Inspired by this thread: Are there any old rules that you remember fondly?, I thought we'd do a similar discussion. Going back to earlier editions of the game, what are some rules that you found distasteful, frustrating, unappealing, etc?
I'll share a few to get the ball rolling:
Formations & allies - call be a purist, but in standard games I like the notion of just having one basic detachment pulled from one codex. No allies to leverage weird wombo-combos, no formations to provide power creep escalations. Just a nice simple detachment will do.
Random charge distances - introduced in 6th edition (and here since). I much prefer fixed charge distances.
Casualty / wound allocation in most editions - I don't think GW did this very well back then. It seems a little better now, but in complex situations the ruleset is really murky with how you are supposed to do it, short of rolling one dice at a time, which is annoying.
+1 for not liking challenges in 6th/7th - too fiddly IMHO.
I'll also add that I don't really like the Hammer of Wrath special rule, especially because nearly every bloody unit got it (jump packs, bikes, jet bikes, cavalry, monstrous creatures, etc.).
In ProHammer we made it so that HoW lets you substitute ONE of your normal attacks for being at Initiative 10.
- Formations - New MC treatment that made MCs just Vehicles +1 - Changes to vehicle damage chart and addition of hull points - TLOS rather than more abstracted terrain rules. - Rules based more in existing factions rather than Your Dudes (e.g. in 3.5 IG, Your Dudes could exist wholly differently than any other dudes. In 5th IG, Your Dudes didn't exist and neither did anyone else. In 6th-7th IG, if any rules for regiments came out at all they were for pre-existing regiments (e.g. cadian formation in 7th). In 8th and 9th, Your Dudes can kind of sort of exist like 3.5 but miss out on relics, WLTs, special orders, and special characters).
And most importantly: - Losing track of abstractions. If "this guy fights betterer after a charge" is Furious Charge, then Hammer of Wrath (this guy slaps better after charging) doesn't need to exist. They're abstracting the same phenomenon generally (i.e. "charging = good for this unit") Like Ogryns having Hammer of Wrath instead of Furious Charge - what really changed there, abstraction wise?
Unit1126PLL wrote: - Rules based more in existing factions rather than Your Dudes (e.g. in 3.5 IG, Your Dudes could exist wholly differently than any other dudes. In 5th IG, Your Dudes didn't exist and neither did anyone else. In 6th-7th IG, if any rules for regiments came out at all they were for pre-existing regiments (e.g. cadian formation in 7th). In 8th and 9th, Your Dudes can kind of sort of exist like 3.5 but miss out on relics, WLTs, special orders, and special characters).
I don't understand what you mean above.
By "your dudes" do you mean having special faction rules that let you customize units in flexible ways so that your army might have a unique combination of special rules associated it? Is that right? And is this something you DO like or DON'T like?
Unit1126PLL wrote: - Rules based more in existing factions rather than Your Dudes (e.g. in 3.5 IG, Your Dudes could exist wholly differently than any other dudes. In 5th IG, Your Dudes didn't exist and neither did anyone else. In 6th-7th IG, if any rules for regiments came out at all they were for pre-existing regiments (e.g. cadian formation in 7th). In 8th and 9th, Your Dudes can kind of sort of exist like 3.5 but miss out on relics, WLTs, special orders, and special characters).
I don't understand what you mean above.
By "your dudes" do you mean having special faction rules that let you customize units in flexible ways so that your army might have a unique combination of special rules associated it? Is that right? And is this something you DO like or DON'T like?
It's something I do like.
I mean like the I.G. Doctrines system in 3.5-4th, where Your Regiment could be utterly different from any other regiment or could be drawn from a more generic Imperial Guard list which didn't have Doctrine boons but also didn't have Doctrine maluses.
In 5th edition and throughout 6th, doctrines disappeared (except for a weird entry on vets) so the 28th Karelian Air Defense Regiment finally found itself utterly indistinguishable from the 4th Chortaxi Foot Hordes (or regular Cadians and Tallarn for that matter).
In 7th, Doctrines still disappeared but you got a Cadian-only formation (so you'd better play Cadians folks).
In 8th and 9th, Doctrines are back (ish, in a worse way than they were implemented earlier) but you still lose out on several fronts for having Your Dudes instead of a preestablished GW faction.
-Instant death. I hate all the random 'break points' that existed in old 40k. I also hated the old AP system as well. A space marine commander could take like 40 shots to the face from an autocannon, but hit him with a krak missile and BLAMMO, instantly obliterated.
-Strength D, stomp, etc. All the classic idiocy at the top end of the 5th-7th unit size scale.
-All the ways your close combat units over the editions would sit around doing nothing like dinguses. After deep striking, oh we can shoot but we can't charge. After getting out of a transport, shooting A-OK but no chargesies that wouldn't be fair! After an opponent falls back in 7th onward, we just fething stand there...
-"Eyeing the Terrain" - still makes me chuckle years later after 5th.
-Weapon Skill and Initiative being often totally worthless fluff stats while every point of Ballistic Skill and ranged weapon strength was always useful no matter what, just due to how to-hit charts and initiatives worked.
-All the editions where you basically never left transports except for 5 seconds just before the unit got utterly obliterated, leading to games being 'the models I lovingly painted sit on the side of the table, and the models you lovingly painted sit on the side of the table, and we just play with the Trukks and Rhinos we were required to purchase for every squad because otherwise you stand no chance.' I'm kind of sick and tired of transports sucking ass in 8th/9th but the 'transports are mandatory' editions sucked way harder. I'm just a miniature toy soldier painter at heart, I dont have nearly the same passion for vehicles.
-Dangerous terrain tests. On a 2-5 youre fine! on a 1 youre INSTANTLY fething KILLED BY THAT BUSH (or immobilized for the entire game)
-totally random Vehicle Damage tables with 'functionally nothing' on one and and 'fething instantly killed' on the other. IMO a semi-random VDT system can be fine and dandy, but I would want a lot more of a sliding scale than what we had in previous editions. I'd be fine with small arms only really being able to mildly inconvenience a tank/monster on a really good roll and needing to have a dedicated AT gun to actually bring 'em down, but I wouldn't have it be a flat D6 roll.
The Fallback rule: Ruined an allready unbalanced 8th edition, and stops 9th from being GREAT it should have been a rule were players roll against each other in one way or the other. Instead they made the most garbage stratagem and maximum wounds taken per phase rules for some of the centerpiece models... what a joke.
Ramming rule in 7th No one really knew how it worked.
Brutallica wrote: The Fallback rule: Ruined an allready unbalanced 8th edition, and stops 9th from being GREAT it should have been a rule were players roll against each other in one way or the other. Instead they made the most garbage stratagem and maximum wounds taken per phase rules for some of the centerpiece models... what a joke.
Ramming rule in 7th No one really knew how it worked.
Ahhh yes, ramming. That rule and soulfire were the peak of old ed rules comedy.
Also the second edition Regulation Standard Elephant.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
6th and 7th were much worse than now
Really? My Keeper of Secrets has: Daemonic Shining Aegis Ritual Knife Sinistrous Hand Daemonic Ritual Delicate Precision Greater Daemon Mesmerizing Aura Quicksilver Swiftness Psyker Locus of Swiftness
which is exactly 11 "abilities" on the datasheet - now granted, some of them are granted by wargear options which are mutually exclusive, but if we include loadout then we're dropping two rules to remember but adding three more: Living Whip Witstealer Sword Snapping Claws
for a total of 12 rules to remember on a regularly-kitted Keeper of Secrets. Add in the Exalted keyword (from the stratagem) and you get two more that aren't even on the datasheet (from the list of Realm Racer, Quicksilver Reflexes, Blessing of the Dark Prince, Lightning Flayer, Battle Rapture and Fearseeker).
Wound allocation in 5th i think with nob bikers especially.
That was NONSENSE.
That's what I was going to say too.
Also the lack of "obscuring"-like terrain from 5th through 8th.
Many of the 7th ed Psychic powers.
True. If there haven't been units like nobs who exploited those rules it would have been fine. Major mistake on the rules team which created those units.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
Ill agree with the OP on this, I hated just seeing a list of special rules, especially if they were stupid ones that didn't apply to the model itself. Plus you had to go look them up. Plus they may have worked in a very unintended way that granted some sort of super ability (IE monstrous creature) that the unit did not warrant. I remember some really wacky rule breaking stuff because of the universal special rules and how easily it was abused, especially when it came to independent characters supercharging the unit they join because one of their USRs were poorly worded. Whilst the wall of rules can occasionally become overwhelming in 8-9th edition at least those rules can be tailor made for the model itself and not just trying to shove a square peg into a round hole of rule making.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
Ill agree with the OP on this, I hated just seeing a list of special rules, especially if they were stupid ones that didn't apply to the model itself. Plus you had to go look them up. Plus they may have worked in a very unintended way that granted some sort of super ability (IE monstrous creature) that the unit did not warrant. I remember some really wacky rule breaking stuff because of the universal special rules and how easily it was abused, especially when it came to independent characters supercharging the unit they join because one of their USRs were poorly worded. Whilst the wall of rules can occasionally become overwhelming in 8-9th edition at least those rules can be tailor made for the model itself and not just trying to shove a square peg into a round hole of rule making.
That'd be great, if GW actually DID that. As-is, we still have USRs, they're just called different things.
I do agree that it's a good move to print rules text on the datasheets, but even that's gone by the wayside on modern Dexes.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
Ill agree with the OP on this, I hated just seeing a list of special rules, especially if they were stupid ones that didn't apply to the model itself. Plus you had to go look them up. Plus they may have worked in a very unintended way that granted some sort of super ability (IE monstrous creature) that the unit did not warrant. I remember some really wacky rule breaking stuff because of the universal special rules and how easily it was abused, especially when it came to independent characters supercharging the unit they join because one of their USRs were poorly worded. Whilst the wall of rules can occasionally become overwhelming in 8-9th edition at least those rules can be tailor made for the model itself and not just trying to shove a square peg into a round hole of rule making.
Using the Keeper of Secrets datasheet from before, here are ones that I still have to go look up in 9th edition: Daemonic Daemonic Ritual Locus of Swiftness Quicksilver Swiftness Any from the Exalted keyword (listed above). (not to mention the datasheet itself which isn't even in the codex). Any psychic powers I have.
And if you think that there are no unexpected, unintuitive, or unintended interactions in the current rulesset I have an ATV Attack Bike to sell you - brought back to life by an Apothecary.
Stacking minus to hit modifires and gigantic flyer bases blocking you out of being able to reach objective. Made me think that flyers shouldn't be actual units in w40k, but something more kin to a orbital barrage stratagem or something similar.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
Ill agree with the OP on this, I hated just seeing a list of special rules, especially if they were stupid ones that didn't apply to the model itself. Plus you had to go look them up. Plus they may have worked in a very unintended way that granted some sort of super ability (IE monstrous creature) that the unit did not warrant. I remember some really wacky rule breaking stuff because of the universal special rules and how easily it was abused, especially when it came to independent characters supercharging the unit they join because one of their USRs were poorly worded. Whilst the wall of rules can occasionally become overwhelming in 8-9th edition at least those rules can be tailor made for the model itself and not just trying to shove a square peg into a round hole of rule making.
Using the Keeper of Secrets datasheet from before, here are ones that I still have to go look up in 9th edition:
Daemonic
Daemonic Ritual
Locus of Swiftness
Quicksilver Swiftness
Any from the Exalted keyword (listed above).
(not to mention the datasheet itself which isn't even in the codex).
Any psychic powers I have.
And if you think that there are no unexpected, unintuitive, or unintended interactions in the current rulesset I have an ATV Attack Bike to sell you - brought back to life by an Apothecary.
The attack bike is a pretty stupid one but at least its a certain kind of stupid thats not easy to pull off. I get some universal stuff being the same across an army (ie Demonic, Bolter Drill, etc) because its not going to change and theres no reason to reprint it. Those rules are part of what makes the army unique at least. Really Daemonic is not much different than Shield of Faith for sisters but its 5++ vs 6++ since thats what each army needs to define its function. I did not know about the other ones but I can see why spells are not on the sheets since they are there to add flavor.
A single great CC unit mowing down half of a 6 foot tables worth of army in a single assault phase. You think fight (or shoot twice) strats are bad now? (they are, and need to be eliminated, but...)
Watching an opponent use a specially cut tool to place his entire army, model by model, 1.9999999999" apart to avoid extra damage from templates. Love the idea of a template, it just does not work if people do not want it to.
massive units of 2+ invulnerable save models with rerolls. (Oh wait, this is creeping back in...)
Entire armies starting off the board. (oh wait, that is almost back in a certain specific way...)
Lack of objective style games that allowed your army to line up on a board edge and roll the shooting phase. (ok this is a play style that was encouraged by the rules, but not really a rule...)
PS: I enjoy these threads, as much for the old rule ridiculousness, as the people who like to argue with someone else's opinion.
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
6th and 7th were much worse than now
Really? My Keeper of Secrets has:
Daemonic
Shining Aegis
Ritual Knife
Sinistrous Hand
Daemonic Ritual
Delicate Precision
Greater Daemon
Mesmerizing Aura
Quicksilver Swiftness
Psyker
Locus of Swiftness
which is exactly 11 "abilities" on the datasheet - now granted, some of them are granted by wargear options which are mutually exclusive, but if we include loadout then we're dropping two rules to remember but adding three more:
Living Whip
Witstealer Sword
Snapping Claws
for a total of 12 rules to remember on a regularly-kitted Keeper of Secrets. Add in the Exalted keyword (from the stratagem) and you get two more that aren't even on the datasheet (from the list of Realm Racer, Quicksilver Reflexes, Blessing of the Dark Prince, Lightning Flayer, Battle Rapture and Fearseeker).
But those aren't USR's. You can read exactly what they do there in your codex, unlike the USR era, which was the whole point. And the KoS is an outlier, there are a few like that in 9th but not as many as previous editions - yet.
Keywords are kind of like USR's though, just better implemented
It's funny that you'd mention that all those rules are right there in the codex, but they're not. The entire Datasheet isn't even in my codex.
The point is that GW hasn't actually fixed any of their original problems. They've just reformatted them, like someone who moved data from Excel to Access when they were told the data was wrong. The fact that it looks different and may or may not be more accessible doesn't make it less wrong...
Cynista wrote: When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet
Boy you must hate 9th edition.
6th and 7th were much worse than now
Really? My Keeper of Secrets has:
Daemonic
Shining Aegis
Ritual Knife
Sinistrous Hand
Daemonic Ritual
Delicate Precision
Greater Daemon
Mesmerizing Aura
Quicksilver Swiftness
Psyker
Locus of Swiftness
which is exactly 11 "abilities" on the datasheet - now granted, some of them are granted by wargear options which are mutually exclusive, but if we include loadout then we're dropping two rules to remember but adding three more:
Living Whip
Witstealer Sword
Snapping Claws
for a total of 12 rules to remember on a regularly-kitted Keeper of Secrets. Add in the Exalted keyword (from the stratagem) and you get two more that aren't even on the datasheet (from the list of Realm Racer, Quicksilver Reflexes, Blessing of the Dark Prince, Lightning Flayer, Battle Rapture and Fearseeker).
But those aren't USR's. You can read exactly what they do there in your codex, unlike the USR era, which was the whole point. And the KoS is an outlier, there are a few like that in 9th but not as many as previous editions - yet.
Keywords are kind of like USR's though, just better implemented
Having a USR be an actual USR doesn't stop you from printing the rules text on the datasheet.
Wound allocation shinanigans stand out for me as my most hated rules ever. Like having a character or squad leader with a better save in a unit tanking hits and using look out sir to pass off any hits that bypass their saves. Also equipping all models in a multi-wound unit differently and spreading wounds out between them so no-one dies.
Agreed with previous sentiments on random distances or unit abilities, when previous editions had set distances or point costs.
Also the old Jam on triple-1s rule for the assault cannon.
We had a dreadnought battle royale at my flgs and mine jammed on the first round...glad when they got rid of that and increased the shots fired.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
The wound system they have now is sort of attempting a similar outcome with less fuss, I think.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
The wound system they have now is sort of attempting a similar outcome with less fuss, I think.
Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.
Also, I never really liked Sweeping Advance/Consolidating into combat. This is likely because I played Guard at lower points levels and was used to playing Dawn of War (where I could get a squad of Guardsman into CC, activate automatic reinforcement, and come back five minutes later to find the squad still alive), so playing against solid CC units felt like I was playing the game on a timer: either I wiped all the major CC threats, or they got into CC with me and I got to ask my opponent if he wanted to roll anything or if I should just save us both the time and remove the unit from the board as soon as the charge connected.
Last mention: Monstrous Creatures getting to have better rules than vehicles with none of the weaknesses. Differentiation is fine, but when I want to play a tank army, I expect to at least be comparable to a Nidzilla-style massive monster list w/r/t damage soaking and firepower.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.
I'd like to see a hybrid system.
Something like AP X/-Y.
X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.
So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.
I'd like to see a hybrid system.
Something like AP X/-Y.
X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.
So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.
^Oooh, I like this.
Edit: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?
Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.
Insectum7 wrote: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?
Cover comes in two parts:
Cover Save You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.
AP Negation This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.
So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Something like AP X/-Y.
X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.
So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.
^Oooh, I like this.
Edit: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?
Interesting idea.
I always liked the AP system for the most part. What we did in ProHammer was make it so that if AP = Sv, you still get a save but with a -1 modifier. It was a compromise that didn't require re-profiling every weapon in the game.
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Canadian 5th wrote: Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.
I agree with this too. I don't like that flyers were introduced into the main codexes in particular.
Agreed to old AP system, which sucked.
Also vehicle rules in 6/7th Edition, armor facing might have worked before, but giving all vehicles 3-4 hull points made the whole system useless, especially compared to monsters. The gap between walkers and monsters was so vast GW even sold their new Walkers (dreadknight, Riptide) as monsters because they realized this.
Tank shock...
The whole psychic phase was a mess in 6/7th.
Old WS System, because it looked complex until you realized in 90% of all cases you hit on 3s or 4s.
Random traits and psychic powers.
Old CC rules, you couldn't do anything but watch until one side was dead.
