I keep hearing tales of three-year cycles and needed patches to 10th edition.
What, in your mind, does 11th Edition need? Does it need a complete rewrite? Should it just be a 10.5 with all the errata and updates compiled into one source?
Or should it be something entirely new? Perhaps a major Canon change or playstyle is introduced, or in the case of Aircraft, reintroduced.
And do you think GW will continue what it started with 10th edition and give out the Core Rules for free?
What 11th needs is for the entire 10th edition rulebook to be put into a shredder, then for the resulting paper to be fed to pigs, then for those pigs to be fired into the sun.
Well, based on recent editions, GW's pattern seems to be to have even-numbered editions be overhauls, then for odd-numbered editions to refine some of the introduced concepts while also adding a lot of bloat.
So if that "pattern" (limited datapoints) holds, 11th will start as 10.5, but then they'll either flood the game with a ton of poorly tested detachments or else add a new layer of rules/buffs that use unpolished and poorly balanced mechanics. Eventually the edition will bloat up so that we're sick of the power creep/bloat, and they'll market 12th edition as a super balanced edition. Which they'll sort of make true by somehow removing even more options/customization.
So my half-joking prediction is that 11th edition will be 10.5 with a boat load of new detachments or a new layer of buffs, and then 12th will be an overhaul with army construction that looks a lot like Boarding Actions.
What I'd *like* would be an overhaul that values balance but also focuses much more heavily on narrative missions/mechanics. So less standing in magic circles, and more taking out the weapon batteries on an enemy base. Less "your jetbikes reroll to-hit rolls) and more "your jetbikes can move really fast/move after shooting."
Basically, I'm more interested in 40k as a system for mashing action figures together than as turn-based E-sports. I just want *enough* balance that my opponent and I can have a close match regardless of which action figures we're mashing.
I'd like to see them return some equipment costs, but I'm not sure if they will. It wouldn't be on everything, just on the heavy gear that actually makes a difference rather than the old bolt pistol vs. laspistol debate.
I'd like for new Crusade content to not invalidate, but rather expand and compliment 10th's Crusade content.
And I'd like to see chosen psychic powers again. I have been convinced we don't necessarily need a phase. But every psyker of the same type being required to have exactly the same psychic powers as every other psyker of the same type is just... Dull, boring, and stupid game design.
Wyldhunt wrote: Well, based on recent editions, GW's pattern seems to be to have even-numbered editions be overhauls, then for odd-numbered editions to refine some of the introduced concepts while also adding a lot of bloat.
So if that "pattern" (limited datapoints) holds, 11th will start as 10.5, but then they'll either flood the game with a ton of poorly tested detachments or else add a new layer of rules/buffs that use unpolished and poorly balanced mechanics. Eventually the edition will bloat up so that we're sick of the power creep/bloat, and they'll market 12th edition as a super balanced edition. Which they'll sort of make true by somehow removing even more options/customization.
So my half-joking prediction is that 11th edition will be 10.5 with a boat load of new detachments or a new layer of buffs, and then 12th will be an overhaul with army construction that looks a lot like Boarding Actions.
What I'd *like* would be an overhaul that values balance but also focuses much more heavily on narrative missions/mechanics. So less standing in magic circles, and more taking out the weapon batteries on an enemy base. Less "your jetbikes reroll to-hit rolls) and more "your jetbikes can move really fast/move after shooting."
Basically, I'm more interested in 40k as a system for mashing action figures together than as turn-based E-sports. I just want *enough* balance that my opponent and I can have a close match regardless of which action figures we're mashing.
Yee.
PenitentJake wrote: I'd like to see them return some equipment costs, but I'm not sure if they will. It wouldn't be on everything, just on the heavy gear that actually makes a difference rather than the old bolt pistol vs. laspistol debate.
I'd like for new Crusade content to not invalidate, but rather expand and compliment 10th's Crusade content.
And I'd like to see chosen psychic powers again. I have been convinced we don't necessarily need a phase. But every psyker of the same type being required to have exactly the same psychic powers as every other psyker of the same type is just... Dull, boring, and stupid game design.
I'd like that to not be limited to Psykers.
Psykers should have several powers to choose from. Captains should have several buffs to choose from. Heck, Battleline units should have several ways to engage with the game, based on choices made with them.
Edit: What I expect? A modest clean-up of 10th, and then more stuff added.
Looking at it from a very casual perspective, the rules are fine, tidy up the places where they've frayed and give it some Wax On, Wax Off, job done. I have no idea what GWmight do, but I'd like to see list-building return to a more flexible model - doesn't have to be a complete free-for-all, but for discussion's sake let's say the norm will be 'this unit consists of 5-10 models, each one costs X points', still somewhat constrained and predictable (and therefore less likely to cause min-max mayhem), but if you bought a box of ten Interociters and converted one to a Captain, you can still field the remaining 9 as a unit. Or you tried converting one and screwed it up. Or you've got a squad of five and the free mini of the month is another one, now you've got a squad of six. Or just let me tinker with my list, rather than basically having to start from scratch if I want to try a new unit that's not exactly the same points cost as the one I'm dropping.
A proper ally system would be great too. Marines alongside Sisters, or Guard and Eldar, or Orks and Genestealers - screw it, anyone and anyone, do whatever tinkering it takes to make the detachment rules not broken when you have two on the table at once, and let me worry about explaining it.
On program on warhammer + they spoke to a rules guy and he mentioned wargear cost and they are looking at brining some aspect of it back, he talked about how some units have some war gear options that are flat out better than others and said they are looking at charging for those but only those, think he used some sisters of battle unit with multi meltas as the example, armed with them they would cost more than not. So not as granular as before thank god because I hated that and prefer it as is but it might encourage other builds if they are cheaper.
Im really enjoying 10th, most playable edition since 2nd for me, most fun too. Just tweaks is all that’s needed for me. Even the codexs should carry over.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The problem with allies, as fluffy and fun as they are they open the game up to certain types of players trying to exploit weird combos and using it only to be WAAC.
If they brought it in as part of a narrative supplement so couldn’t be used to abuse weird combos it’d be ok.
PenitentJake wrote: I'd like to see them return some equipment costs, but I'm not sure if they will. It wouldn't be on everything, just on the heavy gear that actually makes a difference rather than the old bolt pistol vs. laspistol debate.
I'd like for new Crusade content to not invalidate, but rather expand and compliment 10th's Crusade content.
And I'd like to see chosen psychic powers again. I have been convinced we don't necessarily need a phase. But every psyker of the same type being required to have exactly the same psychic powers as every other psyker of the same type is just... Dull, boring, and stupid game design.
I'd be all for lowering the overall squad costs and then having to pay for heavy weapons again. But, I think it should be a flat cost, regardless of heavy weapon chosen.
Same, with a psychic powers; give us a few choices to customize, without a psychic phase.
I've said it before (to mixed reviews): the D6 needs to be replaced. It's too limiting for the scale of this game. I feel swapping to D8's, D10's or even better D12's would do this game more justice.
I expect it'll be an iteration on 10e rather than a departure.
It's absolutely nuts that they are on a fixed 3 year cycle now. In a decade we'll be on 14th edition. I don't know any other game with so many editions.
3 years isn’t enough time for them to get the codexs out. If they have to it should be 5 years minimum or maybe an update after 3 but keep the codex until the next edition.
PenitentJake wrote:I'd like to see them return some equipment costs, but I'm not sure if they will. It wouldn't be on everything, just on the heavy gear that actually makes a difference rather than the old bolt pistol vs. laspistol debate.
The more I sit with the idea, the more I think they should just have optional wargear "add-ons" that you can pay points for.
So a squad of Devastators costs 60 points. (Or whatever.)
* Add 5 bolter boys for +50 points.
* Let the sergeant swap out his gear for +10 points.
* Let 4 guys swap their bolters for the mediocre special weapons for +20 points OR let 4 guys swap their bolters for good special weapons for +40 points.
(Don't get hung up on the exact points values. Just throwing numbers out their for the sake of the example.)
JNAProductions wrote:I'd like that to not be limited to Psykers.
Psykers should have several powers to choose from.
Captains should have several buffs to choose from.
Heck, Battleline units should have several ways to engage with the game, based on choices made with them.
Heck yeah! I really liked the exarch powers and pivotal roles from 8th/9th. They were a good way to add flexibility to how you built units without being reliant on bits. I was hoping GW would expand the concept to more units/armies, but instead they just removed those options completely.
Lord Clinto wrote:I've said it before (to mixed reviews): the D6 needs to be replaced. It's too limiting for the scale of this game. I feel swapping to D8's, D10's or even better D12's would do this game more justice.
To what end though? Adding granularity only matters if you do something meaningful with that granularity. Squeezing sororitas ballistics skill between that of guardsmen and marines is fine, but it's also mostly splitting hairs. (Less than a 9% difference in how often a die roll succeeds if we're talking about switching to d12s.) The only thing that springs to mind that added granularity would facilitate is to bring back stacking to-hit mods because it would let you put a -2 or -3 penalty on something without making the math go completely bonkers.
Andykp wrote: The problem with allies, as fluffy and fun as they are they open the game up to certain types of players trying to exploit weird combos and using it only to be WAAC.
Yeah well, that's a problem for the game designers - pay a points cost for the option to include an ally, calibrated to game size and how useful each ally might be in patching your base army's shortcomings, let an ally have their army rule but not a detachment rule, maybe they only get an army rule if they're a 'proper' force (1 HQ 2 Battleline) and single squads get nothing, I dunno. In this theoretical scenario I'm sitting in the fancy office telling my lackeys to go back to their cubicles and figure out the details.
Besides fluff and fun though, I feel like there's real buying value to allies - right now if you're not willing to collect 1000pts (or more likely 2000) you may as well not bother with anything outside your own range, unless it's purely for paint and display. Maybe allies remove the incentive for some buyers to collect that 1K, but it also opens the field up to everyone who's not that flush with cash to have a tabletop use for any one-off purchase that catches their fancy. Even if it's not the most clinically effective tabletop use, just being able to field the squad's a reason to buy - I feel like that's worth chaining the devs to their desks until they iron out the kinks (except for the EC, we like our kinks thank you).
Andykp wrote: The problem with allies, as fluffy and fun as they are they open the game up to certain types of players trying to exploit weird combos and using it only to be WAAC.
Yeah well, that's a problem for the game designers - pay a points cost for the option to include an ally, calibrated to game size and how useful each ally might be in patching your base army's shortcomings, let an ally have their army rule but not a detachment rule, maybe they only get an army rule if they're a 'proper' force (1 HQ 2 Battleline) and single squads get nothing, I dunno. In this theoretical scenario I'm sitting in the fancy office telling my lackeys to go back to their cubicles and figure out the details.
Probably not the direction to go. You're talking about asking the designers to come up with custom points costs for every possible faction a datasheet could be taken in. And that's not factoring in the context of potentially making that unit even stronger by mixing in a second allied datasheet potentially from a third faction.
Basically, allies outside of very tightly controlled contexts (like the ally detachments we have in 10th) is just inviting imbalance and creating a ton more scenarios that designers have to try to balance around. A more managable solution is probably to just makes allies a thing in Crusade/narrative games. So you can give people the option to tell the stories they want, but you also acknowledge that taking allies might result in games that are a bit less balanced than usual.
Besides fluff and fun though, I feel like there's real buying value to allies - right now if you're not willing to collect 1000pts (or more likely 2000) you may as well not bother with anything outside your own range, unless it's purely for paint and display. Maybe allies remove the incentive for some buyers to collect that 1K, but it also opens the field up to everyone who's not that flush with cash to have a tabletop use for any one-off purchase that catches their fancy. Even if it's not the most clinically effective tabletop use, just being able to field the squad's a reason to buy - I feel like that's worth chaining the devs to their desks until they iron out the kinks (except for the EC, we like our kinks thank you).
Agreed here. I picked up a bunch of models in 7th and 8th because I wanted to splash them into larger forces. Said units have been on the shelf for a while as a result.
Wyldhunt wrote: You're talking about asking the designers to come up with custom points costs for every possible faction a datasheet could be taken in.
I was thinking simpler - your codex has a list of available allied forces, and the points cost you pay to attach something from that force. Doesn't matter which squad you choose, you just pay, say, 50pts to have the option of taking Sororitas, and then you pay the normal points cost for whatever those Sororitas units are. Imperial Guard offer more potential benefits to whatever your base army is? 100pts if you want any allied Guards then. At present there're, what, 29 armies? Shouldn't be that arduous to come up with 28 point costs while you're writing a new codex, and just multiply them up from 1K to 2K and so on. It's not like GW are shy of just tossing numbers into the wild and adjusting them later when they see what's sinking or swimming. I'm just inventing this off the top of my head, all I mean by it is I don't think it's a gamebreaking problem.
