you played on tables with far to little terrain where you could gun line from the back of the table (as an infinity player i tend to go terrain heavy to force maneuver even if it is not to the infinity level.), or you didn't have many scout/outflank/drop pod units to worry about.
Formations were also not what i would classify as "being fluffy" it was a way to break core game mechanics by buying a specific set of models. it was more of a marketing play than anything else. 3rd/4th ed and for some armies 5th were the editions where "fluff/lore" were a key part of game play. where factions could both be effective and play according to fluff without breaking core game mechanics I still have great love for many of the codexes form those editions -chaos 3.5, demon hunters, witch hunters, dark angels mini dex, armageddon codex etc....and we still incorporate them into our 5th ed games.
As an old school battletech player i am a big fan of combined arms play so bringing in flyers and superheavies is not game breaking to me. i always build my forces as all around army builds to deal with a bit of everything. and often times i could just ignore those units unless opportunity presented itself to work on other targets in the enemy force as prior to 6th they just were not that scary using their original FW rules.
Played FOW in MK1 back in the day. it never really grew on me. i much prefer forces of valors "battle tactics" skirmish level game or DUST to get my WWII fix.
We seem to have very different experiences, or, more likely, one of us has some seriously prescription-strength fond nostalgia glasses. Mathematically, the rear armor of basically any tank is unreachable by maneuver in practical play, unless it chooses to expose it. A Leman Russ, Rhino, etc. are about 4" long, so with 6" of movement for the would-be shooter if the tank is 2" away from them they wouldn't be able to get rear shots.
I prefer to play company to divisional scale games, not what we refer to as "skirmish scale" games, so Flames of War just clicked. More small models appeals to both what I like to build and paint [since I like to paint and field units by the squadron with all their proper tactical markings], and just the general scale of battle I want to play at.
I come to miniatures gaming from playing wargames where a single playing piece was a platoon or company of infantry or tanks, and honestly, that's pretty much the scale I prefer.
As a side note, I also think more smaller models in general makes for a more fun and more wargame-wargame. The key is the size of the board and maneuver space for actual battlefield strategic and tactical maneuver and not just fiddly bits that gets into the realm of RPG's like "which way is GI Timmy looking". I have yet to meet a miniatures game in general that resolves this problem, because of the limitations of board size, where there's no operational depth. There's no penetration or exploitation or defense-in-depth because the depth of the board is limited to the no-man's land and the main line of resistance and the objectives are all in the no-man's land, and there's nothing like the center of gravity of the attack or concentrated push or anything because the board is also too narrow to really have that. Smaller minis, larger armies same size or larger boards does tend to get better in the wargame strategy and tactics department, though, even if it doesn't get quite there.
Fascinating ongoing discussion, sad to have missed most of it but tagging back in to steal some ideas.
Bigger board sizes (relative to the minis, so smaller minis work) is something I agree with. I don't know if it's possible for people to agree on what they think is "important" in a game though - for example, I like the armor systems for both 40k and Flames of War even if 40k's rear armor is basically irrelevant; they're largely the same system (except how you draw the lines) and if the rear armor is relevant (say you have an immobilized tank, or better yet make your movement rules so you can't just pivot at the end of a turn, meaning if you want to move laterally you have to expose your side and rear) then it is worthwhile.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: We seem to have very different experiences, or, more likely, one of us has some seriously prescription-strength fond nostalgia glasses. Mathematically, the rear armor of basically any tank is unreachable by maneuver in practical play, unless it chooses to expose it. A Leman Russ, Rhino, etc. are about 4" long, so with 6" of movement for the would-be shooter if the tank is 2" away from them they wouldn't be able to get rear shots.
I prefer to play company to divisional scale games, not what we refer to as "skirmish scale" games, so Flames of War just clicked. More small models appeals to both what I like to build and paint [since I like to paint and field units by the squadron with all their proper tactical markings], and just the general scale of battle I want to play at.