Another vote for the old AP system. It never made sense to me in what it was trying to model- having a gun completely ignore Space Marine armor like it doesn't exist but ping off Terminator armor no differently from a rifle didn't make sense. I get that from an effects standpoint it strongly reinforced picking the right weapon for the right job, but the old AP3 problem really damaged the verisimilitude for me.
I prefer the modifier system, but it has its own issues in its current implementation- partly stemming from too much mid-range AP, partly from how it was retrofitted onto a stat model designed for the old system, partly from its nature as a linear modifier. It's a step in the right direction, but still kind of a clunky mechanic when the most common infantry profile in the game and main battle tanks have the same level of armor, and GW can't decide whether 'more armor' is represented as Toughness, Wounds, or Save. Just look at Gravis conferring higher T and W but no change to Sv, or a Chimera and Russ having the same save despite very different levels of armor protection.
A different game might streamline the process by folding armor penetration into the wound roll; maybe do an AP-vs-Armor comparison and have the outcome be a modifier (eg, AP is lower than Armor but more than half, so you get a -1 to wound). But I can't see 40K doing that anytime soon.
- Instant Death
- Challenges
- Scatter Dice
- MCs being Vehicles +1
- Move = Heavy Weapons hitting on 6s
- Absurd Psychic Powers like Invisibility
- Rolling for Psychic Powers and Warlord Traits
Insectum7 wrote: Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.
Well it will mostly be based around infantry based models.
It boils down to which target is the best for that weapon.
A HB is MEQ > GEQ > Attack Bike > TEQ An AC is GEQ > MEQ > TEQ <> AB
A HB would much rather prefer T4 > T5 > T6+ than T3
The AC would instead go T3 > T5 > T4 > T6 > T7+ -- why did I say T5 before T4? It is the next strongest model that the AC doesn't lose advantage on.
Meanwhile the Executor HB loves TEQ and MEQ, but would rather die than shoot an Attack Bike or GEQ.
That feels a lot to me like granularity that makes each weapon stand out in its own way. Of course this is just how I personally perceive these things.
Insectum7 wrote: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?
Cover comes in two parts:
Cover Save You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.
AP Negation This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.
So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.
Maybe I'm not seeing it. Is the Cover save an unmodifiable save in addition to the normal armor save?
Insectum7 wrote: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?
Cover comes in two parts:
Cover Save You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.
AP Negation This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.
So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.
Maybe I'm not seeing it. Is the Cover save an unmodifiable save in addition to the normal armor save?
The random table of random warp stuff from the 6th or 7th ed, roll lots of dice for no reason or result (apart from random Farseer splodes), cheers Jervis
And most importantly:
- Losing track of abstractions. If "this guy fights betterer after a charge" is Furious Charge, then Hammer of Wrath (this guy slaps better after charging) doesn't need to exist. They're abstracting the same phenomenon generally (i.e. "charging = good for this unit") Like Ogryns having Hammer of Wrath instead of Furious Charge - what really changed there, abstraction wise?
Hammer Of Wrath is specifically meant to be the impact of the bike / jetpack guy / whatever slamming into the other unit, hence happening before any of the other actions of the combat take place. Whether that's worth picking out as being different enough to warrant a different rule to 'this unit fights better when charging' is another matter, but the distinction was always there.
Canadian 5th wrote: Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.
I can understand you not liking LoWs and flyers in the game, but this particular complaint is confusing. Are you saying that unit movement stats should be higher generally, or that a slow moving unit (I'm guessing something like a terminator with M5) should be able to run around something like a Baneblade in less than 2 turns? How does that break immersion for you?
Sweeping Advances, Psychic dice pool, units acting on AI in the Assault phase, 2++ barricades, decurion detachments, wound juggling, instant death, strength D, tank shocks, vehicle damage table, hull points, overloaded main rulebooks, wound chart, summoning, invisibility, force org chart, Daemon randumb rules.
I both loved and hated this. I did enjoy the mini-game of trying to bait out deny dice, but I can see how it could be horribly one sided, too ( like playing against Vampires in fantasy with like 20+ dice ).
I want to echo a few that have been mentioned here:
-Formations and detachments were what made me quit 40k from late 7th ed til the start of 9th, they brought so much bloat and excessive complication into the game while being totally arbitrary. I actually like the system in 9th where everyone's on the same footing, no free rules are getting handed out and, if you want to load up on detachments, you're paying a cost for it.
-7th ed psychic powers had some insane, game-breaking BS in there.
-How binary AP was, it either worked or it didn't, the current gradient system is far better IMHO.
-Randomly rolling psychic powers, warlord traits, etc in 6th and 7th. My group always houseruled that you just got to pick them.
-Flyers. Holy crap, their introduction completely broke the meta in a bad way because they were practically un-hittable but you couldn't target them without wasting points which just weren't worth it most of the time.
-Instant Death made certain units almost useless (hi Tyranid Warriors) and made you feel crappy for RPing yourself as most generic HQs, because they'd get to combat and then get squashed by a powerfist instantly.
As for what I hated?
-Area terrain. One toe in a ruin or crater? Cool, now your Wraithknight/Riptide has a 4+ cover save.
-Jink. Reactive 4+ saves (or better) when your skimmer/flyer/bike gets shot at? These things made fragile skimmers more survivable than most main battle tanks in 7th ed.
-Weapon arcs. Maybe this one is a controversial dislike, but I just don't like how restrictive they were, especially with how many weapons are modelled (eg, flyers with guns that can't even hit anything unless it's straight ahead more than a foot away). If 40k was more tactical I could see this being more acceptable but I feel like there should be more abstraction like in the current game.
-6th/7th ed rules regarding transports and assaulting. It made having your Rhino explode in the enemy's phase beneficial because then you could actually assault in your own turn, which just made no sense. Assault in general got shafted in these editions, but this was a major reason why.
Insectum7 wrote: Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.
Well it will mostly be based around infantry based models.
It boils down to which target is the best for that weapon.
A HB is MEQ > GEQ > Attack Bike > TEQ An AC is GEQ > MEQ > TEQ <> AB
A HB would much rather prefer T4 > T5 > T6+ than T3
The AC would instead go T3 > T5 > T4 > T6 > T7+ -- why did I say T5 before T4? It is the next strongest model that the AC doesn't lose advantage on.
Meanwhile the Executor HB loves TEQ and MEQ, but would rather die than shoot an Attack Bike or GEQ.
That feels a lot to me like granularity that makes each weapon stand out in its own way. Of course this is just how I personally perceive these things.
Haha, well it does add some granularity when you're dealing with mid-range strengths v. toughness, but imo it's granularity that just doesn't make any sense (or is at least less intuitive than the previous S-T wound chart.) The older wound chart makes more intuitive sense (stronger gun wounds tougher models easier, full stop), plus it knocks out engagement potentials with extreme matchups (s3 can't wound T7, don't even roll). The only different "roll event" for a HB firing at a Guardsmen vs. Space Marine in the current system is the save, whereas in the older system the HB would be wounding the Guardsman on a 2+, giving two "roll events" differences.
Part of the increased weapon-differentiation of 8th/9th is the fact that they brought the Damage stat back. Imo the old wound chart plus the Damage variable is the ideal setup.
The pinning rule and having to take leadership tests to shoot at not the closet target have been consigned to the dustbin of history with no tears being shed
Bosskelot wrote: The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.
Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.
Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.
I'd like to see a hybrid system.
Something like AP X/-Y.
X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.
So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.
We really don't need to go back to the days where the most common weapon in the game could completely ignore the saves of half of the basic infantry units in the game while also being higher strength than their toughness (barring Orks). That was probably the nicest thing that 8th brought about - 5 and 6+ saves actually meant something for the first time in god knows how long.
Mind you, combat doctrines have already reduced this with Marine bolters getting -1ap and marine melee getting -1ap...
On topic of hated old rules, I didn't overly like the Instant Death rule. Mind you I think part of it was I learned about it in a gotcha moment when I first started playing, but it just kind of is a feels bad moment when you get hit by a weapon and then whoops, that model is dead regardless of how many wounds it has. This salt with that rule might also be in part because most armies I'm drawn to have T3 as a baseline so anything s6 and up could just destroy something - often without a save.
I "got" the old AP system as it seemed logical that a weapon either had sufficient penetrative power to go through armour or it didn't. I didn't like the way it played in game terms though.
A blast from the past.... but I'd like to nominate the virus outbreak strategy card from 2nd edition. A randomly acquired card that could be completely useless or destroy entire armies and the only rule I know of that lead to a formal apology from the designer (I seem to remember he told people to tear it up).
Gadzilla666 wrote: I can understand you not liking LoWs and flyers in the game, but this particular complaint is confusing. Are you saying that unit movement stats should be higher generally, or that a slow moving unit (I'm guessing something like a terminator with M5) should be able to run around something like a Baneblade in less than 2 turns? How does that break immersion for you?
Think about scales in the game. Your average infantry model can run 6" which is about 3x their own height without the base, I'm out of shape and I can do that in a couple of seconds at most. Now at the same time, we have certain 'ranged' weapons that have a maximum range of 6-12". So how do you square that circle?
If you didn't have tanks or terrain you could imagine space marines being so fast that they can cover the hundreds of meters of distance their rounds can travel in seconds. Once you add in landmarks like vehicles and buildings it starts to look silly that a rocket-powered space gun can't fire further than 3 or 4 tanks parked tip to tail and that it takes a marine a couple of turns of 'advancing' to clear those same dozens of meters. Adding in larger vehicles that can't even move their own length in a turn armed with guns that can only fire twice as far as they themselves are long just further highlights the absurdity.
For our table sizes space marines should be half their current scale or less to fit better with the sizes of battles our current forces allow us to have.
I just remembered one that confused the hell out of me when I first started - the way Ballistic Skill used to scale. I think it was in part the way I was originally described it to, but BS3 hit 1/2 the time, BS 2 1/3 the time, and BS4 hit 2/3 of the time. I think it was because I was used to "roll under" rpg systems since I've done role playing games far longer than 40k, but on hearing it is determined by D6 rolls, the natural conclusion was "BS 3 means I hit on a 3 and under, BS 4 a 4 and under, BS 5 a 5 and under, and BS 2 a 2 and under. Instead, for some random reason, BS 3 means I need 4 or better, while BS 4 means I need a 3 or better to hit, BS 2 means you are fishing for 5s and 6s...etc.
I vastly prefer the current "hit on an X+" to that. It is intuitive and makes far more sense than the old version.
But whether GW gave your faction any of that was pot luck.
Unknown_Lifeform wrote: I "got" the old AP system as it seemed logical that a weapon either had sufficient penetrative power to go through armour or it didn't. I didn't like the way it played in game terms though.
I think it was intentional weapon abstraction - like in some computer games when you have anti-tank guns that take longer to kill infantry than handguns.
It starts to come apart as you add more and more categories of unit and weapon to the mix.
kurhanik wrote: I just remembered one that confused the hell out of me when I first started - the way Ballistic Skill used to scale. I think it was in part the way I was originally described it to, but BS3 hit 1/2 the time, BS 2 1/3 the time, and BS4 hit 2/3 of the time. I think it was because I was used to "roll under" rpg systems since I've done role playing games far longer than 40k, but on hearing it is determined by D6 rolls, the natural conclusion was "BS 3 means I hit on a 3 and under, BS 4 a 4 and under, BS 5 a 5 and under, and BS 2 a 2 and under. Instead, for some random reason, BS 3 means I need 4 or better, while BS 4 means I need a 3 or better to hit, BS 2 means you are fishing for 5s and 6s...etc.
I vastly prefer the current "hit on an X+" to that. It is intuitive and makes far more sense than the old version.
The real problem is that there was a bunch of rules to make your weapons twin linked, so a higher BS value was often pointless.
Not so much a specific rule, but a design paradigm that GW went through a while back. It was the "Let's put in a wargear section!" phase.
My homeboy Jervis explained this at the time, his son couldn't figure out what was what, so the introduction of the Wargear section was done to keep all the weapons in a central location for easy reference.
Of course this is GW, and GW's ideas often don't meet up with the execution of said ideas. So we ended up with units that had rules spread across 3-4 different pages, be it from unique special rules, weapons, specialist equipment and USRs.
And it reached it's absolute nadir in the 5th Edition Imperial Guard Codex, specifically the vehicle wargear section, which has 31 different entries, of which 23 told you to check other pages in the book (actually, one of them directed you to the main 40k rulebook!).
What was the point in this central wargear page if all the rules were spread out across the entire book? It was nuts.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I can understand you not liking LoWs and flyers in the game, but this particular complaint is confusing. Are you saying that unit movement stats should be higher generally, or that a slow moving unit (I'm guessing something like a terminator with M5) should be able to run around something like a Baneblade in less than 2 turns? How does that break immersion for you?
Think about scales in the game. Your average infantry model can run 6" which is about 3x their own height without the base, I'm out of shape and I can do that in a couple of seconds at most. Now at the same time, we have certain 'ranged' weapons that have a maximum range of 6-12". So how do you square that circle?
You don't. It was explicit in Rogue Trader that model scale and table scale aren't related in any way at all, and weapon ranges were decided based on their gameplay merits, not 'realisms.'
And that's before you try to apply real time units like 'seconds' to game turns, which also aren't even vaguely related.
*Rule of 3 in 8th ed. And my distaste for this rule has only grown with 9th.
*the 8th ed+ deep-strike (and similar) rules.
*Strategems
*anything can wound anything on a 6.
*Vehicles not having facings/fire arcs.
*The requirement that x % of stuff has to start on the board.
*Not being allowed to fire into melee from units not involved. WTF? Lore wise, unless you're an Eldar (maybe) life is even cheaper here in the 41stM than it ever was in WHFB/Sigmar....
*The wound allocation system in most editions.
*The moral system in most editions.
*very often the psychic phase
Crispy78 wrote:Hammer Of Wrath is specifically meant to be the impact of the bike / jetpack guy / whatever slamming into the other unit, hence happening before any of the other actions of the combat take place. Whether that's worth picking out as being different enough to warrant a different rule to 'this unit fights better when charging' is another matter, but the distinction was always there.
This is exactly why I like USRs as a concept and strongly dislike the 6th-7th Ed implementation of them.
What on earth is a 'hammer of wrath'? That name tells me nothing, except that the writer isn't allowed to name the band. Call it 'impact hits' and then it's reasonably intuitive, and I can more easily remember why it's different from Furious Charge. What's the difference between Bulky and Very Bulky again? Couldn't it just be, like, Bulky(2) or Bulky(4) and that tells me how many spots they occupy in a transport, if that's the relevant factor? I can guess that It Will Not Die has something to do with durability. Oh, right, it's regeneration. Why can't it just be called Regeneration? Go for gold and call it Regeneration(5+) even, so I don't need to remember what the value I need to roll is. And how many unrelated USRs are there that are all some variation of anger but had totally different effects? I remember Rage, Furious Charge, and Hatred; got any others?
Unintuitive wording adds an unnecessary cognitive burden to an already complex game. If you want to use thematic language to convey a theme, best practice is to separate it from crunch- 'It Will Not Die: This unit has the Regeneration USR.' Special rules that have their definitions right there are fine, but universal special rules ought to be as straightforward and easy to remember as any other part of the core rulebook.
At least the basic mechanics stayed free of the purple prose. Imagine if GW decided that 'Movement Phase' or 'Strength' were too straightforward and gave them 'fluffy' names instead.
Lots of hate for my boy Instant Death... so conversly.
Eternal Warrior: No just because you're grrrr real good at taking damage and powering through it doesn't prevent you from turning into a fine mist when the Medusa siege gun fires at you.
Anything involving having to roll leadership to shoot at anything but the nearest target, or worse, not giving the option at all.
Just Tony wrote: Every mutable genus/trait/doctrine/veteran skill system
You didn't like those?
It started the trend of not knowing what the feth you were facing. Prioritizing fire was a nightmare as you usually wind up focusing on a unit that was innocuous while a particularly vicious build that had NO WYSIWYG WHATSOEVER was ignored. It also gave Chaos YET AGAIN the ability to have their cake and eat every other army's bakery as well.
So I started in 8th, but I love me some 30k, and also reading about earlier editions. It completely blows my mind that there was a time when you couldn’t measure distances until you were committed to an action. In fact I think in necromunda you still can’t. That just seems like the cruelest design choice.
Crackedgear wrote: So I started in 8th, but I love me some 30k, and also reading about earlier editions. It completely blows my mind that there was a time when you couldn’t measure distances until you were committed to an action. In fact I think in necromunda you still can’t. That just seems like the cruelest design choice.
In practice it meant you had situations where you had to use an element of risk management. You might really want to shoot a specific target but you're not sure of the range so you need to decide whether to risk it or take a safer choice to target a less important unit you know is in range. Pre-measuring does have the major advantage of avoiding the really heated arguments about what's in range for charges but the older rules had their merits too.
For me Challenges, Flyers and Superheavies are probably the three things I hated the most. Challenges just didn't work. I still remember a game where my Death Company surrounded a Chaos Sorcerer and ended up having to be cheerleaders because he challenged my Chaplain and neither of us were equipped to kill the opponent (AP4 FTW!) Flyers and SH just completely skew the scale of the game and their introduction showed that just with the sheer number of rules they broke/ignored in order to function.
Was nice to have a much wider array of psychic powers but some were just obnoxious, such as Invisibility and the one that let you move an entire terrain feature (regardless of size) and anything on it.
7th Ed casting was also just awful; add up the total warp charges and that's your pool, every dice from the pool that rolls a 4+ is one charge, meaning you'd need 3 charges to comfortably get a WC1 power off. Even worse for denying, since you'd only deny those charges on 6's.
The codex bloat as mentioned previously. Your rules were scattered over several sections. Want a Leman Russ? Ok the stats are here. Oh you need to know the Battle Cannon stats? In another bit...You need the points cost now? Keep checking around, you'll find it.
I do wish we kept USRs in 8th-9th but there were so many in previous editions it was hard to keep track. IIRC, you had Hatred, Preferred Enemy, Crusader and Zealot which all did very similar things but were all distinct.
Challenges. Longer that stays dead, the better.