A continued dumbing-down of the rules. We've now gone from actual upgrades to units (better guns, wargear, etc.) factoring into your points cost to simply being automatic free choices for a set cost. Why? Because GW cast the models with those choices. Will the next step be taking away choice entirely and dictating what your units have based on the re-worked sprues?
Here is your X-number squad of Y. They have Z weapons because that's what everyone always took and modeled them as, so now those are all we've put on the sprues. BTW, we've increased the cost 50% because we did your thinking for you. Do you have older models with different stuff? Too bad. Welcome to the Squat/Slann army era again.
The bitterness in my tone comes from having lived though this multiple times, and the resignation in my voice from wondering why I or anyone else would keep doing so. It's like battered spouse syndrome at this point.
If only anyone else, at any point, could come up with a seriously competitive product. I'm also wildly gun-shy of investing in the myriad of "fresh, new, better" miniature games that show up for two years then fold, dying on the vine. That's just money thrown in a hole you dug, peed on, then set on fire. I've done that a few times now. Wargods, Confrontation, Dark Age...
At least if I'm going to waste money and time, I can do it with other like-minded people.
Every attempt to 'simplify' the game seems to make it more bloated and complex (removing stats from a sheet, but then adding actual special rules to re-compensate for missing granularity that was once done with an easy number; removing options but then having to compensate by having entire new profiles for variations), and strategems also slowing it down.
While I don't see them doing this, the correct solution is to go back to the old full stat line: M, WS, BS, S, T, W, I, A, Ld; and old wargear selection etc. and eject things like strategems, or if stategems absolutely must stay, make them cost hefty points so while they add their own bloat, they remove models from the army meaning armies with strategems are smaller and thus go through their turn faster.
Not a fan of allies really outside of explicitly fluffy combinations (probably determined by detachment rules that bring their own limitations). I think 8th edition soup was impossible to balance, but also severely undermined the flavour of the various factions that could all be merged together.
Don't even really want points for wargear back. I think some optionality would be nice (note DE=none etc). But while you can mock the bolt pistol vs laspistol debate, it kind of applies all the way down. Unclear the game had better balance when a heavy bolter was 10 points, a multimelta was 20 etc. What matters is if the unit with heavy bolters has a different function to the one with multimeltas - which is usually best covered by rules rather than just being a bit cheaper. There's no point having it cheaper if you still never take it because heavy bolters are a bit pointless outside of the "massively buffed up Heavy Bolters" detachment. Having some sort of shared points total to aim at should inform you how good the rules need to be.
I'd like a bit of variability in psychic powers - mainly so you can bring multiples of the same character and they aren't just clones. Arguably this could apply to character buffs. But I guess if you were picking both from a pool, there's a danger you turn a sea of characters into functionally interchangeable pieces.
I guess what I'd find interesting (although viewed with concern) would be changes to scoring. I mean some critics/haters rightly observe that we have been playing "stand on the circles" (and variants thereof) for many years now. I have no desire to go back to end of game scoring - or the often badly thought through missions of the past. But feel like some sort of shakeup might be in order. It would need curating (by faction and detachment) - but perhaps keep trying to make battleline units more key to scoring.
Well, ideally 11th ed will be a return to form with list-building and unit compositions that actually make sense and matters instead of just getting special weapons and abilities for free.
What we will probably get is an even more bland game where you can just use any weapon profile at any time without actually needing to include it in the list, army compositions are locked behind cookie cutter detachments where you have to buy whatever gak GW wants to peddle that month.
The only unit that actually has some degree of customization and focus is your leader unit because GW played LoL and thought it was a good game. As such, missions will be more character focused, with characters being the only ones who can take objectives and having a lot of special rules and deal the most damage.
Because if you can just take any weapon for free and wound allocation doesn't matter, then do you really need to specify having such a weapon in the unit?
Why go through the hassle of making a list when you can just let GW decide for you?
Why worry about outfitting, modeling and painting your rank and file when you can just focus on whatever overly detailed, overpriced and overpowered centerpiece GW wants you to buy that month? So much easier to just ignore 90% of your army composition and just paint and gear up one guy.
Why bother worrying about tactical missions when you can just roll dice and forge the narrative with your totally-original-donut-steel munchkin of a character?
For people that start playing 40K in 11th, it’ll be the best edition ever. They’ll likely look back at it for most, if not all their wargaming life with rose-coloured nostalgia and fondly remember it as the best version of 40K ever, probably overlooking some of its issues and confounding rules-quality with the joy of playing and discovering it for the first time.
For old curmudgeons who have similarly rose-coloured nostalgia for older editions, it will be further evidence of GW’s “decline”, simply because it’ll obviously move further away from older paradigms of game design.
For most people, it’ll be a cool edition to play 40K, probably it’ll have some flaws, but also some neat innovations and cool miniatures.
It is going to be like 9th, was to 8th ed. I expect more cross game polination from AoS. Maybe we will see psychic powers as models, and we will definitly see more faction terrain.
Aside of that same sesonal system, same pretending that narrative/open is a thing just as much as match played. More terrain wierdness and obligatory jerk knee reactions to "big" problems from 2 years before, that in a new setting no longer are a problem. Marine will get more of their line turned and split in to primaris, but there will still be stuff left for 12th ed still to do. A few factions will get an update (aka 2-3 units, 2-3 characters), a faction or two may get a refresh, everyone else will get the new codex+HQ you probably didn't want or need.
Prices will go up and I think it is high time to start removing some of the older primaris boxes to replace them with new controversial ones. Like lets say a box of intercessor which can now sport a hellblaster, las talon, pyro option. Starting an out cry from all the people that bought their intercessor when those things were not an option, respons from others "just buy box of X, Y and Z" and the obligatory "but my [insert unimportant non marine faction] only got one model why do marines get 10 new" etc.
I don't think it'll be anything other than a tidy up, but I want them to really think about terrainand how to try and get more game balance from something other than LoS blocking L's.
I am aware that you can do that now, but it requires such careful care and balance on the set up.
Assuming the just want to improve the current game and not just cause an upheaval for sales sake, there are a few things that should be changed:
- Clean up core rules. A bunch of things have clearly not not worked well as written and were fixed with so much errata, they now look like a looted wagon. Devastating wounds, towering, "shooting as if it were the shooting phase", indirect fire, flying, pivoting, actions, just to name a few. Much of that errata is wonky for the sole reason of having to fit a square peg into a round hole. The game that's currently being played doesn't have a whole lot to do with what was printed in the leviathan books.
- New keywords for things we have in almost every army, likes sticky objectives or
- Improve terrain rules, so ruins aren't the only valid terrain. A table covered in pipelines, barricades, industrial terrain and craters should be just as valid as one covered in L-shaped ruins.
- Get rid of TLoS, ffs. We dropped it as a house rule in favor of just drawing lines like KT does, and it's just a all upside change. Heck, 40k even has the rules defined to support it right now.
- Do something about aircraft. Either make them all hover or turn them into AoS Endless Spells, I don't care. Current rules simply don't work.
- After being in favor of the new psykers originally, I changed my mind. Psykers should be powerful, versatile and explode when something goes wrong. The game currently doesn't reflect that at all outside of former "warp charge 1" psykers. And no, choosing powers should stay dead. We all know everyone is going to chose the same ones every time anyways.
- I'd like another pass at the whole pile-in and engagement range topic. It still feels like a mess. Maybe just don't let units pile in and make the engagement range more generous instead?
- Battle shock needs slight tweaks. It both needs to be a bit more punishing (can no longer critical hit/wound? lose abilities?) and not automatically disappear when inflicted by an opponent's unit. I feel like it's almost where it should be.
- Sometimes upgrade should cost points, options should not. I'm fine with a base line smattering of special or heavy weapons being priced into the squads. I'm especially fine with marines no longer leaving all their plasma guns and sponsons at home so Brother Extrawound and his bolter squad can join them. I'm also fine with icons, power swords and bomb squigs no longer being optional. However, sometimes one option is a no downsides upgrade over another. Especially single models with multiple melee weapons, big guns on tanks/artillery or one of the many models where you have the choice between a lascannon and a heavy bolter. In some cases, GW has solved this issue by duplicating datasheets (daemon princes, space marine dreads, tau suits), but I feel like this solution doesn't scale well.
Yeah, that's about it. Many low hanging fruits to make the game vastly better. I would also prefer them not braking all the crusade content of the last two editions. Narrative gaming never had better support than it does now, it would be a shame to start from zero.
Given that it's nearly 2 years since 10th launched and I still don't have a codex for any of my 3 (!) armies I hope that a) 10th lasts more than 3 years, and b) that 11th isn't a re-write!
dreadblade wrote: Given that it's nearly 2 years since 10th launched and I still don't have a codex for any of my 3 (!) armies I hope that a) 10th lasts more than 3 years, and b) that 11th isn't a re-write!
I have to say, 3 years seems like a ridiculously short time to establish and flesh out an edition with a game of 40ks depth and size. I agree with those who say 5-6 years is far more reasonable.
Particularly with age, my mid-40s, 3 years takes about 5 minutes to pass.
Don't even really want points for wargear back. I think some optionality would be nice (note DE=none etc). But while you can mock the bolt pistol vs laspistol debate, it kind of applies all the way down. Unclear the game had better balance when a heavy bolter was 10 points, a multimelta was 20 etc. What matters is if the unit with heavy bolters has a different function to the one with multimeltas - which is usually best covered by rules rather than just being a bit cheaper. There's no point having it cheaper if you still never take it because heavy bolters are a bit pointless outside of the "massively buffed up Heavy Bolters" detachment. Having some sort of shared points total to aim at should inform you how good the rules need to be.
I'd say this is a symptom of typical GW piss-poor game design.
All you have to do is look one system over, to HH, to see a solid (not perfect by any means, but definitely 'proof of concept') example of how this could work.
HH 2.0 has many things which 40k abandoned, especially squads with flexible special weapon picks that are priced differently. The humble TSS is a troop choice which comes stock with all flamers, a short-range anti horde option. They can swap for free to all volkite chargers (a slightly longer range anti horde option which performs better against mid-range infantry such as marines), or pay points they can go all plasma / all melta, turning them into dangerous anti heavy-infantry / dreadnought, or straight up tank hunters. The more dangerous weapons can more than double the cost of the squad itself, and come with trade offs of their own. Changes in range, desired target, and even how much they cost are all important; a TSS with flamers or chargers is less dangerous as an all melta one but in turn their also less likely to die, where as the metal squad is paying 25 ppm and a much jucier target for good shooting / charge units to take down.
40k has previously, and absolutely could, implement this kind of thing. Giving weapons niches, even within the same niche when balanced by cost, is system agnostic and only dependent on conscious and intentional design. Which 40k will never see, because 40k hasn't been about tight rulesets or good design in nearly 20 years. These days it's all turn-and-burn baby.
If we're (realistic) wishlisting I pretty much agree with everything Jidmah mentioned. I'd add in 1) rules for units in transports not completely ceasing to exist 2) get rid of the weird alternating melee thing 3) make character models and bodyguards into a single unit in all respects 4) switch to two stratagems per detachment plus four per faction 5) remove the ban on duplicate weapons 6) crack down on rerolls and d3/d6 weapon characteristics.
That's basically a list of minor tweaks that wouldn't change the way the game plays substantially but would simplify the ruleset and speed up play. Conversely though it wouldn't fix many of the fundamental complaints people have about the game.
Jidmah wrote: And no, choosing powers should stay dead. We all know everyone is going to chose the same ones every time anyways.
This may be true for the majority of competitive players, because if the sole goal is winning, that creates the conditions for there being a "best option."
But what you have to remember is that they haven't actually written off narrative play yet, and that utility powers really shine in a narrative context where people are designing custom story-based missions. The other factor is that prescribed powers disincentivize multiple instances of the same model, which is a thing I HATE about prescribed powers. Let's say that my favourite armour type is Phobos, and I'm building an entire detachment of Phobos units. Let's further assume the Phobos Librarian is my favourite model of all time, and I want to include three of them, and to really push this over the top, lets say I did some cool but relatively simple conversions- head swaps, chapter/ company shoulderpads, maybe swapping an arm for a bionic equivalent from a different kit.
Why should all 3 of those psykers be forced to have the same psychic power, simply because competitive players trying to win or players that only field one Phobos Librarian are most likely to pick that power?
If you give me three options to choose from, even if most people would always pick one... So what? Use that power, forget the other two and just... you know, shut up about it, because it doesn't actually wreck the game for you if do that.
