Personally i don’t think sun faction rules provide that much flavor tbh.
I don’t think I’d notice much difference using IF vs UM even with their doctrines.
To me most of an army’s flavor comes from the units taken, and for specific subfactions from their unique characters and units.
For example is anyone going to play BA in a massively different manner without their chapter doctrine? No, they won’t.
Did the chapter doctrine change massively change how BA played from before 9th or even 8th? As far as I can tell not really. The way people play BA has been basically the same since 3rd. I think the biggest change was the end of rhino rush…
Personally i don’t think sun faction rules provide that much flavor tbh.
I don’t think I’d notice much difference using IF vs UM even with their doctrines.
To me most of an army’s flavor comes from the units taken, and for specific subfactions from their unique characters and units.
For example is anyone going to play BA in a massively different manner without their chapter doctrine? No, they won’t.
Did the chapter doctrine change massively change how BA played from before 9th or even 8th? As far as I can tell not really. The way people play BA has been basically the same since 3rd. I think the biggest change was the end of rhino rush…
Not sure how much faith I have in these rumors, but I'd be okay with those changes if the rumors are true. Simplifying things, removing some of the layers of buffs and the number of strats floating around in a given game would all be good.
"Subfactions are gone and replaced with custom traits," just sounds like what the latest IG 'dex did, and I like that approach. It lets you customize your playstyle a bit, but you don't lock faction X players from using the exact same rules every game. (Which is extra awkward when the rules GW gave your faction don't match your own vision of what makes that faction interesting.) Let me represent my Ulthwe force with anything from psychic buffs to deepstriking benefits to guardian buffs, but give me extra Ulthwe flavor when I field Eldrad? Sounds good to me.
Personally i don’t think sun faction rules provide that much flavor tbh.
I don’t think I’d notice much difference using IF vs UM even with their doctrines.
To me most of an army’s flavor comes from the units taken, and for specific subfactions from their unique characters and units.
For example is anyone going to play BA in a massively different manner without their chapter doctrine? No, they won’t.
Did the chapter doctrine change massively change how BA played from before 9th or even 8th? As far as I can tell not really. The way people play BA has been basically the same since 3rd. I think the biggest change was the end of rhino rush…
Not sure how much faith I have in these rumors, but I'd be okay with those changes if the rumors are true. Simplifying things, removing some of the layers of buffs and the number of strats floating around in a given game would all be good.
"Subfactions are gone and replaced with custom traits," just sounds like what the latest IG 'dex did, and I like that approach. It lets you customize your playstyle a bit, but you don't lock faction X players from using the exact same rules every game. (Which is extra awkward when the rules GW gave your faction don't match your own vision of what makes that faction interesting.) Let me represent my Ulthwe force with anything from psychic buffs to deepstriking benefits to guardian buffs, but give me extra Ulthwe flavor when I field Eldrad? Sounds good to me.
Idk about other factions but marines already had custom doctrines
Personally i don’t think sun faction rules provide that much flavor tbh.
I don’t think I’d notice much difference using IF vs UM even with their doctrines.
To me most of an army’s flavor comes from the units taken, and for specific subfactions from their unique characters and units.
For example is anyone going to play BA in a massively different manner without their chapter doctrine? No, they won’t.
Did the chapter doctrine change massively change how BA played from before 9th or even 8th? As far as I can tell not really. The way people play BA has been basically the same since 3rd. I think the biggest change was the end of rhino rush…
Not sure how much faith I have in these rumors, but I'd be okay with those changes if the rumors are true. Simplifying things, removing some of the layers of buffs and the number of strats floating around in a given game would all be good.
"Subfactions are gone and replaced with custom traits," just sounds like what the latest IG 'dex did, and I like that approach. It lets you customize your playstyle a bit, but you don't lock faction X players from using the exact same rules every game. (Which is extra awkward when the rules GW gave your faction don't match your own vision of what makes that faction interesting.) Let me represent my Ulthwe force with anything from psychic buffs to deepstriking benefits to guardian buffs, but give me extra Ulthwe flavor when I field Eldrad? Sounds good to me.
Idk about other factions but marines already had custom doctrines
Most factions have "custom traits? available for their subfactions. So for instance, I can either play one of the craftworlds with pre-defined rules, or I can mix and match two of the "far-flung craftworld" traits to make rules for a craftworld that doesn't have traits. Just like marines can either use "Salamander" rules, or they can pick two from a list of custom traits.
What the latest AM 'dex did (as I understand it) is just stop including the pre-defined options. So instead of having the option to use the "Salamander" rules or the "custom chapter" rules, you would just always do the latter and decide yourself which of those custom traits are the best fit for your Salamanders army.
Personally i don’t think sun faction rules provide that much flavor tbh.
I don’t think I’d notice much difference using IF vs UM even with their doctrines.
To me most of an army’s flavor comes from the units taken, and for specific subfactions from their unique characters and units.
For example is anyone going to play BA in a massively different manner without their chapter doctrine? No, they won’t.
Did the chapter doctrine change massively change how BA played from before 9th or even 8th? As far as I can tell not really. The way people play BA has been basically the same since 3rd. I think the biggest change was the end of rhino rush…
Not sure how much faith I have in these rumors, but I'd be okay with those changes if the rumors are true. Simplifying things, removing some of the layers of buffs and the number of strats floating around in a given game would all be good.
"Subfactions are gone and replaced with custom traits," just sounds like what the latest IG 'dex did, and I like that approach. It lets you customize your playstyle a bit, but you don't lock faction X players from using the exact same rules every game. (Which is extra awkward when the rules GW gave your faction don't match your own vision of what makes that faction interesting.) Let me represent my Ulthwe force with anything from psychic buffs to deepstriking benefits to guardian buffs, but give me extra Ulthwe flavor when I field Eldrad? Sounds good to me.
Idk about other factions but marines already had custom doctrines
Most factions have "custom traits? available for their subfactions. So for instance, I can either play one of the craftworlds with pre-defined rules, or I can mix and match two of the "far-flung craftworld" traits to make rules for a craftworld that doesn't have traits. Just like marines can either use "Salamander" rules, or they can pick two from a list of custom traits.
What the latest AM 'dex did (as I understand it) is just stop including the pre-defined options. So instead of having the option to use the "Salamander" rules or the "custom chapter" rules, you would just always do the latter and decide yourself which of those custom traits are the best fit for your Salamanders army.
Sort of. Guard have preset units, Cadians, Catachan, and krieg. Each specific unit gets a subfaction, but over all there’s no more set Cadian sun faction outside of Cadian specific units like the CSTs, and castellans.
Yay! What makes subfactions different is their special units.
Awesome Dark Angels!
Awesome Space Wolves!
Awesome Blood Angels!
But hey, not so good news for every non-marine faction- you get one or two subfactions, each defined by the inclusion of a single character model. Other than that? Everything else in your dex is generic.
But feth you nids, and GSC- you don't have ANY models that are unique to subfactions, so your whole army gets to be generic.
Just like every edition from 2-7. Marines matter. Other armies are an afterthought. No thanks. If the game is halfway decent two years into its run once the flavour has been put back, and there are credible rumours that 11th will be a 10.5 I might think about looking into it.
Even then, only if we get a Crusade equivalent, a good Drukhari update, another Eldar update, Emperor's Children and Imperial Agents.
But this 10th ed Index crap? It'll take at least two years to get remotely interesting enough for my tastes.
Yay! What makes subfactions different is their special units.
Awesome Dark Angels! Awesome Space Wolves! Awesome Blood Angels!
But hey, not so good news for every non-marine faction- you get one or two subfactions, each defined by the inclusion of a single character model. Other than that? Everything else in your dex is generic.
But feth you nids, and GSC- you don't have ANY models that are unique to subfactions, so your whole army gets to be generic.
Just like every edition from 2-7. Marines matter. Other armies are an afterthought. No thanks. If the game is halfway decent two years into its run once the flavour has been put back, and there are credible rumours that 11th will be a 10.5 I might think about looking into it.
Even then, only if we get a Crusade equivalent, a good Drukhari update, another Eldar update, Emperor's Children and Imperial Agents.
But this 10th ed Index crap? It'll take at least two years to get remotely interesting enough for my tastes.
-edited-
it literally says there will be mix and match custom army traits you can use, as well as extra flavor based on what HQs you have...it really isn't that different than how it is now, except a blood angels player can have rapid assault, and whirlwind of rage for chapter traits, and still have access to all BA named characters.
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tneva82 wrote: So how does that differ anyway to using rules for whatever subfactioe you prefer anyway?
i think the biggest way is that marines for example lose access to all named characters if they use a successor chapter with custom traits currently, so under the new method you could play blood angels, pick the rapid assault and whirlwind of rage traits, and still have access to all named BA characters, who will then give some sort of buffs that make the army even more unique than just the chapter traits do.
Honestly I think this is great, all my factions I don’t think gained anything from current.
And didn’t help with flavour so much, tied paint to much to mini selections and really just hurt 40k.
So many factions and sub factions are supposed to be quite diverse, and the factions that lack that diversity probably shouldn’t have sub faction rules anyway.
I do still think it’s kinda awquard, and probably still meh unless GW gets together and does it well. I don’t want my army to be stuck running specific builds where taking a unit that doesn’t fit Nice into a category that my faction has makes it worse for “Flavour”.
it literally says there will be mix and match custom army traits you can use, as well as extra flavor based on what HQs you have...it really isn't that different than how it is now, except a blood angels player can have rapid assault, and whirlwind of rage for chapter traits, and still have access to all BA named characters.
Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got. All of these things give you an idea what a character from the subfaction might look like, or how they might behave on the battlefield, and it might be all you have to go on. The relic, and sometimes the WL trait can be great conversion opportunities, since you weren't lucky enough to get even a single HQ for your subfaction of choice; you can create that model, and you know that other subfaction nerds will recognize it for what it is... Because GW isn't going to do it for you.
And these differences of opinion about how simple the game should or should not be aren't just a product of faction choice, they're a product of preferred game size and type. A person who likes 2k pick-up games probably is going to prefer a simpler game. A person who prefers slow-grow escalation campaigns over the course of long a narrative arc is probably going to want as many optional materials as we can get our hands on, knowing we're only going to use some of those options in very specific types of stories, and that we can safely ignore the tools we choose not to use.
I am always a bit surprised how few people know the AoS system.
AoS 3.0 cut down the subfaction trait down heavily. Nowadays it is more about buffing a certain playstyle(like a shark build for Idoneth or a turtle build) instead of a generic armywide subfaction rule.
Personally I like it as it feels less heavy handed than the regular 40k way of locking you into only one subfaction trait until the heat death of the universe. Something like Bloody Rose becomes "Zephyrim get +1 to attack on charge/etc" instead of everything and their mother suddenly going melee crazy.
Eldarsif wrote: I am always a bit surprised how few people know the AoS system.
AoS 3.0 cut down the subfaction trait down heavily. Nowadays it is more about buffing a certain playstyle(like a shark build for Idoneth or a turtle build) instead of a generic armywide subfaction rule.
Personally I like it as it feels less heavy handed than the regular 40k way of locking you into only one subfaction trait until the heat death of the universe. Something like Bloody Rose becomes "Zephyrim get +1 to attack on charge/etc" instead of everything and their mother suddenly going melee crazy.
Yeah, the way AOS handles it is a lot better IMHO.
Sim-Life wrote: >the game is more generic
How is that even possible?
I need a sign to point at that says “games workshop”
But honestly I could get it, 40k is over managed often.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they think the fix to there crazy rule system is to make the base rules even simpler and more basic.
Then double the page count of a codex to make players feel they are getting a good deal!
So, they accept that codex creep and bloat has become wild in 9th, and they want to start over again?
8th's Indexes stripped away all subfactions and their rules, and we had to wait for the codexes to be re-released over the next 2 years to get them back. This suggests they'll add generics in, to plug that gap a little bit.
I think we'll stay playing 9th until some of the flavour gets added back in. Hopefully they'll keep the current 40k app running for a while, like they did for AoS.
It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
Grimskul wrote: It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
In some aspects they did pretty well and stayed that course though, the streamlining of vehicles by abolishing that whole armour value - penetration - table roll thing and assorted special rules, introducing degrading profiles for large models, and abolishing templates in favour of dice-based solutions have all been pretty succesful in removing bloaty, but self-contained parts from the rules and were on the most part not replaced by new, different bloat.
PenitentJake wrote: Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got.
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful. Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
Grimskul wrote: It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
In some aspects they did pretty well and stayed that course though, the streamlining of vehicles by abolishing that whole armour value - penetration - table roll thing and assorted special rules, introducing degrading profiles for large models, and abolishing templates in favour of dice-based solutions have all been pretty succesful in removing bloaty, but self-contained parts from the rules and were on the most part not replaced by new, different bloat.
Yes, they were quite successful in turning the majority of non-invulnerable save equipped vehicles into utter (to the point that they had to break their "T9 is Forbidden" rule), and screwing up the mechanics for things like flamers and Blast Weapons, and sticking with that garbage. Bully for them.
Grimskul wrote: It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
In some aspects they did pretty well and stayed that course though, the streamlining of vehicles by abolishing that whole armour value - penetration - table roll thing and assorted special rules, introducing degrading profiles for large models, and abolishing templates in favour of dice-based solutions have all been pretty succesful in removing bloaty, but self-contained parts from the rules and were on the most part not replaced by new, different bloat.
Yeah, for me it's not so much the core rules currently but rather the amount in both codices and supplementary rules they always like to tack on from campaigns and codex supplements. The more annoying part is how much of the codices actively work around and not with the rules. They've somewhat addressed the concern from campaigns, but you can tell that rules that could have been easily implemented or simplified into the main codex were cut out to sell off as a separate Army of Renown.
Eldarsif wrote: I am always a bit surprised how few people know the AoS system.
There may still be a little enmity at GW over killing off Fantasy for some of us....
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Skinnereal wrote: So, they accept that codex creep and bloat has become wild in 9th, and they want to start over again?
That's pretty much what they do. Every edition gets more powerful the longer it goes, then they reset. As business models go...
8th's Indexes stripped away all subfactions and their rules, and we had to wait for the codexes to be re-released over the next 2 years to get them back. This suggests they'll add generics in, to plug that gap a little bit.
I think we'll stay playing 9th until some of the flavour gets added back in. Hopefully they'll keep the current 40k app running for a while, like they did for AoS.
That's kind of what has me laughing at all the folks going bonkers over "we're going back to Indexes". Been there, done that, Codexes will be not far behind.
Eldarsif wrote: I am always a bit surprised how few people know the AoS system.
There may still be a little enmity at GW over killing off Fantasy for some of us....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Skinnereal wrote: So, they accept that codex creep and bloat has become wild in 9th, and they want to start over again?
That's pretty much what they do. Every edition gets more powerful the longer it goes, then they reset. As business models go...
8th's Indexes stripped away all subfactions and their rules, and we had to wait for the codexes to be re-released over the next 2 years to get them back. This suggests they'll add generics in, to plug that gap a little bit.
I think we'll stay playing 9th until some of the flavour gets added back in. Hopefully they'll keep the current 40k app running for a while, like they did for AoS.
That's kind of what has me laughing at all the folks going bonkers over "we're going back to Indexes". Been there, done that, Codexes will be not far behind.
Some of us have been there/done that twice!
2e's little black pamphlet & then Codex Space Wolf +
2nd: 8e's Index books & then onto Codex books.
Yay! What makes subfactions different is their special units.
Awesome Dark Angels!
Awesome Space Wolves!
Awesome Blood Angels!
But hey, not so good news for every non-marine faction- you get one or two subfactions, each defined by the inclusion of a single character model. Other than that? Everything else in your dex is generic.