Unbound armies. Didn't mind the Allies Matrix, as that can do some nice fluffy combos (IG force with a squad of Deathwatch hunting down a xenos relic for example), but when you can "literally take anything you want from any book" and the only downside was, IIRC, you can't reroll your warlord trait, utterly ridiculous.
Having to roll for warlord traits and psychic powers in general.
Crackedgear wrote: So I started in 8th, but I love me some 30k, and also reading about earlier editions. It completely blows my mind that there was a time when you couldn’t measure distances until you were committed to an action. In fact I think in necromunda you still can’t. That just seems like the cruelest design choice.
In practice it meant you had situations where you had to use an element of risk management. You might really want to shoot a specific target but you're not sure of the range so you need to decide whether to risk it or take a safer choice to target a less important unit you know is in range. Pre-measuring does have the major advantage of avoiding the really heated arguments about what's in range for charges but the older rules had their merits too.
Haha, no-pre-measuring before declaring targets?! Some of us remember when indirect barrages required you to literally GUESS the range between the firing model and the target, and that's where your shot hit/scattered from. I loved that.
Just Tony wrote: Every mutable genus/trait/doctrine/veteran skill system
You didn't like those?
It started the trend of not knowing what the feth you were facing. Prioritizing fire was a nightmare as you usually wind up focusing on a unit that was innocuous while a particularly vicious build that had NO WYSIWYG WHATSOEVER was ignored. It also gave Chaos YET AGAIN the ability to have their cake and eat every other army's bakery as well.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Imo all those potential army mods made list building way more fun, and opened up unique opportunities for more units to shine.
I really dislike flyers in this game, especially their current implementation. They just feel like tanks which are very fast, often they have the same toughness/save/wounds as actual tanks!
I like to imagine flyers as "hitting them is hard, destroying them is easy", but that's not what we've got or have ever really had.
I like USRs, there's no reason not to have them. They were badly implemented before, but IMO current special rules have exactly the same problem of bloat but now they're not even universal!
Even when rules are universal, like deepstrike, they pretend it isn't and give each one a unique name. Which just gets confusing when they try and tie effects into deepstrike as they need long-winded explanations instead of just saying "deepstrike".
I didn't like the old cover, armour, and AP system either.
A Space Marine gets zero benefit from hiding behind a building, unless he gets hit by a battlecannon in which suddenly the building stops 50% of incoming fire. To name just one example.
Haha, no-pre-measuring before declaring targets?! Some of us remember when indirect barrages required you to literally GUESS the range between the firing model and the target, and that's where your shot hit/scattered from. I loved that.
.
Wouldn't you just know the table after 4-5 games and to the math for the triangulation in your head by memory? Plus pre game you could just check what the lenght of terrain is, and with that and Pitagoras you more or less could hit anything with an error of around half an inch, maybe less if you were really good at decimals.
Haha, no-pre-measuring before declaring targets?! Some of us remember when indirect barrages required you to literally GUESS the range between the firing model and the target, and that's where your shot hit/scattered from. I loved that.
.
Wouldn't you just know the table after 4-5 games and to the math for the triangulation in your head by memory? Plus pre game you could just check what the lenght of terrain is, and with that and Pitagoras you more or less could hit anything with an error of around half an inch, maybe less if you were really good at decimals.
No. You weren't allowed to measure anything other than ranges back then and anyone trying to do shady stuff like measure terrain pre-game wouldn't get very far in either a gaming group or tournament. There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges. the thing is, this was all unnecessary, as it took about 3 or 4 games for most competent players to be able to guess ranges within a reasonable margin of error. I haven't had to do it in well over a decade but reckon I'd still get within a few inches of targets in the 24"-36" range. Even then, you still had to roll for scatter so it wasn't like it was a guaranteed path to victory.
But you could check the lenght of store terrain after the game? If you know where your opponent and your deployment ends, you can easily check the ranges knowing the table size.
If you know that that building is 6" wide and 8" long. It would be really hard to mind scrub someone from such knowladge,specially after a few games.
Back in the before-premeasure days, you could only measure once you declared an attack, so if you were out of range, sucks.
HOWEVER, it allowed for some awesome differentiation - there was a wargear called 'Targeters' that allowed units to premeasure for their shooting before they declared targets. IG stormtroopers had them.
This also allowed for some interesting tactics, where you could move a unit with targeters to a specific distance between say, a guess range weapon and it's target, allowing them to measure the distance from themselves to the target without firing at it. This effectively "spotted" for the artillery/guess weapon by getting a precise known range.
Stuff like that was cool and made units useful in roles besides "kill the enemy" or "die slowly"
The first rule that sticks out to me as the one I disliked the most was from 5th edition.
From memory it went something like.
A fearless unit that lots a close combat takes a number of saves based on how badly they lots, something like that. I recall it was devastating to my foot Orks at the time and all the online and other player were all like Orks are amazing because or Nob Bikers. Which just compounded the issue in my head as I didn't play that new hotness and Orks were in fact not good. One good build doesn't make a good codex. I'll add to my complaint a dislike of pulling casualties from the front and later in 7th being forced into challenges. Which lead to another weird change to my army, no more equipment spent on Nobs. There was no point to throwing those points away.
Other than that I can't think of many rules that gave me such an emotional reaction.
And maybe on there own those rules aren't so bad but stacked with a gakk codex it was a lot of compound interest.
The only weird positive that came from some of that was moving towards a shoota boys based list mid to late 7th which seemed to work quite well.
Oh, last one. Close combat in 2nd edition. That's the one thing about that edition I never liked. The rules were just a slog as I remember it. 90% of the time an unkillable character moved across the table to engage one of my characters or a squad and it never went well for me. maybe it was the dice. Who knows at this point. I just recall really not enjoying that whole phase.
Kroem wrote: The pinning rule and having to take leadership tests to shoot at not the closet target have been consigned to the dustbin of history with no tears being shed
Count me as one who "shed a (figurative) tear" and misses taking leadership tests to shoot at a target other than the closest unit. It is a rule that makes logical sense in the chaos of battle, directly impacts model placement and targeting strategies, and further distinguishes more elite armies from less disciplined armies. Yes, it was more time consuming, but it added more realism to a game that was trying to become a tabletop wargame (versus the more mathhammer "gotcha" card game with models we have now). For older editions, I also like to houserule that an infantry unit (ex. tactical squad) may split fire with heavy/special weapons by taking another leadership test beforehand instead of all models having to fire at the same target (i.e. all of the models with bolters having to fire at a tank when really only the one model with a missile launcher really wants to).
As to what I did not care for: TLOS versus more abstract terrain rules may be easier for beginners to learn but it has had more of a negative impact on the game in my opinion. I also disliked 5th edition's wound allocation rules and the Eternal Warrior USR; basically a form of "plot armour" for big/named characters.
ugh, yes, "Fearless' units actually getting extremely bad penalties from losing melee was a very obnoxious feature. Oh my orks are "Fearless" So they just...take 15 extra casualties from that melee, whoops theyre all dead now instead of just possibly being dead and possibly running away.
oh, for fun I'll also throw out:
If a necron player ever got below 1/4 of the number of necron models (stuff like wraiths/scarabs/vehicles didnt count) they had at the start, they instantly lose the game because all the necrons disappear.
Brilliant, wonderful rules writing, very fluff, very narrative, very fun and satisfying for everyone.
warhead01 wrote: A fearless unit that lots a close combat takes a number of saves based on how badly they lots, something like that.
One wound per point by which they had lost combat, saves allowed.
Previously the morale rules were based on how outnumbered you were and how many remaining wounds the two sides had, not how badly you were getting beaten.
Gotta add that I hated guess range weapons and was very happy with GW changing it to scatter instead. I'm not an artillerist, the game should be testing my generalship rather than my ability to guess ranges, and when you spend your weekends cutting metal and wood to precise lengths you get pretty good at estimating distances.
To a lesser extent, the lack of premeasuring in general. I like the idea but so many cheesy interactions came out of it, like guys casually laying their forearms on the table or measuring their movement with a yardstick that just so happens to extend over the enemy army. Oh, the battlefield is composed of 12" tiles, isn't that something.
I very much like the idea of friction and uncertainty, not knowing whether you'll be able to shoot, not able to hover 6.1" out of range and know with complete confidence that you are immune to shooting. But I'd rather see that friction come from things like randomized movement or activation orders. That's how hex-and-paper wargames handle it and it works well.
Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.
Slipspace wrote: ...There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges...
Maybe this is me being an IG fanboy, but if I played a dude who had literal protractors on his artillery to work out firing solutions, I think I'd let him.
Also, from what I recall, a lot of the badfeels from Guess ranges was that one guy in the group who worked in carpentry or construction/was preternaturally good about eyeballing ranges/had a forearm exactly 12" long who basically didn't have to play by the rule where everyone else did. I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available), so that's a bit of abstraction that I'm happy to do to keep everyone on a reasonably level field there.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Back in the before-premeasure days, you could only measure once you declared an attack, so if you were out of range, sucks.
HOWEVER, it allowed for some awesome differentiation - there was a wargear called 'Targeters' that allowed units to premeasure for their shooting before they declared targets. IG stormtroopers had them.
In an edition where you couldn't pre-measure, Targeters were probably the best wargear in the game. They were only 1 point. A single point for your unit to pre-measure. IIRC, only Daemonhunters also had access to them, but seeing as you could take an allied Inquisitor very easily, nothing stopped you from attacking with him first, then using that as a baseline for the guys around you.
AnomanderRake wrote: Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.
It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.
Command points - these seem to be around to stay but no bueno from me
Challenges - yeah more often than not they broke the game heavily in one players favour.
Snap shots - hitting on 6s in many situations seemed unfair, when the different base ballistic skills were so varied.
Grav weapons - cheap way to make tanks unplayble. Auto immobilise on 6s? With like a million shots? Yeah.....
Slipspace wrote: ...There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges...
Maybe this is me being an IG fanboy, but if I played a dude who had literal protractors on his artillery to work out firing solutions, I think I'd let him.
Also, from what I recall, a lot of the badfeels from Guess ranges was that one guy in the group who worked in carpentry or construction/was preternaturally good about eyeballing ranges/had a forearm exactly 12" long who basically didn't have to play by the rule where everyone else did. I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available), so that's a bit of abstraction that I'm happy to do to keep everyone on a reasonably level field there.
I feel like a lot of the nostalgia for a lot of these old-school mechanics is for the concept, rather than the reality of how they actually practically worked in the game.
People love to compare the powergaming-infested worst case state of the current game edition with a rosy-tinted super duper casual everyone just in it to have fun and care about making sure their opponents are having a good time version of the older game edition.
When I think back to fifth, I make a conscious effort to try and remember the gakky moments of my first donkey-cave opponent screaming and yelling that the charge distance I rolls gets me 0.1" away from BASE TO BASE CONTACT (after he maybe accidentlly slightly put the charging model back down on the board slightly farther back away than it was when I initially measured and moved it) or opponents squatting down and going "Yeaaaaah, no...I can definitely see over 50% of that model, no from my perspective definitely" when looking at things they were targeting and going "hmmm, no, nope I think that if you actually angle your eye here, that rock right there covers the whole left side of my model, I definitely get that cover save vs your lascannon!"
I also remember the good games, too, me and my friends in high school laughing when Ragnar Blackmane ended up the sole survivor of his squad and sweeping advanced the 8 remaining ork boyz away, or when a squad of blood claws died heroically immobilizing a deff dread, which buzz sawed them to pieces and then spent the rest of the battle waving its claws around.
waefre_1 wrote: I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available)
IRL there are a ton of ways to measure range and most of them are low-tech. You've got maps and laser rangefinders, but in a defensive position you also have pre-measured and marked positions- this provides a visual reference that helps both artillery and machine gunners. Then there are coincidence rangefinders, of which there even is a model in 40K (a Death Korps artillery crewman has a coincidence rangefinder). On top of that it is very common for rifle scopes to have built-in rangefinders, like the Soviet PSO reticle or the Steyr AUG's donut of death. For anti-tank guns there are also spotting rifles, which allow you to fire successive rifle shots with the same ballistic profile as your 'real' gun, then once you've worked out the range fire the actual anti-tank round.
And even as an infantryman with no rangefinding gear whatsoever, you can observe your shots and use your rifle's range compensation to work out distance. Sights are set to 200m and you're hitting low? Bump it up to 300m. On target now? Cool, you radio in that the target's 300m away, your mortars know they're 500m behind you, they can put two and two together. Fire for effect.
So yeah getting distance is not especially difficult in the real world. I think it's fine to abstract that out to a scatter roll to see if the soldiers get the measurement right, rather than make you, the player, responsible for that with just a bird's-eye view. The range guessing always felt to me like it was just a step removed from old naval wargames where you shot the silhouette of a ship with a BB gun to see where the shells hit.
Slipspace wrote: ...There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges...
Maybe this is me being an IG fanboy, but if I played a dude who had literal protractors on his artillery to work out firing solutions, I think I'd let him.
Also, from what I recall, a lot of the badfeels from Guess ranges was that one guy in the group who worked in carpentry or construction/was preternaturally good about eyeballing ranges/had a forearm exactly 12" long who basically didn't have to play by the rule where everyone else did. I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available), so that's a bit of abstraction that I'm happy to do to keep everyone on a reasonably level field there.
I feel like a lot of the nostalgia for a lot of these old-school mechanics is for the concept, rather than the reality of how they actually practically worked in the game.
People love to compare the powergaming-infested worst case state of the current game edition with a rosy-tinted super duper casual everyone just in it to have fun and care about making sure their opponents are having a good time version of the older game edition.
Hehe, not me! I definitely recall the powergaming aspects of earlier editions. And I often remember them fondly because I was one of the ones who was finding new ways to powergame them, lol.
When I think back to fifth, I make a conscious effort to try and remember the gakky moments of my first donkey-cave opponent screaming and yelling that the charge distance I rolls gets me 0.1" away from BASE TO BASE CONTACT (after he maybe accidentlly slightly put the charging model back down on the board slightly farther back away than it was when I initially measured and moved it)
I remember those too. DON'T TOUCH THE MODELS before carefully measuring out potentially contentious charges. I remember having to mathematically prove to people that they couldn't make a charge because they had to start the game at least 24" away, and therefore they could only get to my (stationary) model in two turns or whatever by cheating.
*Didn't roll for charge distance in 5th ed though, it was a flat 6". (unless you were charging through difficult terrain).
Unit1126PLL wrote: Back in the before-premeasure days, you could only measure once you declared an attack, so if you were out of range, sucks.
HOWEVER, it allowed for some awesome differentiation - there was a wargear called 'Targeters' that allowed units to premeasure for their shooting before they declared targets. IG stormtroopers had them.
In an edition where you couldn't pre-measure, Targeters were probably the best wargear in the game. They were only 1 point. A single point for your unit to pre-measure. IIRC, only Daemonhunters also had access to them, but seeing as you could take an allied Inquisitor very easily, nothing stopped you from attacking with him first, then using that as a baseline for the guys around you.
Lots of units had access to targeters. It was a good way to differentiate well-equipped units from less well-equipped ones.
Sisters of Battle, for example, had targeters. This was an advantage over Space Marines possessed by a unit typically considered "Marines -1".
Imperial Guard stormtroopers had targeters, which went a good ways to separate them from other 4+ save units like carapace veterans or grenadiers.
4th edition eldar with a bunch of pinning rangers backed up with skimmer grav tanks was miserable.
Oh, I miss the whole gamut of morale effects, including pinning. I want a bit more complexity to the game than 'kill everything you can,' and stop once you've mathed out how many more are likely to vanish into the ether later. Which granted, in 9th that number is almost always one, but still.
AnomanderRake wrote: Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.
It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.
Eh. When 8e came along and they decided to try and make everyone's free rules of equal value all they've ended up doing is making the sub-faction rules all pretty much the same across factions in the name of making them more 'distinct' and 'characterful'. While also making balancing the game harder, optimizing lists harder, and still putting players in the position of needing to hop sub-factions if they want to use a different unit effectively. I'd rather they just stop it with the free rules entirely.
For my part, on rules I found distasteful in older editions?
Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life.
Skimmer rules: Somehow GW routinely manages to finagle Skimmers into being super-tanks, while making walking/wheeled/tread vehicles garbage or at least decidedly generally less effective.
Hull Points: What if we take vehicles, that have their own unique damage and toughness mechanisms, but also make it so that they're basically W3 Sv "-" models too! Overlapping kill mechanics are the coolest!
5E No Retreat: Yeah, your Orks lost combat by 8 against an elite foe, even though you killed a greater tabletop value of the enemy force, now take 8 6+ armor saves for what's left of the unit.
Formations: "Oh let me turn those 800pts into 1200pts, but you still only gotta pay 800pts"
Nightfight: Stupendously poorly implemented through most editions
Rerollable 2+ saves
3E/4E transport rules: "unless you're a skimmer, don't actually ride in these".
Vehicle movement/shooting rules: particularly 3-5E's, these were wonky and bad.
Challenges: Solid dumb
Wound Allocation is another thing that's been wonky through most editions.
Consolidation into new combats: "oh yeah, I rode up behind area terrain where you could never see me, dove into combat turn 2, and never gave you a chance to shoot at that unit again the whole rest of the game as it ate that whole flank on its own".
Blast/Ordnance weapon rules: These were always wonky until 8E. The change to random shots and not potentially affecting multiple units is definitely a change, but these weapons are generally much more functional in terms of average damage output and performance.
Vaktathi wrote: ...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...
Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?
Vaktathi wrote: ...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...
Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?
I think the bigger issue is that the "attack at initiative through cover" mechanic just didn't fit the function. GW apportioned grenades as was appropriate to the lore, but many or even most of the units that could buy or just came with hand grenades didn't really ever have a use for them (guardsmen, sisters, devasator marines, etc) while many units that really could have used that functionality never got access to them. This resulted in grenades being complete window dressing that just bloated cost unnecessarily (or that they just started getting for free) for many units, being critical for certain assault units, and being completely unavailable but desperately needed for others.
Now, there's definitely an argument to be made about their later iterations' functionality and value, but the older 3E-5E paradigm for grenades just really felt like the wrong idea for the way they got distributed. It was also just not terribly intuitive to a first time new player and made their existence feel largely trivial (even if they could be vital on some units). EDIT: It was a weird thing to have one specific weapon type so abstracted in function, particularly when so many other weapons, often much less interesting, got their own differentiations and distinct weapons profiles during that era.