Whereas, providing a only single option actually does wreck the game for some subsets of player, however low a percentage of the total player base they may be.
Furthermore, I want to challenge the premise that people would only pick one. You can break powers down into some general categories:
And you can see how those roles might appeal to you in certain situations and how determining which of those is best depends on what you want/ need the unit to do. If my army is full of deadly shooters, then the ranged attack option is probably redundant, even if it is an objectively awesome attack. And just because I listed six categories doesn't mean I'm absolutely set on tables of 6 abilities (though that does facilitate randomization, which has a lot of appeal to a subset of players). Maybe you give everyone the option an attack (which will be melee for some units and ranged for others), a defense and a third option, which could be either a buff/ debuff/ heal. That allows you to randomize on a D3, and cuts away "bloat" while still providing some degree of differentiation/ choice/ player agency.
On the wishlisty side of things, if we're talking about evolving 10th then the one that always springs to mind is to decouple BATTLELINE from specific datasheets, make it a USR, and have detachments determine which units are BATTLELINE for that detachment.
I believe the USR would give +1OC and allow you to select twice as many units as normal.
I appreciate this would need to come with an errata document with tweaked datasheets for the units that currently have BATTLELINE (and to confirm what is BATTLELINE for existing detachments), but it's one thing I'd like to see in 11th.
Orkeosaurus wrote: 3) make character models and bodyguards into a single unit in all respects
I don't get this one, care to elaborate?
To be honest, I often whish a solo leader could just join a new unit, but I also remember what a rules nightmare this caused back in 5th-7th. Probably not worth it.
That's basically a list of minor tweaks that wouldn't change the way the game plays substantially but would simplify the ruleset and speed up play. Conversely though it wouldn't fix many of the fundamental complaints people have about the game.
Eh, I feel like many of those are more personal taste than actual problems, but I can see where you are coming from.
The big fundamental issues of 40k currently are scale/model count and IGOUGO. Addressing either would just be creating a new game, and we saw how well that worked with AoS. To put it in Douglas Adams' words, "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
There also is the issue of the community being split twice, once between people who play multiple times a week and those who play 1-2 times a month. The former group requires regular updates to keep happy and engaged, the later struggles to keep up with all the balance updates and often only get one or two games with any given game state. Not much that can be done about this outside making the updates easier to digest for casual players.
The other split is that there is essentially just two game modes now: one is objective deck based competitive games and the other is crusade. Those two game modes cover a lot of players, but both have some issues. The competitive game is widely criticized as bland and repetitive (and I do agree). Crusade's biggest issue is that while aimed at casual players, it requires non-casual amount of effort and skill to run. Speaking from experience here. You simply cannot run a single game of crusade. If your schedule is extremely packed, if you switch your army every game or if you play pick-up games, no crusade for you. Due to this, play groups are essentially locked into one or the other playstyle, which results in players being stuck with a type of game they don't actually enjoy. Many posts in this thread tell this tale. I'm not sure how to exactly tackle creating a single game crusade mode, but I'm sure it would make a lot of players happy.
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PenitentJake wrote: But what you have to remember is that they haven't actually written off narrative play yet, and that utility powers really shine in a narrative context where people are designing custom story-based missions. The other factor is that prescribed powers disincentivize multiple instances of the same model, which is a thing I HATE about prescribed powers. Let's say that my favourite armour type is Phobos, and I'm building an entire detachment of Phobos units. Let's further assume the Phobos Librarian is my favourite model of all time, and I want to include three of them, and to really push this over the top, lets say I did some cool but relatively simple conversions- head swaps, chapter/ company shoulderpads, maybe swapping an arm for a bionic equivalent from a different kit.
Then you should be playing a narrative game mode (=Crusade) and that game mode can provide you with battle honors and/or requisitions to customize your psykers. If that is valuable to you.. They could publish a whole narrative supplement with tables to roll on for your power that would put 7th edition to shame and it would be great. But it has no place in the base game.
Furthermore, I want to challenge the premise that people would only pick one.
Not going into detail here, but we did have that, in pretty every iteration possible. Categories don't matter, the most powerful powers win. Whether it's guide or invisibility or da jump or the spacewolf chasm thing one-shotting carnifexes. The game will be balanced against those most powerful options and not picking them is just handicapping yourself. There is no need to print another 4 options for the five people who claim to pick them regularly on the internet.
PenitentJake wrote: But what you have to remember is that they haven't actually written off narrative play yet, and that utility powers really shine in a narrative context where people are designing custom story-based missions. The other factor is that prescribed powers disincentivize multiple instances of the same model, which is a thing I HATE about prescribed powers. Let's say that my favourite armour type is Phobos, and I'm building an entire detachment of Phobos units. Let's further assume the Phobos Librarian is my favourite model of all time, and I want to include three of them, and to really push this over the top, lets say I did some cool but relatively simple conversions- head swaps, chapter/ company shoulderpads, maybe swapping an arm for a bionic equivalent from a different kit.
Then you should be playing a narrative game mode (=Crusade) and that game mode can provide you with battle honors and/or requisitions to customize your psykers. If that is valuable to you..
They could publish a whole narrative supplement with tables to roll on for your power that would put 7th edition to shame and it would be great.
But it has no place in the base game.
Sorry, PenitentJake, you're having fun wrong.
Taking choices because they're flavourful or thematic, or to try and give differentiate different characters in your army is verboten.
You are only permitted to take the absolute best option available, as confirmed by no les than 80% of Pro Tournament players.
Please report to your nearest Citadel Re-education Centre (TM) so you can be schooled in the only correct way to enjoy this game.
Not really sure its "having fun wrong" - but its an accurate observation that people overwhelmingly took the strongest powers and the weaker ones scarcely ever saw play.
The cry goes up "give powers a points cost them, so the weaker ones will be cheaper" - but that's rarely solved the problem. You are then left asking "is this points efficient, yes/no". Often the answer has been no. I mean to a degree we see that with enhancements now. Some are detachment defining - others are kind of trash, useful only for filling in 10 point gaps in your list.
Tyel wrote: Not really sure its "having fun wrong" - but its an accurate observation that people overwhelmingly took the strongest powers and the weaker ones scarcely ever saw play.
The cry goes up "give powers a points cost them, so the weaker ones will be cheaper" - but that's rarely solved the problem. You are then left asking "is this points efficient, yes/no". Often the answer has been no. I mean to a degree we see that with enhancements now. Some are detachment defining - others are kind of trash, useful only for filling in 10 point gaps in your list.
It's the same issue with a lot of wargear options in reality, much as people don't like to admit it.
Crusade's biggest issue is that while aimed at casual players, it requires non-casual amount of effort and skill to run. Speaking from experience here.
You simply cannot run a single game of crusade. If your schedule is extremely packed, if you switch your army every game or if you play pick-up games, no crusade for you. Due to this, play groups are essentially locked into one or the other playstyle, which results in players being stuck with a type of game they don't actually enjoy. Many posts in this thread tell this tale.
I'm not sure how to exactly tackle creating a single game crusade mode, but I'm sure it would make a lot of players happy.
Crusade isn't casual play. One of the biggest misunderstandings this community constantly makes is believing narrative play is casual play. It isn't. Narrative play requires a playgroup dedicated to narrative play, hell it requires a DM (or CM I guess).
Casual play is just pickup games, often with random people, and arguably casual play is more a variant of competitive play (which are games with random people, juts in a tournament setting). What used to be aimed at casual players was Open Play, but we all know how that ended.
To be honest I'm unsure if there is a way to make a random pickup friendly game mode that isn't just Matched Play.
I'd argue against Jidmahs point of there always being a strongest option that the same was true for formations and they were burned because of it - only to return as detachments in 9th/10th with several detachments being well and often played per faction (see his own breakdown for Orks). Don’t let the idea of choice die because of the most aweful editions of the game (6th/7th).
With the current system in place it may well be that some psychic powers would be less optimal or thematic in one detachment, but offer exactly what you need in another one.
Also, there's always the chance that what is considered strongest might not be useful in your own meta or playstyle - like I realized in 8th when warp time was all the rage in the internet and I took it a couple of games only to realize that it was totally useless in all the time
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I'd argue against Jidmahs point of there always being a strongest option that the same was true for formations and they were burned because of it - only to return as detachments in 9th/10th with several detachments being well and often played per faction (see his own breakdown for Orks). Don’t let the idea of choice die because of the most aweful editions of the game (6th/7th).
With the current system in place it may well be that some psychic powers would be less optimal or thematic in one detachment, but offer exactly what you need in another one.
Also, there's always the chance that what is considered strongest might not be useful in your own meta or playstyle - like I realized in 8th when warp time was all the rage in the internet and I took it a couple of games only to realize that it was totally useless in all the time
Yeah. "GW did it poorly" is not the same as a bad idea.
Tyran wrote: Crusade isn't casual play. One of the biggest misunderstandings this community constantly makes is believing narrative play is casual play. It isn't. Narrative play requires a playgroup dedicated to narrative play, hell it requires a DM (or CM I guess).
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I'm fairly sure the community understands that, that's why so many people are complaining. What I'm not so sure about is whether GamesWorkshop does.
All the fun, silly, asymmetric and complex missions go into crusade packs, mission objectives which are flavorful or fun become agendas, rules which do insane or extremely complex things become crusade relics, customization rules become battle traits. So all the stuff many veterans are asking for in this thread is there - just not in a game mode they are able to play. And even if they are, crusade's bookkeeping is just not everyone's cup of tea.
Casual play is just pickup games, often with random people, and arguably casual play is more a variant of competitive play (which are games with random people, juts in a tournament setting). What used to be aimed at casual players was Open Play, but we all know how that ended.
Casual play is pretty much everything that is not either competitive (trying your best to win) or organized in a crusade, event or league-style structure. Beer&prezelhammer, dadhammer, random pickup games, playing with your friend Bob who comes over to your town twice a year, a school's club or gaming night with a group of friends. All those games lack a game type which properly represents them.
To be honest I'm unsure if there is a way to make a random pickup friendly game mode that isn't just Matched Play.
Well, if they released more stuff like the Christmas missions, that would be a good start. Rules for a one-game-crusade would also be nice.
Maybe it sounds more like a bad idea if you paraphrase it as "GW will get it right this time!" despite having hard proof that they failed for five editions and over a hundred publications with psychic powers in them.
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Sgt. Cortez wrote: I'd argue against Jidmahs point of there always being a strongest option [...]
The part about formations is whataboutism, especially since you are cherry-picking an example GW got right more or less by fluke.
The problem with worthless options still exists in the game right now, at this very moment. There are posts about it in this very thread. They did not get it right, enhancements are proof of that. There is no reason to assume options for psychic powers would fare any different.
Jidmah wrote: Rules for a one-game-crusade would also be nice.
What the hell would that be?
The concept of Crusade is that you're units lv up & gain abilities over the course of several games (yes, there's some book keeping involved).
Do you envision leveling up turn by turn or something?
For the first time in ages, I dont care or think about a new 40K edition at all. GW has made it loud and clear they want me playing other GW games instead.
Lots of really good post here since I looked in last.
Regarding Jidmah's request for one game Crusade, I see where he's coming from, even if the progression system is important to me personally.
Playing a single, stand-alone game of Crusade currently does offer these benefits:
1. A greater variety of asymmetric and diverse missions
2. A removal of Secondaries, which influence winning or losing, in favour of Agendas, which DO NOT have ANY effect on winning or losing.
3. Some built in narrative consequences...
What I mean by that last is if you were only playing one game, maybe you're trying to complete one of the trials of Sainthood (Sisters)- you either pass the Trial or don't, but either way, that's how the story ends. Maybe you're fighting to take one specific Territory in Commorragh. Maybe you play the GSC's Ascension battle. Maybe the Eldar are Guiding Fate, but they only have a single threat and not 3, so that you can do the single game success/ failure.
Of the three benefits, the first is probably the one most folks are looking for in a stand-alone game. The second benefit is weird in a stand-alone game: the dynamic tension between the desire to win and the desire to acrue experience, which I believe to be the coolest element of Crusade, is minimized when "Experience" as a concept is rendered irrelevant. Sure, you can still say "Hah ha! I'm defiling all your sacred shrines by painting them with the blood of their defenders!" but you're less likely to do that if it might cost you the victory since there's no tasty XP as consolation prize.
The third one is probably the hardest one to manage, because not every faction's bespoke content provides a narrative goal that can be accomplished in a single game... But many do- especially if you're willing to tweak a bit.
And all of that can be independent of progression if that's what you need.