But feth you nids, and GSC- you don't have ANY models that are unique to subfactions, so your whole army gets to be generic.
I mean, my main army is Iybraesil. We don't get an extra choice of warlord trait or relic or stratagem as-is. So it doesn't sound like anything would really change for us except we lose the option to steal the Ulthwe/Alaitoc/etc. rules. Conversely, now my Ulthwe army is free to lean into a Black Guardians theme by taking the traits that most favor guardians and deepstriking while still having the option to be lead by Eldrad.
I don't really want special Iybraesil-only units. My army feels like Iybraesil as long as I stick a squad or two of banshees in there somewhere.
Grimskul wrote: It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
I mean, IMHO 9th went from "good" to " bloated mess" faster than any edition before it. And that's the big issue, they may START with good intentions but it never lasts. The constant codex churn means something will end up having more bloat, and then it's a design change from then forward while everything else gets left behind. They just can't NOT start introducing more and more crap to try and get people to buy the new hotness.
PenitentJake wrote: Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got.
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful. Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
That doesn't mean GW will just keep the indices. Although, I wish they would do like Privateer Press used to do and update all the armies at the same time (and usually in the same book). Now since there will probably be at least 3 new Codices for 10th I wouldn't mind it if GW just updated each codex, keeping it intact, with upgraded rules/units/whatever as long as the next codex gets updated relatively close in time. So that say, Codex A gets updated in Jan and Codex B gets updated in March while Codex C gets updated in May.
Some of this seems okay. I'd certainly like to see Stratagems gone, so losing most of them would be an excellent start.
Generic warlord traits seem logical, given how many of the current ones are almost identical between books. Though, I hope they don't just make crap ones that are never taken (in the past, generic WLTs have frequently been objectively worse than codex ones - such as giving +1S when codex ones give +1S and +1A or some other bonus).
I also much prefer just having custom traits to mix and match, rather than the current system. Not least because the custom traits currently lose out on WLTs, artefacts, stratagems and (if applicable) psychic powers that the standard subfactions get. Also, in general I'd rather not have WLTs, artefacts etc. locked behind specific subfactions.
All that said, it's concerning that this will result in markedly fewer WLTs. I can understand some being removed because they're so similar to the generic ones, but you might think that there would still be a decent amount with previously subfaction-locked WLTs being made available regardless of subfaction.
PenitentJake wrote: Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got.
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful. Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
I agree. I just hope the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater, with GW just throwing away most or all of the subfaction-locked WLTs and subfactions, rather than opening them to the rest of the army.
PenitentJake wrote: Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got.
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful. Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: Now since there will probably be at least 3 new Codices for 10th I wouldn't mind it if GW just updated each codex, keeping it intact, with upgraded rules/units/whatever as long as the next codex gets updated relatively close in time. So that say, Codex A gets updated in Jan and Codex B gets updated in March while Codex C gets updated in May.
I assume you're meaning new factions there - what makes you think we'd expect that many new factions in 10th?
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful.
Obviously, your preferences are at least as valid as mine, and probably moreso because they are certainly shared by a greater number of Dakkanauts than mine. So understand, it's not your preference that I disagree with. That is a thing that is entirely valid.
But how can a subfaction relic be a constraint when you aren't required to use it? You're still free to choose any non-subfaction relic if you don't like the relic that is associated with your subfaction. If you don't like your subfaction's bespoke WL trait? Just don't take it. How is that restrictive? Now strategems... You can argue that even if you don't use them, they are still a burden to all the people who feel like they have to memorize every strat from every possible enemy in order to be a competitive player... But the principal IS still the same: you've got 30 strats- you like 5 and hate the other 25. And you can waste time and energy arguing about how much better the game would be FOR YOU if the 25 you hated just didn't exist. But a) that completely ignores the fact that someone else might prefer a different five than you, and by insisting that GW cater exclusively to your preferences, you may have compromised someone else's enjoyment, when B) instead of doing that, you could have just ignored the 25 you hate.
Now I get it- strats certainly aren't as simple as I'm making them- some people hate equipment strats conceptually because they remove the "equipment" feeling that they had when they were just equipment... And in fact, I tend to agree.
Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
Well here's the thing: technically, Kraken AREN'T your dudes. They're GW's dudes. Their lore was literally written by "not you." If you want to play YOUR dudes, there are rules you can use to invent YOUR dudes. Want to play GW's Dudes? I'm sorry, you're going to have to accept that Space Wolves aren't generally artillery specialists, and that the Sacred Rose aren't ravenous close combat monsters who can't control their temper, because those histories have been written.
And sure, there is enough artillery in a Chapter that the Wolves could choose to send only artillery units to a particular fight, and if they did, the army they sent would be better at doing artillery things than a force composed of a wider variety of units... But the Chapter that ARE artillery specialists are going to have better artillery units than the wolves have.
Similarly, no one is saying Sacred Rose don't have Repentia and Sacrestans... Of course they do, and like the Wolves, they could opt to send an army consisting ONLY of close combat units. But if they do, they still aren't going to be as good as the Bloody Rose close combat army, because Bloody Rose happen to be close combat specialists. Now, the Sacred Rose force that consists entirely of Sacressants and Repentia... Might it be a better CC army than the Bloody Rose army that consists entirely of BSS, Dominions and Retributors? It might actually be.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
And of course, you preference is valid.
But allowing people to decide how to best represent an established element of lore by themselves almost guarantees that you are eventually going to meet the guy decides to absolutely break cannon- I like red, but I like cybernetics, so welcome to Blood Angels that get cybernetics instead of succumbing to the rage because "My Dudes!"
When I choose to write a sonnet, it's because I want to explore the potential of Iambic Pentameter, the brevity of 14 lines, and the structure of a handful of established rhymes schemes. If I didn't want those challenges, I would choose not to write a sonnet. What I WOULDN'T do is say "Sonnets shouldn't exist because My Poem!" or say, "Well, I know it has 36 lines of unrhymed trochaic tetrameter, but it's still a sonnet because My Sonnet!"
I like working with the material that GW gives me. It's why I play their game rather than just writing sci-fi stories about My Dudes.
And again- remember what my proposed solution to these problems is: there's a tightly balanced, easy to play, tactical game for people who want it, but there's also a huge, sprawling sandbox of narrative potential with more tools and rules than you could ever use in a single game or even a single campaign for those who prefer that approach. So I'm definitely not saying that you shouldn't have what you want- I'm just saying that it doesn't have to prevent me from also having what I want.
Why design a game that only suits one type of player when you can design a game that suits them all?
PenitentJake wrote: But how can a subfaction relic be a constraint when you aren't required to use it? You're still free to choose any non-subfaction relic if you don't like the relic that is associated with your subfaction. If you don't like your subfaction's bespoke WL trait? Just don't take it. How is that restrictive? Now strategems... You can argue that even if you don't use them, they are still a burden to all the people who feel like they have to memorize every strat from every possible enemy in order to be a competitive player... But the principal IS still the same: you've got 30 strats- you like 5 and hate the other 25.
They're design space being spent on one-note options for specific subfactions rather than options anyone could make use of. If you don't choose to use the one (1) faction-specific warlord trait, relic, or stratagem associated with that subfaction, then you're using the generic ones anyways.
Again, look at how subfactions were handled for Marines and Guard in 4th Ed. Nothing was locked to specific chapters/regiments, instead you were given examples of which traits the big named chapters/regiments get, or you were free to choose your own. GW's brought this back with the 9th Ed Astra Militarum codex, letting you pick from a set of regimental doctrines while also name-dropping which ones are associated with particular regiments.
PenitentJake wrote: Well here's the thing: technically, Kraken AREN'T your dudes. They're GW's dudes. Their lore was literally written by "not you." If you want to play YOUR dudes, there are rules you can use to invent YOUR dudes. Want to play GW's Dudes? I'm sorry, you're going to have to accept that Space Wolves aren't generally artillery specialists, and that the Sacred Rose aren't ravenous close combat monsters who can't control their temper, because those histories have been written.
And sure, there is enough artillery in a Chapter that the Wolves could choose to send only artillery units to a particular fight, and if they did, the army they sent would be better at doing artillery things than a force composed of a wider variety of units... But the Chapter that ARE artillery specialists are going to have better artillery units than the wolves have.
First off, I'm not trying to redefine what any existing faction is, so I don't understand where you're going with this argument. I don't want to play Kraken, and I don't mind if GW picks a set of traits for the known, established subfactions to say that this is what they normally use. I want to play as My Dudes, and I want the opportunity to pick rules that suit them. I do not want to have to pick an existing subfaction to counts-as, and then decide whether I'm going to just ignore and miss out on options and abilities tied to that subfaction.
Second, the practical outcome of the current system is that Blood Angels don't take their own god damn tank because it doesn't synergize with their subfaction ability. The subfactions tacitly incentivize you to min-max into a single specialty, and for many factions that leads into a flanderization of their theme. I don't know about Space Wolves artillery units, but the lore does not say that literally every Cadian regiment is a static gunline, yet that's what you got in 8th Ed when you were locked into 're-roll 1s when stationary' subfaction trait. You could counts-as Tallarn to better represent Cadian armored companies- firmly established as A Thing in the lore- but then you didn't get any of those Cadian-specific orders, warlord traits, relics, et cetera.
Now we have a freer system where instead of 6 or 7 regiments you get 16 different regimental doctrines to choose from. Cadian armored companies exist again, anyone making a homebrew regiment can just pick an appropriate trait.
PenitentJake wrote: But allowing people to decide how to best represent an established element of lore by themselves almost guarantees that you are eventually going to meet the guy decides to absolutely break cannon- I like red, but I like cybernetics, so welcome to Blood Angels that get cybernetics instead of succumbing to the rage because "My Dudes!"
Right now that guy is just playing his Blood Angels as Iron Hands. Who cares? Decades of lore are not going up in flames just because I decide that my Krieg tank battalion (something well established in lore) is going to use rules that make them good as tankers, rather than the Krieg-specific Cult of Sacrifice rule that does literally nothing for tanks.
You are arguing in favor of putting every subfaction in a tiny box (you're Krieg so you must play an infantry horde, and your general will have either one of 5-6 generic relics or the same relic as every other Krieg army), and then characterizing that as a huge, sprawling sandbox of narrative potential. I couldn't disagree more; this is a garbage system for enabling anything beyond flanderized archetypes.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: That doesn't mean GW will just keep the indices. Although, I wish they would do like Privateer Press used to do and update all the armies at the same time (and usually in the same book). Now since there will probably be at least 3 new Codices for 10th I wouldn't mind it if GW just updated each codex, keeping it intact, with upgraded rules/units/whatever as long as the next codex gets updated relatively close in time. So that say, Codex A gets updated in Jan and Codex B gets updated in March while Codex C gets updated in May.
Yeah, they should have moved to this version long ago. "Indexes" or whatever you want to call them immediately form the basis for the army, and then each Arks of Omen-type book during the course of that edition gives the new stuff for whomever (ideally everyone, but assuming it was split up into different books, you could have the first book be for like Marines, Chaos, Eldar, and the second one be for Orks, Guard, AdMech, and so forth) that goes ON TOP of the existing book, not replaces it entirely.
PP's model was the best because all your current stuff was in one book (and I can't even recall if they did books for Mk3) and then you knew each story-progressing book would have a couple of new options for you, but not reinvent the wheel.
Right now that guy is just playing his Blood Angels as Iron Hands. Who cares? Decades of lore are not going up in flames just because I decide that my Krieg tank battalion (something well established in lore) is going to use rules that make them good as tankers, rather than the Krieg-specific Cult of Sacrifice rule that does literally nothing for tanks.
Arguably, this is WORSE because you will have said guy with his very-clearly Blood Angels being "counts as" Iron Hands just because Iron Hands are the "better" choice. At least without rigid sub-factions you don't have to do THAT. There still might be a best choice, but you're not saying "These guys count as these other guys despite looking nothing like them because they have better rules". Instead you might just have Blood Angels that happen to have a force that's been augmented from battle damage with more cybernetics, but they're still Blood Angels.
But how can a subfaction relic be a constraint when you aren't required to use it? You're still free to choose any non-subfaction relic if you don't like the relic that is associated with your subfaction. If you don't like your subfaction's bespoke WL trait? Just don't take it. How is that restrictive?
Because you like the Relic/WLT for a subfaction but not its bonus? Or because you want to have Custom subfaction traits, thus locking you out of all the subfaction Relics and WLTs? Or because you like the Relics/WLTs in more than one subfaction but can never take both in the same army?
Or because you're tired of every Tallarn army having its own Dagger of Tu'Sakh, like that one-of-a-kind relic is being given out in Happy Meals, and the alternative is one of a handful of generic choices.
At least if the generic list was twice as long, there'd be a little more scope for uniqueness in it.
I just feel that simplification is so badly, badly needed. I counted the strategems the other day and it's 40-60 for each faction, more for others. It just feels like a card game on top of a game with an already bloated ruleset. I don't play, but I do want to one day and the idea of keeping track of not only my own but my opponents... please, no.
If they have to keep them I'd be cool with a handful of universal strategems plus a couple I can use before the game.
Beast_of_Guanyin wrote: I just feel that simplification is so badly, badly needed. I counted the strategems the other day and it's 40-60 for each faction, more for others. It just feels like a card game on top of a game with an already bloated ruleset. I don't play, but I do want to one day and the idea of keeping track of not only my own but my opponents... please, no.
If they have to keep them I'd be cool with a handful of universal strategems plus a couple I can use before the game.
Simplification and streamlining are different things but I don't think GW understands that and we'll end up back where we are now in a few years but with a somehow even shallower game.
Beast_of_Guanyin wrote: I just feel that simplification is so badly, badly needed. I counted the strategems the other day and it's 40-60 for each faction, more for others. It just feels like a card game on top of a game with an already bloated ruleset. I don't play, but I do want to one day and the idea of keeping track of not only my own but my opponents... please, no.
If they have to keep them I'd be cool with a handful of universal strategems plus a couple I can use before the game.
Simplification and streamlining are different things but I don't think GW understands that and we'll end up back where we are now in a few years but with a somehow even shallower game.
Indeed. You can have famously complex games with very uncomplicated rulesets - look at Chess or Go for example, the rules fit on a single sheet of paper in an average font size, but volumes have been written about optimal strategy for both. Now, aiming for a literal classic that stands the test of centuries is probably not a realistic goal, but their existence shows that depth and complexity of a game does not depend on complicated or convoluted rules.
This thing regarding "lore-accurate Blood Angels" is fascinating. The 90s GW I grew up with strongly encouraged everyone to "make the army yours", and fluff etc was deliberately left vague enough that indeed, you could have bionics-obsessed Blood Angels if you wanted to, and NOBODY was going to tell you you were going "against Canon". Heck, the early editions even encouraged you to make up rules by yourself, if it added to your enjoyment of the game..
30 years later, Blood Angels have been flanderized and stereotyped to "Vampiric Anime bois" who spam Sanguinary Guard units left and right. On their spare time, they all wash their long, blonde hairs, write emo poetry and craft artisanal decorations to their weapons. And when the Chaplain tucks them to sleep at night. they need a bedtime story or they'll get nightmares about the Black Rage. WTF
Sure enough, there is much more lore now to go around.. but with the huge scope of time/space in the game, there is still millions of ways to make it ALL fit into the setting - GW's lore, your headcanon, your neighbor's. The lore is supposed to flesh out things, and to inspire your imagination, not to make things more stereotypical and one dimensional..
An ideal army building system IMHO is one which errs on the side of being "too open-ended" rather than "too restrictive". If this is the direction where things are headed, I'm all for it.
Food for thought - People love to talk about units feeling "flavourful", and many like to think you need special rules for making something feel a certain way. Well, what if you altered your playstyle instead?