I come to miniatures gaming from playing wargames where a single playing piece was a platoon or company of infantry or tanks, and honestly, that's pretty much the scale I prefer.
As a side note, I also think more smaller models in general makes for a more fun and more wargame-wargame. The key is the size of the board and maneuver space for actual battlefield strategic and tactical maneuver and not just fiddly bits that gets into the realm of RPG's like "which way is GI Timmy looking". I have yet to meet a miniatures game in general that resolves this problem, because of the limitations of board size, where there's no operational depth. There's no penetration or exploitation or defense-in-depth because the depth of the board is limited to the no-man's land and the main line of resistance and the objectives are all in the no-man's land, and there's nothing like the center of gravity of the attack or concentrated push or anything because the board is also too narrow to really have that. Smaller minis, larger armies same size or larger boards does tend to get better in the wargame strategy and tactics department, though, even if it doesn't get quite there.
I'll second earlier recommendations for Epic, as it sounds like exactly what you're describing.
Individual infantry stands represent ~5 infantrymen, units represent platoons, and the board actually is big enough to have real maneuver space. It uses the standard 6x4 table as other GW games, but small arms range is typically 15cm and heavy weapons are typically 30-60cm, so it's actually able to model the closing to contact stage of combat, and transports are really useful for getting to where the fighting is. Units can multiply their base movement (15cm for infantry, 30cm for fast vehicles) by x2 or x3 at the cost of shooting ability, but it also requires a successful command check, so once attrition penalties come into play units get 'sticky' and hard to recommit.
Throw in rules for C&C, crossfire, and meaningful morale, and maneuver/center-of-gravity becomes a lot more important. You actually can execute an armored breakthrough across a narrow frontage, deploy mechanized infantry to establish a salient before the enemy can respond, commit reserves to wipe out entrapped enemies in crossfire, and still be out of range of most of the enemy army. A small, elite, force-multiplier force of Marines actually feels substantially different from a strong but nigh-impossible to command horde of Orks.
You can also deploy flyers, superheavies, and Titans without it feeling contrived.
I enjoy FoW for many of the same reasons, but find that the 15mm scale often creates AFV parking lots. The system feels much better suited for 6mm (micro armor) scale, which in turn is pretty close to the 6-8mm that Epic used. At that scale, it's got a great historical feel and I think strikes an excellent balance between playability and realism. I sometimes wish it didn't have perfect information (knowing exactly what piece of bocage is hiding the AT gun sure changes how tankers operate), but that's a general problem with tabletop games and one area where videogames really shine as an alternative.
If GW were to bring back Epic without gutting the rules in the name of streamlining I'd be all over it. It is, IMO, the best game system GW ever made, and by far the most 'wargamey'.
catbarf wrote: ...If GW were to bring back Epic without gutting the rules in the name of streamlining I'd be all over it. It is, IMO, the best game system GW ever made, and by far the most 'wargamey'...
I've tried Epic over TTS and I have a hard time working out how you'd make it more streamlined, it's already pretty stripped-back.
catbarf wrote: ...If GW were to bring back Epic without gutting the rules in the name of streamlining I'd be all over it. It is, IMO, the best game system GW ever made, and by far the most 'wargamey'...
I've tried Epic over TTS and I have a hard time working out how you'd make it more streamlined, it's already pretty stripped-back.
Try the new Apocalypse, it is ruleswise the latest iteration of Epics (more company level than Epic Armageddon, which is more in the battalion territory) and less crunchy, but more by design than just leaving things out.
Unit, it's always a good time to get in Epic 3d printers and third parties have made getting gorgeous armies trivial, GW has started pushing out nice small scale models and all the rules are freely available.
catbarf wrote: ...If GW were to bring back Epic without gutting the rules in the name of streamlining I'd be all over it. It is, IMO, the best game system GW ever made, and by far the most 'wargamey'...
I've tried Epic over TTS and I have a hard time working out how you'd make it more streamlined, it's already pretty stripped-back.