I think the old narrative missions pre 9th edition were probably similar to what Jidmah and Jake hint at. Meaning you had rules for endless swarms, night fighting, killing important daemons, performing some Ritual, defending City walls against an attacker and so on.
GW just never cared to do the homework of saying: when playing this scenario, one side should have that many points of units that can do X, but only that many points of units that can do Y...
With 29 factions and millions of Variations you either have to go preset lists for this (as GW partly did in campaign books, but often it was still not enough or rendered moot by the next codex release) or put in some guidelines (which they did in 8th, but it was far too open and was nothing more than: one side shouldn't have more than 50% of units with fly).
What I'd like is either some pretty clear guidelines (either for each faction per mission, or list suggestions, or list archetypes- "the attacking swarm army should be Orks, Tyranids, GSC or Imperial guard and at least 60% should be made of battleline units") OR the One Page Rules way: just an awesome catalogue of objectives, deployment zones, catastrophic Events, sudden death objectives, narrative stratagems, terrain special rules, warzone rules, hero rules etc. An easy framework to build your narrative mission- with an amount of playtesting and adjusting by GW (or the players). NOT like every time GW did this in the past: here is what one of our writers made up last night, buy it for 50€ and we'll never come back to it again.
9th ed's Theatre of war rules gave some of that environmental add-in, and you could combine those with any of the idiosyncratic Crusade missions to achieve interesting narrative one-off games.
Orkeosaurus wrote: 3) make character models and bodyguards into a single unit in all respects
I don't get this one, care to elaborate?
To be honest, I often whish a solo leader could just join a new unit, but I also remember what a rules nightmare this caused back in 5th-7th. Probably not worth it.
Basically just drop the weird thing where once the bodyguard dies the character becomes a distinct second unit, who is somehow no longer half-strength due to more people in his squad dying. And especially getting rid of multiple characters merging with a unit and then splitting into two different units when the mooks die around them. Also no more buffs that disappear from the character when the bodyguard is dead. All of that is counter-intuitive rules overhead, without any of the possible benefits of allowing characters to leave and rejoin units like previously.
PenitentJake wrote: Furthermore, I want to challenge the premise that people would only pick one.
Not going into detail here, but we did have that, in pretty every iteration possible. Categories don't matter, the most powerful powers win. Whether it's guide or invisibility or da jump or the spacewolf chasm thing one-shotting carnifexes. The game will be balanced against those most powerful options and not picking them is just handicapping yourself. There is no need to print another 4 options for the five people who claim to pick them regularly on the internet.
I feel like the same objection can usually be made about having multiple psyker datasheets within an army. What's the practical difference between a Librarian who can choose a strong power or a weak power versus a Librarian with a strong power and a Terminator Librarian with a weak power? Mainly just that the latter screws over the guy who has his Librarian modeled with Terminator armor.
That said I would only let a psyker choose one power from a short list, not some crazy WHFB thing with 3 spells per character rolled on a Magic School chart or whatever they were doing for a while. That's asking your opponent to memorize more than is reasonable about your army. (Which is also my objection to 6 unique stratagems per detachment.)
Jidmah wrote: Not going into detail here, but we did have that, in pretty every iteration possible. Categories don't matter, the most powerful powers win.
My experience was that this sometimes meant a no-brainer pick, but more often was 2-3 fairly comparable choices and then the rest mediocre to crap. Which was at least more interesting than having no choice at all- and functionally no different from how they've fared with weapon options, now that those don't have points as a balancing factor anymore.
I mean, you might as well be saying they should just get rid of grenade launchers, meltaguns, and flamers for matched play because you're just going to take plasma guns anyways, so no point in having a choice. Just make at least a cursory effort to give different psychic powers distinct roles and utility and then the choice is worth something.
Here is my insane "crazy-guy-in-woods" prediction for 11th:
Alternating activations.
Maybe it's a separate game mode, maybe it isn't, but that's my thought. It would shake up the game in a huge way, people would talk about it, everyone would want to at least give it a go... and the end result would probably bump up the almighty sales figures in the end.
leerm02 wrote: Here is my insane "crazy-guy-in-woods" prediction for 11th:
Alternating activations.
Maybe it's a separate game mode, maybe it isn't, but that's my thought. It would shake up the game in a huge way, people would talk about it, everyone would want to at least give it a go... and the end result would probably bump up the almighty sales figures in the end.
If it's done like their other games, it could work.
But I'm afraid that is too much of a change in the game for now.
leerm02 wrote: Here is my insane "crazy-guy-in-woods" prediction for 11th:
Alternating activations.
Maybe it's a separate game mode, maybe it isn't, but that's my thought. It would shake up the game in a huge way, people would talk about it, everyone would want to at least give it a go... and the end result would probably bump up the almighty sales figures in the end.
Epic: Armageddon is already a thing, despite the total lack of support, and has always been a superior game.
It's been 40+ years of IGOUGO. Fantasy, 40k, Mordheim, Necromunda, Bloodbowl, and every other game GW has ever published. EA is the one exception (unless Warmaster used the same rules, I have no idea), and they abandoned it. They're not going to even entertain this idea.
If you want to try such a thing out, you should. 6mm EA minis aren't that hard to come buy, and all of the rules are free. You might just get hooked on it. Activate a unit...make a roll. Was it successful (it usually is)? Awesome, go on a rampage with whatever that unit can do. Try and "retain the initiative" if you're feeling confident, and activate another unit with a penalty to the roll. Or let your opponent take their turn, with the same rules.
I haven't played since the very beginning of 6th and have been just now getting back into the game. But I really do like the list building for the most part and not having every wargear or weapon option cost different. It makes it much easier to bring what you want, not what you can afford, or what is the best bang for your points.
That said, I would like some way to easily add or remove a few points from a list. I like the idea of having some skills, abilities, etc that maybe you pay for an upgrade. Just to make some things flow a little better.
Jidmah wrote: Rules for a one-game-crusade would also be nice.
What the hell would that be? The concept of Crusade is that you're units lv up & gain abilities over the course of several games (yes, there's some book keeping involved). Do you envision leveling up turn by turn or something?
More like giving access to all the customization before the game, give some incentive to follow agendas instead of mission success and dropping the whole thing afterwards.
I guess you could also level up during the game, but feels like too much effort.
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Orkeosaurus wrote: Basically just drop the weird thing where once the bodyguard dies the character becomes a distinct second unit, who is somehow no longer half-strength due to more people in his squad dying. And especially getting rid of multiple characters merging with a unit and then splitting into two different units when the mooks die around them. Also no more buffs that disappear from the character when the bodyguard is dead. All of that is counter-intuitive rules overhead, without any of the possible benefits of allowing characters to leave and rejoin units like previously.
Gotcha, fully agree. There is no reason for characters to act any different from squad leaders or medics.
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catbarf wrote: I mean, you might as well be saying they should just get rid of grenade launchers, meltaguns, and flamers for matched play because you're just going to take plasma guns anyways, so no point in having a choice. Just make at least a cursory effort to give different psychic powers distinct roles and utility and then the choice is worth something.
I'm not opposed to giving psykers extra options, but those should absolutely not be army wide (like enhancements) and not a pool of options that you can cherry pick from. For example a CSM sorcerer currently has the "powers" Prescience, Gift of Chaos and two versions of Infernal Gaze. Just like many other units get the choice of trading a gun for an ability, the sorcerer could get a choice to trade Infernal Gaze for Death Hex. You should not be able to trade any "power" for Death Hex (because everyone is going to trade gift of chaos) and neither should you be able to get the same Death Hex on every other psyker in the army.
In general, GW seems to be doing a lot better when balancing two options against each other (plasma and melta both see play), I can't think a single instance where three or more options are well balanced against each other unless the choice is meaningless anyways.
On top of that, getting two weapons right is much easier than getting utility or mobility right. In addition, it's night impossible to correctly evaluate a model correctly that can switch between offensive, defensive and utility/mobility options. For example, an offensive power that could compete with Da Jump for a big unit of boyz would have to be insanely powerful, allowing Mortarion to trade his plague wind for a defensive or mobility option is functional identical to deleting plague wind from the datasheet.
Tyel wrote: Not really sure its "having fun wrong" - but its an accurate observation that people overwhelmingly took the strongest powers and the weaker ones scarcely ever saw play.
The cry goes up "give powers a points cost them, so the weaker ones will be cheaper" - but that's rarely solved the problem. You are then left asking "is this points efficient, yes/no". Often the answer has been no. I mean to a degree we see that with enhancements now. Some are detachment defining - others are kind of trash, useful only for filling in 10 point gaps in your list.
To be fair, the last time psychic powers cost points was 5th(?) edition, and GW wasn't exactly giving quarterly balance updates back then. It seems like it would be pretty easy to just raise or lower the costs of powers until you saw a healthy mix of them being taken. It's basically the same as balancing multiple similar psyker datasheets with different abilities against eachother.
Alternatively, you could maybe overhaul (some) psykers a bit. They'd be more expensive, but you could do something like:
* Psykers have access to X different powers. X is probably like, 3.
* They can either use one power per turn, or use more with some sort of risk/downside. (Insert side tangent about how psychic tests should work here.)
So psykers end up feeling like they're capable of pulling off multiple types of psychic stunts, and it's up to the player to decide which powers to use as the situation demands. This solves the slight weirdness of having a librarian who *only* knows how to put up a telekinetic shield or only knows how to gate of infinity and nothing else. And it makes psykers more flexible so you're not wasting points by taking a psyker whose power is to reduce enemy charges when playing against tau or a psyker whose power is to grant an invuln save when playing against an army with little AP of note. You'd have to charge psykers some extra points to account for the increased flexibility, but I think it would go a long way to making them feel fluffy again.
It kind of a is though. The models, rules and time to paint/play/etc is not free. Meaning if GW does something poor they are wasting their customers time and money. Their intentions are unimportant, because GW is not a 6 years old in kindergarden who thought that painting their face blue with an unwashable paint was a good idea. No, if GW writes a set of rules for lets say terrain, which exclude specific units from being worth taking, then it is very bad for A people that have/like those models, B unit and army disersity and C faction balance (because the haves will only get more as the edition progresses, while the have nots will get worse and worse with every new book added).
I mean GW says they produce the best models and best games in the world. I can even say, that maybe it is even their intention. But it isn't true. And there are consequances of it. Just ask how much fun a salamander or WS player is having this edition. Or how it is to like Ad Mecha robots. Or those people that liked bikes or terminator armies. Those people aren't having much fun. And a lot of them just stopped playing in 10th.
It'll be more of 10th. L shaped tables of exacting set up. Maybe they'll really stretch themselves and put in a tree in one of their table set ups. Really it'll just be another round of SM codexs and 12 more SM lieutenants while removing another 48 units across all books to Legends.
It kind of a is though. The models, rules and time to paint/play/etc is not free. Meaning if GW does something poor they are wasting their customers time and money. Their intentions are unimportant, because GW is not a 6 years old in kindergarden who thought that painting their face blue with an unwashable paint was a good idea. No, if GW writes a set of rules for lets say terrain, which exclude specific units from being worth taking, then it is very bad for A people that have/like those models, B unit and army disersity and C faction balance (because the haves will only get more as the edition progresses, while the have nots will get worse and worse with every new book added).
I mean GW says they produce the best models and best games in the world. I can even say, that maybe it is even their intention. But it isn't true. And there are consequances of it. Just ask how much fun a salamander or WS player is having this edition. Or how it is to like Ad Mecha robots. Or those people that liked bikes or terminator armies. Those people aren't having much fun. And a lot of them just stopped playing in 10th.
As far as quality models/the best models in the world, I agree with your assessment that GW ain't it. You can get incredibly detailed original models printed from numerous Etsy storefronts for half or less what GW charges. Some (most, really) of them would even proxy well for GW games. Hells, there's an entire range of Adepta Sororitas models they'll print that are much better than anything GW ever designed. And that's just Etsy alone.
As far as the best games in the world, they do, if your definition of best is limited to "best selling" or "most popular." That said, some of their previous games were real standouts for me, but it was always the "off stuff" that they failed to support. We had endless hours of fun with old-school Bloodbowl/Dungeonbowl leagues, Necromunda leagues, Mordheim leagues, and Epic: Armageddon. Those games were just...fun. Mostly because they were much better balanced. It didn't really mean much if you picked to play Reiklanders over Middenheimers, for example, or Escher vs Cawdor...everyone was an Imperial Guardsman at the core. What mattered was how you chose to play them. Yes, there were oddities like Skaven or VC in Mordheim, or Spyrers and Ratskins in Necomunda, but if they became a problem we just asked people not to bring them to the leagues.