Wayniac wrote: Arguably, this is WORSE because you will have said guy with his very-clearly Blood Angels being "counts as" Iron Hands just because Iron Hands are the "better" choice. At least without rigid sub-factions you don't have to do THAT. There still might be a best choice, but you're not saying "These guys count as these other guys despite looking nothing like them because they have better rules". Instead you might just have Blood Angels that happen to have a force that's been augmented from battle damage with more cybernetics, but they're still Blood Angels.
That would be having cake and eating it too. At least now you trade unique units. Now it would be just codex hopping with bonus of keeping your unique units.
So now except even worse as there's no reason whatsoever to NOT pick best traits
30 years later, Blood Angels have been flanderized and stereotyped to "Vampiric Anime bois" who spam Sanguinary Guard units left and right. On their spare time, they all wash their long, blonde hairs, write emo poetry and craft artisanal decorations to their weapons. And when the Chaplain tucks them to sleep at night. they need a bedtime story or they'll get nightmares about the Black Rage. WTF
IMHO it's a process you can observe in a lot of entertainment media over the years - once the original authors leave, or additional authors are taken in and produce material, characters, or in this case factions, often enter a spiral of becoming 'more similar to themselves'. One well-known example are the Simpsons, and specifically Ned Flanders - it's where 'Flanderization' got its name from, but it was observable in most of their characters. What started out as pretty nuanced characters with a good handful of traits, gimmicks, catchphrases and so on got whittled down to two or three defining traits and things, and these traits were in turn exagerated and blown out of proportion with each season. In the case of Flanders, he went from a normal, if religious, person that could have existed on any small-town-america street to a ridiculous parody of a whacked-out nutjob that likes to drink his tap water slightly warmed and oogily-doogilies around all day. The same process can be observed in Warhammer: Space Marines with slight nordic and werewolf themes get turned to Wolflord Wolfy Wolfhammer, Murderfang the werewolf Dreadnought, with a side order of Wolf-Priests on Giant Wolves, and so on. The process gets accelerated by meme culture that takes such exagerations and exagerates them even further.
30 years later, Blood Angels have been flanderized and stereotyped to "Vampiric Anime bois" who spam Sanguinary Guard units left and right. On their spare time, they all wash their long, blonde hairs, write emo poetry and craft artisanal decorations to their weapons. And when the Chaplain tucks them to sleep at night. they need a bedtime story or they'll get nightmares about the Black Rage. WTF
IMHO it's a process you can observe in a lot of entertainment media over the years - once the original authors leave, or additional authors are taken in and produce material, characters, or in this case factions, often enter a spiral of becoming 'more similar to themselves'. One well-known example are the Simpsons, and specifically Ned Flanders - it's where 'Flanderization' got its name from, but it was observable in most of their characters. What started out as pretty nuanced characters with a good handful of traits, gimmicks, catchphrases and so on got whittled down to two or three defining traits and things, and these traits were in turn exagerated and blown out of proportion with each season. In the case of Flanders, he went from a normal, if religious, person that could have existed on any small-town-america street to a ridiculous parody of a whacked-out nutjob that likes to drink his tap water slightly warmed and oogily-doogilies around all day. The same process can be observed in Warhammer: Space Marines with slight nordic and werewolf themes get turned to Wolflord Wolfy Wolfhammer, Murderfang the werewolf Dreadnought, with a side order of Wolf-Priests on Giant Wolves, and so on. The process gets accelerated by meme culture that takes such exagerations and exagerates them even further.
I think some of that is as new writers come in, they are often writing for the company. They are being told and taught to write that way, it’s why even really good writers can stumble with these settings when coming in and often take years to feel out a setting and given some leeway.
It’s also why so many writers go on to hate writing for games, often given a game nearly done and told to make it sound good was the norm.
Everything from the building of the world to characters is set in stone, just have to somehow make it all sound and feel good to play though.
Grimskul wrote: It's not suprising unfortunately. GW seems to continue going through this cycle of "Guys we heard ya'll, we have too many running parts, we're going back to the basics" and they try doing either a hard or soft reboot of the rules or design paradigm for codices where they dial back the number of rules, but inevitably, as they add more units in the new edition, they start tacking on new things over the course of the edition until it becomes a bloated mess again.
In some aspects they did pretty well and stayed that course though, the streamlining of vehicles by abolishing that whole armour value - penetration - table roll thing and assorted special rules, introducing degrading profiles for large models, and abolishing templates in favour of dice-based solutions have all been pretty succesful in removing bloaty, but self-contained parts from the rules and were on the most part not replaced by new, different bloat.
You just named all the things i love about 40K and what makes it 40K, there was a lot of love from the old guard at GW through the 90s and into the mid 2000's. they may never have gotten everything right but the goal at the time was different. i think the best line from that time about the game was as they called it "the most important rule" (paraphrased) a game of epic battles in the 41st millennium where both players have a good time.
to me they did the opposite of staying the course
mistakes were made in 6th and 7th and then compounded on from 8th to 9th
.adding poorly implemented hull points
.adding more USRs (from 22 in 5th ed to what triple that in 7th?)
.adding psychic power bloat
.ongoing codex creep
.adding formation bloat
.revamping the game for streamlining core rules... then rinse and repeat the errors of 7th with codex creep, aura bloat, stratagem bloat etc..
.increased lethality and volume of fire to absurd levels.
I could go on..... all they did was move bloat from the core rules to the individual codexes and achieved a higher level of bloat.
catbarf wrote:
PenitentJake wrote: Yes, it does, but right now we have those PLUS subfaction traits, plus subfaction relic, strat and warlord traits. And OF COURSE that's going to sound excessive to Space Marines, who have had multiple unique units for multiple subfactions since second edition. Heck, to a space marine player, it is excessive when you're already so spoiled for choice and so celebrated in the fiction and lore.
But when you're playing Sisters and your only sub-faction models all come from the same Order, or you're playing Nids or GSC where there are NO subfaction units at all... Believe me, you might actually appreciate the relic, the WL Trait and the strat... Because it's literally ALL you've got.
I play Tyranids and would like subfaction relics, warlord traits, and stratagems to all die in a fire, please and thank you. I find those elements to be more constraining (and annoying, when the wombo-combos come out to play) than flavorful. Especially when I want to play My Dudes and not just Kraken with a funny color scheme.
I much prefer the idea of a free-form traits system that can be selected either to represent an existing subfaction or design your own, like the doctrines/chapter tactics system of 4th Ed. And you of all people should appreciate the capability to make the rules fit your backstory, rather than having to make your army fit the rigid mold that GW has issued you.
I own all those codexes. the trait system in the 4th ed marine codex or the equivalent biomorph system for nids in the 3rd or 4th ed codexes are a thing of beauty. you could clearly build your own personal hive fleet or marine chapter
Also when you didn't want to play just your dudes but a force from legend (a named specific faction) there is still lots of love there in the old thematic rules. and it wasn't just marines. thanks to a combination of FW books and the 4th ed eldar codex i can build a list based on any of the craftworlds or even corsairs.
Tsagualsa wrote: IMHO it's a process you can observe in a lot of entertainment media over the years - once the original authors leave, or additional authors are taken in and produce material, characters, or in this case factions, often enter a spiral of becoming 'more similar to themselves'. One well-known example are the Simpsons, and specifically Ned Flanders - it's where 'Flanderization' got its name from, but it was observable in most of their characters. What started out as pretty nuanced characters with a good handful of traits, gimmicks, catchphrases and so on got whittled down to two or three defining traits and things, and these traits were in turn exagerated and blown out of proportion with each season. In the case of Flanders, he went from a normal, if religious, person that could have existed on any small-town-america street to a ridiculous parody of a whacked-out nutjob that likes to drink his tap water slightly warmed and oogily-doogilies around all day. The same process can be observed in Warhammer: Space Marines with slight nordic and werewolf themes get turned to Wolflord Wolfy Wolfhammer, Murderfang the werewolf Dreadnought, with a side order of Wolf-Priests on Giant Wolves, and so on. The process gets accelerated by meme culture that takes such exagerations and exagerates them even further.
I don't know if this totally applies to the Simpsons (although I think it does) - but it is just the expansion of the world.
I mean within reason I'd argue its always been a bit thus. Even back in 2nd edition Ultramarines were vanilla. BA loved jump packs (and would get a slightly faster Predator in 3rd?). DA liked bikers and terminators. Finally you had Wolf wolf woof wolfy woof wolves.
But today the number of recognised, fluff-supported Space Marines is what.. over a dozen? If we bring in old Forge World fluff-supplements two or three dozen? There just aren't that many concepts to make a bunch of Marines different to the rest. So to avoid the inevitable overlap being even worse than it already is, you have to narrow the factions down to a thinner and thinner concept. You could I guess try to reverse this - all Marines are much the same, its really just a different paint job on the power armour - but I don't think anyone really wants that to apply. If your character is a Blood Angel - that should mean something different to him being an Imperial Fist or a White Scar etc.
It seems like it should mean something but gamewise it doesn't. Does your yellow marine with a bolter shoot better than a green marine with a bolter? Is the yellow bolter any more/less powerful than the one the green marine uses? In 90% of the cases the answers are "no".
What GW should/could do is make a few special units that are only unlocked if you take special character X. Assuming the AoO detachment chart is here to stay you don't even have to have special deployment rules. If you want to do a White Scar bike horde then there you go. If you want a DA deathwing here's the same chart. The only real thing that is different amongst the marine chapters is their special characters and unique units. Everything else can be covered by your building your detachment the way you want to do it.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It seems like it should mean something but gamewise it doesn't. Does your yellow marine with a bolter shoot better than a green marine with a bolter? Is the yellow bolter any more/less powerful than the one the green marine uses? In 90% of the cases the answers are "no".
What GW should/could do is make a few special units that are only unlocked if you take special character X. Assuming the AoO detachment chart is here to stay you don't even have to have special deployment rules. If you want to do a White Scar bike horde then there you go. If you want a DA deathwing here's the same chart. The only real thing that is different amongst the marine chapters is their special characters and unique units. Everything else can be covered by your building your detachment the way you want to do it.
Several editions of 40k had that 'Unlock by special character' system, but that was often unpopular as 'special character tax' - you'll probably never find a system that makes all players happy, one subgroup will always complain, be it with character-unlock, trait-unlock, stratagem-unlock or free choice. Imho they should just pick a system that is not overly complicated and does not impose 'taxes' that are too egregious. Something like unlock via Warlord trait, with appropriate special characters always having that trait, but not being the only acces to it, could work. Tournament issues are another kettle of fish entirely, but you'd sensibly solve them by writing tournament-specific additional rules, not by making basic rules perfectly 'tournament-balanced'. List-optimization and meta-builds will happen anyway, no use in breaking the base game in a futile attempt to stop them.
...Tournament issues are another kettle of fish entirely, but you'd sensibly solve them by writing tournament-specific additional rules, not by making basic rules perfectly 'tournament-balanced'. List-optimization and meta-builds will happen anyway, no use in breaking the base game in a futile attempt to stop them.
I've been advocating for this among my peers when we have discussions on the direction 40k rules should head. I also think I mentioned it once or twice here on Dakka as well.
Narrative and Matched need entirely separate core rules. I believe the 9th framework is great for matched, it's streamlined (supposedly getting more-so in 10th). However for Narrative the streamlined rules really leave a lot to be desired. I believe that the 30k HH core rules and stat line reversions would be perfect for a narrative version of 40k. Since HH is typically touted as the "historical" type game more than a competitive one. This ruleset provides more role play elements imho which would greatly benefit Narrative playstyle... at least a lot more than taking a tournament ruleset and slapping some crusade bloat on top of it.
The destruction of BA lore has to do with the habitual use of horrible authors for writing books about chapters. Unless your book was written by ADB, your canon now likely sucks. The worst fate a faction can receive is to have a book put out by one of the new writers on GWs payroll, about them. BAs, DAs, UM, Custodes, even Cadians. Every new book from 2001+ basically ruins your lore.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: The destruction of BA lore has to do with the habitual use of horrible authors for writing books about chapters. Unless your book was written by ADB, your canon now likely sucks. The worst fate a faction can receive is to have a book put out by one of the new writers on GWs payroll, about them. BAs, DAs, UM, Custodes, even Cadians. Every new book from 2001+ basically ruins your lore.
DoB was a good book, can’t get over the whiny marines in the astorath book though…
And as i understand it the gak show that was the swallow trilogy got retconned as DoB and what not apparently happened while the swallow series was supposedly occurring
...Tournament issues are another kettle of fish entirely, but you'd sensibly solve them by writing tournament-specific additional rules, not by making basic rules perfectly 'tournament-balanced'. List-optimization and meta-builds will happen anyway, no use in breaking the base game in a futile attempt to stop them.
I've been advocating for this among my peers when we have discussions on the direction 40k rules should head. I also think I mentioned it once or twice here on Dakka as well.
Narrative and Matched need entirely separate core rules. I believe the 9th framework is great for matched, it's streamlined (supposedly getting more-so in 10th). However for Narrative the streamlined rules really leave a lot to be desired. I believe that the 30k HH core rules and stat line reversions would be perfect for a narrative version of 40k. Since HH is typically touted as the "historical" type game more than a competitive one. This ruleset provides more role play elements imho which would greatly benefit Narrative playstyle... at least a lot more than taking a tournament ruleset and slapping some crusade bloat on top of it.
Core rules might be fairly simple, but calling matched play streamlined with 100 strats per faction, needing a flow chart to deconflict fights first/last, etc is anything but streamlined.
It all comes down to being very clunky imho
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It seems like it should mean something but gamewise it doesn't. Does your yellow marine with a bolter shoot better than a green marine with a bolter? Is the yellow bolter any more/less powerful than the one the green marine uses? In 90% of the cases the answers are "no".
What GW should/could do is make a few special units that are only unlocked if you take special character X. Assuming the AoO detachment chart is here to stay you don't even have to have special deployment rules. If you want to do a White Scar bike horde then there you go. If you want a DA deathwing here's the same chart. The only real thing that is different amongst the marine chapters is their special characters and unique units. Everything else can be covered by your building your detachment the way you want to do it.
Gosh no. We already have primarches etc fighting in every tiny minor not important pub brawl. Making it even more so by having them unlock things? No thanks.
I don’t really think it’s that needed to do special things for and factions that have a full roster.
Factions like white scars can have marines in a transport to support bikes as the main force, and be entirely fluffy.
It just takes GW making it positive experience to have that without a major hindrance and supporting it with discussion about how and why that’s fluffy, and supporting it in game.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It seems like it should mean something but gamewise it doesn't. Does your yellow marine with a bolter shoot better than a green marine with a bolter? Is the yellow bolter any more/less powerful than the one the green marine uses? In 90% of the cases the answers are "no".
What GW should/could do is make a few special units that are only unlocked if you take special character X. Assuming the AoO detachment chart is here to stay you don't even have to have special deployment rules. If you want to do a White Scar bike horde then there you go. If you want a DA deathwing here's the same chart. The only real thing that is different amongst the marine chapters is their special characters and unique units. Everything else can be covered by your building your detachment the way you want to do it.
Gosh no. We already have primarches etc fighting in every tiny minor not important pub brawl. Making it even more so by having them unlock things? No thanks.
It doesn't have to be a special character. For instance, you may need to have a Capt in Terminator Armor to unlock the deathwing rules or a Capt on Bike to unlock ravenwing. Now that I think on it you could even have a choice of unlocked features with a model. Say an officer on Bike unlocks either a ravenwing special rule or a white scars special rule. I'm just spit balling but there might be something to this feature.
Also to the people who don't want to pay a "tax" for a special rule then you really aren't looking for a special rule just special treatment. Every benefit should have a cost (IMHO).