Vaktathi wrote: ...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...
Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?
I think the bigger issue is that the "attack at initiative through cover" mechanic just didn't fit the function. GW apportioned grenades as was appropriate to the lore, but many or even most of the units that could buy or just came with hand grenades didn't really ever have a use for them (guardsmen, sisters, devasator marines, etc) while many units that really could have used that functionality never got access to them. This resulted in grenades being complete window dressing that just bloated cost unnecessarily (or that they just started getting for free) for many units, being critical for certain assault units, and being completely unavailable but desperately needed for others.
Now, there's definitely an argument to be made about their later iterations' functionality and value, but the older 3E-5E paradigm for grenades just really felt like the wrong idea for the way they got distributed. It was also just not terribly intuitive to a first time new player and made their existence feel largely trivial (even if they could be vital on some units). EDIT: It was a weird thing to have one specific weapon type so abstracted in function, particularly when so many other weapons, often much less interesting, got their own differentiations and distinct weapons profiles during that era.
^While the Frag-adjusting-Initiative felt a little unintuitive, as a Marine player I loved Grenades. It meant my Tacs/Assaults/Devs could hit vehicles in CC at Strength 6 by planting Krak Grenades on them, and made them feel like absolute bosses once you assaulted a Leman Russ you had spent two turns Stunning as you closed the distance. It gave this whole new dimension to the basic guys, making them feel very capable.
For a little bit of time Frag Grenades could also be used against vehicles in CC, giving a Strength of 4. This allowed Guardsmen to make similar, more desperate attacks in CC against vehicles, which felt really cool.
My ideal system would allow some throwing of Grenades in addition to the CC capability. Imo the ability to set AT grenades on vehicles should be one of the design pillars of the balance between infantry and vehicles/superheavies. (the other being a capability to target sub-sections of superheavies)
As a concept, it was pretty cool. But, as a mechanic it was pretty poorly implemented.
Not only did you need to score a wound for the test to take place, most units had high enough Ld or other ways to largely ignore it.
If they’d just made the test trigger on being hit? It might’ve been enough to make it relevant. But when the weapons typically lacked rate of fire, or had unavoidable scatter, the test just didn’t trigger often enough to build into a plan.
Chiming in with some more dumb rules from days of yore: -Blast sniping in 6th/7th was so stupid, taking the wound allocation rules of that edition and throwing them out the window at the altar of "less abstraction". Throw that template down above a dude you really want dead and you've got a better than 1/3 chance of making them take every wound first. Wound allocation has been wonky over the years, but I'm much more in favour of allocating how you like vs the sort of silliness this brought about.
-Heavy weapons on infantry - either move or can't shoot, or in later editions only being able to hit on a 6+ was still excessive. The current system is far more interesting in my opinion and makes your heavy weapon infantry units less static, not to mention that taking a heavy weapon in an infantry squad is actually a legitimate option now.
-Vehicle weapons - in addition to the facings and weapon mounts I already mentioned, vehicles were only allowed to shoot a limited number of weapons depending on how far they moved. This makes some sense on the faster vehicles, but it was particularly dumb on Leman Russes who somehow weren't considered Heavy vehicles and couldn't shoot half their guns if they moved at all.
-OMG, Night Fighting! Yeah this was stupid, I liked the idea but it was totally random and only really affects the first turn. Oh and you had to spend points on searchlights to completely negate it, but it wasn't worth it for the 1/6 chance of this happening for 1 turn of the game. Just pointless.
-Can't assault out of reserves in 6th/7th... like, why? Just why? These editions screwed assault units in so many ways. The dumbest part about this is that making putting a counter-charge unit into reserves would now make them effectively useless, whereas if you put a shooting unit in reserves they would walk onto the board at full effectiveness. My poor Wolf Scouts got screwed by this, although I compensated by giving them special weapons and hoping they would kill something expensive or be a distraction for a mere ~115pts.
-Tyranid Instinctive Behaviour has almost always been bad. Oh no, my unit has to shoot at the closest enemy unit? Cool, my guns are only 12" anyway. Oh no, my Hormagaunts have to charge the closest enemy? Cool, was going to do that anyway. In early editions they even cannibalized themselves if I remember correctly. I get that they don't want to make it too unfun, but it's been borderline pointless for as long as I can remember. Give all Nids some sort of buff beyond Fearless while in synapse range? Then we'd be talking.
Andilus Greatsword wrote: ...Can't assault out of reserves in 6th/7th... like, why? Just why? These editions screwed assault units in so many ways. The dumbest part about this is that making putting a counter-charge unit into reserves would now make them effectively useless, whereas if you put a shooting unit in reserves they would walk onto the board at full effectiveness. My poor Wolf Scouts got screwed by this, although I compensated by giving them special weapons and hoping they would kill something expensive or be a distraction for a mere ~115pts...
No counter-play. Reliable, accurate Deep Strike that you can charge out of can only be countered by taking masses of screening units, and in 8th that ended up borking small elite armies pretty badly because they couldn't do anything about the Deep Strikers so they got automatic charges (as long as they were armies with charge distance buffs) on priority targets you couldn't do anything about. To my mind 6th/7th and 8th/9th have both done Deep Strike badly wrong; 6th/7th made it unusable unless you had drop pods and 8th/9th have made it so usable there's very little point not keeping half your army in reserves every game, I'd rather have seen some mechanic based on teleport homers/jammers where you needed table presence to actually deep strike and you could stop the deep strike by killing/shutting down the teleport homers instead.
That said I think lethality creep has done way more to punish melee armies than any core rules changes; 6e/7e pushed firepower too far and instead of backing off on firepower creep 8e/9e have chosen to make reliable Deep Strike charges and move speed creep the answer for melee armies.
AnomanderRake wrote: Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.
It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.
Eh. When 8e came along and they decided to try and make everyone's free rules of equal value all they've ended up doing is making the sub-faction rules all pretty much the same across factions in the name of making them more 'distinct' and 'characterful'. While also making balancing the game harder, optimizing lists harder, and still putting players in the position of needing to hop sub-factions if they want to use a different unit effectively. I'd rather they just stop it with the free rules entirely.
GW hasn't really experimented with the Sub Faction rules, and it's hard to when you have a pretty bad core ruleset. For example, if we actually had any interaction with the LD stat and morale, that'd be an automatic fix to several Sub Factions that like to rely on fear. If you increase the granularity of the wounding chart, a straight up Sub Faction getting T+1 would at least be interesting compared to wanting a FNP or negative modifiers.
Free Sub Faction rules aren't really a problem as much as just making sure they're not all over the place for balance. Even if you wanted to add points for the rules, what the Word Bearers have is laughable regardless.
Nurglitch wrote: I could live without all that mucking around with dice.
Ah, Theater of the Mind 40k, eh? Truly you are both a gentleman and a scholar!
It's weird that the oldest games like Chess and Go involve neither dice nor role-play.
Or setting/story. Or painting miniatures. It's almost like they're a different style of game for a different audience.
Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.
Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.
Nurglitch wrote: ...Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.
Absolutely, but then you're not playing Warhammer, you're playing Carcassonne. Dice aren't somehow metaphysically necessary to every game, no, and you can absolutely make perfectly fine games without them, but I put it to you that if the existence of dice is your problem with Warhammer maybe you ought to be playing a different genre of game.
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Slayer-Fan123 wrote: ...Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.
Yes, but if you took the dice out of the game would that improve the RP/narrative aspects?
warhead01 wrote: A fearless unit that lots a close combat takes a number of saves based on how badly they lots, something like that. I recall it was devastating to my foot Orks at the time and all the online and other player were all like Orks are amazing because or Nob Bikers.
It was a rule that actively punished units for being Fearless. It was absurd.
Haha, no-pre-measuring before declaring targets?! Some of us remember when indirect barrages required you to literally GUESS the range between the firing model and the target, and that's where your shot hit/scattered from. I loved that.
.
Wouldn't you just know the table after 4-5 games and to the math for the triangulation in your head by memory? Plus pre game you could just check what the lenght of terrain is, and with that and Pitagoras you more or less could hit anything with an error of around half an inch, maybe less if you were really good at decimals.
Yes.
On a good day I could put a Basilisk round within a 1/4" (or less) of a target. On a bad day I might be off by a whole 1"
Besides, turn 2+ all you had to was remember how far your unit x shot in the previous turn & adjust you're unit Ys guess based on that. (iirc you declared your "Guess' range weapons 1st, before other types of fire)
Gnarlly wrote: Count me as one who "shed a (figurative) tear" and misses taking leadership tests to shoot at a target other than the closest unit. It is a rule that makes logical sense in the chaos of battle, directly impacts model placement and targeting strategies, and further distinguishes more elite armies from less disciplined armies.
Until you remember that that edition was also the edition that saw Marine Captains gain the 'Rites of Battle' rule, giving out Ld10 to all fellow Marines on the entire board simply by existing.
"And They Shall Know No Inconvenient Rules" indeed...
AnomanderRake wrote: Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.
This is why I disliked the changes to the 2nd Ed Apoc as well.
Formations in Apoc made sense - you paid points for an additional bonus. Making said bonus free was dumbfounding.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: ...Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.
Yes, but if you took the dice out of the game would that improve the RP/narrative aspects?
Quite honestly might. For all the people that be all "iT's OnLy ToY SoLdIeRs" they sure get cranky when suggestions to balance are made. Throw the baby out with the bathwater and start over and just use a DM to make the armies clash.
That's a lot better than pretending Crusade is helping Forge The Narrative.
Gnarlly wrote: Count me as one who "shed a (figurative) tear" and misses taking leadership tests to shoot at a target other than the closest unit. It is a rule that makes logical sense in the chaos of battle, directly impacts model placement and targeting strategies, and further distinguishes more elite armies from less disciplined armies.
Until you remember that that edition was also the edition that saw Marine Captains gain the 'Rites of Battle' rule, giving out Ld10 to all fellow Marines on the entire board simply by existing.
"And They Shall Know No Inconvenient Rules" indeed...
That was a far better mechanic for making elite troops feel more elite than stacking on more wounds, invulns, doctrines and rerolls. I'll take the Ld test paradigm any day.
AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
If a necron player ever got below 1/4 of the number of necron models (stuff like wraiths/scarabs/vehicles didnt count) they had at the start, they instantly lose the game because all the necrons disappear.
Brilliant, wonderful rules writing, very fluff, very narrative, very fun and satisfying for everyone.
(shrug) I actually liked it. And I played Necrons then. Still do. I'd not be opposed to using it today in fact.
I just knew how to play around it. in fact? I've lost more games with Necrons here in 9th than I ever did via Phase-Out.
I don't know if "distasteful" is the word, but did not like 3rd Edition when it arrived. It felt like the flavour had been boiled away from 2nd Edition and the table became so crowded.
Still played lots, and good things certainly happened in the hobby/gaming scene.
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
Marines weren't the only beneficiary. Necrons all had Ld 10. CSM could get Ld 10 pretty easy iirc. More ways to differentiate units is welcome, even if Marines get it too.
If a necron player ever got below 1/4 of the number of necron models (stuff like wraiths/scarabs/vehicles didnt count) they had at the start, they instantly lose the game because all the necrons disappear.
Brilliant, wonderful rules writing, very fluff, very narrative, very fun and satisfying for everyone.
(shrug) I actually liked it. And I played Necrons then. Still do. I'd not be opposed to using it today in fact.
I just knew how to play around it. in fact? I've lost more games with Necrons here in 9th than I ever did via Phase-Out.
^Fully agree. Loved that rule and how it influenced army structure and strategy.
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
Marines weren't the only beneficiary. Necrons all had Ld 10. CSM could get Ld 10 pretty easy iirc. More ways to differentiate units is welcome, even if Marines get it too.
CSM could get Ld10 very easily. Any character, including Aspiring Champions, were Ld10. Meanwhile you're basic CSM, Raptors, and Havocs were Ld9 even without the Aspiring Champion. This meant loyalists needed their leaders, but CSM didn't, they could function without them just fine. I loved that. It made CSM feel far more like Veterans of The Long War than a +1 to wound stratagem ever will.
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
Marines weren't the only beneficiary. Necrons all had Ld 10. CSM could get Ld 10 pretty easy iirc. More ways to differentiate units is welcome, even if Marines get it too.
CSM could get Ld10 very easily. Any character, including Aspiring Champions, were Ld10. Meanwhile you're basic CSM, Raptors, and Havocs were Ld9 even without the Aspiring Champion. This meant loyalists needed their leaders, but CSM didn't, they could function without them just fine. I loved that. It made CSM feel far more like Veterans of The Long War than a +1 to wound stratagem ever will.
Why should Chaos Marines that aren't cult troops have higher leadership than Imperial Loyalist Marines? It goes agaisnt all fluff since the dawn of time.
They are chaotic. They lost the war. They ran away to the eye of terror and started tearing themselves apart. They are characterized by a serious LACK of leadership. They are individualistic, they KNOW fear because they have personal goals. Most loyalist marines are indoctrinated nutjobs that would gladly die for their God-Emperor (Like most chaos cult troops)
Actually , going with the fluff, Chaos Marines specially the veterans ones should be more powerfull than imperial equivalents (Because chaotic and corrupted boons are more powerfull than "good" boons. Dawn of War 2 made that very well with corrupted wargear. Evil is more powerfull than Goodness in any setting because it comes with a price) but have a serious lack of tactical and strategic coordination because even the most organized of the chaotic legions and warbands are made of squads of , by their own nature, egoistical, tyranical, and evil marines.
I dislike not being able to charge into a unit, kill it, and charge something else. I get it, the cascading charge effect can be scary for a gunline, but a) feth gunlines and b) the 'tactical guardsman screen' is a bug not a feature of the rules.
- Formations
- New MC treatment that made MCs just Vehicles +1
- Changes to vehicle damage chart and addition of hull points
- TLOS rather than more abstracted terrain rules.
- Rules based more in existing factions rather than Your Dudes (e.g. in 3.5 IG, Your Dudes could exist wholly differently than any other dudes. In 5th IG, Your Dudes didn't exist and neither did anyone else. In 6th-7th IG, if any rules for regiments came out at all they were for pre-existing regiments (e.g. cadian formation in 7th). In 8th and 9th, Your Dudes can kind of sort of exist like 3.5 but miss out on relics, WLTs, special orders, and special characters).
And most importantly:
- Losing track of abstractions. If "this guy fights betterer after a charge" is Furious Charge, then Hammer of Wrath (this guy slaps better after charging) doesn't need to exist. They're abstracting the same phenomenon generally (i.e. "charging = good for this unit") Like Ogryns having Hammer of Wrath instead of Furious Charge - what really changed there, abstraction wise?
Galas wrote: They are individualistic, they KNOW fear because they have personal goals. Most loyalist marines are indoctrinated nutjobs that would gladly die for their God-Emperor (Like most chaos cult troops)
Exactly. Ten-milennia-old veterans need less handholding to know what to shoot at, loyalists get ATSKNF. Veterans have experience, loyalists have indoctrination. Sounds perfect to me.
'Leadership' does have to be synonymous with either bravery or army coordination. If used for things like target priority, then it's more a measurement of overall quality, as it was in several of the specialist games (eg BFG, where all special orders required passing a Ld test).
Dakkamite wrote: I dislike not being able to charge into a unit, kill it, and charge something else. I get it, the cascading charge effect can be scary for a gunline, but a) feth gunlines and .
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
Marines weren't the only beneficiary. Necrons all had Ld 10. CSM could get Ld 10 pretty easy iirc. More ways to differentiate units is welcome, even if Marines get it too.
CSM could get Ld10 very easily. Any character, including Aspiring Champions, were Ld10. Meanwhile you're basic CSM, Raptors, and Havocs were Ld9 even without the Aspiring Champion. This meant loyalists needed their leaders, but CSM didn't, they could function without them just fine. I loved that. It made CSM feel far more like Veterans of The Long War than a +1 to wound stratagem ever will.
Why should Chaos Marines that aren't cult troops have higher leadership than Imperial Loyalist Marines? It goes agaisnt all fluff since the dawn of time.
They are chaotic. They lost the war. They ran away to the eye of terror and started tearing themselves apart. They are characterized by a serious LACK of leadership. They are individualistic, they KNOW fear because they have personal goals. Most loyalist marines are indoctrinated nutjobs that would gladly die for their God-Emperor (Like most chaos cult troops)
Actually , going with the fluff, Chaos Marines specially the veterans ones should be more powerfull than imperial equivalents (Because chaotic and corrupted boons are more powerfull than "good" boons. Dawn of War 2 made that very well with corrupted wargear. Evil is more powerfull than Goodness in any setting because it comes with a price) but have a serious lack of tactical and strategic coordination because even the most organized of the chaotic legions and warbands are made of squads of , by their own nature, egoistical, tyranical, and evil marines.
That's the point. They don't need leadership, as in leaders. A squad of CSM were perfectly fine without a HQ giving them buffs, loyalists needed one. They can think for themselves, loyalists are a bunch of brainwashed followers.
Their higher natural Leadership in older editions where Leadership meant more than how many guys run away meant they were more self sufficient than loyalists. That's how it worked with rules like Target Priority. Kill the loyalists leader and their less effective, kill the CSM leader and they work just fine, because they're more individualistic.
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
Marines weren't the only beneficiary. Necrons all had Ld 10. CSM could get Ld 10 pretty easy iirc. More ways to differentiate units is welcome, even if Marines get it too.
CSM could get Ld10 very easily. Any character, including Aspiring Champions, were Ld10. Meanwhile you're basic CSM, Raptors, and Havocs were Ld9 even without the Aspiring Champion. This meant loyalists needed their leaders, but CSM didn't, they could function without them just fine. I loved that. It made CSM feel far more like Veterans of The Long War than a +1 to wound stratagem ever will.
Couldn't they reroll their Ld tests too with the Mark of Chaos Undivided?
Yeah I liked that balance too. ATSKNF was the loyalists allegiance to the Chapter as an institution larger than themselves. A selfless loyalty. The CSMLd. Was a confidence in themselves and their prowess, but if things went sideways they turned to self preservation l. Good stuff.