So, as to GW making the "best" games, they don't, not by a long shot. But they HAVE put out some enjoyable winners in the past. It does tend to be 1000% easier to find a game/league/event to play a GW game at though. That's what they have going for them.
It kind of a is though. The models, rules and time to paint/play/etc is not free. Meaning if GW does something poor they are wasting their customers time and money. Their intentions are unimportant, because GW is not a 6 years old in kindergarden who thought that painting their face blue with an unwashable paint was a good idea. No, if GW writes a set of rules for lets say terrain, which exclude specific units from being worth taking, then it is very bad for A people that have/like those models, B unit and army disersity and C faction balance (because the haves will only get more as the edition progresses, while the have nots will get worse and worse with every new book added).
I mean GW says they produce the best models and best games in the world. I can even say, that maybe it is even their intention. But it isn't true. And there are consequances of it. Just ask how much fun a salamander or WS player is having this edition. Or how it is to like Ad Mecha robots. Or those people that liked bikes or terminator armies. Those people aren't having much fun. And a lot of them just stopped playing in 10th.
As I've said to you before, literally every mechanic is a bad idea if you assume GW will go out of their way to implement it badly. It's valid to point out possible pitfalls that would need to be avoided, but it's not valid to say that an idea is bad because there's a way to diabla ex machina it into being executed badly.
But we know how GW implements mechanics. They have the same design team. At least since 8th ed they have been consisten in what they do and how they shape the game.
GW talking about rules right now, is like that dude who tells you that he is just about to make a great break through and join the national team in wrestling. At 39 years of age.
Now I am not saying ALL stuff GW writes is bad. Fantasy came out well, but from what I have been told it was based on the best iteration of WFB ever made. I play AoS and with all its problems, it is okeyish too. But the way GW handles w40k, and I am basing this on 3 editions of expiriance now, there are clear paterns in how they function.
They know that the terrain rules they have generate HUGE problems. They know it. They know the rules had to be abstract for a game with so many models (as it happens in AoS). Yet they cling to a semi RPG system ment for skirmish games.
People beg for something else then IGYG in phase/turn structure. And aside of how it would work under the army structure in w40k, we know how GW handles rotating model activation. We have it in Kill Team. And each seson the same thing happens, There is one or two factions that litteraly break the system.
Or to not force people to read my stupid and bad writing. Past actions tells us a lot about future actions. And GW does not have a good record implementing new or supporting old mechanics.
As far as the best games in the world, they do, if your definition of best is limited to "best selling" or "most popular." That said, some of their previous games were real standouts for me, but it was always the "off stuff" that they failed to support. We had endless hours of fun with old-school Bloodbowl/Dungeonbowl leagues, Necromunda leagues, Mordheim leagues, and Epic: Armageddon. Those games were just...fun.
Funnily enough, I recently started Warmaster - a game GW abandoned back in 2013, but which various fans have kept going (the current version is called Warmaster Revolutions).
One of the nice things is how cheap it is to get into, as the rules are free and (thanks to 3D printing) you can buy an entire army for most factions for ~£45-60 on ebay.
Wyldhunt wrote: As I've said to you before, literally every mechanic is a bad idea if you assume GW will go out of their way to implement it badly. It's valid to point out possible pitfalls that would need to be avoided, but it's not valid to say that an idea is bad because there's a way to diabla ex machina it into being executed badly.
It's also completely unreasonable to assume that the GW will successfully implement something that they have tried and failed to implement across multiple editions and games, including the current iteration of Warhammer 40k.
Assuming that there will never be a successful implementation of psychic disciplines where three or more powers are fairly balanced across multiple psyker profiles is a fairly safe bet.
For psychic powers GW could copy current AoS.
There each faction has 2 or 3 general spells & individual casters each have their own bespoke spell. Each spell has a 2d6 casting value.
Works well enough & I don't see why it wouldn't work for 40k.
Dysartes wrote: Please never suggest that the 40k team copy from AOS - that's where the current stupid fixed to-hit values in melee came from.
They should also import the idea of endless spells/manifestations into 40k.
I really hope they don't. Endless Spells are one of the things keeping me from wanting to dive into AoS.
Multiple spells per caster each with their own casting value would be *okay*. That's more or less how 9th worked, and 9th is more or less how 3rd-5th worked. It's one of the better systems they've tried. Personally, I don't like psychic tests where you failure means your librarian or warlock suddenly forgets how to use their powers.
Dysartes wrote: Please never suggest that the 40k team copy from AOS - that's where the current stupid fixed to-hit values in melee came from.
AoS has, and currently does, have a few rock solid ideas that would've proved beneficial to 40k.
That GW chose to copy the absolute dullest element is yet another representation of the main team's broad-strokes incompetence with regards to game design, rather than a negative reflection on every concept which exists and has existed in AoS.
Dysartes wrote: Please never suggest that the 40k team copy from AOS - that's where the current stupid fixed to-hit values in melee came from.
AoS has, and currently does, have a few rock solid ideas that would've proved beneficial to 40k.
That GW chose to copy the absolute dullest element is yet another representation of the main team's broad-strokes incompetence with regards to game design, rather than a negative reflection on every concept which exists and has existed in AoS.
Yeah. I prefer 40k to AoS, and I prefer the 3rd-7th game to 8th and onwards.
But just because a system is generally worse (for me, at least) doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from it.
Dysartes wrote: Please never suggest that the 40k team copy from AOS - that's where the current stupid fixed to-hit values in melee came from.
They should also import the idea of endless spells/manifestations into 40k.
I really hope they don't. Endless Spells are one of the things keeping me from wanting to dive into AoS.
Multiple spells per caster each with their own casting value would be *okay*. That's more or less how 9th worked, and 9th is more or less how 3rd-5th worked. It's one of the better systems they've tried. Personally, I don't like psychic tests where you failure means your librarian or warlock suddenly forgets how to use their powers.
^ Seconded.
I don't enjoy the idea of buying models for spells that I may or may not get to use in a game...
But I kinda secretly loved Perils of the Warp and enjoyed watching a Psyker blink out if existence with a really bad Psychic Test.
It's going to be even more appealing to the lowest common denominator and even worse for anyone else, not that anyone else is left playing it at this point.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's going to be even more appealing to the lowest common denominator and even worse for anyone else, not that anyone else is left playing it at this point.
I’m really enjoying 10th. I don’t consider myself the lowest common denominator either, been playing 40K for all 10 editions and can see the good and bad in all them, some more than other obviously. So I will still be playing and so will my mates and many others. I’m hoping for and confident we will get a tweaked version of 10th. Less confident but still hopeful is that codexes will carry over and get replaced in time.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's going to be even more appealing to the lowest common denominator and even worse for anyone else, not that anyone else is left playing it at this point.
I’m really enjoying 10th. I don’t consider myself the lowest common denominator either, been playing 40K for all 10 editions and can see the good and bad in all them, some more than other obviously. So I will still be playing and so will my mates and many others. I’m hoping for and confident we will get a tweaked version of 10th. Less confident but still hopeful is that codexes will carry over and get replaced in time.
Such things are not unprecedented, but they also don't make GW nearly as much revenue as forcing you to buy a new $60 Codex ever few years. I'd expect a moderate re-vamping of certain rules (hopefully terrain), but I'd also expect every Codex to be immediately invalid and to start that process over again "balancing" things for the new rules tweaks.
Jidmah wrote: How would invalidating the codices yield them more money?
If you still buy codices, you need to buy one irrespective of whether you are getting your rules from an index or an old book.
If anything, it saves them money because they don't need to create full indexes for everyone, though the quality of the game would be worse initially.
Because they're already having underpaid staff cook up the next set of indices so they'll be ready to go when they release 11th?
There's little difference in that and going through every single rule in every single published book to attempt to FAQ and Commentary them into compliance with changed rules. I'd argue coming up with new indices is significantly easier for staff who may or may not know the rules well enough to modify older ones to be relevant.
GW is a business, and it's run like a business. Unless you think the Old Guard like Gav are being kept alive in stasis to grant new rules to each edition with their incredible psychic powers.
The business model is to pay staff writers and editors minimum wage to do minimum wage editing duties, have those "OK'd" by someone higher up, then publish new rules and let the mess shake itself out over several months to a year. All the while selling you new minis and books. Do you imagive everyone working at GW is a dedicated Warhammer fan and hobbyist? News flash. That was 40 years ago.
Jidmah wrote: How would invalidating the codices yield them more money?
If you still buy codices, you need to buy one irrespective of whether you are getting your rules from an index or an old book.
If anything, it saves them money because they don't need to create full indexes for everyone, though the quality of the game would be worse initially.
Because they're already having underpaid staff cook up the next set of indices so they'll be ready to go when they release 11th?
There's little difference in that and going through every single rule in every single published book to attempt to FAQ and Commentary them into compliance with changed rules. I'd argue coming up with new indices is significantly easier for staff who may or may not know the rules well enough to modify older ones to be relevant.
GW is a business, and it's run like a business. Unless you think the Old Guard like Gav are being kept alive in stasis to grant new rules to each edition with their incredible psychic powers.
The business model is to pay staff writers and editors minimum wage to do minimum wage editing duties, have those "OK'd" by someone higher up, then publish new rules and let the mess shake itself out over several months to a year. All the while selling you new minis and books. Do you imagive everyone working at GW is a dedicated Warhammer fan and hobbyist? News flash. That was 40 years ago.
-Edited-
Writing 11th edition codices for every army yields the exact same amount of money whether you write an index or not.
Writing an index for 11th edition is zero money earned.
Not writing an index costs less money than writing it.
Making 10th edition codices compatible with 11th edition would make more money, but likely result in a worse game.
Jidmah wrote: How would invalidating the codices yield them more money?
If you still buy codices, you need to buy one irrespective of whether you are getting your rules from an index or an old book.
If anything, it saves them money because they don't need to create full indexes for everyone, though the quality of the game would be worse initially.
Because they're already having underpaid staff cook up the next set of indices so they'll be ready to go when they release 11th?
There's little difference in that and going through every single rule in every single published book to attempt to FAQ and Commentary them into compliance with changed rules. I'd argue coming up with new indices is significantly easier for staff who may or may not know the rules well enough to modify older ones to be relevant.
GW is a business, and it's run like a business. Unless you think the Old Guard like Gav are being kept alive in stasis to grant new rules to each edition with their incredible psychic powers.
The business model is to pay staff writers and editors minimum wage to do minimum wage editing duties, have those "OK'd" by someone higher up, then publish new rules and let the mess shake itself out over several months to a year. All the while selling you new minis and books. Do you imagive everyone working at GW is a dedicated Warhammer fan and hobbyist? News flash. That was 40 years ago.
Writing 11th edition codices for every army yields the exact same amount of money whether you write an index or not.
Writing an index for 11th edition is zero money earned.
Not writing an index costs less money than writing it.
Making 10th edition codices compatible with 11th edition would make more money, but likely result in a worse game.
You're not 100% wrong, but the breaking point comes down to how different 11th edition turns out to be. Make enough changes, that'll invalidate the codices in and of itself. Make minor tweaks to the rules, it might be worth keeping the old codices around until they're updated with new editions. One can also look at how GW has handled it for the last 40 years, and see that it doesn't tend to go the way you're describing it.
-Edited to remove my own snotty, childish remark.-
Make minor tweaks to the rules, it might be worth keeping the old codices around until they're updated with new editions.
Well again, if the follow the 8th into 9th precedent, then yes, it absolutely will be appropriate to hang on to the outgoing codices, because they will be legal right up to the day the codex of the incoming edition drops.
One can also look at how GW has handled it for the last 40 years
Well not really. Second edition was a hard reset of Rogue Trader. Third was a hard reset of Second. I think 6th was an attempted hard reset that was such a failure it only lasted a year and a half, and then I think 7th was a hard reset. Then 8 and 10 were hard resets.
So what most people seem to think is that from 8th on, we will have consistency: And what that looks like is a brand new edition with indexes, lasting three years, followed by a soft reboot which does include a new BRB and new dexes, BUT doesn't require indexes because dexes continue to be valid, until the new one drops.
We won't know until 11th drops whether this is the new pattern or not, but people are speculating that that IS the new pattern, and we suspect GW will stick to it because predictability has value when you're running a publicly traded company. Personally, I'm looking forward to the confirmation one way or the other.
I don't think the edition history prior to 8th is consistent enough to establish a pattern, but 8th, 9th and 10th are looking super consistent, and once 11th drops, we'll know for sure.
Make minor tweaks to the rules, it might be worth keeping the old codices around until they're updated with new editions.