Leo_the_Rat wrote: Also to the people who don't want to pay a "tax" for a special rule then you really aren't looking for a special rule just special treatment. Every benefit should have a cost (IMHO).
Putting that cost to a single character isn't an approach that scales well, though. The amount of benefit you get from those Deathwing rules is going to be pretty different between Capt + one unit compared to Capt + 3000pts of just Terminators.
Is it really necessary to tie 'special' armies to a single character choice? If you want to play Deathwing, why not just let the player say 'this is a Deathwing army' and pay 5ppm or whatever for the Deathwing special rules?
drbored wrote: According to the main 40k rumor thread, these are just rumor-reverb from some discord from months ago.
Not months, more like a couple of days, but Spikeybits literally only removed the identifying information from the same screenshot we had in the main rumour thread on monday - afaik we don't know how old that screenshot is or where it originated, the user that brought it to our attention had it from some Drukhari discord channel, but iirc that is also not the original source.
Moorecox wrote: I’m calling it now. The same neckbeards that demanded a reboot will hate 10th edition because reasons and because they hate everything.
Of course - like with every new edition, everybody will hate it until the first rumours of 11th edition turn up, then 10th will always have been the best edition and every change will be a sacrilege
Moorecox wrote: I’m calling it now. The same neckbeards that demanded a reboot will hate 10th edition because reasons and because they hate everything.
It's perfectly reasonable to want a reboot, and be disappointed with the end product of said reboot.
Going from 7th to 8th and being disappointed in the terrain rules, say, or stacking modifiers.
The question is whether the things you're disappointed by should be a big enough deal to put you off the edition.
Pre-emptively attacking a class of people before we have enough information... that's not a good look.
tauist wrote: This thing regarding "lore-accurate Blood Angels" is fascinating. The 90s GW I grew up with strongly encouraged everyone to "make the army yours", and fluff etc was deliberately left vague enough that indeed, you could have bionics-obsessed Blood Angels if you wanted to, and NOBODY was going to tell you you were going "against Canon". Heck, the early editions even encouraged you to make up rules by yourself, if it added to your enjoyment of the game..
30 years later, Blood Angels have been flanderized and stereotyped to "Vampiric Anime bois" who spam Sanguinary Guard units left and right.
Some of that is on GW, but most of it is on "lazy" players. I'm starting to like where Assault Squads are right now - There's also DC and VV beyond SangGuard - BA also have Terminators, speeders, and Dreadnaughts in their fluffy wheelhouse. Many of those units are good enough to use right now, but its "easier" to be "lazy". GW could easily encourage more variety in the BRB, but they're not encouraging monobuilds that's on the players.
On their spare time, they all wash their long, blonde hairs, write emo poetry and craft artisanal decorations to their weapons. And when the Chaplain tucks them to sleep at night. they need a bedtime story or they'll get nightmares about the Black Rage. WTF
Sure enough, there is much more lore now to go around.. but with the huge scope of time/space in the game, there is still millions of ways to make it ALL fit into the setting - GW's lore, your headcanon, your neighbor's. The lore is supposed to flesh out things, and to inspire your imagination, not to make things more stereotypical and one dimensional..
An ideal army building system IMHO is one which errs on the side of being "too open-ended" rather than "too restrictive". If this is the direction where things are headed, I'm all for it.
Food for thought - People love to talk about units feeling "flavourful", and many like to think you need special rules for making something feel a certain way. Well, what if you altered your playstyle instead?
I'm mostly curious about what the core rule changes will be in 10th.
Horus Heresy 2.0 seemed to be a really nice evolution of the 40k ruleset. It's closer to 7th ed than 8th/9th, but takes some queues from the newer editions while also adding in some new long-wished for stuff like a proper reaction system.
Seems like there would be interest in bridging the gap between 9th and HH2.0 with a 10th edition, rather than just iterating on the 8th/9th approach from scratch. If its just going to iterate on 8th/9th, why the hard reset for codexes? (unless of course the answer is requiring the most book re-purchasing with the least amount of developer cost)
Mezmorki wrote: I'm mostly curious about what the core rule changes will be in 10th.
Horus Heresy 2.0 seemed to be a really nice evolution of the 40k ruleset. It's closer to 7th ed than 8th/9th, but takes some queues from the newer editions while also adding in some new long-wished for stuff like a proper reaction system.
Seems like there would be interest in bridging the gap between 9th and HH2.0 with a 10th edition, rather than just iterating on the 8th/9th approach from scratch. If its just going to iterate on 8th/9th, why the hard reset for codexes? (unless of course the answer is requiring the most book re-purchasing with the least amount of developer cost)
There is always the “Sell more books” aspect. Mostly to flog indexes off on people as well as the eventual 10th codex.
I think the bones of 9th are not bad. Most of the edition’s issues are in the codex imbalance/creep/bloat. So if you left them, and just did a quick FAQ to bring them up to the mechanics of 10th, most of the problems with 40k remain. And if you just release new 10th ed codexes one at a time, but toned down, they are going to suck from a competitive/power POV compared to the legacy 9th books.
Incremental rules update, hard codex reset is what is needed IMHO.
Mezmorki wrote: I'm mostly curious about what the core rule changes will be in 10th.
Horus Heresy 2.0 seemed to be a really nice evolution of the 40k ruleset. It's closer to 7th ed than 8th/9th, but takes some queues from the newer editions while also adding in some new long-wished for stuff like a proper reaction system.
Seems like there would be interest in bridging the gap between 9th and HH2.0 with a 10th edition, rather than just iterating on the 8th/9th approach from scratch. If its just going to iterate on 8th/9th, why the hard reset for codexes? (unless of course the answer is requiring the most book re-purchasing with the least amount of developer cost)
10th can be based on 8/9th and still need indexes if they nerf the lethality. I’d say cutting strats significantly, and then cutting weapons profile stats by a lot, those two things alone would require indexes.
Mezmorki wrote: I'm mostly curious about what the core rule changes will be in 10th.
I hope they get terrain perfect. It would be the biggest improvement we could get. I won't even go into what perfect is, because it might end up being something I couldn't predict, but I think one of the things people need from the new edition is a terrain system that works well.
Strat reduction is likely too. I don't think they're going away, but there will certainly be fewer of them.
Nevelon wrote: I think the bones of 9th are not bad. Most of the edition’s issues are in the codex imbalance/creep/bloat.
Except that the main reason for codex creep and bloat is the fact that the core rules are clingfilm-thin. There's nothing to build on. No USRs or core mechanics to adapt to different books.
Those are your core rules with which to differentiate 30+ armies, going by the GW store.
Is it really such a shock that so many codices end up horrendously bloated and stuffed full of bespoke rules when there are no USRs and the core rules give them nothing to work with?
It doesn't help that the 40K team often seems to go about the most cumbersome way possible to implement desired features.
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Or the Custodes flowchart system.
Or the Tyranid adaptation system. But at least that one doesn't matter because, seeing that they had inadvertently created something interesting (a faction that can adapt to each opponent, rather than being locked into a fixed list), GW patched it out of matched play ASAP.
I don't really have high hopes for 10th unless we see signs of a radical course-correction in fundamental writing style. Beyond core rules vs codices, matched play vs narrative, there's a basic need for more elegant design.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: Also to the people who don't want to pay a "tax" for a special rule then you really aren't looking for a special rule just special treatment. Every benefit should have a cost (IMHO).
Putting that cost to a single character isn't an approach that scales well, though. The amount of benefit you get from those Deathwing rules is going to be pretty different between Capt + one unit compared to Capt + 3000pts of just Terminators.
Is it really necessary to tie 'special' armies to a single character choice? If you want to play Deathwing, why not just let the player say 'this is a Deathwing army' and pay 5ppm or whatever for the Deathwing special rules?
I tend to agree. I don't like using characters. I want my own army to be my own. I'd be happy to pay extra for the special rules.
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of the Core Rules) . . ."
Mezmorki wrote: I'm mostly curious about what the core rule changes will be in 10th.
I hope they get terrain perfect. It would be the biggest improvement we could get. I won't even go into what perfect is, because it might end up being something I couldn't predict, but I think one of the things people need from the new edition is a terrain system that works well.
Strat reduction is likely too. I don't think they're going away, but there will certainly be fewer of them.
I counted them and there's 40-80 strategems per faction. It's just such an enormous amount of bloat. If they have to have strategems they could cut that down to probably 6 universal strategems and one-two faction specific strategems. Personally I'd just do away with them period. If I want a special weapon for my warlord let me pay points for it.
Eldarsif wrote: I am always a bit surprised how few people know the AoS system.
AoS 3.0 cut down the subfaction trait down heavily. Nowadays it is more about buffing a certain playstyle(like a shark build for Idoneth or a turtle build) instead of a generic armywide subfaction rule.
Personally I like it as it feels less heavy handed than the regular 40k way of locking you into only one subfaction trait until the heat death of the universe. Something like Bloody Rose becomes "Zephyrim get +1 to attack on charge/etc" instead of everything and their mother suddenly going melee crazy.
Yeah, the way AOS handles it is a lot better IMHO.
A system where "your army bonus is one unit is better" is absolutely worse LMAO
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of these Core Rules) . . ."
the fact they STILL can't comprehend how to properly write what is basically an instruction manual and instead insist on writing in this cumbersome, convoluted textbook style boggles the mind.
Warmachine/Hordes had an excellent rulebook with obvious rules that made sense with just a simple reading most of the time. GW refuses to do that.
Probably the most egregious example is where they're talking about terrain I think, and it's something about drawing an imaginary line to see if the target gets the benefit. The 40k book takes like a paragraph filled with superfluous language like "if, were you to draw a line, 1mm in thickness, from the firing models base to the target models base... " And it's like why write in such a pedantic style? They could say it much more concisely and still have it clear enough. And if they really needed to clarify that part it could be done in an appendix or something
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of these Core Rules) . . ."
the fact they STILL can't comprehend how to properly write what is basically an instruction manual and instead insist on writing in this cumbersome, convoluted textbook style boggles the mind.
Warmachine/Hordes had an excellent rulebook with obvious rules that made sense with just a simple reading most of the time. GW refuses to do that.
Probably the most egregious example is where they're talking about terrain I think, and it's something about drawing an imaginary line to see if the target gets the benefit. The 40k book takes like a paragraph filled with superfluous language like "if, were you to draw a line, 1mm in thickness, from the firing models base to the target models base... " And it's like why write in such a pedantic style? They could say it much more concisely and still have it clear enough. And if they really needed to clarify that part it could be done in an appendix or something
Apparently it's because of rules lawyers?
I'd agree though. They could simplify terrain to a couple obvious types, have a picture, then a 1-2 line rule.
Nevelon wrote: I think the bones of 9th are not bad. Most of the edition’s issues are in the codex imbalance/creep/bloat.
Except that the main reason for codex creep and bloat is the fact that the core rules are clingfilm-thin. There's nothing to build on. No USRs or core mechanics to adapt to different books.
Those are your core rules with which to differentiate 30+ armies, going by the GW store.
Is it really such a shock that so many codices end up horrendously bloated and stuffed full of bespoke rules when there are no USRs and the core rules give them nothing to work with?
Can't. Exalt this post. Enough. Seriously, totally agreed Vipoid. Well said
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of these Core Rules) . . ."
the fact they STILL can't comprehend how to properly write what is basically an instruction manual and instead insist on writing in this cumbersome, convoluted textbook style boggles the mind.
Warmachine/Hordes had an excellent rulebook with obvious rules that made sense with just a simple reading most of the time. GW refuses to do that.
Probably the most egregious example is where they're talking about terrain I think, and it's something about drawing an imaginary line to see if the target gets the benefit. The 40k book takes like a paragraph filled with superfluous language like "if, were you to draw a line, 1mm in thickness, from the firing models base to the target models base... " And it's like why write in such a pedantic style? They could say it much more concisely and still have it clear enough. And if they really needed to clarify that part it could be done in an appendix or something
Apparently it's because of rules lawyers?
I'd agree though. They could simplify terrain to a couple obvious types, have a picture, then a 1-2 line rule.
Again, that's a place where they could take a page out of Magic: the Gatherings book: because by design all the rules for a specific card have to be printed on the space of a physical card, most keywordable things are keyworded, and unique things use standard language that makes them fit in and work with the common things - all that bloaty stuff still exists in the comprehensive rulebook, but for the most part you only need to read that once, if ever, and can rely on short explanation text on the cards itself for the most part.
Its because players complained about their previous rules writing style, which was generally informal and fine because there were some cases where they were unclear (and many more where people decided to be pedantic as hell despite the obvious intention). A case of be careful what you wish for I feel especially when asking GW to do it
It does feel like they are taking the Mick with it though, if it is one big troll I am almost impressed.
Nevelon wrote: I think the bones of 9th are not bad. Most of the edition’s issues are in the codex imbalance/creep/bloat.
Except that the main reason for codex creep and bloat is the fact that the core rules are clingfilm-thin. There's nothing to build on. No USRs or core mechanics to adapt to different books.
Those are your core rules with which to differentiate 30+ armies, going by the GW store.
Is it really such a shock that so many codices end up horrendously bloated and stuffed full of bespoke rules when there are no USRs and the core rules give them nothing to work with?
Can't. Exalt this post. Enough. Seriously, totally agreed Vipoid. Well said
Never claimed that 9th was perfect, just that we don’t need the 2nd to 3rd or 7th to 8th level reboot of the core rules.
You could clean up the whole terrain section, add back USRs, and change psychology and I’d be happy with that. I don’t want to drag this off into a wishlist thread though.
I also don’t think we need the level of differentiation. I was fine and happy back in the day when a bolter was a bolter, and the difference between marine chapters was the color of their armor (any maybe a character or special unit).
Dai wrote: Its because players complained about their previous rules writing style, which was generally informal and fine because there were some cases where they were unclear.
But the problem with the old rules wasn't that they weren't written in legalese - it was that GW was incredibly inconsistent in language. e.g. you had terms like 'unit' and 'model', which were supposed to be defined terms/keywords with very specific meanings, yet writers used them interchangeably.
Same with using 'removed from play', in place of 'instant death', when only one of those is a defined term.
All they needed to do was be consistent with words/language used.
I don't think USRs would have made any difference. Nor do I think the issue is the thinness of the basic rules - which are frankly a strength.
The problem is the rule stack. You have:
Unit special rules.
Weapon special rules
Faction special Rules.
Faction purity bonus rules - which became increasingly complicated/powerful.
Subfaction Special Rules - which went from say 1 active buff to 2 or 4.
Character Buffs/abilities.
WLT/Relic Buffs.
Psychic Powers.
Stratagems.
This unsurprisingly has been bloated and complicated to just process without playing regularly. Every new codex has brought a whole swathe of stuff you notionally want to learn if you want a quasi universal encyclopaedia style knowledge of the game. Which I'd argue was certainly possible up to at least 5th, and has grown steadily more difficult. I'd be amazed if someone off the top of their head could name every thing in 9th. Which means if two non-regulars play, they can end up nose deep in books all game.
The core issue is that GW want everything to be unique. Yes, in principle a game system where you say "there are only 10, maybe 20 at a push, USRs and every single unit from now on must be defined by those rules and that's it the end" will be cleaner. But GW have never ever accepted such constraints on their rules writing before, and I suspect they never will. 7th ended up with about 100 USRs - and still had unique special rules all over the place.
Tyel wrote: I don't think USRs would have made any difference. Nor do I think the issue is the thinness of the basic rules - which are frankly a strength.
The problem is the rule stack. You have:
Unit special rules.
Weapon special rules
Faction special Rules.
Faction purity bonus rules - which became increasingly complicated/powerful.
Subfaction Special Rules - which went from say 1 active buff to 2 or 4.
Character Buffs/abilities.
WLT/Relic Buffs.
Psychic Powers.