Nurglitch wrote: ...Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.
Absolutely, but then you're not playing Warhammer, you're playing Carcassonne. Dice aren't somehow metaphysically necessary to every game, no, and you can absolutely make perfectly fine games without them, but I put it to you that if the existence of dice is your problem with Warhammer maybe you ought to be playing a different genre of game.
I guess I'll have to politely reject that suggestion: there's plenty of wargames out there that don't depend on dice, (Tactical Assault: Combat Cards is one notable example using cards) and as noted Warhammer can shed dice just like any other old rules and obsolete player-aids that have gone by the wayside over the years, like blast markers and templates. In fact, from the 'walled garden' approach GW takes the lack of special Warhammer-specific dice is something of an oversight that leaves the door open to third-party providers.
Ugh. Game specific dice. They aren't an advantage, or an oversight (especially since GW does use them for multiple games- BB, warcry, underworlds), they're a sales gimmick. Any special symbol dice are just a conversion of a normal die so you can be sold junk. Doesn't matter what the system is, or how 'special' they are.
Usually some variation of
1-2 (or 1-3) fail
3-4 (or 4-5) basic success
5-6 (or 6) special or double success.
[Adjust for whatever level of success appeals to the writer.]
They're completely unnecessary, and do nothing but obscure odds from people who can't map the symbols to the math behind them. They change nothing.
Yeah. Those sorts of rules were awesome. I even remember old Command and Control networks you could set up as Imperial Guard with vox-casters, where your character's Leadership was shared with any other squads that had voxes.
It meant that squads without voxes (heavy weapon squads for example) had to be babysat with the officers' normal auras, whilst squads with voxes could spread out more.
It meant that IG armies looked and played totally differently depending on how they kitted their squads, and skilled players could build "maneuver elements" with voxes and 'fire elements' without to save points, but it rigidified their plan.
You could easily get Army Wide LD10 as guard though with a Heroic Senior Officer and Commissar and Vox on everyone. You had to pay points, but it was a good bit less vulnerable than the SM command structure due to the durability of the IG command squads relative to a single captain (unless you got into melee). It was more vulnerable at the 'end' of the C2 chain though because a squad could lose a vox operator, which immediately removed it from the net and forced it to rely on local leadership (commonly the sergeant).
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yeah. Those sorts of rules were awesome. I even remember old Command and Control networks you could set up as Imperial Guard with vox-casters, where your character's Leadership was shared with any other squads that had voxes.
Voxes were garbage though. You'd pay points for something that you already got for free by keeping one part of one model within 12" of an officer.
Back when Officers had a 12" Ld bubble (re-rollable with a standard bearer, and can regroup under 50% with Iron Discipline), the idea of having to pay points for a vox network was just silly.
Vaktathi wrote:For my part, on rules I found distasteful in older editions?
3E/4E transport rules: "unless you're a skimmer, don't actually ride in these".
Vehicle movement/shooting rules: particularly 3-5E's, these were wonky and bad.
Consolidation into new combats: "oh yeah, I rode up behind area terrain where you could never see me, dove into combat turn 2, and never gave you a chance to shoot at that unit again the whole rest of the game as it ate that whole flank on its own".
Blast/Ordnance weapon rules: These were always wonky until 8E. The change to random shots and not potentially affecting multiple units is definitely a change, but these weapons are generally much more functional in terms of average damage output and performance.
So these I disagree with, some because of preference. I still play 3rd and use non skimmer transports to great effect. Having actually trained for combat in tracked vehicles the move/shooting rules and the blast template rules are much more intuitive to me than what is currently used.
My big bugbear is with the consolidation into combat thing. You could only consolidate 3" which meant that anybody with an ounce of common sense could keep their units 5" apart and negate this tactic. I've come to discover through the last few years of discussion on different forums that the consolidation into combat rule was simply played wrong as almost invariably rolling for distance moved is brought up. That's a sweeping advance, and allows you to be shot by every enemy unit that can draw line of sight to you.
7th edition mob rule. Love my 7th edition Orks but the change to mob rule was the single worst decision that befell that faction. Get shot, take casualties, failed pinning, take casualties, took too many casualties so morale check which failed so more casualties. It worked sorta ok for large blobs of Boyz but it ruined any small unit of Orks such as trukk boyz and it REALLY hurt units that tended to not have a Nob such as Lootas.
Also hated Invisibility as if was the single most broken psychic power outside of maybe fortune.
D weapons, while fine for Apoc, was the bane of tanky vehicles and poorly implemented on certain units (looking at you Eldar and Imperial Knights).
As much as 6th and 7th had some hot garbage rules going on, none of them match 8th edition in it's entirety. Killed the hobby for me as it removed basically everything I found fun in the game for an experience about as compellingly as a game of 2 player Risk.
Vankraken wrote: 7th edition mob rule. Love my 7th edition Orks but the change to mob rule was the single worst decision that befell that faction. Get shot, take casualties, failed pinning, take casualties, took too many casualties so morale check which failed so more casualties. It worked sorta ok for large blobs of Boyz but it ruined any small unit of Orks such as trukk boyz and it REALLY hurt units that tended to not have a Nob such as Lootas.
Also hated Invisibility as if was the single most broken psychic power outside of maybe fortune.
D weapons, while fine for Apoc, was the bane of tanky vehicles and poorly implemented on certain units (looking at you Eldar and Imperial Knights).
As much as 6th and 7th had some hot garbage rules going on, none of them match 8th edition in it's entirety. Killed the hobby for me as it removed basically everything I found fun in the game for an experience about as compellingly as a game of 2 player Risk.
God, totally forgot about D-weapons. First incarnation was a weapon which caused auto-penetrating hits or Instant Death if it wounded. That's the important part. You could have a Destroyer weapon representing a radiation caster of some kind, it could be S3, Ap- but could still cause Instant Death if a wound did get through. It was interesting and not too OP in my opinion.
Then they decided to change it to "If you're hit, on a 2+ you're dead, no excuses. On a 6+ you're super dead". Boring and ridiculously OP.
For every Leman Russ, Basilisk and Griffon in your army, you got essentially a free Battle Cannon shot at the start of the game.
Themeatically it was great. But man that ruined many a game with how effective it could be.
What was worse, that or the Planetstrike barrage? 3D6 Battle Cannon shots before the game starts. Oh it's ok now, now it's just a number of D6 Mortal Wound-causing markers.
For every Leman Russ, Basilisk and Griffon in your army, you got essentially a free Battle Cannon shot at the start of the game.
Themeatically it was great. But man that ruined many a game with how effective it could be.
Given the havoc a Virus Grenade could wreak on an IG army, I'd call it about even
At least I had to get within lobbing range to give you all a nasty case of the sniffles! Virus Outbreak was a sod though, so much so GW genuinely told people to destroy the card!
Just the term Virus Outbreak makes me nauseous to this day. Just how swingy it was showed terrible design. Marines? Won't hurt Jack... IG Orks or anything not in armor? Dead. But at least it took forever to implement.
The old Altoic rules in 3.5E. Enjoy the pinning rules? Enjoy being sniped by a ton of rangers before the first turn even occurs with random results? Well lets roll the dice to see how most of your army is screwed!
Nurglitch wrote: ...Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.
Absolutely, but then you're not playing Warhammer, you're playing Carcassonne. Dice aren't somehow metaphysically necessary to every game, no, and you can absolutely make perfectly fine games without them, but I put it to you that if the existence of dice is your problem with Warhammer maybe you ought to be playing a different genre of game.
I guess I'll have to politely reject that suggestion: there's plenty of wargames out there that don't depend on dice, (Tactical Assault: Combat Cards is one notable example using cards) and as noted Warhammer can shed dice just like any other old rules and obsolete player-aids that have gone by the wayside over the years, like blast markers and templates. In fact, from the 'walled garden' approach GW takes the lack of special Warhammer-specific dice is something of an oversight that leaves the door open to third-party providers.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: The old Altoic rules in 3.5E. Enjoy the pinning rules? Enjoy being sniped by a ton of rangers before the first turn even occurs with random results? Well lets roll the dice to see how most of your army is screwed!
I remember that! we had a guy with a fantastically painted Eldar army playing Altoic. He was quite surprised when I had a platoon as a single troop choice, messed up his chart rolls a few times. The look on his face was always worth it. He's steam roll lots of other factions back then.
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Vankraken wrote: 7th edition mob rule. Love my 7th edition Orks but the change to mob rule was the single worst decision that befell that faction. Get shot, take casualties, failed pinning, take casualties, took too many casualties so morale check which failed so more casualties. It worked sorta ok for large blobs of Boyz but it ruined any small unit of Orks such as trukk boyz and it REALLY hurt units that tended to not have a Nob such as Lootas.
I had blocked that Mob rule from my mind. Truly a horrible codex. We had two bad books in a row. I was ready to give up 40K until the index dropped for 8th. amazing that a book with so little in it can be such an improvement.
Formations & allies - call be a purist, but in standard games I like the notion of just having one basic detachment pulled from one codex. No allies to leverage weird wombo-combos, no formations to provide power creep escalations. Just a nice simple detachment will do.
Random charge distances - introduced in 6th edition (and here since). I much prefer fixed charge distances.
Casualty / wound allocation in most editions - I don't think GW did this very well back then. It seems a little better now, but in complex situations the ruleset is really murky with how you are supposed to do it, short of rolling one dice at a time, which is annoying.
For rules that used to exist but no longer exist, I think I'm going to have to go with:
Challenges - Seriously, I have no idea why there are even in the game. Dumb in general [seriously, your berzerker leader charges into combat weapons at the ready, but rather than getting right to the stabbing with the force of his charge behind him in a mad frenzy like his squadmates are, he stops, stands there in from of it all, and in the moment calls out "which one of you will fight me in honorable single combat!"], but more importantly contributes almost nothing to the game mechanically except seeing to it that the sergeant dies first in melee, which is a mostly pointless thing to really care about.
Multiple IC attachment conferring stacking rules to squads - This is an okay idea, and honestly probably better than what we have now with regards to how characters issue buffs and are protected. However, the ability to stick 6 different character in the unit to confer the whole unit like 8 different special rules was really absurd, even more so than nowadays.
Universal Overwatch - Overwatch was basically ineffective at it's job. It basically existed to deter someone from declaring everything in range as a charge once they introduced random charges, but it didn't actually succeed in doing that and never amounted to anything but a slow down to the game. It adds nothing but takes time, glad to see that as a stratagem it is now basically contained to units that will have an impact when they do it, like flame guns.
Snap Shots - The whole thing with fliers was absurdly broken in earlier editions. I don't miss only being able to hit flyers on a 6 except with AA guns. OTOH, it made sense, and wouldn't have been as bad if everyone got some form of AA option.
Wound Allocation - Remove from the front was always a matter of discussion, and the 5e version was hilariously abusable. The new version is much better.
Formations - Seriously, this was a mess. Free rules on free rules for the same units in the same army taken a different way, and completely broken to boot.
Hull Points - These were a terrible idea to implement. Like, the VDT already models the destruction of a vehicle, vehicles don't need wounds too. This effectively reduced the number of throws to create a vehicle casualty after a hit from 2 to 1, while monsters still had 2 throws.
and begrudgingly have to acknowledge that the game is better without Scatter - This seriously slowed the game down and was the single leading generator of arguments. I still miss placing the template over things though.
If we're going to complain about all rules
Allies - I don't think allied detachments should ever have been a thing. It's bad for the balance of the game and the classification and distinction of the factions.
Lords of War - Also don't belong outside of Apocalypse.
Detachments - I think the only force organization chart should be the 1-2HQ, 2+ troops, and 0-3 FA, 0-3 Elite, and 0-3 HS. This newfound level of customization for armies unleashes a whole new level of combinations and army power.
8e+ Vehicle Rules - I think that MC's should have been made to work like vehicles rather than the other way around to reconcile their different. I really dislike the HP mechanics; they make everything feel spongy and indecisive.
Save Modifiers - The old method of armor saves made weapon types effective against different targets to give more defined roles and capabilities, and also felt a lot more decisive. Nowadays, SM, Sisters, and other 3+ infantry is really spongy against everything and the sweet spot is that AP1/2 maximum statistical impact-for-cost range rather than have dedicated anti-heavy-infantry weapons.
Multiwound Infantry and damage characteristics - Toughness versus Strength already represents the difficulty of generating a casualty with a hit. Wounds, theoretically, represent a model taking a hit that would have made them a casualty, and continuing to fight anyway. Basically plot armor. That's why a Company Commander has more wounds than a Guardsmen. There's no reason a basic noncharacter infantry unit should have multiple wounds, if they're harder to kill than average, they should have higher toughness.
Moving and Shooting Heavy Weapons, Moving and Shooting RF weapons > half range, and Shooting non-assault weapons and charging - This, more than anything else, is what has increased the game's lethality. Formerly, you could not move, shoot, and charge with full effect in the same turn. This made choices to maneuver versus shooting more significant, and made the game less lethal since units couldn't shoot and charge, in the same phase.
I actually liked the challenge system in the earlier editions as its main purpose seemed to be attempting to nullify 'hidden' weapons such as Marine sergeant hidden powerfists during a time where most people treated their tac marines as ablative wounds for their plasma guns, lascannons, and/or sergeant with powerfists. Of course, not every army could take advantage of the mechanic--I think only the Tyranids' Broodlord at the time could.
Insectum7 wrote: AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.
It let Marines all but ignore a newly added major element to the game.
I've played the game off and on for over 15 years, and in that time, I've learned one invariable truth:
If a rule exists, Space Marines have access to that rule, have a better version of that rule, or can ignore that rule.
On topic, I hated rules in older editions that allowed armies to play shenanigans with the Force Organization Chart. Army that comes to mind is Iron Warriors that were able to trade two Fast Attack slots for another Heavy Support slot, a trade most if not all armies would gladly make. I believe they could also take Obliterators--a heavy support choice--as elites as well.
The taking additional wounds if fearless and lost combat was stupid--especially, once again, as Space Marines were able to ignore both it and the actual downside of losing combat (that being Sweeping Advance destroying the unit).
Just the most nonsensical decisions regarding weapons in the earlier decisions, especially for the Tyranids. Venom cannons can't pen vehicles. Devourers can't pen vehicles. Your strongest anti tank weapon being either a single shot S8 blast weapon that if the hole scatters off the tank has its S value halved. After that? Two shot S6 weapons, because why not strength cap ranged weapons since Tyranids were of course a close combat army.
I disliked challenges, but I can see why they were added. "Honourable duels" is a popular theme among more 'narrative' players.
One of my gaming groups actually wrote their own 'dueling' rules. They originally found that basically "who swung first won" as they wiped out their opponent.
So they compensated by, as soon as you enter a duel, all damage dealt is halved and all wounds are doubled.
So you just rolled back and forth and it became a test of who had the most DPS.
40k is not structured to allow fun duelsl and I'm glad the mechanic has never returned.
I liked the old AP system much more so than modifiers, both thematically and gameplay wise.
Thematically, I makes more sense to me that a weapon would generally either penetrate the armor or not. The chance for failing the save already reflects the notion of a shot hitting a weak point or whatever. Hence power armor remaining a full 3+ save up until the shot is able to punch through it. It better represents armor being strong, and thinks marines shrugging off small fire. Hence better theme representation.
In terms of gameplay it means that you need to be more mindful of the types of weapons you bring in your list, and creates more differentiation in the roles of weapons. It also has a bearing on cover, as lighter armored forces have to rely on cover more for staying protected. They still have to do this to an extent with a modifier system too - but on the other end 3+ units don't need to worry about cover as much, unless facing lots of high AP weaponry.
Also in terms of gameplay it greatly speeds up the pace of play. You'll roll a lot less dice (for the hits that get penetrated) and you don't need to be adding and subtracting modifiers when you do need to take a roll.
The issue (at least in my eyes) with the old All Or Nothing AP system, is that it's just too binary, a turret-mounted vehicle autocannon capable of penetrating APC armor may deflect an angled shott off a thick pauldron or breastplate of Astartes Power Armor, but a dead square shot to the chest should probably leave everything inside jelly even if it doesn't penerate, and stuff the helmet or backpack may be proof against Lasgun fire, that Autocannon's probably going to tear right through it. Having that being encapsulated only by a weapons Strength, but not its AP, led to a paradigm through many editions where spamming as much AP2 as possible (or where any AP value that wasn't 2+ or at least 3+ was considered irrelevant) was the norm.
Now, there are also issues with multishot mid strength weapons with -2 ASM's that can just do everything when spammed in considerable volume, that's absolutely an issue, but in general, armor isn't uniformly proof against everything until it isn't. If you look at modern combat armor, you'll find level III chest plates that are proof against rifle rounds, but helmets rated only for pistols and shrapnel, while major joints may have pads and plastic armor to protect against falls/scrapes/blades/punches/etc. So to abstract that modern combatant to 40k terms, against a sword or axe, that modern combatant may have a 4+ save, a pistol a 5+, and a rifle a 6+, and perhaps no save against a heavier rifle like a DMR weapon that'll sail right through level III plate, regardless of the wounding potential of each weapon.
I don't think anyone would argue however that codex execution has actively hampered both implementations.
waefre_1 wrote: ...[w]hat stands out the most to me when I remember it [the old AP system] was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. ...
Shamelessly quoting myself from upthread due to relevance. I just can't see that as thematically appropriate or logical.
Also, as Vaktathi mentioned, penetration isn't really binary IRL. I'll not claim to have any expertise here, but it strikes me that an Autocannon is still going to have an easier time penetrating power armor than a lasgun, and in the old system that simply did not happen (barring one-off rules like the old Choppa "counts armor saves lower than 4+ as 4+" thing). I'd argue that including modifiers makes armor even more relevant since a single point of AP no longer completely negates a certain level of protection, and lower save units like Guardsmen will actually get to use their armor saves, like, ever.
While we're talking about AP what about a system that is neither of the versions GW has thus far tried. One where a given weapon has two values, one that works like current AP modifiers, and another that sets an armor value where they instead use another lower modifier.