Well again, if the follow the 8th into 9th precedent, then yes, it absolutely will be appropriate to hang on to the outgoing codices, because they will be legal right up to the day the codex of the incoming edition drops.
One can also look at how GW has handled it for the last 40 years
Well not really. Second edition was a hard reset of Rogue Trader. Third was a hard reset of Second. I think 6th was an attempted hard reset that was such a failure it only lasted a year and a half, and then I think 7th was a hard reset. Then 8 and 10 were hard resets.
So what most people seem to think is that from 8th on, we will have consistency: And what that looks like is a brand new edition with indexes, lasting three years, followed by a soft reboot which does include a new BRB and new dexes, BUT doesn't require indexes because dexes continue to be valid, until the new one drops.
We won't know until 11th drops whether this is the new pattern or not, but people are speculating that that IS the new pattern, and we suspect GW will stick to it because predictability has value when you're running a publicly traded company. Personally, I'm looking forward to the confirmation one way or the other.
I don't think the edition history prior to 8th is consistent enough to establish a pattern, but 8th, 9th and 10th are looking super consistent, and once 11th drops, we'll know for sure.
Good insights, I guess I was also writing my opinions from the standpoint of having been a pretty hardcore WFB player also. When you factor in more of GW's games I'd argue a stronger pattern of abandonment appears, but I could be mistaken. It certainly felt that way when you were living through it.
I, for one, hope you're right, and from here on out it's tweaks and changes, clarifications and clean-ups, instead of wholesale slaughter.
if it is true that GW is going to make a sm 2.0 or index/codex for non ultramarine marines at the end of 10th, it is going to be so prior editions, When 11th comes and removes all those books.
In a perfect world the last year or so of an edition shouldn't be used for codex, but for giving new options here and there (potentialy forshadowing next edition changes), new sesons of course/new missions and stuff like that. Non of that well this is the second edition in our 2 edition cycle, guess whose book was legal for 1-3 months, and prepare for waiting for a new one for 18-24 months?
But we don't get perfect we get regular world only.
Well not really. Second edition was a hard reset of Rogue Trader. Third was a hard reset of Second. I think 6th was an attempted hard reset that was such a failure it only lasted a year and a half, and then I think 7th was a hard reset. Then 8 and 10 were hard resets.
Minor point, but I don't think of 6th as being a hard reset because the codices of 5th were still useable, there was just a list of adjustments made in certain areas like CC weapons gaining profiles. 7th was similar in that it was really just a further adjustment of 6th, and codices from the prior edition/s were still compatible. The main rules for each edition were still based on the foundation set up by 3rd ed.
This is in great contrast to 3rd and 8th in particular, both of which necessitated releasing "index" armies alongside the rules because the foundation of the game was so different. 10th offered index armies, although I'm not sure the rules deviated enough to necessitate it, actually. (haven't played 10th much, so unsure)
Insectum7 wrote: This is in great contrast to 3rd and 8th in particular, both of which necessitated releasing "index" armies alongside the rules because the foundation of the game was so different. 10th offered index armies, although I'm not sure the rules deviated enough to necessitate it, actually. (haven't played 10th much, so unsure)
I don't think 10th needed the indexes in the same way as 3rd and 8th, but it was the only way they could cleanly reset the codex creep/lethality which had reached insane levels.
You can argue things like the USRs - but really its late 9th written up in a different language.
If you really wanted I think you could make them compatible - but the issue is who is going to be excited if their 10th edition codex is a fundamental downgrade in power compared with 9th?
Insectum7 wrote: This is in great contrast to 3rd and 8th in particular, both of which necessitated releasing "index" armies alongside the rules because the foundation of the game was so different. 10th offered index armies, although I'm not sure the rules deviated enough to necessitate it, actually. (haven't played 10th much, so unsure)
I don't think 10th needed the indexes in the same way as 3rd and 8th, but it was the only way they could cleanly reset the codex creep/lethality which had reached insane levels.
You can argue things like the USRs - but really its late 9th written up in a different language.
If you really wanted I think you could make them compatible - but the issue is who is going to be excited if their 10th edition codex is a fundamental downgrade in power compared with 9th?
Characters would've needed a LOT of erratas, though.
Minor point, but I don't think of 6th as being a hard reset because the codices of 5th were still useable, there was just a list of adjustments made in certain areas like CC weapons gaining profiles. 7th was similar in that it was really just a further adjustment of 6th, and codices from the prior edition/s were still compatible. The main rules for each edition were still based on the foundation set up by 3rd ed.
This is in great contrast to 3rd and 8th in particular, both of which necessitated releasing "index" armies alongside the rules because the foundation of the game was so different. 10th offered index armies, although I'm not sure the rules deviated enough to necessitate it, actually. (haven't played 10th much, so unsure)
Cool- I wasn't sure about 6th and 7th- those are the only two editions I sat out. So yeah, that reinforces my point even more- edition schedules were really inconsistent prior to 8th.I do really believe 11th will be a soft reboot, which will lock the post 8th rhythm in place. And while I would prefer a single six year edition rather than a 3 year Part A and a 3 year Part B, it does help hobby planning to know the pattern. For example, you'd know that if you started an army in an Index edition, you'd be guaranteed to be able to use that army into the following edition. By the same token, you might choose not to buy in to a Part B edition, knowing that in 3 years or less, indexes are just going to blow the whole thing up. For me, it means three extra years to Crusade before a hard reset invalidates the progression system.
there will be a lot of promises, and a lot of let-down after the fact. I would like them to turn combat patrol into something more balanced and appealing, like it is in Spearhead. AoS Spearhead is not perfect, but it is an absolute blast to play. GW Hyped up Combat Patrol so much, and then never did it justice.
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
Do away with the 'you can only use it if it's in the box' rule. Nu-GW wears the skin of kitbashing encouragement but the spirit isn't there. Catachans, for example only get flamers because their 25 year old box only has them. (but I'm SURE we need three new special weapon Primaris squads instead!)
Just bring back 7th/9th era complexity, maybe make it optional. Suckin' off WYSIWYG players, oversimplifying and removing wargear costs leads to much less complexity and really makes 40k into a beer n pretzels game IMO. A good beer n pretzels game, mind you, but there's a lot less nuance in listbuilding. We had Force Org charts for a reason
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
Hmmm regarding 10th edition, and a future 11th edition: I was going to say some stuff, but then decided not to say anything, cause like me mum said, if you cant say anything nice........
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
The terrain does create an added barrier to entry though. Which is a huge shame because I'm pretty sure it would become my favorite way to play if it didn't intimidate people.
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
The terrain does create an added barrier to entry though. Which is a huge shame because I'm pretty sure it would become my favorite way to play if it didn't intimidate people.
When I started this hobby, what really hooked me was playing Space Hulk, and instead of the puzzle pieces (since we often played 6 player games) we used a 3d board.
All it was is a sheet of plywood covered with 1.5" ceramic tiles with no grout between them. Then we jammed corrugated cardboard cut to different lengths don into the 1mm space between the tiles where the grout should have been. Cheap, easy and effective. Barriers to entry are for suckas!
I imagine that with the current terrain requirements for an enjoyable game making the barrier to entry for 10th already pretty high, it's unlikely that GW is likely to lean further in that direction unless they radically change how they handle terrain (eg cardboard stand-up terrain pieces, which I can't see them doing).
GW quite understandably doesn't want to try and sell a $500 army of hand-painted miniatures alongside cardboard cut-out terrain. It's the worst of both worlds: looks bad and still expensive.
Orkeosaurus wrote: GW quite understandably doesn't want to try and sell a $500 army of hand-painted miniatures alongside cardboard cut-out terrain. It's the worst of both worlds: looks bad and still expensive.
Agreed. Everything GW has always been expensive. People need to decide if they want to play a game or decide to be part of a hobby. The first one requires money, and lots of it. The second one requires love of the pastime and lots and lots of time, far more valuable than money.
Creating enough good-looking terrain for multiple tables is a time-consuming and incredibly rewarding endeavor.
Buying enough terrain to spray-paint and drybrush in an afternoon for multiple tables is a shallow and incredibly expensive endeavor.
Both of them lead to the same result, someplace to play with your overpriced pieces of plastic and your (hopefully) friends, and have fun.
Everyone has to decide what level of involvement they'd like to have.
Just jumping in here so not sure if it's already been discussed.
I'd like to see less emphasis on the whole "simplification" aspect of the game. This whole notion that everything needs to be simpler for some banal reason. Bring back some old mechanics like scatter, environmental effects and boards which aren't just a symmetrical array of L-shaped ruins.
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
I didn't say I wanted GW terrain, I also don't want to make my own ass looking cobbled together board to play the entry level game. Hell, lots of people never make or buy terrain and of those that do it often never gets painted.
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
I didn't say I wanted GW terrain, I also don't want to make my own ass looking cobbled together board to play the entry level game. Hell, lots of people never make or buy terrain and of those that do it often never gets painted.
Oh, so you're just bitching about a game mode that you'll never play (unless someone else provides the terrain).
MY point was that if your interested in playing Boarding Action? You've got options besides GWs overpriced wall sections.
I hope someday they do away with rerolls, and limit stratagems/special powers to a few per armies that you can show your opponent at the beginning of the game, to avoid gotcha moments.
Also Combat patrol needs to go and Boarding Actions needs to become the new 500 pts standard.
Also hope that they create a scalable system ie the more points on the table, the more streamlined the gameplay.
Oh and Alternate activations per phase please, just like Legions Imperialis.
My issue with boarding actions is the frankly insane terrain requirement compared to say spearhead or combat patrol
You know you don't HAVE to use GW terrain for your boarding Action games, right?
You can make wall sections out of virtually anything. Same for the pillars & doors.
Now how skilled a modeler you are will determine what your scratch built walls look like.... but trust me, if my friend Dave can make Boarding Action walls? You can too (and they'll look better han his I'll bet )
I didn't say I wanted GW terrain, I also don't want to make my own ass looking cobbled together board to play the entry level game. Hell, lots of people never make or buy terrain and of those that do it often never gets painted.
Oh, so you're just bitching about a game mode that you'll never play (unless someone else provides the terrain).
MY point was that if your interested in playing Boarding Action? You've got options besides GWs overpriced wall sections.
I'm bitching at the idea of making it the default small game/intro method. You're correct, right now I will never play it because I don't want to spend a load of time/money on terrain specifically for said niche small game.
I also don't expect anyone else to do it for me, neither should someone else. So maybe it's a stupid idea trying to force it on people and criticising them if they don't want it, yes?
Valkyrie wrote:Just jumping in here so not sure if it's already been discussed.
I'd like to see less emphasis on the whole "simplification" aspect of the game. This whole notion that everything needs to be simpler for some banal reason. Bring back some old mechanics like scatter, environmental effects and boards which aren't just a symmetrical array of L-shaped ruins.
Partly agree. Scatter dice can stay gone (cool as they are) because they were just kind of a bad/ambiguous mechanic. But de-emphasizing the "e-sports" feeling of the game and injecting a bit more of the narrative/flavor would be nice. Something along the lines of the asymmetrical Crusade missions, but without making people deal with the paperwork/intimidation factor of having to do a whole crusade roster/figure out how to make a crusade roster feel good playing against a non-crusade army.
The "simplification" of the game in 8th got rid of/streamlined a bunch of the clunkier mechanics, and I'm fine with a lot of those staying gone. Difficult terrain being a 2d6 take the highest roll for your movement was kind of feels bad. Explosions making you roll to see if you explode, roll to see how far you explode, roll to wound models in range, and having them roll saves was a bit too much rolling for what it did. Stuff like that can stay gone, but taking another stab at Theaters of War, skimmer movement rules, etc. would be nice.
Dudeface wrote:It won't happen without index, but dial back some power creep again, but to like 3rd/4th ed levels please.
An assault marine having 3 attacks s4 no ap in any way etc. was the norm. Whereas now 4 attacks s4 ap-1 d1 is considered bad.
Yeah. Obviously you'd need to fine-tune things a bit, especially if W2 marines remain a thing, but it definitely feels like there's room to reduce lethality a bit further. Especially if they emphasize/promote slightly smaller games. A bit less lethality with games being played at 1k-1500 feels like the sweet spot to me. Let units be good at their jobs without necessarily having to one-shot whatever they shoot at, and with few enough units that you aren't just nuking the enemy into oblivion turn 1.
I'm bitching at the idea of making it the default small game/intro method. You're correct, right now I will never play it because I don't want to spend a load of time/money on terrain specifically for said niche small game.
I also don't expect anyone else to do it for me, neither should someone else. So maybe it's a stupid idea trying to force it on people and criticising them if they don't want it, yes?