Stratagems.
This unsurprisingly has been bloated and complicated to just process without playing regularly. Every new codex has brought a whole swathe of stuff you notionally want to learn if you want a quasi universal encyclopaedia style knowledge of the game. Which I'd argue was certainly possible up to at least 5th, and has grown steadily more difficult. I'd be amazed if someone off the top of their head could name every thing in 9th. Which means if two non-regulars play, they can end up nose deep in books all game.
The core issue is that GW want everything to be unique. Yes, in principle a game system where you say "there are only 10, maybe 20 at a push, USRs and every single unit from now on must be defined by those rules and that's it the end" will be cleaner. But GW have never ever accepted such constraints on their rules writing before, and I suspect they never will. 7th ended up with about 100 USRs - and still had unique special rules all over the place.
I don’t think many games restrict themselves to only USRs, some may but I do not think it’s what people think about.
Instead you use USRs and other common rules so you can later build on them.
Just GW sucks so much they cannot even understand there own rules as a company.
Nevelon wrote: I think the bones of 9th are not bad. Most of the edition’s issues are in the codex imbalance/creep/bloat.
Except that the main reason for codex creep and bloat is the fact that the core rules are clingfilm-thin. There's nothing to build on. No USRs or core mechanics to adapt to different books.
Those are your core rules with which to differentiate 30+ armies, going by the GW store.
Is it really such a shock that so many codices end up horrendously bloated and stuffed full of bespoke rules when there are no USRs and the core rules give them nothing to work with?
Can't. Exalt this post. Enough. Seriously, totally agreed Vipoid. Well said
Never claimed that 9th was perfect, just that we don’t need the 2nd to 3rd or 7th to 8th level reboot of the core rules.
You could clean up the whole terrain section, add back USRs, and change psychology and I’d be happy with that. I don’t want to drag this off into a wishlist thread though.
Outside AA and a reworked wounding table, I overall agree with these points. Some of the core just works better than prior editions, but the "rules writers" are too lazy to put more effort in.
Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
Normally I would agree, but their track record is so abysmal that it's either laziness or incompetence, or both.
You can't really judge the track record if you don't know what their internal goals are or were - change for change's sake is a thing that happened with GW's publication model, and continues to happen, and there is a wealth of sources like interviews with ex-designers that talk about interventions from managment that threw development out of the loop. Of course you can judge the end product on its own merits and demerits, but without knowing the ins and outs of how you got there you're probably too harsh on the designers.
Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
They are lazy. Prove otherwise, please.
You make the claim, and then demand others prove you wrong?
That's not how proof works. You have to provide proof of the validity for your claim. What is your knowledge of their laziness?
They copy/paste stuff all the time. Almost every special rule in the game is a copy/paste of the handful of rules they sprinkle about. No time or consideration is given to individual units on how they should alter the copy/pasted rules to suit the unit. Because obviously a lictor benefits from a 9" deep strike the same way a heavy weapon terminator unit does.
We all know GW doesn't hire based on merit for their rules or models. How big a fan you are is a more important qualification than ability to them because it's cheaper. And when the rules are bad who cares? Just sell them again.
Dudeface wrote: Define lazy here, they publish a looot of rules and books every year so they're hardly sat with a thumb up their ass.
By that metric the production of funko pops must be the height of creative diligence.
Funko pops scare me, every place that sells them has them stacked up high. And never accounts for anyone with any movement difficulty’s at all.
I fear one day I will be crushed by funko pops entering our local Video game store.
Dudeface wrote: Define lazy here, they publish a looot of rules and books every year so they're hardly sat with a thumb up their ass.
By that metric the production of funko pops must be the height of creative diligence.
Funko pops scare me, every place that sells them has them stacked up high. And never accounts for anyone with any movement difficulty’s at all.
I fear one day I will be crushed by funko pops entering our local Video game store.
I will never understand how people can have rooms full of featureless faces and blank staring eyes surround them and not feel unnerved.
Define lazy here, they publish a looot of rules and books every year so they're hardly sat with a thumb up their ass.
If you sign up for doing 2 masters and the same time, and fail both, you have not been hard at work, having goals and trying to achive stuff. No you just failed twice. Things and people are judged by their results. And after a few decades of GW, we can litteraly say what is going to happen in 10th. First books are going to be marines. GW is going to be doing the tone the crazy thing they did in 8th and 9th. Then there will be 1-2 non marine books that will also be toned down. And then GW will have books for armies which are either always writen above the curve or who need good rule support to sell. And the race will be on. Marines will be dropping in their adaptivness, through the edition, only to blow up with new set of rules at the end of it. To have it nullfied with new books coming in the next edition.
All books will be full of copy past with no unit or character fixes. The only good/bad changes are going to come from core rules changes. Books are going to be copy paste from prior edition, especialy for armies who are not being updated in a given cycle.
Or on a more personal level. If for 2 edition straight, the army to play does not change it is the same identical set up, then someone is not putting a lot of work in to the faction. And let me remind again that the goals is what is important in the end, not the intentions. And the goal for GW is to MAKE MORE MONEY. An idential list as prior edition means old players don't buy more stuff, and new players will have access to pre build armies on secondary market. Any new box, bundle etc who does not have those specific units that are being always run, is going to have lower sales. And something like the custodes christmas box is going to make any custodes player, who couldn't get it, salty. Twice as much considering yearly price rises.
Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
They are lazy. Prove otherwise, please.
Define lazy here, they publish a looot of rules and books every year so they're hardly sat with a thumb up their ass.
The problem with the whole thing of insulting individuals is it distracts from the actual topic. If the rules are bad that's an entirely different thing to whether or not someone is "lazy". A Lazy person could write good rules, or they could write bad rules. It's a fundamentally different topic to "The rules are bad".
I think the rules are awful. I think the game is fundamentally made bad to play because of them. Why the rules are bad I do not care. I Just want good rules so if I ever do play it'll be an enjoyable experience.
Dudeface wrote: Define lazy here, they publish a looot of rules and books every year so they're hardly sat with a thumb up their ass.
By that metric the production of funko pops must be the height of creative diligence.
Still can't call them lazy even if they have the imagination of a plank.
When I call the lazy, I'm talking about their bare minimum effort.
Very few changes etc. are taken out more than one degree of separation.
They just added the new MFM.
Hellblasters got a minor drop. Devs got a minor increase and free weapons. They are:
Defensively - Relatively equal.
Offensively - Not quite as equal but still fairly so.
Points: Large edge going to the Devs.
Probably because the Hellblasters still have gun cost baked into their PPM.
So not only are Hellblasters "bad", they set the "bottom" of PRIMARIS INFANTRY heavy weapons. Eradicators - as Gravis - are "better" than both Desolators and Hellblasters so they set the top end. This leaves Desloators in the Meh zone because Hellblasters weren't repriced in relation to Devastators.
I agree the rules are bad, i dont consider that laziness. They put out so much stuff on relatively low wages that i consider that a ridiculous charge. I suspect its down to a mix of corporate wanting to appeal to the absolute largest amount of people and designers not having the skillset to turn that into what I'd consider a good product (not convinced anyone could). I hate people attacking the workers when the likelihood it is on the bosses if one wonders why i am on this soapbox
Dai wrote: I agree the rules are bad, i dont consider that laziness. They put out so much stuff on relatively low wages that i consider that a ridiculous charge. I suspect its down to a mix of corporate wanting to appeal to the absolute largest amount of people and designers not having the skillset to turn that into what I'd consider a good product (not convinced anyone could). I hate people attacking the workers when the likelihood it is on the bosses if one wonders why i am on this soapbox
The problem with calling them "lazy" is "Lazy" writers could write good, or bad rules. I don't care if they're lazy or not, I care if the rules are good or if they're bad. Whether or not they're good individual workers I could not care less about.
You are right. Instead of blaming the bottom rung people if we are to direct blame I'd suggest it be towards the decision makers. The ones who could delete strategems from the game but choose not to.
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of the Core Rules) . . ."
Of course when they wrote short players abused the rules as hell and complained gw rules aren't detailed enough opening up loopholes
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Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
Well. Lazy might be incorrect. Incompetent though isn't as shows by rules they produce.
But then again as GW openly admits they don't hire for abilities.
Dai wrote: I agree the rules are bad, i dont consider that laziness. They put out so much stuff on relatively low wages that i consider that a ridiculous charge. I suspect its down to a mix of corporate wanting to appeal to the absolute largest amount of people and designers not having the skillset to turn that into what I'd consider a good product (not convinced anyone could). I hate people attacking the workers when the likelihood it is on the bosses if one wonders why i am on this soapbox
You are right. Instead of blaming the bottom rung people if we are to direct blame I'd suggest it be towards the decision makers. The ones who could delete strategems from the game but choose not to.
1. They don't HAVE to write rules if the supposed decision makers are the problem.
2. Stratagems aren't the problem, it's the overall implementation of then due to the laziness (see?) of random fight/shoot twice and durability Strats that somehow only one unit remembers.
Karol wrote: And after a few decades of GW, we can litteraly say what is going to happen in 10th. First books are going to be marines. GW is going to be doing the tone the crazy thing they did in 8th and 9th. Then there will be 1-2 non marine books that will also be toned down. And then GW will have books for armies which are either always writen above the curve or who need good rule support to sell. And the race will be on. Marines will be dropping in their adaptivness, through the edition, only to blow up with new set of rules at the end of it. To have it nullfied with new books coming in the next edition.
All books will be full of copy past with no unit or character fixes. The only good/bad changes are going to come from core rules changes. Books are going to be copy paste from prior edition, especialy for armies who are not being updated in a given cycle.
So absolutely nothing has changed about how GW handles the game in those decades?
Was there no fluffy rules distinction between 8th and 9th edition codexes or did I imagine that?
Or on a more personal level. If for 2 edition straight, the army to play does not change it is the same identical set up, then someone is not putting a lot of work in to the faction. And let me remind again that the goals is what is important in the end, not the intentions. And the goal for GW is to MAKE MORE MONEY. An idential list as prior edition means old players don't buy more stuff, and new players will have access to pre build armies on secondary market. Any new box, bundle etc who does not have those specific units that are being always run, is going to have lower sales. And something like the custodes christmas box is going to make any custodes player, who couldn't get it, salty. Twice as much considering yearly price rises.
People who have been playing for a long time have a deep enough bench that point shifts are pretty irrelevant. I know you bought your army from someone tuned to 6th edition or something and probably still have yet to buy any other models because of how expensive it is out there.
Despite shifts the GK have always had an over reliance on DKs. And as long as you don't mix and match you can run Paladins as Terminators or vice versa.
In reviewing the point changes for GK the GM/DKs were mostly unchanged. This is logically correct as it would be the most used unit. Other units saw drops that mirror what happened to other factions.
Marines get 33 point termies with whatever they want. You get 35 point obsec terminators that can cast a spell and have an extra attack. Perhaps it isn't fair to see TH/SS termies while you pay for the Daemon Hammer, but again -- extra attack and the ability to give themselves RR wounds. And while Strikes and the popular Interceptors drops by 2 the terminators dropped by 5.
So nowhere in this do I see GW capriciously buffing or nerfing things that don't need it just to sell different models.
Breton wrote: So not only are Hellblasters "bad", they set the "bottom" of PRIMARIS INFANTRY heavy weapons. Eradicators - as Gravis - are "better" than both Desolators and Hellblasters so they set the top end. This leaves Desloators in the Meh zone because Hellblasters weren't repriced in relation to Devastators.
Helblasters get 5 weapons per squad. Devs get 4 plus Cherub / Signum. Often this is phrased as no ablative wounds, but losing the Sarge nicks the BS2 shot/s. Helblasters pay 35 per weapon and Devs effectively pay 29. This closes the gap a bit.
If you imagine playing against someone bringing lots of terminators ( quite likely ) the outcome of LC vs OC HPI is below.
Spoiler:
It's a more reliable gun that can also double out marines and totally remove their armor and wounds -- LC does most of the time, too, but then the HPI can strip cover bonus. I would consider it a far better weapon than a LC. The problem is rolling 1s and clearly GW has had a problem balancing Plas-ceptors as well.
Unlike Plas-ceptors RR1s are an opportunity cost for Helblasters. They can more easily stick near any captains you happen to grab, which makes the raw math a little more difficult to consider.
Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
Normally I would agree, but their track record is so abysmal that it's either laziness or incompetence, or both.
You can't really judge the track record if you don't know what their internal goals are or were - change for change's sake is a thing that happened with GW's publication model, and continues to happen, and there is a wealth of sources like interviews with ex-designers that talk about interventions from managment that threw development out of the loop. Of course you can judge the end product on its own merits and demerits, but without knowing the ins and outs of how you got there you're probably too harsh on the designers.
So to tie both these posts into one reply that isn't just tongue in cheek (My comment above). Lets break it down, how are GW rules writers Lazy? Personally I think its a combination between Lazy and stupid but that is just my opinion; so here are the facts.
GW released the 9th edition Ork codex...with a few problems.
#1: Trukk Boyz weren't legal by their own incompetent rules writing.
#2: Synergy...sorry we couldn't find any.
#3: Completely forgot to buff units that were struggling for multiple editions (Stompa hasn't been good....pretty much ever).
#4: The number of typos and screw ups is hilarious. On multiple pages of the codex GW design team screwed up photos and images and overlapped them leaving you with an amalgam of images that they just said ...meh screw it. My personal favorite is the two headed grot on the painboy picture #5: Biggest buff/rules change for Orkz in 9th was -1AP on choppas! Which GW immediately nerfed 5-6 months later by releasing AoC which ignored it. Huzzah.
But wait...there's more! GW went ahead and fixed the Trukkboyz illegality problem and then immediately created a new rule which made them illegal again I can probably keep going but the point I am making is that GW's rules team is either lazy or incompetent. You can pick which or both for that matter, but a single skilled editor or review process would have caught 99% of these issues.
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of the Core Rules) . . ."
Of course when they wrote short players abused the rules as hell and complained gw rules aren't detailed enough opening up loopholes
Sigh.
Again, the issue with GW's old rules wasn't that they were short, it was that they were completely inconsistent.
Language is extremely important in games like this because there are a lot of defined terms and playing loosey-goosey with terms means that rules quickly become very unclear.
For example, a model with Eternal Warrior is immune to Instant Death, but is it also immune to effects that remove models from play? Instant Death was a defined term, but the latter was not.
I would also add that GW switching to legalese did not stop the Assault weapon rule being non-functional as-written for the entirity of 8th.
Terrain's the perfect example. 8th Ed terrain rules sucked, so in 9th Ed they addressed it with a convoluted keyword system with unintuitive effects and wording that reads like legalese.
Just on that point, there's something I find almost soul-crushing about GW's rule wording.
I get that they want to avoid misinterpretation, but maybe this is why it would help to have USRs, keywords and core rules that are actually worth a damn.
I mean, other games can work just fine with effects as simple as 'push the target 6"', yet GW apparently needs:
"Thou may, if thou choses, push [that is move] the target ["the target" being a model [defined as a tabletop miniature for use in the game of Warhammer 40k (TM)] currently in play on the table in the current game and not a person, animal, or object not being a model or a model not being on the table, in play at the present time, or presently in use in the current game] a number of inches being no more than 6" (it may be less but not so few as to pull the model instead) measured horizontally (being defined as level with and parallel to the table, excepting in the case of terrain, the rules for which are defined in volumes 14 through 19 of the Core Rules) . . ."
Of course when they wrote short players abused the rules as hell and complained gw rules aren't detailed enough opening up loopholes
Sigh.
Again, the issue with GW's old rules wasn't that they were short, it was that they were completely inconsistent.
Language is extremely important in games like this because there are a lot of defined terms and playing loosey-goosey with terms means that rules quickly become very unclear.