Try the new Apocalypse, it is ruleswise the latest iteration of Epics (more company level than Epic Armageddon, which is more in the battalion territory) and less crunchy, but more by design than just leaving things out.
Unit, it's always a good time to get in Epic 3d printers and third parties have made getting gorgeous armies trivial, GW has started pushing out nice small scale models and all the rules are freely available.
Games Workshop have started pushing out nice small scale models - What?
If anyone knows a third party provider doing epic models, please do let me know.
Games Workshop have started pushing out nice small scale models - What?
If anyone knows a third party provider doing epic models, please do let me know.
Titanicus and Aeronautica models are in scale with each other and 6 mm infantry, Epic communities around the globe are using them without a hitch. For third party sites you have people like Vanguard, Onslaught, Trolls under the Bridge etc. as well as 3d printing services, public libraries and friends.
Regarding GW specialist prices... eh, a Titanicus starter for 120 e has a fully playable army, AI fliers come 4-6 in a box of 30 e and what not. Cheaper than 40k.
Titans are only useful if you want your Epic Army to have titans - They don't even have a non Imperium/Chaos Titan in production either, so its pretty useless for say, Orks or Eldar.
I will go check out Vanguard however. Thanks guys!
Dysartes wrote: Vanguard Miniatures is a reasonable place to start, Admiral - there's a thread in N&R which shows some of their stuff.
I've got a small order of things from them that I really need to paint at some point - including a not-Mastadon
I'm guessing the "GW pushing nice small scale models" is referring to Titanicus and Aeronautica. They do look nice sculpts, but the prices...
Doesn't a titanicus army cost like half what a normal w40k army costs?
Trivially. The 120 euro starter alone gives you about 1200 points, normal games tending towards 1250-1750 point range. Add one box of your choice in there and for less than 200 you've got the rules and a fully playable army.
This is getting a bit off topic, sorry for shilling here
So i had a bit of an epiphany via this topics subject matter as it relates to my dislike of late 8th edition 40K and now 9th edition.
I hate card games, we have a large group of players at the FLGS who are avid CCG players predominately magic the gathering...GW has turned 40K into MTG
Think about it
mana/lands=CP .creatures=units
.spells/buffs=stratagems or combos of stratagems.
It is no wonder that little tingle in my spidey sense kept going off when i looked at what has been happening to 40K as a war(game) and why i went back to older editions.
Games Workshop have started pushing out nice small scale models - What?
If anyone knows a third party provider doing epic models, please do let me know.
Titanicus and Aeronautica models are in scale with each other and 6 mm infantry, Epic communities around the globe are using them without a hitch. For third party sites you have people like Vanguard, Onslaught, Trolls under the Bridge etc. as well as 3d printing services, public libraries and friends.
Regarding GW specialist prices... eh, a Titanicus starter for 120 e has a fully playable army, AI fliers come 4-6 in a box of 30 e and what not. Cheaper than 40k.
I've had trouble 3d-printing 6mm and 15mm scale infantry, but most of the tanks work pretty well.
I've had trouble 3d-printing 6mm and 15mm scale infantry, but most of the tanks work pretty well.
With resin, it's often about how well the file is made. My guys here are 7-8 mm tall, as marines should, and damn if they haven't come out pretty well with lots of well placed supports.
On the actual topic, echoing Jidmah here. Aphyon's view is overtly reductionistic and does not generalize well. Heck, great many games use resources like CP's to fuel the way armies work on the field without reducing the amount of war-likeness (1914 springs to mind with its command system).
I've had trouble 3d-printing 6mm and 15mm scale infantry, but most of the tanks work pretty well.
With resin, it's often about how well the file is made. My guys here are 7-8 mm tall, as marines should, and damn if they haven't come out pretty well with lots of well placed supports...
Almost certainly. I'm mostly working off my own FDM printer, though, and it can't handle the fiddly weapons very well.
) so if anyone thinks no out there other than me, sound off.