I think I agree with this? Terrain needs to come from somewhere in 40k. My gripe about BA's terrain is that, unless I'm mistaken, the missions expect you to have very specific pieces of terrain in specific places depending on the mission. So where an aspiring 40k player can cobble together some basic terrain or even just use boxes/books laying around the house or just throw the FLGS's terrain onto the table... BA makes you buy or build some precise dimensions and put them in precise places. Which seems like a lot to ask of someone just tryiing to get into the hobby.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Can we steal some of the older stuff back from HH like Dangerous Terrain and Minefields?
This is precisely what I was on about, stuff that actually added a bit of flavour to the game rather than a lazily-written "this does D3 Mortals".
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
- Blast markers used for effects/mechanics, not for weapons
- Terrain variety and asymmetrical boards
- FOC, so it's somewhat harder to just load up on power-units.
- Allies to a limited extent, such as taking a squad of Sternguard and their Captain with your Guard army, or a couple squads of "penal squads" with your Grey Knights. Alliances that fit more of a thematic rather than competitive mindset.
Enough of this "oh this is too much dice-rolling" mood, it's a dice-rolling game.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Can we steal some of the older stuff back from HH like Dangerous Terrain and Minefields?
This is precisely what I was on about, stuff that actually added a bit of flavour to the game rather than a lazily-written "this does D3 Mortals".
Isn't dangerous terrain (roll a bunch of d6s and lose a guy for every 1 you roll) functionally pretty much the same as taking a randomized number of mortal wounds? What's the key difference to your mind?
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
Why? In what form? You're not using them for weapons, so just to see if deepstrikers randomly die when they try to arrive? If so, you could get similar results by just rolling to see if they get fethed over before they arrive on the table and save yourself from minor arguments over the exact angle the scatter die is pointing. I'm open to using scatter dice for something, but adding a special die back into the game just for the sake of it feels like more of a nostalgia move than a fluff thing.
- Blast markers used for effects/mechanics, not for weapons
Can you give an example? I'm picturing like, smoke grenades. In which case, blast templates are a fine way to represent that, but so are simple tokens that you measure from to define the area.
- Terrain variety and asymmetrical boards
Agreed there, but technically nothing is stopping you from using asymmetrical setups right now, and most people aren't using all the terrain types currently in the 10th edition rules.
- FOC, so it's somewhat harder to just load up on power-units.
The FOC is not and never was the answer. It creates more problems than it solves and was never actually very good at preventing people from loading up on power units. It's also just actively unfluffy for a lot of factions, so it's actively detrimental if your main goal is to add more fluff to the game. I can and will rant about this.
- Allies to a limited extent, such as taking a squad of Sternguard and their Captain with your Guard army, or a couple squads of "penal squads" with your Grey Knights. Alliances that fit more of a thematic rather than competitive mindset.
We kind of already have this. Imperial agents let you splash a wide variety of units into an imperial army. For more extensive alliances, we have more and more detachments that facilitate this while also making it easier for the designers to predict what combos they have to look out for and design things accordingly. If you want some marines splashed into your guard army, you've got Death Watch units. If you want some squishy human fodder splashed into your GK, I'm guessing there's probably an imperial agent datasheet that fits that description. (And if not, it's easier to add one than to overhaul how allies work game-wide.)
Enough of this "oh this is too much dice-rolling" mood, it's a dice-rolling game.
I think it's worth clarifying this a bit. When people talk about "simplifying the game" and "reducing dice rolling" in the same breath, they're usually talking about the mechanics that just had a lot of dice rolling for minimal effect. Such mechanics were just kind of tedious/clunky. Like the aforementioned system of having an explosion involve like, 4 dice pools to resolve whereas now it's just 2. Or having free overwatch on every unit when they get charged even if their loadout made them unlikely to do any significant damage.
You can have flavorful mechanics that are simple to resolve. Doubling the amount of time it takes to resolve a vehicle explosion doesn't innately make it more fluffy, cinematic, or satisfying. Random != fluffy.
Siegfriedfr wrote:You absolutely dont need expensive physical terrain pieces to play boarding actions, at least when playing outside of official venues.
You need elements that can pass as walls or doors, and they can be flat, dont need to be 3d.
It can be simple cardboard flat pieces, just like in any normal board game.
But do you need to make sure they're the right dimensions to line up with the map of the mission you're playing? That creates this whole homework assignment someone has to do before you can play the game. "Go create this many pieces of terrain with these exact dimensions." Not a huge ask, but a big enough one to be inconvenient for would-be players.
Valkyrie wrote: Enough of this "oh this is too much dice-rolling" mood, it's a dice-rolling game.
It's a dice-rolling game that I want to resolve in a reasonable amount of time, where I want more of that time spent making fun decisions than tediously resolving the effects of those decisions. Rolling dice to see what happens is fun, but rolling dozens of dice for every model removed off the table is incredibly excessive and bogs down the game. This is not a necessarily evil for depth, it's just inelegant design- other games on the market accomplish more gameplay depth with more player interaction and less dice-rolling.
Rolling dice is a means to an end, not the point of the activity. If you want to roll dice for the sake of rolling dice you want Yahtzee.
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
Why? In what form? You're not using them for weapons, so just to see if deepstrikers randomly die when they try to arrive? If so, you could get similar results by just rolling to see if they get fethed over before they arrive on the table and save yourself from minor arguments over the exact angle the scatter die is pointing. I'm open to using scatter dice for something, but adding a special die back into the game just for the sake of it feels like more of a nostalgia move than a fluff thing.
I'm not going to try to know what Valkyrie was meaning here, but one thing that springs to mind is that by having units which Deep Strike having to scatter, it removes some of that "perfect control" feeling that's come in since 8th - we're talking postage stamp battlefields here, having to actually think about where you're going to deep strike because your troops won't land on the right pinhead would be a small improvement IMO
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
Why? In what form? You're not using them for weapons, so just to see if deepstrikers randomly die when they try to arrive? If so, you could get similar results by just rolling to see if they get fethed over before they arrive on the table and save yourself from minor arguments over the exact angle the scatter die is pointing. I'm open to using scatter dice for something, but adding a special die back into the game just for the sake of it feels like more of a nostalgia move than a fluff thing.
I'm not going to try to know what Valkyrie was meaning here, but one thing that springs to mind is that by having units which Deep Strike having to scatter, it removes some of that "perfect control" feeling that's come in since 8th - we're talking postage stamp battlefields here, having to actually think about where you're going to deep strike because your troops won't land on the right pinhead would be a small improvement IMO
See, even in that case we could use something more along the lines of the Nachmund Crusade Tactical Deepstrike rules to avoid the ambiguities that come with scatter dice.
There's also probably a debate to be had over whether or not precisely delivering deepstrikers is a good/bad thing. A lot of units would become a lot less valuable if they had a chance to not deliver their sucker punch out of reserves or had a chance of not being within charge range after they arrived or had a chance of not landing on an objective.
"I'll deepstrike this squad into your backfield to get Behind Enemy Lines."
"Actually, you scattered badly. Time to roll on the mishap table. Oh look, your unit got destroyed before you could deploy it, so now you're basically playing a 1300 point army versus my 1500 point army. How thrilling!"
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
Why? In what form? You're not using them for weapons, so just to see if deepstrikers randomly die when they try to arrive? If so, you could get similar results by just rolling to see if they get fethed over before they arrive on the table and save yourself from minor arguments over the exact angle the scatter die is pointing. I'm open to using scatter dice for something, but adding a special die back into the game just for the sake of it feels like more of a nostalgia move than a fluff thing.
I'm not going to try to know what Valkyrie was meaning here, but one thing that springs to mind is that by having units which Deep Strike having to scatter, it removes some of that "perfect control" feeling that's come in since 8th - we're talking postage stamp battlefields here, having to actually think about where you're going to deep strike because your troops won't land on the right pinhead would be a small improvement IMO
See, even in that case we could use something more along the lines of the Nachmund Crusade Tactical Deepstrike rules to avoid the ambiguities that come with scatter dice.
There's also probably a debate to be had over whether or not precisely delivering deepstrikers is a good/bad thing. A lot of units would become a lot less valuable if they had a chance to not deliver their sucker punch out of reserves or had a chance of not being within charge range after they arrived or had a chance of not landing on an objective.
"I'll deepstrike this squad into your backfield to get Behind Enemy Lines."
"Actually, you scattered badly. Time to roll on the mishap table. Oh look, your unit got destroyed before you could deploy it, so now you're basically playing a 1300 point army versus my 1500 point army. How thrilling!"
As opposed to your auto successful DS where you promptly wiping out the other guys 200 pts of stuff via shooting + charge?
If you don't want to risk dying during Deep Strike.... Don't Deep Strike.
Expanding on that I would add to the game:
- Scatter mechanics
Why? In what form? You're not using them for weapons, so just to see if deepstrikers randomly die when they try to arrive? If so, you could get similar results by just rolling to see if they get fethed over before they arrive on the table and save yourself from minor arguments over the exact angle the scatter die is pointing. I'm open to using scatter dice for something, but adding a special die back into the game just for the sake of it feels like more of a nostalgia move than a fluff thing.
I'm not going to try to know what Valkyrie was meaning here, but one thing that springs to mind is that by having units which Deep Strike having to scatter, it removes some of that "perfect control" feeling that's come in since 8th - we're talking postage stamp battlefields here, having to actually think about where you're going to deep strike because your troops won't land on the right pinhead would be a small improvement IMO
See, even in that case we could use something more along the lines of the Nachmund Crusade Tactical Deepstrike rules to avoid the ambiguities that come with scatter dice.
There's also probably a debate to be had over whether or not precisely delivering deepstrikers is a good/bad thing. A lot of units would become a lot less valuable if they had a chance to not deliver their sucker punch out of reserves or had a chance of not being within charge range after they arrived or had a chance of not landing on an objective.
"I'll deepstrike this squad into your backfield to get Behind Enemy Lines."
"Actually, you scattered badly. Time to roll on the mishap table. Oh look, your unit got destroyed before you could deploy it, so now you're basically playing a 1300 point army versus my 1500 point army. How thrilling!"
Could this not be at least partially solved with a more forgiving mishap table? One where your dudes are never auto-destroyed, but instead either end up back in reserve or just in a worse spot on the table.
(Though it was hilarious when one of my ill-tempered friends flipped out after losing Draigo and an entire entourage of Terminators to a deep strike mishap. )
As opposed to your auto successful DS where you promptly wiping out the other guys 200 pts of stuff via shooting + charge?
If you don't want to risk dying during Deep Strike.... Don't Deep Strike.
Sort of. Think about it. When we're talking about deepstriking units that are picking up 200 points of enemies, we're generally talking about deepstrikers with short-ranged guns (or melee units). With the current system, there's counterplay involved. If my opponent wants to deepstrike something near one of my expensive units, I can screen them out with cheaper units or units that are a bad target for the deepstrikers. Which in turn actually adds value to units that aren't particularly durable or lethal.
Under the old system, you had a pretty narrow band of positions you could place that short-ranged shooting unit while still being within range of your target. You chose the location that was least likely to screw you over while still being able to hit your target, and then it was out of your hands. A die roll with no interaction could just decide to scatter you 10" straight into an enemy or off the table, and you'd either be delayed (having to do the same thing next turn), or you'd be destroyed outright, or you'd be placed by your opponent so that you were either irrelevant for the rest of the game or else were sitting there waiting for your opponent to come collect their free kill on the following turn.
What we have now promotes positioning decisions and counterplay. What we had previously promoted some of that but was ultimately just a die roll with an X% chance of your unit being wiped out without firing a single shot. Sometimes without even being put on the table. Which sucked. It was frustrating when it happened to my units, and it was unsatisfying when it happened to my opponents'.
Charging out of deepstrike isn't ideal in the current system. It's basically an X% chance show up and do nothing, but at least you can opt to position the unit somewhere safe-ish or rapid ingress to be relevant on the next turn. I have thoughts on improving it, but that's probably a topic for Proposed Rules.
Could this not be at least partially solved with a more forgiving mishap table? One where your dudes are never auto-destroyed, but instead either end up back in reserve or just in a worse spot on the table.
(Though it was hilarious when one of my ill-tempered friends flipped out after losing Draigo and an entire entourage of Terminators to a deep strike mishap. )
Ehhh. That would make it less bad, but a lot of units would still be screwed. The "let your opponent deploy your unit" approach usually just meant your unit died without doing anything but with extra steps or else got shoved in a corner where they can't participate. Going back into reserves is less bad.