For example, a model with Eternal Warrior is immune to Instant Death, but is it also immune to effects that remove models from play? Instant Death was a defined term, but the latter was not.
See also my complaint about aircraft being able to pivot up to 90d & then having to fly forward.
There's no facings in this edition. So what is this "Forward" the rule is referring to??
catbarf wrote: Or the Tyranid adaptation system. But at least that one doesn't matter because, seeing that they had inadvertently created something interesting (a faction that can adapt to each opponent, rather than being locked into a fixed list), GW patched it out of matched play ASAP.
Don't fething remind me.
The best types of things in 40k are when the rules and the fluff match up perfectly. The Tyranids adapt to things. The rules let Tyranid players adapt their armies (in small ways) to the situation they found themselves in. A simple system that wasn't "list tailoring", but was an elegant way of matching fluff to rules.
Dai wrote: Calling the rules writers lazy is incredibly childish unless you have first hand experience of the work culture there.
They are lazy. Prove otherwise, please.
not how things normally work...you're the one levelling an accusation, the burden of proof is on you.
Yeah, have you read anything done this edition or the random fixes?
Y'all seem hung up on defending the "rules writers" for whatever reason. GW will not see you defend them in this forum and send you free stuff.
No one is defending anyone.
Weird how mentioning the burden of proof is on the accuser is somehow ‘defending’ GW.
There have been some bad/poorly written rules and fixes, that however doesn’t equate to lazy as mentioned above.
Tyel wrote: I don't think USRs would have made any difference. Nor do I think the issue is the thinness of the basic rules - which are frankly a strength.
The problem is the rule stack. You have:
Unit special rules.
Weapon special rules
Faction special Rules.
Faction purity bonus rules - which became increasingly complicated/powerful.
Subfaction Special Rules - which went from say 1 active buff to 2 or 4.
Character Buffs/abilities.
WLT/Relic Buffs.
Psychic Powers.
Stratagems.
And that bloat becomes less of an issue if your base rules are universal. If you are disciplined about it and have a solid core of scalable universal rules, then everything you've described above would be fine because everything would be working on the same basis, rather than slight variations or incremental changes (or outright inventions/paradigm shifts) between books.
Yup. Sticking to a basic set of USRs, preferably scalable, instead of writing each faction's rules separately, would have helped prevent the "bloat" and "power creep". The point is to have a plan from the start, and stick to it. Instead of just "making it up as you go along".
And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1). Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1). Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1). Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1). Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1). Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
That's the amazing thing with the core rules this edition is that the "rules writers" can fully use keywords and add USR to their advantage, but decided not to
Breton wrote: So not only are Hellblasters "bad", they set the "bottom" of PRIMARIS INFANTRY heavy weapons. Eradicators - as Gravis - are "better" than both Desolators and Hellblasters so they set the top end. This leaves Desloators in the Meh zone because Hellblasters weren't repriced in relation to Devastators.
Helblasters get 5 weapons per squad. Devs get 4 plus Cherub / Signum. Often this is phrased as no ablative wounds, but losing the Sarge nicks the BS2 shot/s. Helblasters pay 35 per weapon and Devs effectively pay 29. This closes the gap a bit.
I wasn't really counting the Once Per Battle Cherub or the Signum. And no, it doesn't really close the gap because the Devs still pay less per unit. You can't say I'm taking some Hellblasters and my Sgt is leaving his Incinerator at home, so he's cheaper.
If you imagine playing against someone bringing lots of terminators ( quite likely ) the outcome of LC vs OC HPI is below.
I was just stilling with Plasma all around for the comparison, but if you want to point out Devs have more varied options than minor deviations in range, and average ROF, its kind of just another point in my favor that Hellblasters probably should have had a deeper look at their PPM than they got in the MFM.
Devastators are ~ 5PPM more than their Tactical Marine base body. Hellblasters are ~12PPM more than their Intercessor Marine base body.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Yup. Sticking to a basic set of USRs, preferably scalable, instead of writing each faction's rules separately, would have helped prevent the "bloat" and "power creep". The point is to have a plan from the start, and stick to it. Instead of just "making it up as you go along".
That requires discipline. And that is not something GW40k writers seemingly have. Probably because all the disciplined writers went to 30k
Well, more disciplined, afterall 30k is still a GWtm Product tm, but it still is miles better in this regard.
That's the amazing thing with the core rules this edition is that the "rules writers" can fully use keywords and add USR to their advantage, but decided not to
This is the sole thing that i rekon is better than 30k rules foundation wise right now is the keyword system... IF IT WOULD'VE BEEN USED.
Breton wrote: In this particular instance, I feel sorry for the GW writers. I'm old enough to remember when USR's were called Bloat and the bane of happy players.
They were bloat in an era where there were 7 pages of USR, and a handful of them were never used or were a USR that was just two other USRs in one.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
But... how does this help? Do you go around thinking "Dreadnoughts have Duty Eternal" rather than "Dreadnoughts reduce damage taken by 1"?
I know - because people have been going on about it for years - that some people can't cope that all the above rules are the same but with different names. Or that there's 20+ rules which mean "you can deepstrike" etc.
But to my mind that's not bloat. Read the rule once, oh its deepstrike, okay, move on with your life. If you are ever in doubt, its on the datasheet right there. That isn't the source of 9th's complexity. The very fact that you could make it a USR system implies that it isn't an issue.
Bloat/Complexity is "okay its in my 2nd command phase so I can activate Rendax Stance 1 or 2 to be active. Hang on what do they do, let me check, oh wait since I'm Emperor's Chosen doesn't that mean I can have both, is that all the time or just one turn? Let me check again" etc. Now I'm sure you could break say Martial K'atah down to "you can activate one of this list of about 12 USRs (except when you get 2)" but thats the source of complication. Not exchanging all the rules that just mean "-1 damage" for a USR, "FNP" for a USR, "Deepstrike" for a USR etc.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
But... how does this help? Do you go around thinking "Dreadnoughts have Duty Eternal" rather than "Dreadnoughts reduce damage taken by 1"?
I know - because people have been going on about it for years - that some people can't cope that all the above rules are the same but with different names. Or that there's 20+ rules which mean "you can deepstrike" etc.
But to my mind that's not bloat. Read the rule once, oh its deepstrike, okay, move on with your life. If you are ever in doubt, its on the datasheet right there. That isn't the source of 9th's complexity. The very fact that you could make it a USR system implies that it isn't an issue.
Bloat/Complexity is "okay its in my 2nd command phase so I can activate Rendax Stance 1 or 2 to be active. Hang on what do they do, let me check, oh wait since I'm Emperor's Chosen doesn't that mean I can have both, is that all the time or just one turn? Let me check again" etc. Now I'm sure you could break say Martial K'atah down to "you can activate one of this list of about 12 USRs (except when you get 2)" but thats the source of complication. Not exchanging all the rules that just mean "-1 damage" for a USR, "FNP" for a USR, "Deepstrike" for a USR etc.
Well, it helps in that in his above examples, I don't need to remember several different abilities are exactly the same - I also don't need to make sure they are the same. I know they have been better about it in 9th, but in 8th a lot of the rules were similar but markedly not the same and you needed to go through it to figure it out. It just gives one more layer of simplicity as knowing say Bodyguard (X+) is a rule, I then know that Bodyguard (4+) means they succeed on a 4 or higher, while Bodyguard (3+) means they succeed on a 3 or higher.
The problem is GW has a penchant for making lots of similar but not quite different rules, so having the USRs could give them a template to work with, and that way its more noticeable to the player when they DO make things different. In the specific example you quoted, by making a USR that is scalable, you are able to play with the numbers without having to make a whole new rule. Want something extra soaky? Unnatural Resilience (2), want a super soaker? Unnatural Resilience (3), etc.
The problem 40k had with USRs before was that there were a ton of them, some were rarely used, others were "you get these 2 USRs", and so on.
But... how does this help? Do you go around thinking "Dreadnoughts have Duty Eternal" rather than "Dreadnoughts reduce damage taken by 1"?
I know - because people have been going on about it for years - that some people can't cope that all the above rules are the same but with different names. Or that there's 20+ rules which mean "you can deepstrike" etc.
But to my mind that's not bloat. Read the rule once, oh its deepstrike, okay, move on with your life. If you are ever in doubt, its on the datasheet right there. That isn't the source of 9th's complexity. The very fact that you could make it a USR system implies that it isn't an issue.
The way HBMC setup the rules opens up design space for GW, while making it simpler for players. It's BECAUSE players call it deepstrike/transhuman/melta/etc. that it's dumb for GW not to use these terms (or at least a common one).
Take the start of 8th when all "melta" equivalent got changed to D6+2 instead of best of 2D6, they had to do a big list of every "melta" weapon. If they had a solid ruleset based on USRs, they could have done a single update that said :
Melta : when firing this weapon from half range, its damage characteristic is D6+2
USRs are 100% the way to go and the best way to approach game design. They just have to make a list of USRs at the beggining of the edition and not feth with it by adding a ton more (and never ever bring back the dumb "this USRs means you have these USRs")
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Flavour text and especially abilities or wargear that grants other abilities can rot. A rule does not become thematic because it has been adapted as appropriate for the faction, but because the rules evoke the fluff and models making the rules feel thematic and right.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Flavour text and especially abilities or wargear that grants other abilities can rot. A rule does not become thematic because it has been adapted as appropriate for the faction, but because the rules evoke the fluff and models making the rules feel thematic and right.
i think the "flavor text" that HBMC gave is actually a bonus, in a way, if GW wants to change how Duty eternal is represented, they can keep the same flavor while giving it a different effect/USR
for example, they could decide to do :
Duty Eternal : This models fights on death (parting shot USR or something)
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Flavour text and especially abilities or wargear that grants other abilities can rot. A rule does not become thematic because it has been adapted as appropriate for the faction, but because the rules evoke the fluff and models making the rules feel thematic and right.
In some cases it's the right way to go - you can only have so many rules that give you 'This unit can reroll 1s to wound' or whatever, and that construction allows you to have some flavor in the unit description/datasheet, but just list the pertinent USRs on an e.g. summary sheet. Also, it removes a layer of confusion that arises when you have a bunch of almost, but not quite identical rules because of slight differences in wording between codices or over time.
Ideally, you'd look for a system to be able to handle the bulk of all armies and units mostly with USRs, and save special rules for the cases where they're really needed because a given unit is just *that* special and out-of-the-box.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Personally, I'd put the flavour in the rule itself. e.g.:
Unnatural Resilience (X): Whether through advanced armour, sorcerous enhancements or alien physiology, some models are able to blunt incoming attacks - turning otherwise fatal strikes into mere flesh-wounds. A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
I think it would make things easier than having several different names for the same USR.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1). Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1). Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1). Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1). Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1). Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Flavour text and especially abilities or wargear that grants other abilities can rot. A rule does not become thematic because it has been adapted as appropriate for the faction, but because the rules evoke the fluff and models making the rules feel thematic and right.
i think the "flavor text" that HBMC gave is actually a bonus, in a way, if GW wants to change how Duty eternal is represented, they can keep the same flavor while giving it a different effect/USR
for example, they could decide to do :
Duty Eternal : This models fights on death (parting shot USR or something)
That, apparently, is the reason why they did the opposite of most games and instead of having rules defined and applied, went to each rule has its own reprint of what it does. So they could, if they wanted to, change Duty Eternal but not Cheating Eldar Bullgak (love that one lol). The problem is that bloats things even more because everything has to be done separately. It reminds me of Warmachine Mk1 where they did similar; "Fly" was different for various units based on whatever (e.g. regular wings vs. tattered wings for undead), and Mk2 codified it so that Fly was Fly was Fly no matter what allowed you to fly; the language was consistent so you knew what it did from the core rules.
Breton wrote: I was just stilling with Plasma all around for the comparison, but if you want to point out Devs have more varied options than minor deviations in range, and average ROF, its kind of just another point in my favor that Hellblasters probably should have had a deeper look at their PPM than they got in the MFM.
Devastators are ~ 5PPM more than their Tactical Marine base body. Hellblasters are ~12PPM more than their Intercessor Marine base body.
Oh I totally agree that they need a look, but the gap isn't massive enough for me to think they were trying to ignore them. As with many things -- they screw up ( *cough* Inceptors ).
The bad things are the amount of stratagems, stale mission design, and imbalanced secondaries. The missions are basically written for the same cookie cutter table tournaments have been using since 5th. NOVA has way better missions and secondaries than what's in the rulebook. I also think 6 month seasons are too short for people who have actual lives outside of 40k. The only people that can keep up are the guys who live at home with no jobs and can hang out at the FLGS/Warhammer store all day. People with 40hr+ jobs and other hobbies that split time with 40k are not going to learn all new rules, point costs, and missions every 6 months. I'm lucky if I've even played all the missions before the new ones are released. It's just another excuse to get $30-40 off us every 6 months when it should be a free PDF. Dota updates heroes every 2 weeks, which is fine if the game and heroes are free and don't require buying/building/painting just to be invalidated before that process is even finished.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
Flavour text and especially abilities or wargear that grants other abilities can rot. A rule does not become thematic because it has been adapted as appropriate for the faction, but because the rules evoke the fluff and models making the rules feel thematic and right.
In some cases it's the right way to go - you can only have so many rules that give you 'This unit can reroll 1s to wound' or whatever, and that construction allows you to have some flavor in the unit description/datasheet, but just list the pertinent USRs on an e.g. summary sheet. Also, it removes a layer of confusion that arises when you have a bunch of almost, but not quite identical rules because of slight differences in wording between codices or over time.
Ideally, you'd look for a system to be able to handle the bulk of all armies and units mostly with USRs, and save special rules for the cases where they're really needed because a given unit is just *that* special and out-of-the-box.
When is re-roll 1s to wound an appropriate ability for a unit to have? If it is appropriate for a unit to be able to fly over other units then give it FLY. If it is appropriate for a unit to arrive anywhere from reinforcements give it Deep Strike. The fluff does not belong on the datasheet, the ability to Deep Strike is what is thematic, not whatever arbitrary name you change it to, the fluff mechanics of the unit's Deep Strike ability should be explained elsewhere. That's not to say you shouldn't use thematic names for abilities that will be unique to the faction, the chance of another designer wanting to use Reanimation Protocols or Combat Doctrines in another codex is zero, so there is no need to use generic names like Back From the Dead and Ordered Armour Penetration. If it isn't clear what Deep Strike or FLY is representing for the datasheet then the datasheet probably shouldn't have it. Why do Warp Spiders have FLY? Because they can teleport to the other side of units. Why do Scarabs have FLY? Because they can fly. Why do Tactical Squads have FLY? No reason for them to have it, so they shouldn't have it. You should be able to apply the same to a re-roll 1s ability, if the ability doesn't make sense without flavour text giving an excuse for it existing, it should be removed. I could make an excuse for any unit to be able to re-roll 1s, but it would be just that, an excuse for bad game design.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And you can do so without losing the flavour text as well.
The USR Unnatural Resilience (X): A model with this special rule reduces all incoming damage by the amount indicated, to a minimum of 1 (eg. a model with Unnatural Resilience (2) wounded hit by a Damage 4 weapon would reduce that to Damage 2).
Codex Entries Duty Eternal: Space Marine Dreadnoughts have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Crazed Longevity: Helbrutes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Synaptic Redundancy: Carnifexes have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Auto-Repair Sub-Systems: Riptides have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Dead 'Ard Construkshun: Deff Dreadz have Unnatural Resilience (1).
Cheating Eldar Bull gak: Wraithlords have Unnatural Resilience (16).
And so on.
But... how does this help? Do you go around thinking "Dreadnoughts have Duty Eternal" rather than "Dreadnoughts reduce damage taken by 1"?