So a bolter firing at AP-1 could reduce armor of 4+ and worse by 1 and not reduce armor 3+ at all. While a heavy bolter might have the same AP but have its threshold set at armor 2+ instead. You could even have some weapons flip the scrip and gain higher AP against better armor as might be the case with grav weapons, lances, C-beams, and shokk attack gunz.
It's not a large change, but it means that weapons work in a way that better mimics IRL armor penetration and gives more design space to weapons. This could help offset the design space lost to the new wounding chart.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the current wounding chart either, they just need to assign stats with it in mind.
It's quite clear stats were ported over from the old edition, that's why a lascannon is still strength 9.
Which doesn't really work with the new wound system.
Necromunda uses the same wound chart as 40k, but a lascannon is strength 10. Now it wounds toughness 5 on a 2+ still and therefore is noticeably better than a missile launcher, which won't.
That's how I view a lot of mechanics in 40k. The mechanics are all fine in their own right, they just don't jive well together.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the current wounding chart either, they just need to assign stats with it in mind.
It's quite clear stats were ported over from the old edition, that's why a lascannon is still strength 9.
Which doesn't really work with the new wound system.
Necromunda uses the same wound chart as 40k, but a lascannon is strength 10. Now it wounds toughness 5 on a 2+ still and therefore is noticeably better than a missile launcher, which won't.
That's how I view a lot of mechanics in 40k. The mechanics are all fine in their own right, they just don't jive well together.
The question is, what does the new wound chart actually solve that couldn't be addressed in another more elegant way?
For the AP systems, they're a product of their times. I don't think the current system applied to older editions would work as well, and I think the old system applied to this edition would be awkward.
In older editions, you either wanted to put the right weapon to the right job or you *had* to spam enough shots to beat the statistics. But plasma/lascannons (and most other forms of AP2) fired once or twice--not something you wanted to waste on anything smaller than Terminators or obliterators. Ideally you'd be aiming them at big, expensive-ish Monstrous Creatures or Vehicles.
The current AP, even inefficient weapons can do some real harm, and they usually come in enough numbers that even if they're not ideal, they'll at least do something. And I think that's why GW made the change--because the new system always feels like you're doing something. In the older system, if someone beat your armor, you didn't get a save (unless invul which was at best a 5+, or cover). If someone didn't beat your armor, you got your full save. I've had 30 hormagaunt attacks whiff off your bog standard tac marines in 4th. But in the current system, even AP-1 weapons do *something*, and even a weapon in an older edition that wouldn't allow an armor save might allow you to take one in this edition.
So I think the preference comes down to, can you tolerate less numerous, often less lethal weapons that just won't allow you to do jack if the opponent rolls averagely, or do you want to feel that your guns or armor are at least doing something, which means defensive profiles have to bloat to compensate because if a squad can put out 18 plasma shots, a T6 4 wound 3+ save carnifex isn't going to cut it anymore.
It meant Marines actually got to use their much-vaunted armour, something that was never a big deal in 2nd Ed as every gun and its dog had a -1 Save mod, meaning you never actually got to take a 3+ save unless you were facing units with Autoguns.
Vaktathi wrote: The issue (at least in my eyes) with the old All Or Nothing AP system, is that it's just too binary, a turret-mounted vehicle autocannon capable of penetrating APC armor may deflect an angled shott off a thick pauldron or breastplate of Astartes Power Armor, but a dead square shot to the chest should probably leave everything inside jelly even if it doesn't penerate, and stuff the helmet or backpack may be proof against Lasgun fire, that Autocannon's probably going to tear right through it.
Thing is, GW almost solved this with the Choppa rules, but it's own inherent binary nature foiled them again. Choppas reduced you to 4+, but did nothing to 4+ and worse, which makes no real sense.
In our own rules we created "High Impact" (name stolen from the version of Necromunda that existed at the time) for those fringe cases where a weapon was really powerful, but giving it a higher AP would have caused it to be too powerful. It was just -1 to the save. So Choppas, which became "Heavy CCWs", had a flat -1, so they had an extra effect on Sv4+ and worse. Autocannons? High Impact, so they do something a bit more to Marines. Krak Missiles? High impact, so they can do something a bit more than just bounce off Terminators.
Simple rule. Made things better.
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't think there's anything wrong with the current wounding chart either...
Everything can wound everything. That's the problem. That's why people use mid-strength mid-damage high ROF weapons to kill everything in 9th, as they're more effective by volume of fire than dedicated AT weaponry. It's also why we're seeing enhancements in damage in AT weaponry, to make them more attractive, thereby causing vehicles to be even weaker than they already were.
Ever since tanks got hit points (6th edition) instead of having to be killed by actually penetrating their armor (before 6th), the utility of high-rof mid-strength weapons such as assault cannons and scatter lasers has been too damn high!
H.B.M.C. wrote: It meant Marines actually got to use their much-vaunted armour, something that was never a big deal in 2nd Ed as every gun and its dog had a -1 Save mod, meaning you never actually got to take a 3+ save unless you were facing units with Autoguns
Did you play with a houserule stating that all ASMs automatically negate all armor? Because if not, you still got to use the armor, just not on a 3+. I'm not unsympathetic to the "why am I paying for a piece of armor when I never get its full usage", but you'll have to excuse me for not seeing "My Space Marines sometimes have to roll a 4+ rather than a 3+" as equivalent to Orks/Guard literally never getting to use their armor saves at all.
I much prefer the T and W version we have now, married to degrading profiles.
The old one was just flavourless, and as someone else mentioned, Hull Points only made it worse.
2nd Ed gets a pass, as least the damage tables were pretty interesting (blowing off a turret and it landing on someone important was always good for a laugh), and with vehicle targeting, you never quite knew what you were going to hit.
Rogue trader gets a buy because I still don’t understand any of its various ways of handling vehicle rules
It meant Marines actually got to use their much-vaunted armour, something that was never a big deal in 2nd Ed as every gun and its dog had a -1 Save mod, meaning you never actually got to take a 3+ save unless you were facing units with Autoguns.
Vaktathi wrote: The issue (at least in my eyes) with the old All Or Nothing AP system, is that it's just too binary, a turret-mounted vehicle autocannon capable of penetrating APC armor may deflect an angled shott off a thick pauldron or breastplate of Astartes Power Armor, but a dead square shot to the chest should probably leave everything inside jelly even if it doesn't penerate, and stuff the helmet or backpack may be proof against Lasgun fire, that Autocannon's probably going to tear right through it.
Thing is, GW almost solved this with the Choppa rules, but it's own inherent binary nature foiled them again. Choppas reduced you to 4+, but did nothing to 4+ and worse, which makes no real sense.
In our own rules we created "High Impact" (name stolen from the version of Necromunda that existed at the time) for those fringe cases where a weapon was really powerful, but giving it a higher AP would have caused it to be too powerful. It was just -1 to the save. So Choppas, which became "Heavy CCWs", had a flat -1, so they had an extra effect on Sv4+ and worse. Autocannons? High Impact, so they do something a bit more to Marines. Krak Missiles? High impact, so they can do something a bit more than just bounce off Terminators.
Simple rule. Made things better.
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't think there's anything wrong with the current wounding chart either...
Everything can wound everything. That's the problem. That's why people use mid-strength mid-damage high ROF weapons to kill everything in 9th, as they're more effective by volume of fire than dedicated AT weaponry. It's also why we're seeing enhancements in damage in AT weaponry, to make them more attractive, thereby causing vehicles to be even weaker than they already were.
Everything being able to wound everything isn't the problem. The problem is the execution of the wounding table itself and being relegated to a D6.
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H.B.M.C. wrote: I liked the all-or-nothing system. It meant armour actually meant something.
LOL it really didn't. It just meant you went with mostly AP2, because AP3 was that absurdly rare. Also in the newer system Marines (AND Terminators despite the people crying otherwise) became more durable to various weapons compared to before. Yes you're weaker vs a Gauss Flayer and now the Galvanic Rifle. However even with Manlet Marines having W1 they were more durable vs an array of weapons so that's fine.
I much prefer the T and W version we have now, married to degrading profiles.
I can't agree with this. You're right that Hull Points were a bad idea, but as someone who loves the Datafaxes from 2nd Ed, vehicles acting like vehicles (rather than just paper monsters like they are now) was a highlight of the game.
Now vehicles just die and are removed. Talk about boring.
waefre_1 wrote: Did you play with a houserule stating that all ASMs automatically negate all armor? Because if not, you still got to use the armor, just not on a 3+. I'm not unsympathetic to the "why am I paying for a piece of armor when I never get its full usage", but you'll have to excuse me for not seeing "My Space Marines sometimes have to roll a 4+ rather than a 3+" as equivalent to Orks/Guard literally never getting to use their armor saves at all.
I meant that something with a 3+ save got to have a 3+ save, rather than a 3+ save really meaning you have a 4+ or 5+ save all the time. I mean if virtually every weapon in the game makes you take a 4+ save rather than the 3+ save you come with, why not just have a 4+ unmodified save and cut out the middle man. That's the point I'm getting at - if you're always saving at 4+, then you don't really have a 3+ save, do you?
That's why I was shocked in my first 3rd Ed demo game, when the GW employee told the Marine player to take his 3+ saves, and I was just taken aback because Marines actually getting to roll 3+ saves was completely alien to my 2nd Ed brain.
Yes, you're right, Guard and Orks never got to take their save in 2nd Ed. I've had turns where it was just removing Guardsmen from incoming Eldar ranged fire because my heavy cover wasn't enough to save me. But in 3rd, we had cover saves, and they did just fine.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I meant that something with a 3+ save got to have a 3+ save, rather than a 3+ save really meaning you have a 4+ or 5+ save all the time. I mean if virtually every weapon in the game makes you take a 4+ save rather than the 3+ save you come with, why not just have a 4+ unmodified save and cut out the middle man. That's the point I'm getting at - if you're always saving at 4+, then you don't really have a 3+ save, do you?
That's why I was shocked in my first 3rd Ed demo game, when the GW employee told the Marine player to take his 3+ saves, and I was just taken aback because Marines actually getting to roll 3+ saves was completely alien to my 2nd Ed brain.
Yes, you're right, Guard and Orks never got to take their save in 2nd Ed. I've had turns where it was just removing Guardsmen from incoming Eldar ranged fire because my heavy cover wasn't enough to save me. But in 3rd, we had cover saves, and they did just fine
Yeah, I get that - but you still get to have a save, which is my point. Save Modifiers on power armor mean that you still get some level of protection against shots that would punch clean through flak or carapace, while also modelling that an Autocannon is going to have an easier time penetrating the weak points of power armor than a lasgun will. That's the point of heavy armor - you're never completely immune, but it's a damn sight harder to get through and you end up needing to target it with weapons that might prefer getting pointed at light vehicles or monstrous creatures instead.
As to why you would want the 3+ plus mods vs flat 4+...well, if we're going to have an armor penetration mechanic, then you'd want to have the 3+ plus mods to appropriately model the fact that some armors offer more protection and some weapons are better at penetrating armors and the weapons don't completely lose all of their penetrative capacity the moment the target puts on kneepads or a helmet. It's a little more work, yes, but IMO it's worth it. There's certainly room to argue about the proliferation of AP-1 (and also room to argue about whether armor should be separate from Toughness or invulns or a hypothetical Dodge save instead of all of them being rolled into a generic "Defense Save"), but that's an issue with implementation.
Also, and this is a bit of a tangent, but I'd be inclined to wonder how much of the AP-1 proliferation is on-paper stuff (ie. x% of weapons having it, when y% may be more appropriate) and how much is meta/psychological (ie. "I need to bring weapons with AP because of the lists I will face" a la recent/current issues with vehicles/superheavies/AT weapons, or confirmation bias on the receiving end once you've had a game or three where AP-1 was more common).
Also also, we're talking about armor saves - Guardsmen and Orks never got to take those after 3e, either.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: LOL it really didn't. It just meant you went with mostly AP2, because AP3 was that absurdly rare. Also in the newer system Marines (AND Terminators despite the people crying otherwise) became more durable to various weapons compared to before. Yes you're weaker vs a Gauss Flayer and now the Galvanic Rifle. However even with Manlet Marines having W1 they were more durable vs an array of weapons so that's fine.
You mean you had to bring specific weapons to deal with specific targets, rather than what we have now where the middle of the road weapons do everything adequately enough to not require specialist equipment.
It might sound appealing to some ears, and I can understand why. For combat oriented armies, it punished your opponent for being too densely packed, as you skipped from combat to combat, safe from their firepower.
But...my distaste is probably more down to 3rd Ed and how bent some armies were.
Blood Angels in particular could get into combat stupidly fast. Potentially first turn if they got lucky and you’d really stuffed your deployment.
It meant combat armies had much of the game to themselves. Not only did they fight twice as often as ranged units (fighting combats in both player turns), but range armies rarely had much in the way of targets.
It might sound appealing to some ears, and I can understand why. For combat oriented armies, it punished your opponent for being too densely packed, as you skipped from combat to combat, safe from their firepower.
But...my distaste is probably more down to 3rd Ed and how bent some armies were.
Blood Angels in particular could get into combat stupidly fast. Potentially first turn if they got lucky and you’d really stuffed your deployment.
It meant combat armies had much of the game to themselves. Not only did they fight twice as often as ranged units (fighting combats in both player turns), but range armies rarely had much in the way of targets.
Shouldn't punishing positioning mistakes be exactly how a melee army functions though? If you deploy wrong, they can start dealing damage and you watch as your gunline crumbles. If you don't misposition you, in turn, have the advantage given that as, presumably, a shooting list your heavy weapons have good odds of cracking/immobilizing/stunning enough transports to clog up their charge lanes and from there it should just be cleaning up.
This seems fair to me and if you get caught once it shouldn't take too many more beatings to realize that you don't want to deploy at the edge of your deployment zone and that you need to space units 5" apart.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: LOL it really didn't. It just meant you went with mostly AP2, because AP3 was that absurdly rare. Also in the newer system Marines (AND Terminators despite the people crying otherwise) became more durable to various weapons compared to before. Yes you're weaker vs a Gauss Flayer and now the Galvanic Rifle. However even with Manlet Marines having W1 they were more durable vs an array of weapons so that's fine.
You mean you had to bring specific weapons to deal with specific targets, rather than what we have now where the middle of the road weapons do everything adequately enough to not require specialist equipment.
Oh how terrible.
The whole argument of "oh specific weapons for specific targets" has always been a lie that the defenders of the old system tell themselves. Nobody was specifically bringing AP4 or AP3. They either brought high strength with high rate of fire (with AP just being a bonus) or they made sure everything was AP2. Everything meant Marines not hugging cover was laughable. Actually, Marines hugging the cover was still laughable.
The old wounding table mightve been better slightly (and only slightly), but the old AP system with all or nothing meant you brought weapons that ignored the problem altogether instead of tailoring for specific targets.
It might sound appealing to some ears, and I can understand why. For combat oriented armies, it punished your opponent for being too densely packed, as you skipped from combat to combat, safe from their firepower.
But...my distaste is probably more down to 3rd Ed and how bent some armies were.
Blood Angels in particular could get into combat stupidly fast. Potentially first turn if they got lucky and you’d really stuffed your deployment.
It meant combat armies had much of the game to themselves. Not only did they fight twice as often as ranged units (fighting combats in both player turns), but range armies rarely had much in the way of targets.
Shouldn't punishing positioning mistakes be exactly how a melee army functions though? If you deploy wrong, they can start dealing damage and you watch as your gunline crumbles. If you don't misposition you, in turn, have the advantage given that as, presumably, a shooting list your heavy weapons have good odds of cracking/immobilizing/stunning enough transports to clog up their charge lanes and from there it should just be cleaning up.
This seems fair to me and if you get caught once it shouldn't take too many more beatings to realize that you don't want to deploy at the edge of your deployment zone and that you need to space units 5" apart.
Kind of.
Certainly any rule system should allow for the errors of your opponent to be exploited.
But, with the way 3rd and 4th Ed (I think they removed consolidate into a new combat in 5th. Might’ve been 6th) worked, you never got a chance to recover from such an error. And that made for a bad system.
Because the more shooty/static army had to deploy without error, whilst certain* assault armies didn’t.
*remember, my criticism largely stems from how specific armies were able to exploit it.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: ...The whole argument of "oh specific weapons for specific targets" has always been a lie that the defenders of the old system tell themselves. Nobody was specifically bringing AP4 or AP3. They either brought high strength with high rate of fire (with AP just being a bonus) or they made sure everything was AP2. Everything meant Marines not hugging cover was laughable. Actually, Marines hugging the cover was still laughable...
Which is a consequence of stat creep more than anything else. The amount of 2+ armour in the game ballooned ridiculously in 5e-7e, hull points made AP increasingly irrelevant against vehicles, the introduction of easy move-and-fire AP2 blasts/templates made heavy infantry kind of a joke, yes. Try looking at 3e/4e or 30k where the game isn't made entirely of underpriced AP2 large blasts, superheavies with Invulnerable saves, rapid-fire S8, scatterbikes, and 2+-armour MCs.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: LOL it really didn't. It just meant you went with mostly AP2, because AP3 was that absurdly rare. Also in the newer system Marines (AND Terminators despite the people crying otherwise) became more durable to various weapons compared to before. Yes you're weaker vs a Gauss Flayer and now the Galvanic Rifle. However even with Manlet Marines having W1 they were more durable vs an array of weapons so that's fine.
You mean you had to bring specific weapons to deal with specific targets, rather than what we have now where the middle of the road weapons do everything adequately enough to not require specialist equipment.
Oh how terrible.
??¿¿?¿? Most armies had enough AP on their basic troop to negate the armor of all horde infantry in the game. AP4 weapons were nearly non existant. So all the "special" weapons one could bring with the exception of flamers were AP3 or better.
I really believe you are overstating how the old system forced people to take "the right tools for the job".
Also that was the age were a single 1 meant a dead 2+ model.
It might sound appealing to some ears, and I can understand why. For combat oriented armies, it punished your opponent for being too densely packed, as you skipped from combat to combat, safe from their firepower.
But...my distaste is probably more down to 3rd Ed and how bent some armies were.
Blood Angels in particular could get into combat stupidly fast. Potentially first turn if they got lucky and you’d really stuffed your deployment.