It means you just see Unnatural Resilience and instantly know what rule you're dealing with, rather than needing to read through it to make sure it's the same rule you know. It also means you can see at a glance that, oh, the Eldar version works a little differently, rather than that being a detail you might miss. It means you don't need to parse the whole thing to avoid getting caught out by some little nitpicky distinction (see: 're-roll any' versus 're-roll all' versus 're-roll misses').
And lastly it means that if/when the core writers adjust the rule, they can just change it, instead of the awkward word salad we got when GW had to restrict deep strike by describing what deep strike abilities look like.
Tyel wrote: If you are ever in doubt, its on the datasheet right there.
And to this point- 'on the datasheet right there' in practice means having to pull out the codex and flip to the appropriate unit entry, because you can't put the full text of every ability on a quick-reference sheet. USRs allow a more concise presentation of rules. You use a shorthand name for a consistent mechanic so that it's easier to refer to and to facilitate the usability heuristic of recognition over recall, and then if necessary you can pull out the list of USRs and read the full text.
I mean, this is pretty much Game Design 101. I can't think of any other modern games that do this USRs-without-calling-them-USRs thing that 40K does.
I mean aren't you instead pulling out the rulebook to check the wording of the USR after having pulled out the Codex to check the unity entry this way round, it's less words but more actual book checking unless you memorise them all?
The obvious answer is print it as a USR and have that relevant rule in full on the unit, or reprinted in the codex.
Dudeface wrote: it's less words but more actual book checking unless you memorise them all?
Condensing the content to the point where you can easily memorize it all is the entire point of the universal special rules.
yeah, its mind numbing seeing all the people trying to somehow prove that USRs are a bad thing. Theres a reason pretty much all games use them.
Try playing a game of MTG where every keyword is written in full (and some differences are added between cards, just because) and i swear the game will be super painful.
GW introduced lawyer-speech in their rules because they couldnt be assed to have a solid framework.
Dudeface wrote: it's less words but more actual book checking unless you memorise them all?
Condensing the content to the point where you can easily memorize it all is the entire point of the universal special rules.
yeah, its mind numbing seeing all the people trying to somehow prove that USRs are a bad thing. Theres a reason pretty much all games use them.
Try playing a game of MTG where every keyword is written in full (and some differences are added between cards, just because) and i swear the game will be super painful.
GW introduced lawyer-speech in their rules because they couldnt be assed to have a solid framework.
I won't argue that USR's aren't a good thing, it's a reason we refer to FNP saves etc even now. But I don't see the harm in them being reprinted where useful. The entire shift to data cards now are so the players (in theory) have all the relevant stuff for their army in one place/book, which I don't see as anything to be negative towards.
I won't argue that USR's aren't a good thing, it's a reason we refer to FNP saves etc even now. But I don't see the harm in them being reprinted where useful. The entire shift to data cards now are so the players (in theory) have all the relevant stuff for their army in one place/book, which I don't see as anything to be negative towards.
I miscommunicated what i meant.
I meant "Imagine if MTG had the full rules text (with variations) on every card INSTEAD of just the keyword"
Repetition is the best way to approach it, have reminder text written on every datasheet that way players will learn what keywords do just by looking at the datasheet, no need to refer to the book.
Now, that obviously breaks if GW ever makes a change to an USR but its still a start (and until the rules are 100% digital, i don't think theres a perfect method of distributing them)
I won't argue that USR's aren't a good thing, it's a reason we refer to FNP saves etc even now. But I don't see the harm in them being reprinted where useful. The entire shift to data cards now are so the players (in theory) have all the relevant stuff for their army in one place/book, which I don't see as anything to be negative towards.
I miscommunicated what i meant.
I meant "Imagine if MTG had the full rules text (with variations) on every card INSTEAD of just the keyword"
Repetition is the best way to approach it, have reminder text written on every datasheet that way players will learn what keywords do just by looking at the datasheet, no need to refer to the book.
Now, that obviously breaks if GW ever makes a change to an USR but its still a start (and until the rules are 100% digital, i don't think theres a perfect method of distributing them)
MTG does it in a quite ingenious way: the common cards - which have usually not many keywords on any given card, and are overall 'simpler', have keywords and reminder/explainer text in brackets, while the rarer cards usually have not. Since a player will encounter vastly more commons than higher rarities, the commons kind of act as a tutorial. Then of course there are a couple dozen of 'evergreen' keywords that show up so often that they only really need reminder text in core and introductory sets aimed at new players. Also, MTG made a conscious effort to give the more common keywords names that are kind of intuitive: even if you have no real idea about game mechanics, you could probably guess what First Strike, Fly, Double Strike or Haste would do.
Dudeface wrote: I mean aren't you instead pulling out the rulebook to check the wording of the USR after having pulled out the Codex to check the unity entry this way round, it's less words but more actual book checking unless you memorise them all?
The obvious answer is print it as a USR and have that relevant rule in full on the unit, or reprinted in the codex.
In most games you have the USR definitions, or at least summaries thereof, somewhere in your set of quick-reference materials. Either the ones relevant to your army are on your printed army quick-reference sheet (the one with all your stats, abilities, and equipment for your army), or they're on the back of the unit card, or they're somewhere on the game's core rules quick reference sheet(s).
So if you just need to know what abilities a unit has, they're on your army reference sheet or unit stat card along with the statlines and equipment for that unit. If you need to know what those abilities do, you have a summary somewhere on hand in your reference material. If you need the full legalistic definition that covers edge cases and resolves all ambiguity, then you crack open a rulebook. The amount of effort you need to spend to get an answer scales, and most of the time you'll just glance at a unit sheet, see a couple of standardized keywords, and that's all you need. You memorize the USRs the same way you've already memorized what 'deep strike' and 'feel no pain' mean, you just see standardized/recognizable terminology at a glance, and don't get caught out by edge cases when GW decides that this unit's deep strike works very slightly differently from everyone else's.
The current approach of fully-written-out abilities that only appear in codex entries, codices and rulebook not laid out in a manner conducive to in-game reference, and a total lack of play aids is making zero effort to be a playable system. The current expectation is that you do need to memorize basically everything or rely on an app, because playing the game with your codex open as you flip back and forth between unit entries and stratagem lists and the wargear stats gets old real quickly.
I don't mind having USRs if it codifies the rules writing. I, however, would not want GW to skimp on the datasheet text in favor of a single word USR. I still have bad memories of the USR system from 6th and 7th where you had to keep the core rulebook with you and the relevant pages tabbed because a Blood Angel has a slightly different rule from another.
So when an experienced player sees "Resilience(1)" they will go "ah of course", but then there would be extra text for the beginners that explained on the datasheet what resilience does.
JNAProductions wrote: Also, for a game like Magic, all the rules are available online. So you can google "MtG Trample" and find out what it does with ease.
The Gatherer site is really good, including relevant rulings beneath the card's full description.
That brings up an interesting idea. With Wahapedia, actually "having" a physical codex present with you for a game is now redundant, correct? Yes, yes, pirates and scalywags, yada yada yada. But honestly if GW purchased and ran something like this, and made a digital repository of all rules and stats, wouldn't that solve "Bloat"? You no longer need 7 books, you just need the website.
Dudeface wrote: The obvious answer is print it as a USR and have that relevant rule in full on the unit, or reprinted in the codex.
Reprinting USRs on unit entries defeats the purpose of USRs, but yes, you would literally have a USR section in each Codex, and it wouldn't change from book to book.
I've never had someone go but what does "Wraithbone Form" mean? What does "Armoured Exoskeleton" mean?
You read the datasheet once, go "okay this unit has -1 damage" and move on. I don't find that complicated. Its not rendered less complicated by just having Unnatural Resilience as an ability - that you either need to know or look up.
Yes, I'm sure a lot of the basic rules across the game could be turned into USRs. But every time this comes up we go through and find there just aren't that many of them - and they aren't the ones players have problems with. Yes there are many rules that could just be turned into deep strike. Or infiltrate. Or FNP. Or even things like reroll 1s to hit or to wound, exploding 6s to hit, no rerolls and so on. The community tends to give these abilities names based on the first time we see them or most common occurance.
I feel complexity comes from things stacking - i.e. Ad Mech which can have up to half a dozen rules effecting how you unit shoots. Making it so that unit would be acting under 6 keywords doesn't change that computation. You need to know the rules - and keep track of whether they are in effect. Or you have rules - typically the purity bonuses, but also things like stratagems etc - which are just not intuitive and so anyone not playing frequently has to check and read and possibly debate whether they are understanding it correctly and should use it now or later etc.
I don't want to go back to a system of Zealot and Crusader, Furious Charge and Hammer of Wrath, Relentless and Slow and Purposeful or say Rage and Rampage.
I don't disagree that a system of USRs can work. Lets pick something like Bolt Action (which is a game I don't know as well as 40k, but know a bit). That's a USR driven ruleset. But +/- it works because infantry are 3 types of infantry - and vehicles are also sort of grouped up, as are largely the weapons. I'm simplifying it a bit but it doesn't have a 1000 (or whatever the total is) units, and maybe 1000 different weapon profiles that all sort of want to be bespoke as 40k does.
Now you can say "yeah, that's the problem" - but I don't see GW changing that.
Adding say "Deepstrike" as a keyword and putting on the units which effectively have that rule may make the game a bit cleaner - but that wouldn't change the issues people who find 9th too complicated have. Or at least I don't think so anyway.
You read the datasheet once, go "okay this unit has -1 damage" and move on. I don't find that complicated. Its not rendered less complicated by just having Unnatural Resilience as an ability - that you either need to know or look up.
.
it works with -1 damage because its simple, the complaint people have is with more complex abilities that are almost the same between codexes.
Tell me, what is the difference between the Lychguard "bodyguard" rule and the Victrix honor guard "bodyguard" rule.
Tell me, what is the difference between the explosion of a killa kan a kataphron destroyer and a land speeder
etc.
Having properly setup USRs (like other wargames do) will simply make the game more easily parseable for players. You somehow pushing back AGAINST that is truly baffling
VladimirHerzog wrote: no it doesn't, writing the rules in full on the datasheet ON TOP of the name of the USR is the best way for players to learn them
It creates more opportunities for errors and more opportunities for undisciplined changes.
Universal Rules should be kept central in a single part of any given book.
Dudeface wrote: The obvious answer is print it as a USR and have that relevant rule in full on the unit, or reprinted in the codex.
Reprinting USRs on unit entries defeats the purpose of USRs
no it doesn't, writing the rules in full on the datasheet ON TOP of the name of the USR is the best way for players to learn them
Why should they do it, if they are writen in full. There is zero entice for them to do it. On the other hang carrying 1 less book, and being able to understand your opponents data sheet without having to crack the rule book and go USR by USR, very much is an entice to learn the rules fast. Even more so, if your inability to learn them, means fewer or no players want to play against you.
It is like with everything. You see something or someone shows you how it is done, and then it is up to you to memorise it. If coach is going to come and go through all the movement over and over again, you will not only not learn them properly, but also you will not invent anything yourself. So in w40k terms, if someone gets used to reading the rules in full, then telling them it is a ++4 or it works like Deep Strike, will again create slow down moments when you have to explain someone stuff again or even worse read it to them.
VladimirHerzog wrote: no it doesn't, writing the rules in full on the datasheet ON TOP of the name of the USR is the best way for players to learn them
It creates more opportunities for errors and more opportunities for undisciplined changes.
Universal Rules should be kept central in a single part of any given book.
USRs should be both written out in the book and in the datasheet, just like that :
Spoiler:
so you see at a glance what the USRs are once you have learned them. (that obviously requires the company that produces these makes it clear what the most up to date version is.)
So in w40k terms, if someone gets used to reading the rules in full, then telling them it is a ++4 or it works like Deep Strike, will again create slow down moments when you have to explain someone stuff again or even worse read it to them.
"So my unit has teleport strike, which means that During deployment, if every model in this unit has this ability, then you can set up this unit in a teleportarium chamber instead of setting it up on the battlefield. If you do, then in the Reinforcements step of one of your Movement phases you can set up this unit anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 9" away from any enemy models."
vs :
"So my unit has deepstrike"
yeah, clearly the second option creates a slow down moment (hint, if we already say "its has deepstrike", it means its already an USR, its just that GW didnt get the memo)
Dudeface wrote: it's less words but more actual book checking unless you memorise them all?
Condensing the content to the point where you can easily memorize it all is the entire point of the universal special rules.
yeah, its mind numbing seeing all the people trying to somehow prove that USRs are a bad thing. Theres a reason pretty much all games use them.
Try playing a game of MTG where every keyword is written in full (and some differences are added between cards, just because) and i swear the game will be super painful.
GW introduced lawyer-speech in their rules because they couldnt be assed to have a solid framework.
I won't argue that USR's aren't a good thing, it's a reason we refer to FNP saves etc even now. But I don't see the harm in them being reprinted where useful. The entire shift to data cards now are so the players (in theory) have all the relevant stuff for their army in one place/book, which I don't see as anything to be negative towards.
And yet not all units even have thier options detailed.
See WE terminators.
To find out what any of thier optional gear does do you simply look down thier sheet?
NO! You flip to the back of the book.
Why? Because they geniuses decided to waste 1/2 a oages worth of space on a giant picture of the trrmies.
Dudeface wrote: The obvious answer is print it as a USR and have that relevant rule in full on the unit, or reprinted in the codex.
Reprinting USRs on unit entries defeats the purpose of USRs, but yes, you would literally have a USR section in each Codex, and it wouldn't change from book to book.
The benefit to USRs is clearing up communication between players, there is no benefit to small datasheets, how would VladimirHerzog's IG11 become better without the reminder text? If you need to look up whether your unit has Deep Strike, you probably also need to know what Deep Strike does. I'd be willing to extend this to FLY, having maybe 10 of these USR that go in the core rules I think you could get away with, but I don't think having 10 is better than having 1 and I know having more than 30 abilities in codexes without those rules being in the codexes which use them and only in the core rules is awful. At least reprinting the rule in the codex is the minimal effort to make a codex halfway worth it and GW shouldn't be errataing FLY and Deep Strike every 6 months. The game is already being updated with a new edition every 3 years, that's often enough to change shared abilities.
If you don't want to print all the relevant weapons and special rules on each datasheet then maybe the datasheet model isn't right for you, I'm trying out a model which just skips that part so you have unit entries with what the unit is equipped with and can replace their wargear with, but no rules you need outside list building. Then a unit statblock with all the associated abilities listed. Then the rules for every ability that units in the codex have is listed in alphabetical order. Then wargear. Then the rules for the abilities of the wargear. Text is repeated as little as possible and you can fit the codex on hardware from 1980. The downside is that trying to get a handle on points-efficiency without having the rules next to the points is a pain. The second problem is that the codex is a lot harder to use until you have memorized how all the abilities in the codex work. The datasheets, with USRs printed in full on every datasheet model is the most beginner-friendly option.
Eldarsif wrote: I don't mind having USRs if it codifies the rules writing. I, however, would not want GW to skimp on the datasheet text in favor of a single word USR. I still have bad memories of the USR system from 6th and 7th where you had to keep the core rulebook with you and the relevant pages tabbed because a Blood Angel has a slightly different rule from another.
USR's are actually what exist to prevent "blood angels having slightly different rule from another".
It's when you have dataspecific rules you get those. There's no quarantee anymore that bolter in the hand of a tactical marine is same as bolter in hand of a devastator.
there are 2 different things here, USRs and what GW is doing with USRs
USRs are good, it does not matter if they are in each Datasheet or not, those are names for simple universal rules that people who play for a while will remember
no need to write in each datasheet what Fly is doing
What GW has done in the past is something different as they like to mix in fluff text with rules and name rules according to fluff different for each faction
hence re-printing the USR on each datasheet will result in different names with the same text and different text with the same wording
they were not able to just copy&paste USR text in the past and doubt the will be able to do it now
Except what we have now is not USR. As there's rules that are almost but not quite the same it's not by definition USR.