It meant combat armies had much of the game to themselves. Not only did they fight twice as often as ranged units (fighting combats in both player turns), but range armies rarely had much in the way of targets.
Shouldn't punishing positioning mistakes be exactly how a melee army functions though? If you deploy wrong, they can start dealing damage and you watch as your gunline crumbles. If you don't misposition you, in turn, have the advantage given that as, presumably, a shooting list your heavy weapons have good odds of cracking/immobilizing/stunning enough transports to clog up their charge lanes and from there it should just be cleaning up.
This seems fair to me and if you get caught once it shouldn't take too many more beatings to realize that you don't want to deploy at the edge of your deployment zone and that you need to space units 5" apart.
Kind of.
Certainly any rule system should allow for the errors of your opponent to be exploited.
But, with the way 3rd and 4th Ed (I think they removed consolidate into a new combat in 5th. Might’ve been 6th) worked, you never got a chance to recover from such an error. And that made for a bad system.
Because the more shooty/static army had to deploy without error, whilst certain* assault armies didn’t.
*remember, my criticism largely stems from how specific armies were able to exploit it.
There were also some other things about the 3E/4E era that really helped consolidation into new combats. Being able to have your Daemon Prince or unkillable Falcon zip up the board turn 1, hide completely out of LoS behind area terrain, and turn 2 move up (or disembark passengers) and dive into assault against anything that wasn't butt-to-board-edge, and consolidate up the board either hiding in combat or using the LoS rules to stay completely untargetable the entire time against an opponent that cannot redeploy against you was a wee bit silly.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: ...The whole argument of "oh specific weapons for specific targets" has always been a lie that the defenders of the old system tell themselves. Nobody was specifically bringing AP4 or AP3. They either brought high strength with high rate of fire (with AP just being a bonus) or they made sure everything was AP2. Everything meant Marines not hugging cover was laughable. Actually, Marines hugging the cover was still laughable...
Which is a consequence of stat creep more than anything else. The amount of 2+ armour in the game ballooned ridiculously in 5e-7e, hull points made AP increasingly irrelevant against vehicles, the introduction of easy move-and-fire AP2 blasts/templates made heavy infantry kind of a joke, yes. Try looking at 3e/4e or 30k where the game isn't made entirely of underpriced AP2 large blasts, superheavies with Invulnerable saves, rapid-fire S8, scatterbikes, and 2+-armour MCs.
I played 4th, thank you very much. The same still applied except for Rapid Fire weapons just not being very good. Take Necrons using weight of fire for example with Immortals and Destroyers, which is literally what I played.
Part of the problem is a clash between "realism" (in the context of the setting) and balance.
Think about it from a narrative perspective: "sir, you can take these plasma guns which ignore every armor save and are quite effective even against medium vehicles, or for 1/3rd the price you get the gakky version of a lasgun" (the Grenade Launcher)." Of course almost every commander will choose plasma.
Therefore:
Increase the cost of AP3 or 2 weapons to reflect their rarity and expense in the setting. This can vary (e.g. battle cannons should be cheaper on this metric than plasma guns). Otherwise you end up like IRL where firepower that does more damage will always dominate lower quality firepower unless the price is dramatically different.
You part of the problem with the idea of "bring the right weapon for the right target" is that in 40k you don't consistently fight a variety of targets.
You know in most games you're going to be playing Space Marines, so that's an entire army of 2-3+ saves.
I distinctly remember in those days the attitude of "AP3 or bust" for that very reason.
I prefer AP mods, although I think they hand out AP a little too easily.
Certainly any rule system should allow for the errors of your opponent to be exploited.
But, with the way 3rd and 4th Ed (I think they removed consolidate into a new combat in 5th. Might’ve been 6th) worked, you never got a chance to recover from such an error. And that made for a bad system.
Because the more shooty/static army had to deploy without error, whilst certain* assault armies didn’t.
*remember, my criticism largely stems from how specific armies were able to exploit it.
This also went against them too. If they deployed incorrectly, went second, or if you deployed well you could counter their gameplan almost completely. This design made for swingy games, which weren't as common in 3e, but that's hardly the biggest sin 40k has ever commited.
AP3 weapons were also weirdly statted. Either they were artillery based weapons that had blast or large so they erased entire squads if they could manage to hit or they were on esoteric models like Tau's Auxillary and oddly statted like stormtroopers S3 AP3 that both made them overly expensive, but still weak against what their primary target was.
Galas wrote: ??¿¿?¿? Most armies had enough AP on their basic troop to negate the armor of all horde infantry in the game. AP4 weapons were nearly non existant. So all the "special" weapons one could bring with the exception of flamers were AP3 or better.
In practice the opposite was often true - AP4 weapons were too common for players to put value into the expensive 4+ armour save upgrades, especially when 4+ cover was available. 'eavy armour and grenadiers for example.
Anything that was heavy but not 'anti-marine/anti-tank' capped out at AP 4 including the dispersed fire mode of some guns and a lot of secondary vehicle weapons.
By comparison some armies had no AP 3 at all. It got a bit more common in 5th but for the most part it was either artillery/missiles or a specialist anti-marine gun. Most things just jumped straight to AP 2.
As for the rest - AP 6/- was your horde weapons (lasgun, spike rifle, shoota, kroot rifle, etc) and weird stuff (snipers, spliter rifles, etc).
AP5 was the elite weapons (bolters, gauss flayers, pulse rifles, hotguns, shuriken catapults, etc), usually carried by models with 4+ or better saves that gained nothing from hiding in cover from small arms.
As for the rest - AP 6/- was your horde weapons (lasgun, spike rifle, shoota, kroot rifle, etc) and weird stuff (snipers, spliter rifles, etc).
AP5 was the elite weapons (bolters, gauss flayers, pulse rifles, hotguns, shuriken catapults, etc), usually carried by models with 4+ or better saves that gained nothing from hiding in cover from small arms.
This bit is not quite right, basically every basic weapon for basic troops choices for everyone other than guard, orks and nids was AP5
Both sorts of Eldar had AP 5 on their 5+ save grunts and all their pistols for example all of which definitely wanted to be hiding in cover. And fire warriors, while having 4+ saves, where hardly that elite.
And elite 4+ save guys (aspect warriors, storm troopers, 5th Ed Necron warriors, somewhat scouts) absolutely did want to be in cover as AP4 was absolutely rife with heavy bolters being everywhere in Imperial armies, marines spamming ass cannons and auto cannons being pretty common too.
And then because AP 5 or worse heavy weapons were basically useless, Eldar just ended up spamming their AP2 star cannons everywhere, especially in 3rd Ed where they had as many shots as a shuriken cannon. (Though EMLs with AP3 or AP4 blast were also pretty popular after starcannons dropped to 2 shots).
Hull Points in 6th and 7th. Not necessarily the concept, but that the damage tables/HP ratios were designed so that it was easier to use 'general-purpose' multishot weapons like Scatter Lasers, than it was to actually attempt to kill vehicles with supposedly 'dedicated' (and more expensive) anti-tank weapons like Lascannons.
Oh, and the general tendency for there to usually be "one weapon to rule them all" each edition.
MagicJuggler wrote: Hull Points in 6th and 7th. Not necessarily the concept, but that the damage tables/HP ratios were designed so that it was easier to use 'general-purpose' multishot weapons like Scatter Lasers, than it was to actually attempt to kill vehicles with supposedly 'dedicated' (and more expensive) anti-tank weapons like Lascannons.
I've house ruled 7th a few times giving all vehicles 3+ armor saves except for skimmers/flyers getting 4+ which works out exceptionally well. I also play it that rear armor hits have 1 less to their armor save It solves a lot of the high strength, poor AP spam as it cuts their effectiveness by a 1/3 but had no impact on the effectiveness of the true anti tank weapons like melta, krak missiles, lascannons, etc while the auto cannon class weapons are still fully effective against skimmers and flyers but not so much against ground vehicles. It also helped with gauss spam making vehicles completely useless.
In melee it makes it so infantry have a lot harder time just punching a vehicle to death unless they use power weapons or krak grenades against the rear armor while it made walkers super tanky and much more on par with MCs.
For every Leman Russ, Basilisk and Griffon in your army, you got essentially a free Battle Cannon shot at the start of the game.
Themeatically it was great. But man that ruined many a game with how effective it could be.
But that was back in 2nd edition, where you had, what, two of those? Mind you, you also got one for each comm-link (vox-caster, for the young 'uns) too.
The rules I couldn't be bothered with were the ones for grenades with lingering effects - Blind, Smoke, Plasma. Vortex too, but that was less annoying because they were hardly ever used and it made sense for them to be special.
And the trend for everything to have their own bundle of special rules. The rot started in the middle of 1st edition when Marines got their special rules for power armour* and leadership**, but now it's just ridiculous.
*Marines in Marine Power Armour could ignore movement penalties for equipment - not a huge deal because everyone in just about every army got suspensors to cancel out the penalties anyway.
** Marines had to fail a Ld test twice before breaking and fleeing. Failing once just meant they wouldn't move closer to the enemy. Just give 'em all +1 Ld; after all, that same WD issue gave them all +1 T.
Along with the all or nothing AP system, one of the rule changes in third edition that really changed the player base and the background was orks going down from shooting sometimes on 4+ to always on 5+
Orks were a goofy army, but then they became a joke army, literally a punchline. It’s this joke about tau vs orks, orks only having one move.
Andy Chambers said explicitly that when they were redesigning 40k he wanted everything to have a superficial niche, to effectively flanderize the armies. that is what happened, and I think orks stopped being a really main faction as a result of not having a reliable hit roll for rokkits.
The Flanderisation of Orks is something I didn't like either. Orks being bad shots is fine, but it's not so fine when even the Orks that choose to go into combat with big shooty guns also suck at shooting.
Then again, Orks suffered from all being made into generic Goffs when Gorkamorka came around. Took them years to recover from that and regain their colour.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The Flanderisation of Orks is something I didn't like either. Orks being bad shots is fine, but it's not so fine when even the Orks that choose to go into combat with big shooty guns also suck at shooting.
Then again, Orks suffered from all being made into generic Goffs when Gorkamorka came around. Took them years to recover from that and regain their colour.
Yeah I have mixed feelings about that. I liked that the Orks wound up with a more differentiated profile than their prior version, but really dislike that they lost a lot of their original character, such as Madboyz and Boar Boyz. Iirc there was some more Klan rules brought back in later during 3rd or 4th, but they never really regai ed their former zaniness.
Those RT/2nd era Ork sculpts are true highlights of the old GW catalogue. Fantastic models.
Random charge ranges were indeed a bummer, although not as much as with Warhammer Fantasy Battles (where maneuvering for close combat was the name of the game) where the change to random charges just made me stop playing the game right away at that point.
For 40K we tried to alleviate the stupidity of random charges by using "average dice" (2-3-3-4-4-5) for games at home. Helped a little bit.
But the most distasteful rule I remember was two units giving cover to each other at the same time. I'm sure there were plenty of other ones, but this one I remember vividly :]
Curvaceous wrote: ...and I think orks stopped being a really main faction as a result of not having a reliable hit roll for rokkits.
I'm not really sure that's the case - orks in 3rd edition got three rokkit launchers for the same cost as a single guard missile launcher, and they could move and shoot with them.
Madboyz and Boar Boyz for what it's worth, did have rules in 3rd but they were hidden away in the feral orks codex. Though it's always surprised me how little of the orks extended vehicle/unit range has never made it to 40k outside of the odd apoc book.
That was deliberate, back to 2nd edition Warhammer, to make orcs and humans mirrors of each other - humans are slightly faster, orcs a little stronger.
Do you know why Orks ended up with BS 2? It was inthe original Last Stand at Glazer's Creek battle report for 2nd edition - Praetorian Imperial Guard vs feral Orks. The orks got BS 2 for that scenario to make it better for them to close into melee rather than hang back and trade long-range fire with the Guard. Then when 3rd edition came out it was applied across the faction for the same reason.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: LOL it really didn't. It just meant you went with mostly AP2, because AP3 was that absurdly rare. Also in the newer system Marines (AND Terminators despite the people crying otherwise) became more durable to various weapons compared to before. Yes you're weaker vs a Gauss Flayer and now the Galvanic Rifle. However even with Manlet Marines having W1 they were more durable vs an array of weapons so that's fine.
You mean you had to bring specific weapons to deal with specific targets, rather than what we have now where the middle of the road weapons do everything adequately enough to not require specialist equipment.
Oh how terrible.
The whole argument of "oh specific weapons for specific targets" has always been a lie that the defenders of the old system tell themselves. Nobody was specifically bringing AP4 or AP3. They either brought high strength with high rate of fire (with AP just being a bonus) or they made sure everything was AP2. Everything meant Marines not hugging cover was laughable. Actually, Marines hugging the cover was still laughable.
The old wounding table mightve been better slightly (and only slightly), but the old AP system with all or nothing meant you brought weapons that ignored the problem altogether instead of tailoring for specific targets.
I played a couple of games of 5th edition not to long ago with my friends, and it was astounding how pronounced the right weapon-right target effect was compared to nowadays.
It felt a lot more responsive and well playing, since like if I put a battle cannon shell onto a squad of marines, the squad just died basically. If it target a predator with a vanquisher gun, it goes right through and breaks things. If I target a termigaunts with a punisher cannon, they just evaporate.
It feels snappy and decisive, and not this mushy thing where everything feels and responds the same way to fire, and there aren't really specific counters for target types so much as the choice between better or cheap.
But on the flip side, a vanquisher gun doesn't do well against any squad target, a punisher cannon can't hurt vehicles and doesn't do anything to marines either. The battle cannon is the most versatile, being good against both marines and light vehicles, but it really doesn't do anything to heavy vehicles and barely makes a dent in horde infantry squads.
Part of the problem with "right weapon right job" is that armies don't have a diverse mix of stuff, each army is generally skewed.
Playing Marines? That punisher is useless. Even 4+ infantry is rare and it's mostly all 3+ or better.
Playing Nids? Now that Vanquiser is useless. There's not a vehicle in sight.
I think 40k isn't structured in a way to make that work.
It's incredibly diverse on one hand;
There's an army who's basic troops are T5/2/3W (probably 4W soon) and another army who's basic troops are T3/6+/1W.
And yet incredibly homogenous on the other hand;
That first army is pretty much ONLY T5/2+ 3+W whereas there's other armies where the only infantry they get follows that super squishy profile.
Imagine coming against Custodes if AP2 weapons were rare and taken only for niche targets and anything else was completely ineffective.
kirotheavenger wrote: Part of the problem with "right weapon right job" is that armies don't have a diverse mix of stuff, each army is generally skewed.
Playing Marines? That punisher is useless. Even 4+ infantry is rare and it's mostly all 3+ or better.
Playing Nids? Now that Vanquiser is useless. There's not a vehicle in sight.
I think 40k isn't structured in a way to make that work.
It's incredibly diverse on one hand;
There's an army who's basic troops are T5/2/3W (probably 4W soon) and another army who's basic troops are T3/6+/1W.
And yet incredibly homogenous on the other hand;
That first army is pretty much ONLY T5/2+ 3+W whereas there's other armies where the only infantry they get follows that super squishy profile.
Imagine coming against Custodes if AP2 weapons were rare and taken only for niche targets and anything else was completely ineffective.
Armies generally presented 3 or so target profiles out of about 5 total different profile ranges [Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Monstrous Creature], so if you were take all comers, then you'd have a balance of options to handle everything in your list, and only a little bit would be ineffective, which is overall fine. Like, that's also where tailoring comes from.
Nowadays, it doesn't feel like tailoring even gives an advantage.
Would that necessarily be a bad thing? Sure, you should be rewarded in some way for making a clever/balanced TAC list, but (and this may be my personal feelings re: tailoring coming through) I'd rather win through competent generalship, and complaints that tailoring no longer gives you an edge fall somewhat flat to me.
Would that necessarily be a bad thing? Sure, you should be rewarded in some way for making a clever/balanced TAC list, but (and this may be my personal feelings re: tailoring coming through) I'd rather win through competent generalship, and complaints that tailoring no longer gives you an edge fall somewhat flat to me.
Uh... yeah, it's a bad thing because it means that everything is the same and there's one best solution. Theoretically, if I could gain an advantage by tailoring to this scenario by lets say taking more Vanquisher AT guns and fewer Punisher Cannons to defeat my Marine-tankhammer playing opponent, but at the expense of being much weaker against a Tyranids-horde opponent, this means that I have to make more reasoned and considered decisions when composing my force to make it able to take either of the enemies, and it means that when my forces hit the table I'll have more moving pieces and tactical depth to my force on the table as it responds to the present reality of the situation.
If everything is basically the same and I want to fill my list with mid strength, AP1/2, D2/3, high rate of fire weapons to defeat any enemy, then it's less of a strategic and tactical problem to win the game. Take my guns, and point it at whatever's scariest and mob the objectives.
If tailoring gives an advantage, that means you've made some trade off to make your list able to take all comers. This is, of course a good thing.
To perhaps bring a counter example, the comparative AP system may make it feel like
you're "bringing the right tools for the right job". but only so far if you have a wide range of things to pick from. When you're playing a much more restrictive army list, then those options blended in together much more and which ones were even worth taking actually depended more on your ability to keep them on the table because you lacked the same amount of redundancy.
Sure, when you're playing marines or guard, you can just shove X or Y onto B or A and you were fine. if you were playing orks, nids, or demons? you have a hammer, and everything looked like nails.
The other thing is that the low Armor saves actually feel like they exist. Have a 6+ or 5+? No you don't, because 90% of the basic infantry weapons had Ap 5 weapons.
If AP was rarer I don't think people would have the issue of "everything kills everything".
Space Marine's standard small arm being AP1 or even 2 depending on which way the wind is blowing is silly and shows the problem.
Doctrines in general means the most common army is practically drowning in armour piercing.
If things were a little more restrained, I feel that'd really improve things.
kirotheavenger wrote: If AP was rarer I don't think people would have the issue of "everything kills everything".
Space Marine's standard small arm being AP1 or even 2 depending on which way the wind is blowing is silly and shows the problem.
Doctrines in general means the most common army is practically drowning in armour piercing.
If things were a little more restrained, I feel that'd really improve things.