What we got is what players wanted pre-8th. Bespoke rules. So now we have no right to even expect rules to be same because whole point of bespoke rules is rules can differ...
Prediction for 10th: It will last approximately three years and people will still be having this exact same argument in the "predictions for 11th" thread in 2026.
The point of universal rules is so that they're not repeated over and over again across the same book.
A Melta weapon should just have "Melta" in its rules. You shouldn't reprint the Melta rules every time a Melta weapon appears on a unit card.
Meet in the middle? The BRB has two pages of USRs over the two pages of the book after the index; for arguments sake let's say that there's 20 USRs.
Then your datasheet has the relevant USRs on them. Let's say this particular unit has Deep Strike, Melta and Resilient 1 (Resilient being a reduce damage by x rule) printed on it.
Then the codex has the same two pages from the BRB with the USRs at the back of the book. Even if this army doesn't use USRs x or y, they're printed in the back for convenience.
So datasheets have less clutter, but you know exactly where all of your USRs are and can literally just flip whatever book you have with you to its last pages for reference.
I like that during this discourse the issue of GWs codex formatting hasn't been mentioned. I can't be the only person that's noticed that the back cover summery page(s) got removed or that there is no clear delineation between where one unit type ends and another starts or that units aren't organised by alphabetical order within their categories?
Someone mentioned having to have the core rule book next to you with a tab on the USR section like it was a bad thing but I much prefer that over flipping around 20 pages of badly organised unit entries to find a single sentence.
Sim-Life wrote: I like that during this discourse the issue of GWs codex formatting hasn't been mentioned. I can't be the only person that's noticed that the back cover summery page(s) got removed or that there is no clear delineation between where one unit type ends and another starts or that units aren't organised by alphabetical order within their categories?
Someone mentioned having to have the core rule book next to you with a tab on the USR section like it was a bad thing but I much prefer that over flipping around 20 pages of badly organised unit entries to find a single sentence.
It's as if GW lacks an editor to go over formating and writing.
Sim-Life wrote: I like that during this discourse the issue of GWs codex formatting hasn't been mentioned. I can't be the only person that's noticed that the back cover summery page(s) got removed or that there is no clear delineation between where one unit type ends and another starts or that units aren't organised by alphabetical order within their categories?
Someone mentioned having to have the core rule book next to you with a tab on the USR section like it was a bad thing but I much prefer that over flipping around 20 pages of badly organised unit entries to find a single sentence.
It's as if GW lacks an editor to go over formating and writing.
But that is honestly nothing new.
They have at least three distinct problems in this regard:
- they wildly change codex design for no apparent reason and without unifying design guidelines
- they make no clear distinction between 'fluff' writers and 'technical' writers
- they lack editing and oversight over what is written
The combination of these leads to convoluted rules, rules that are all over the place, unorganized volumes, rules that should work the same not doing so because of differences and ambiguities in writing, rules working differentely than the writers intended, a high numbers of 'misprints' or omissions, day 0 FAQs and so on.
AnomanderRake wrote: Prediction for 10th: It will last approximately three years and people will still be having this exact same argument in the "predictions for 11th" thread in 2026.
As game is so simple it doesn't take time to master it got to spend time some other way around
Sim-Life wrote: I like that during this discourse the issue of GWs codex formatting hasn't been mentioned. I can't be the only person that's noticed that the back cover summery page(s) got removed or that there is no clear delineation between where one unit type ends and another starts or that units aren't organised by alphabetical order within their categories?
Someone mentioned having to have the core rule book next to you with a tab on the USR section like it was a bad thing but I much prefer that over flipping around 20 pages of badly organised unit entries to find a single sentence.
It's as if GW lacks an editor to go over formating and writing.
But that is honestly nothing new.
They have at least three distinct problems in this regard:
- they wildly change codex design for no apparent reason and without unifying design guidelines
- they make no clear distinction between 'fluff' writers and 'technical' writers
- they lack editing and oversight over what is written
The combination of these leads to convoluted rules, rules that are all over the place, unorganized volumes, rules that should work the same not doing so because of differences and ambiguities in writing, rules working differentely than the writers intended, a high numbers of 'misprints' or omissions, day 0 FAQs and so on.
And all of those would be resolved by an editor going over and asigning tasks aswell as organising propperly the wirters with their task aswell as firstly being able to create a basis ruleset aswell as an USR set that is adaptable for all factions.
Hence why 30k is in that regard a superior ruleset, because it has or atleast looks to have had that unified basegame vision for the ruleset.
Eldarsif wrote: I don't mind having USRs if it codifies the rules writing. I, however, would not want GW to skimp on the datasheet text in favor of a single word USR. I still have bad memories of the USR system from 6th and 7th where you had to keep the core rulebook with you and the relevant pages tabbed because a Blood Angel has a slightly different rule from another.
USR's are actually what exist to prevent "blood angels having slightly different rule from another".
It's when you have dataspecific rules you get those. There's no quarantee anymore that bolter in the hand of a tactical marine is same as bolter in hand of a devastator.
USRs in GW games prevent nothing. It's why I mention 6th and 7th.
VladimirHerzog wrote: USRs should be both written out in the book and in the datasheet, just like that :
Spoiler:
How many books does this game have? I'm unfamiliar with the methods in which it presents its rules?
Either way, I continue to disagree completely.
The point of universal rules is so that they're not repeated over and over again across the same book.
A Melta weapon should just have "Melta" in its rules. You shouldn't reprint the Melta rules every time a Melta weapon appears on a unit card.
The Core Rules (free on Atomic Mass Game's Site) Have a glossary in the back, but all units and thier wargear is on card. Unit cards (which is in the picture) and wargear/unit/skill cards (much smaller, almost like mini playing cards in size) both have the special rules listed on them and is the only way to get a particular units stats. There's no codexes, but every box of models has the relevant unit card and the (in theory) most common upgrades. Clone troopers for example, contain: the Phase 1 Trooper unit card, 4 troopers, the upgrade cards for an extra trooper, a Gatling gun trooper, and a rifle trooper, models for all three of those, cards for smoke Grenades and Electrobinoculars, and a token sheet with all necessary tokens.
Everything you need to know, especially once you've memorized the core mechanics, is on the cards for you.
H.B.M.C. wrote: How many books does this game have? I'm unfamiliar with the methods in which it presents its rules?
One book : the core rules.
and then every faction has cards for its units/upgrades
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H.B.M.C. wrote: So the main way they present the rules is via cards. Makes sense to put all the rules on them then.
The same cannot be said for a Codex.
not to derail the conversation towards a new topic but i also don't understand why GW doesnt do unit cards, they do it for AoS and it helps a lot. It's much easier to have cards in front of you than to need to shuffle through a codex and see what the various datasheet are.
VladimirHerzog wrote: not to derail the conversation towards a new topic but i also don't understand why GW doesnt do unit cards, they do it for AoS and it helps a lot. It's much easier to have cards in front of you than to need to shuffle through a codex and see what the various datasheet are.
Well, one of the advantages of USRs is that it makes cards much easier to format, though obviously that isn't strictly necessary.
But really, this gets back to what I was saying before, which is that the 40K team writes rules as if they just need to work in abstract rather than actually played on the tabletop. No quick reference sheets, no unit cards, no all-in-one summary of stats on the last page of the book, no summaries of abilities, stratagems vomited up as a giant list without even organized by when you can use them, mechanics like ka'tahs where they expect you to create the necessary play aids yourself- even with changing nothing about how the rules are currently written, there is so much you could do to make it easier to actually play.
Even OnePageRules, a family of games written by like one dude, has an online army builder that lets you export the statlines and wargear of your whole army with relevant USRs reproduced in full at the bottom. Does GW just expect we're all using their app?
Even OnePageRules, a family of games written by like one dude, has an online army builder that lets you export the statlines and wargear of your whole army with relevant USRs reproduced in full at the bottom. Does GW just expect we're all using their app?
Agreed on all of what you said.
And yeah, the fact that OPR's app is made by 3-4 guys IIRC and is THAT much better than GW's is baffling and puts them to shame quite frankly
Tyel wrote: Again, I'm sorry but I just don't see it.
I've never had someone go but what does "Wraithbone Form" mean? What does "Armoured Exoskeleton" mean?
You read the datasheet once, go "okay this unit has -1 damage" and move on. I don't find that complicated. Its not rendered less complicated by just having Unnatural Resilience as an ability - that you either need to know or look up.
Yes, I'm sure a lot of the basic rules across the game could be turned into USRs. But every time this comes up we go through and find there just aren't that many of them - and they aren't the ones players have problems with. Yes there are many rules that could just be turned into deep strike. Or infiltrate. Or FNP. Or even things like reroll 1s to hit or to wound, exploding 6s to hit, no rerolls and so on. The community tends to give these abilities names based on the first time we see them or most common occurance.
I feel complexity comes from things stacking - i.e. Ad Mech which can have up to half a dozen rules effecting how you unit shoots. Making it so that unit would be acting under 6 keywords doesn't change that computation. You need to know the rules - and keep track of whether they are in effect. Or you have rules - typically the purity bonuses, but also things like stratagems etc - which are just not intuitive and so anyone not playing frequently has to check and read and possibly debate whether they are understanding it correctly and should use it now or later etc.
I don't want to go back to a system of Zealot and Crusader, Furious Charge and Hammer of Wrath, Relentless and Slow and Purposeful or say Rage and Rampage.
I don't disagree that a system of USRs can work. Lets pick something like Bolt Action (which is a game I don't know as well as 40k, but know a bit). That's a USR driven ruleset. But +/- it works because infantry are 3 types of infantry - and vehicles are also sort of grouped up, as are largely the weapons. I'm simplifying it a bit but it doesn't have a 1000 (or whatever the total is) units, and maybe 1000 different weapon profiles that all sort of want to be bespoke as 40k does.
Now you can say "yeah, that's the problem" - but I don't see GW changing that.
Adding say "Deepstrike" as a keyword and putting on the units which effectively have that rule may make the game a bit cleaner - but that wouldn't change the issues people who find 9th too complicated have. Or at least I don't think so anyway.
I think GW just needs to be consistent with their rules. Like you said - it's not the deepstrikes of the world.
Name them whatever you want. Just make sure the rule that does fight first is worded the same for all rules of a similar nature. Using different language each time is what kills it.
And yeah, the fact that OPR's app is made by 3-4 guys IIRC and is THAT much better than GW's is baffling and puts them to shame quite frankly
OPR is waaaaay simpler. The logic required to make an army builder for GW rules is pretty sketchy when you start considering all the exceptions.
GW's app has gotten better, but they're still falling behind on keeping it updated. Probably because of constant logic changes with army building ( *cough* AoO )
kodos wrote: players wanted less bloat as well
thing is, players always say they want a less complex ruleset with "fluffy" bespoke rules
yet what most mean is less complicated and more clear rules were units act on the table according to the background (and not the opposite)
Of course people have different impressions and interpretations of what is the background. Specially when it comes to factions that they are less familiar with.
not to derail the conversation towards a new topic but i also don't understand why GW doesnt do unit cards, they do it for AoS and it helps a lot. It's much easier to have cards in front of you than to need to shuffle through a codex and see what the various datasheet are.
Daedalus81 wrote: OPR is waaaaay simpler. The logic required to make an army builder for GW rules is pretty sketchy when you start considering all the exceptions.
GW's app has gotten better, but they're still falling behind on keeping it updated. Probably because of constant logic changes with army building ( *cough* AoO )
The guys behind the Battlescribe data files made it work for 40K, and they're volunteers.
But what I'm specifically praising about OPR is that you press one button and you get all the datasheets for your chosen units, with the wargear and upgrades you selected baked in, and a consolidated USR reference at the bottom showing just the rules relevant to the units you've taken, all formatted for printing. I can give GW a little bit of slack on the complexity of army-building (again though: Battlescribe manages it), but where the GW app just gives you an army list, the OPR listbuilder gives you a complete and concise printable gameplay reference for your army that eliminates the need to refer back to the actual army list (codex) or your phone in gameplay.
This- along with coherent USR schemes and avoiding impenetrable legalese- is the sort of thing you get from a group that has playtested their own game and is trying to make it easier to play, rather than just meeting the bare minimum of playable and letting the community come up with play aids for themselves.
But what I'm specifically praising about OPR is that you press one button and you get all the datasheets for your chosen units, with the wargear and upgrades you selected baked in, and a consolidated USR reference at the bottom showing just the rules relevant to the units you've taken, all formatted for printing.
Here, have a visual example so people know what you mean (any ability thats underlined can be hovered on to see its full text)
Fresh Rumor: from Kenny and Wyatt's Long War stream - GW gets into STL's for bits. Mainly for their FW stuff, as none of it seems to be made properly anymore. Parts dont fit, (Arms on FW dreadnaught) models are complete garbage (Bloodthirster's 10" whip) or kits being sent out incomplete.
No recently it's started seeping into GW. The tank with no bottom? Mono-pose models like Angron with just flat out bad molds (armor Buthernails don't match up with nails on head).
It's getting worse and worse by the day. Big multi-hundred dollar kits like Belakor being just....bad.
OPR is waaaaay simpler. The logic required to make an army builder for GW rules is pretty sketchy when you start considering all the exceptions.
Two responses co present themselves:
1: Some units in OPR have similar restrictions and exceptions in their wargear choices. GW just has more units. Doing it right just takes work.
2: Better yet, GW could just junk all the garbage lawyery wargear restrictions and provide more permissive wargear lists like the days of old. That would remove considerable complication.
1: Some units in OPR have similar restrictions and exceptions in their wargear choices. GW just has more units. Doing it right just takes work.
actually, units have the same exceptions for the most part considering the goal of OPR is to be fully compatible with people's existing 40k/AoS forces.
Or am i mistaken
(let's exclude squad size from the comparison since termis/devastators come in trios so they're actually playable and not super costly)
1: Some units in OPR have similar restrictions and exceptions in their wargear choices. GW just has more units. Doing it right just takes work.
actually, units have the same exceptions for the most part considering the goal of OPR is to be fully compatible with people's existing 40k/AoS forces.
Or am i mistaken
(let's exclude squad size from the comparison since termis/devastators come in trios so they're actually playable and not super costly)
It's not fully compatible, there are some oddities (like a "Whirlwind" in OPR builds off a generic "Battle Tank" chassis that has sponson weapons). I don't know what the decision around that is. Brevity? Legal reasons? No idea.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: No recently it's started seeping into GW. The tank with no bottom? Mono-pose models like Angron with just flat out bad molds (armor Buthernails don't match up with nails on head).
It's getting worse and worse by the day. Big multi-hundred dollar kits like Belakor being just....bad.
this is also nothing new
Just that more people acknowledged that expensive GW kits can be bad as well
No one talked about the bad mould lines from the Kill Team Orks but instead reviewer who pointed that out were called haters or lazy for no removing them
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: No recently it's started seeping into GW. The tank with no bottom? Mono-pose models like Angron with just flat out bad molds (armor Buthernails don't match up with nails on head).
It's getting worse and worse by the day. Big multi-hundred dollar kits like Belakor being just....bad.
this is also nothing new
Just that more people acknowledged that expensive GW kits can be bad as well
No one talked about the bad mould lines from the Kill Team Orks but instead reviewer who pointed that out were called haters or lazy for no removing them
Oh I complained about those orky mold lines.
I just did it at the local shop as I was cleaning the damnrd things.
(to the point that they had to break their "T9 is Forbidden" rule), and screwing up the mechanics for things like flamers and Blast Weapons, and sticking with that garbage. Bully for them.