That's part of the problem, sure. I think poorly-thought-out damage/wounds stats, overly constrained S/T, and the way blasts work are bigger ones, since they make spammable mid-power (S5-8, moderate to good AP, D2+, at least two shots or blast) too efficient at killing heavy infantry and vehicles. If S9+ existed, or if you didn't need S8 to wound Marines on 2+, or if you didn't have whole armies of 2-3W infantry, or if vehicles/monsters all had a DR mechanic or 2-3x the wounds they've got the anti-everything guns would be less of an issue. Or even just if you weren't rerolling everything all the time.
Blast: If this weapon rolls a hit on its attack, for each model in the targeted unit roll a die, and for each roll of 4+ the unit takes a hit. On a miss do the same but instead count only unmodified rolls of 6. No blast weapon may score more hits than its impact rating.
Then for the old small blast template weapons just give them a lower impact rating. You can also play around with the 'hit' numbers with special rules to make weapons more or less impactful.
I actually quite like that idea. The only issue is the all or nothing nature.
Roll to Hit, and if you hit roll to hit again against each model. Miss and you hit nothing. Your blast goes off, and may or may not catch people within its radius. That's fine. Your blast misses, and the shell vanishes into the ether.
The random rolls are meant to represent a miss that catches one or two people. The issue is that they tend to be too swingy.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I actually quite like that idea. The only issue is the all or nothing nature.
Roll to Hit, and if you hit roll to hit again against each model. Miss and you hit nothing.
I made it so it wasn't all or nothing. On a miss, you still get to fish for 6s to deal damage which, to my mind, simulates only catching a couple models under an old template due to scattering. In practice, I'd want to playtest the rule and see if maybe some weapons need to roll two attack roles and get like 3+ on both hitting, 4+ on one hitting, and 6+ on a complete miss.
kirotheavenger wrote: If AP was rarer I don't think people would have the issue of "everything kills everything".
Space Marine's standard small arm being AP1 or even 2 depending on which way the wind is blowing is silly and shows the problem.
Doctrines in general means the most common army is practically drowning in armour piercing.
If things were a little more restrained, I feel that'd really improve things.
The problem isn't Doctrines or Super Doctrines, it's the fact they exist together. GW should've chosen one or the other.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: The problem isn't Doctrines or Super Doctrines, it's the fact they exist together. GW should've chosen one or the other.
Fear the might of my chapter for they have mastered Super Doctrine 2 and now their power level is beyond your petty mortal comprehension!
FWIW limiting Chapters and their Successors to get a single turn benefit at thr cost of being pure isn't necessarily bad. Raven Guard having a turn to get to wound Characters better? Sure the scaling is wonky but it isn't necessarily broken. However you also get it with a bonus to all your Rapid Fire and Assault weapons. That's been bad rules writing.
Nightlord1987 wrote: 6th Ed Drop pods. As a CSM player, having pods drop and not scatter was furiating.
I don't remember that one, was it a formation?
Drop Pods in general reduced scatter to avoid a mishap.
You had the Skyhammer Cashgrab Formation which was 2x Drop Pods w. Devastators, and 2x Assault Squads - Devs could still fire at full BS after arriving from the pods. - Assault Marines didn't scatter if arriving near the pods. - Any unit hit by a Dev attack couldn't Overwatch, and the Assault Marines got some kind of other boost to go with it.
Firing at full BS and charging out of DS were pretty rare effects in 7th.
Nightlord1987 wrote: 6th Ed Drop pods. As a CSM player, having pods drop and not scatter was furiating.
I don't remember that one, was it a formation?
Drop Pods in general reduced scatter to avoid a mishap.
You had the Skyhammer Cashgrab Formation which was 2x Drop Pods w. Devastators, and 2x Assault Squads
- Devs could still fire at full BS after arriving from the pods.
- Assault Marines didn't scatter if arriving near the pods.
- Any unit hit by a Dev attack couldn't Overwatch, and the Assault Marines got some kind of other boost to go with it.
Firing at full BS and charging out of DS were pretty rare effects in 7th.
All those rules and it STILL wasn't the most broken Formation LOL
Nightlord1987 wrote: 6th Ed Drop pods. As a CSM player, having pods drop and not scatter was furiating.
I don't remember that one, was it a formation?
Drop Pods in general reduced scatter to avoid a mishap.
You had the Skyhammer Cashgrab Formation which was 2x Drop Pods w. Devastators, and 2x Assault Squads
- Devs could still fire at full BS after arriving from the pods.
- Assault Marines didn't scatter if arriving near the pods.
- Any unit hit by a Dev attack couldn't Overwatch, and the Assault Marines got some kind of other boost to go with it.
Firing at full BS and charging out of DS were pretty rare effects in 7th.
All those rules and it STILL wasn't the most broken Formation LOL
7th was nuts.
And lowered the bar enough were they could simply somewhat often write a faq and release a bit more regularly and that is touted as a second golden age...
And lowered the bar enough were they could simply somewhat often write a faq and release a bit more regularly and that is touted as a second golden age...
Haha, truth!
They've definitely made some positive moves in many areas, but Strats, three Marine Codexes in 4 years, 30$ single character models etc aren't in the 'positive' category.
And lowered the bar enough were they could simply somewhat often write a faq and release a bit more regularly and that is touted as a second golden age...
Haha, truth!
They've definitely made some positive moves in many areas, but Strats, three Marine Codexes in 4 years, 30$ single character models etc aren't in the 'positive' category.
7th was a low, low bar.
Yeah about what was coming afterwards, the indices made me, somewhat, happy.
What they did afterwards with cashgrab release after cashgrab release including PA and vigilus, nevermind supplement and dexes 2.0...
and you know what's funnier? 8th selling point, or one of it anyways, was that it was described as a "living ruleset" and the "last one."... yeah about that.
And ironically 9th isn't really a improvement, because we got day one DLC, and somehow lost in the transtition what, another 3 armies? Infact we haven't even had propperly adapted rulesets to the 9th edition changes for the vast majority of dexes.
Also SoB got within 1 year another codex to buy? And that is somehow acceptable? NVM that some of the new sister units don't fit 40k esthetically atleast not in the IoM forces. (yes the nundams look cool but esthetically they are too smooth, incidentally i'd have fix if i ever were to make chaos sisters but the nundams just don't fit.)
But all is fine in gw land, dare point that out and especially their anti consumer behaviour and you get shouted down. Because they improved their PR, and improveing is a lose word in that manner, because from an non existent PR department to a meh Pr department is an improvement. And ofcourse, it ain 7th edition unbalanced, so it's good, right guys?
...
I guess what i am getting at is the corporatisation is affecting the hobby in a negative way and you see it in the strategies GW employs, rangeing from FOMO to mobile games, to cycles of releases for rules, to first day dlc, etc...
Wound allocation in 5th i think with nob bikers especially.
That was NONSENSE.
Made for a quite the time of never giving regular mooks a sarg or special weapon
"Half of this pile of wounds goes to the regular dudes and the other half goes to the singular squad leader of the unit"
Definitely made Farsight Bomb a big spongey expensive nuisance once I figured out how to work that out towards the ending months of 5th
Apologies if this sounds pedantic, but unless the entire unit was the sergeant and just 1 grunt, you could not do a 50/50 split like that with your wounds. You couldn't allocate more wounds in a wound group than there were models in that wound group.
Worst rule every mostly b.c there was Torrent flamers (You message out 12" from the gun and can pistol the 8" flamer marker on that point, so you had basically a long range flamer to hit almost any direction meaning you can hit 2 or more units without trying). Heldrakes, Immolators, Land Raiders, and many others with torrent flamers meant I had to stop taking Venoms and Raiders all of 6th. Which also meant I had to take Beaststars and quinstars.... they are fun for me but not for others and not what DE is.
People talk about 7th, but really 6th was 10x worst, 7th just had terrible power creep for the last year of the game and too many USR, but 6th rules were so bad they had to bring 7th out just after 2yrs.
Formations & allies - call be a purist, but in standard games I like the notion of just having one basic detachment pulled from one codex. No allies to leverage weird wombo-combos, no formations to provide power creep escalations. Just a nice simple detachment will do.
Random charge distances - introduced in 6th edition (and here since). I much prefer fixed charge distances.
Casualty / wound allocation in most editions - I don't think GW did this very well back then. It seems a little better now, but in complex situations the ruleset is really murky with how you are supposed to do it, short of rolling one dice at a time, which is annoying.
Scatter dice for each jump/jet pack model in a unit. 10 Scatter rolls for a full assault squad took FOREVER.
Worst rule every mostly b.c there was Torrent flamers (You message out 12" from the gun and can pistol the 8" flamer marker on that point, so you had basically a long range flamer to hit almost any direction meaning you can hit 2 or more units without trying). Heldrakes, Immolators, Land Raiders, and many others with torrent flamers meant I had to stop taking Venoms and Raiders all of 6th. Which also meant I had to take Beaststars and quinstars.... they are fun for me but not for others and not what DE is.
People talk about 7th, but really 6th was 10x worst, 7th just had terrible power creep for the last year of the game and too many USR, but 6th rules were so bad they had to bring 7th out just after 2yrs.
6th was actually a much worse ruleset (My character challenges your character, now I'm immune to 10 man assault terminator squad he was attached to!) but it had 2 specific things going for it that I think playing during 6th still ended up being better than playing during 7th.
1 was how short the edition was. By the time you got your first army built and painted you only had maybe a year and a half left of the edition.
The bigger one was that you could just assume you were playing rules wrong. 6th edition was before meaningful FAQs existed so there was always this idea in the back of your head that you must be doing something wrong and that the rules meant something other than what they said. GW's rules writing has always been fairly ambiguous, so without the 70 page FAQ that came out in 7th some part of you was still thinking maybe it's my fault. Maybe I read the rule wrong. This can't be what they meant to happen. It has to be something I did wrong. Which oddly made the nonsense less...nonesense-y.
6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
imagine if they fixed 5th somewhat semi regular and reigned in some of the balance issues of dexes...
would be a damn good wargame...
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
imagine if they fixed 5th somewhat semi regular and reigned in some of the balance issues of dexes...
would be a damn good wargame...
Yeah, the ruleset was tight but 5th ed codices had the absolute worst internal balance ever. Every FOC slot had one super obvious unit that was head and shoulders better than everything else, so cookie cutter lists were the order of the day. Every Imperial Guard list was mech vets, Vendettas, and Manticores. Every Space Wolves list was Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, and outflanking Wolf Scouts. Yadda yadda yadda for every other book. If GW had been as committed to post-launch support then as it is now, we would have had an amazing game on our hands.
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
imagine if they fixed 5th somewhat semi regular and reigned in some of the balance issues of dexes...
would be a damn good wargame...
Yeah, the ruleset was tight but 5th ed codices had the absolute worst internal balance ever. Every FOC slot had one super obvious unit that was head and shoulders better than everything else, so cookie cutter lists were the order of the day. Every Imperial Guard list was mech vets, Vendettas, and Manticores. Every Space Wolves list was Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, and outflanking Wolf Scouts. Yadda yadda yadda for every other book. If GW had been as committed to post-launch support then as it is now, we would have had an amazing game on our hands.
Yup.
And it isn't like GW didn't have people that were able to design armies in a way were the setup allowed for other options instead of mechvets and hydras f.e.
It's just that GW didn't bother to ask them for help, or institute general oversight over their rules output. Something they still don't considering the broken Day 1 dlc interaction right now making DE broken.
But what can you do...
Also 5th was for some factions just a tragedy, like the CSM dex wouldn't come out till 6th and so you were straddled with double prince lash and the 9 happy obliterators for a whole edition because the rest of the csm book was just that trash comparatively...
Not Online!!! wrote: Also 5th was for some factions just a tragedy, like the CSM dex wouldn't come out till 6th...
That in of itself wasn't the problem - 4e CSM were only a year old when 5th edition was released and had already adopted the 5e style cheaper vehicles, free grenades and pistols, etc.
But 5e suffered from GWs usual lack of ability / desire to stick to a set power level for their books. Ward kept raising the takes while Cruddace phoned in anything that didn't interest him.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also 5th was for some factions just a tragedy, like the CSM dex wouldn't come out till 6th...
That in of itself wasn't the problem - 4e CSM were only a year old when 5th edition was released and had already adopted the 5e style cheaper vehicles, free grenades and pistols, etc.
But 5e suffered from GWs usual lack of ability / desire to stick to a set power level for their books. Ward kept raising the takes while Cruddace phoned in anything that didn't interest him.
Well no, it actually did matter, because 4th edition CSM dex was an utter shitshow for a dex. Failing conceptually , design wise, and most importantly managed to increase the power from before via crippling the faction at the same time.
And yes it didn't help that GW did just randomly shift design paradigms jus because. And just like once upon a time, we see the same careless attitude of the rulewriters in regards to their new books, cue SM 2.0 supplements, the recently broken book of rust and de dex...
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
Imo 5th was also crippled by the removal of area terrain and fully embracing TLOS.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also 5th was for some factions just a tragedy, like the CSM dex wouldn't come out till 6th...
That in of itself wasn't the problem - 4e CSM were only a year old when 5th edition was released and had already adopted the 5e style cheaper vehicles, free grenades and pistols, etc.
But 5e suffered from GWs usual lack of ability / desire to stick to a set power level for their books. Ward kept raising the takes while Cruddace phoned in anything that didn't interest him.
LOL Ward was NOWHERE near as bad with balance as Kelley was.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also 5th was for some factions just a tragedy, like the CSM dex wouldn't come out till 6th...
That in of itself wasn't the problem - 4e CSM were only a year old when 5th edition was released and had already adopted the 5e style cheaper vehicles, free grenades and pistols, etc.
But 5e suffered from GWs usual lack of ability / desire to stick to a set power level for their books. Ward kept raising the takes while Cruddace phoned in anything that didn't interest him.
Well no, it actually did matter, because 4th edition CSM dex was an utter shitshow for a dex. Failing conceptually , design wise, and most importantly managed to increase the power from before via crippling the faction at the same time.
And yes it didn't help that GW did just randomly shift design paradigms jus because. And just like once upon a time, we see the same careless attitude of the rulewriters in regards to their new books, cue SM 2.0 supplements, the recently broken book of rust and de dex...
Yes, but was the 6th edition CSM codex really that much of an improvement? For me, personally, the only things that saved CSM in 6th/7th was IA13 and that brief, brief period we had with the Traitor Legions supplement.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: LOL Ward was NOWHERE near as bad with balance as Kelley was.
5e Dark Eldar was in a reasonable place as far as the edition balance went. Wolves got played locally by a chaos player on the grounds that it was basically better at everything he wanted than both the SM and CSM book. So 50/50.
Ward started with Blood Angels (aka marines +1), moved on to the wonder that was 5e Grey Knights, and finished with 5e Necrons.
Cruddace kicked off with his favourites the Guard, followed by his not favourites the Tyranids, and if you ever want to see a textbook example of phoning it in try the WD Sisters of Battle where he didn't even bother changing the points on his copy/paste command squad entry (or managing more than base colours on the 4-5 models for his 'making of' website article). His rules screw-ups in the subsequent Sisters vs Nids battle report was also - in the spirit of the thread - distasteful.
Though props to whichever anonymous designer wrote the 5th edition pdf update for some of the old books. It was an inconsistant train-wreck of an errata but it actually did a pretty good job of bringing some of the outdated 3e-4e books into play again. Armies like post-update 5e Dark Angels weren't a joke.
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
Imo 5th was also crippled by the removal of area terrain and fully embracing TLOS.
Neither of these things are true: area terrain was the most common terrain type in 5th and included most things, and TLOS wasn't indiscriminate line of sight like we have now.
Big Grey Book, page 13 wrote:For the clarity of the game it is important to be able to tell where the boundary of the terrain feature is, as these pieces normally count as difficult terrain. This is where we need to introduce the concept of 'area terrain'. You can show the boundary of a piece of area terrain by using a flat baseboard, an outline of lichen or sand, or by painting a slightly different color on your gaming board. Trees, rocks, ruins, or whatever is appropriate for the kind of terrain you are representing, are usually placed within the boundary of the area terrain's base.
In fact, 5e didn't really have TLOS (though they called it that) because it ignored banners and outstretched appendages:
Big Grey Book, page 16 wrote:Line of sight must be traced from the eyes of the firing model to any part of the body of at least one of the models in the target unit (for 'body' we mean its head, torso, legs and arms). Sometimes, all that may be visible of a model is a weapon, an antenna, a banner or some other ornament he is wearing or carrying (including its wings and tail, even though they are technically part of its body). In these cases, the model is not visible. These rules are intended to ensure that models don't get penalised for having impressive standards, blades, guns, majestic wings, etc.
I like that rule a lot more than the "the corner of my tread can see the edge of your wing, so all my guns are in range" in the current edition, though I think 9th is a better game.
It seems a lot of posts in this thread mistake rules going back beyond 7th edition, and remembered problems seem magnified.
creeping-deth87 wrote: 6th edition's biggest problem was that it came after 5th, which was like the most functional ruleset the game has ever had. All they needed to do was fix wound allocation, but of course GW had to be GW and throw the baby out with the bathwater and now here we are.
Imo 5th was also crippled by the removal of area terrain and fully embracing TLOS.
Neither of these things are true: area terrain was the most common terrain type in 5th and included most things, and TLOS wasn't indiscriminate line of sight like we have now.
Area Terrain in 4th and Area Terrain in 5th were vastly different things. 5th edition used TLOS in the sense that they explicitly got rid of the more abstracted terrain levels/heights of 4th edition, and if you could "see" a model from the firing models view, you could shoot it, even if it was through a ruin or other "Area terrain".
Area terrain in 4th was automatically essentially what "Obscuring" terrain is today, with the addition of size categories. You couldn't shoot at a model on the other side of the area terrain as long as it was of equal size category or smaller. No models-eye shennanigans required. In addition, Area Terrian could not be "seen" into more than 6". So you could ave a Ruin that was 10" deep, and models could be in the ruin and still not see into/out of it.
5th ed junked a superior terrain paradigm, reducing the importance of maneuvering and hurting the game for the next 4 editions.
Mind you, you also got one for each comm-link (vox-caster, for the young 'uns) too.