Without looking at the book right this moment, I think Nachmund's deepstrike mishap table has a result that basically makes you choose a new location to arrive, but it has to be at least X" away from the place you just tried to land. Which seems like a decent way to do it.
I don't really see how this makes the game "more fun". I mean sure, it produces those "remember when?" some deathstar (Terminators come to mind to me too) was insta-gibbed or put in some corner full of difficult terrain. But it sort of provokes "okay, I've lost, good game, lets go again" from your opponent. Except we probably spent an hour getting to this point so...
I mean imaghine you just said "in turn 2 roll a dice, on a 1 (or whatever) you can't deepstrike this turn". Is that fun for anyone?
The Nachtmund Gauntlet crusade actually brings back deep strike mishaps, maybe give it a try if you missed them that much The surgical deep strike rules can be uses irrespective of whether you are playing crusade or not.
On the topic of boarding action terrain, I can really recommend battlesystems terrain. With just two of the smaller sets (40€+60€), I got enough terrain to run two regular games of boarding action or one four player game.
Even if you don't have any terrain, just drop all your ruins, walls and crates onto the battlefield and clog it up like you would for kill team. The important part is to create chokepoints and to have little to no firing lanes. Doors are fun, but not mandatory. The missions and their exact setup themselves are neither that interesting nor important to play the game mode, just playing a regular 40k mission on a board full of terrain also works.
Quixote wrote: I never read the book, how exactly do these deep strike rules vary from the regular rules for Deep Strike?
Remaining stubbornly too lazy to look at my book rather than going from memory... You can basically deepstrike closer than normal, but you count up the number of enemy models near the location that you want to deepstrike. That number becomes a modifier to a (2d6?) roll. If you roll badly, you roll on the mishap table. The table has various results.
I mean imaghine you just said "in turn 2 roll a dice, on a 1 (or whatever) you can't deepstrike this turn". Is that fun for anyone?
And often, it was worse than that. It was "In turn 2, roll a die, and on a one your entire unit is dead." And no, other than not deepstriking (which you pay for the ability to do), there's no way to prevent it.
Same with the stupid AF "After losing a fight, you run, but if my attackers run faster, rather than re-engaging and fighting again, you're all just dead without a roll." I think there might have been a carve out... But you guessed it: For SPace Marines only cuz YAY SPACE MARINES.
These rules were stupid, and when they died, I pissed on their graves. If they return again, I'm done.
Tyel wrote: I don't really see how this makes the game "more fun". I mean sure, it produces those "remember when?" some deathstar (Terminators come to mind to me too) was insta-gibbed or put in some corner full of difficult terrain. But it sort of provokes "okay, I've lost, good game, lets go again" from your opponent. Except we probably spent an hour getting to this point so...
Oh I'm not defending the mechanic at all.
It was more of a 'couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy' memory.
First, a small Joke. I do not know what 11th edition will be like, but 12th edition will be with sticks and stones.
I don't mind vehicles having toughness instead of armor value, if it makes it easier to check one less thing. I think vehicles having wounds and armor saves is a bit much. I prefer the old damage table system, so I'd like to see something like the damage table return instead of pre-selected reductions in vehicle power based on wounds.
I do think the more damage the vehicle has taken from the damage table should be reflected in bonuses on the table, like +1 on the table for each weapon destroyed, +1 on the table if the vehicle has been slowed down, etc, make it harder or impossible to destroy the vehicle in 1-2 hits, but the more hits that get through the more likely it is to result in the destruction.
I also like when psykers have more than 1 power available, it just feels better, I haven't worked out a good system yet but I think it should be done.
PenitentJake wrote: Same with the stupid AF "After losing a fight, you run, but if my attackers run faster, rather than re-engaging and fighting again, you're all just dead without a roll." I think there might have been a carve out... But you guessed it: For SPace Marines only cuz YAY SPACE MARINES.
Ignoring the carve out for GW's favourite sons, I think this made more sense because it was just core to the combat rules. It was how you wiped out big units in assault.
Rather than today's system of "this squad needs to kill (or at least do significant damage) to whatever it charges, so to do that we'll have to give (almost) every combat unit a bazillion attacks."
But I'm not exactly itching for it to come back.
Its a bit like the discussion of how they should bring initiative back. I'm pretty sure only factions with high initiative think that - no one with initiative 2 thought it was a good system. (And GW themselves had to keep adding work arounds to the point where they should clearly have just scrapped it.)
Which is a common issue of GW rules design.
"Here's a problem/negative effect - it adds complexity and realism."
"Well this sucks. Can we solve the problem?"
"Yeah - but only for these units, in these factions."
"Isn't that massively overpowered/unfair on the ones who can't solve it?"
"Yeah, probably, who cares? Anyway enjoy getting a new codex in 6 years..."
I was gonna do a huge response, but this line softened me up a bit.
The rule was probably my least favourite rule out of any edition I played. Scattering deepstrike was a close second.
To say that "tag you're dead" made sense because it was a core rule, and that was just how you defeated units in assault doesn't make any sense to me at all. You can scare me off the board, but if you catch me before I get to the edge of the board, I am going to turn around and fight, not just die of fear- that's fething ridiculous.
It created a situation where in order to be a good close combat unit, leadership was almost as important as your ability to fight, which again, is just kinda dumb, core mechanic or not. Resolving combat by attacks + unit rules + possible strats makes WAY more sense to me, even if it's on the datacard rather than being a core mechanic.
Personally, I always figured Sweeping Advance would have been improved if it just granted free attack(s) to the winner of the close combat instead of instantly killing everyone on the losing side - that would still allow you to chew down a large tarpit without making it one of those "Do you want me to pick up my models now, or would you rather waste time on a roll we both know I'll lose?" situations.
Same with the stupid AF "After losing a fight, you run, but if my attackers run faster, rather than re-engaging and fighting again, you're all just dead without a roll." I think there might have been a carve out... But you guessed it: For SPace Marines only cuz YAY SPACE MARINES.
These rules were stupid, and when they died, I pissed on their graves. If they return again, I'm done.
Those rules were a hold-over from the first time GW tried to dumb-down their rules. Or, simplify, or speed up, or whatever euphemism you'd like to pick for it. In WFB 3rd, i.e. the orange hardback book of utter craziness and fun, when a unit broke and ran their enemies got a free round of swings against them as they fled. Your opponent would attack again, you'd remove casualties again, then move the unit however far it had run. I forget if they also got to chase you or not, that was a long time ago now. I think there was a mechanic for that too. Along with things like cavalry wedges, archers in arrowhead formations, and about a billion other things that all got dropped from the game.
It was slow and clunky, but fun. And the rules often made some form of sense, like the opponent getting some free hacks when the enemy they were fighting turned their backs. I think RT had a similar mechanic, but again...35 years ago.
It got dumbed down in WFB to making a break check, and if you ran, you and your opponent (if they chose to pursue) both rolled dice to see how far. If their roll matched or beat yours, you picked up your models, as they were now "scattered beyond hope of rallying." It changed the way we played the game, but everyone adapted and it became the new norm. Eventually it made its way into 40k too.
Just apropos of nothing, this bit of history.
I'm not sure the current ruleset is any better. I'd like to see Battle-Shock be a bit more negative, like offering penalties if the shocked unit wants to shoot, not allowing them to Charge, or even forcing them to make a Fall Back move towards cover or their own DZ. Not sure it would make a ton of difference though, as right now it seems like the current ruleset is geared towards total obliteration of units, just deleting them from the board before they even have to take a BS test.
BanjoJohn wrote:First, a small Joke. I do not know what 11th edition will be like, but 12th edition will be with sticks and stones.
I don't mind vehicles having toughness instead of armor value, if it makes it easier to check one less thing. I think vehicles having wounds and armor saves is a bit much. I prefer the old damage table system, so I'd like to see something like the damage table return instead of pre-selected reductions in vehicle power based on wounds.
I do think the more damage the vehicle has taken from the damage table should be reflected in bonuses on the table, like +1 on the table for each weapon destroyed, +1 on the table if the vehicle has been slowed down, etc, make it harder or impossible to destroy the vehicle in 1-2 hits, but the more hits that get through the more likely it is to result in the destruction.
Meanwhile in 30k which still has AV, damage table and hullpoints, vehicles suck.
I don't believe GW has ever gotten the classic vehicles rules right, they either are too fragile or dominate the game with cheap transports (5th ed), no middle point.
Tyel wrote:
But I'm not exactly itching for it to come back.
Its a bit like the discussion of how they should bring initiative back. I'm pretty sure only factions with high initiative think that - no one with initiative 2 thought it was a good system. (And GW themselves had to keep adding work arounds to the point where they should clearly have just scrapped it.)
IMHO initiative could work if you made initiative modifiers more common. For example if you got +1 initiative on the charge, if you got a -1 for being surrounded and/or pinned, if charging through terrain was a -2 instead on automatically reducing to 1.
To say that "tag you're dead" made sense because it was a core rule, and that was just how you defeated units in assault doesn't make any sense to me at all. You can scare me off the board, but if you catch me before I get to the edge of the board, I am going to turn around and fight, not just die of fear- that's fething ridiculous.
You're mixing two different mechanics here. Sweeping advance was when your unit got immediately wiped if they couldn't get away. If a unit successfully fled from the combat and were later caught in an assault, they'd have to make a test to regroup (except marines of course) and if successful, they would do as you describe, turn and fight.
For the sweeping advance that used the initiative roll, I suspect that the entire mechanic was ported over from historicals. In actual warfare, most casualties occur when one side breaks. The rout is on and the fleeing side gets cut down. That's what the sweeping advance is trying to simulate. Remember, not every casualty is actually a fatality. Removed models represent a variety of conditions. In the sweeping advance rules from 4th edition, it says as much:
"The falling back unit is scattered. We assume that the already demoralised foe is comprehensively defeated, ripped apart and sent packing, its members left either dead, wounded, and captured, or at best, fleeing and hiding. The destroyed unit(s) is removed immediately. No invulnerable save or other special rule (such as the We'll Be Back special rule) can save them at this stage; for them the battle is over and they can take no further useful part in the fighting."
Periodically I see complaints about the lack of meaty moral rules in modern 40k. Here we are discussing one from past editions and everyone seems to hate it. I think morale rules are rules that people like in theory, especially when they apply to the other guy's units, but not so much in practice when their little soldiers stubbornly refuse to fight to the last man for the glory of the klan, coven, craftworld, chapter et al.
It created a situation where in order to be a good close combat unit, leadership was almost as important as your ability to fight, which again, is just kinda dumb, core mechanic or not.
Not really. If you were good at combat, you'd typically win the combat and have no danger of getting swept because you won. In various editions being too good at combat was a problem. You wipe out your target and then get deleted in your opponent's shooting phase. Skilled players learned to pull their punches so the melee unit wouldn't win too hard on the first round of combat. You wanted them to win during the opponent's assault phase. Then wiping out the enemy wasn't a problem.
I honestly didn't mind the old morale rules as much as a lot of other stuff, it was just annoying that whenever an edition went on, everyone just straight up ignored morale. IG shot someone, Tyranids had Synapse, Orks had Orks, SM were SM, even Tau had their knife and eldar came in small squads of 5 so never survived until morale anyway or punched anything dead because of Initiative.
In every edition morale penalties usually were the fluff players' option (hello, Nightlords!), because they only came to bear when the Stars aligned or you were winning through other means already.
So, I liked it when at the start of 8th and in 10th morale actually counted and weren't straight up ignored (as in every prior edition at the end of 8th and in 9th we were at that point again and morale was nonexistent). On the other hand, 10th edition morale rules aren't worked around by every faction, but their penalites are so small that you can outright ignore them.
You're mixing two different mechanics here. Sweeping advance was when your unit got immediately wiped if they couldn't get away. If a unit successfully fled from the combat and were later caught in an assault, they'd have to make a test to regroup (except marines of course) and if successful, they would do as you describe, turn and fight.
Thanks for the heads up- the roll to rally is better than no roll to rally, and I'm surprised I didn't remember it; I didn't keep all of the 40k books I accumulated over the years, so I wasn't at liberty to double check before I posted.
For the sweeping advance that used the initiative roll, I suspect that the entire mechanic was ported over from historicals. In actual warfare, most casualties occur when one side breaks. The rout is on and the fleeing side gets cut down. That's what the sweeping advance is trying to simulate. Remember, not every casualty is actually a fatality. Removed models represent a variety of conditions. In the sweeping advance rules from 4th edition, it says as much:
"The falling back unit is scattered. We assume that the already demoralised foe is comprehensively defeated, ripped apart and sent packing, its members left either dead, wounded, and captured, or at best, fleeing and hiding. The destroyed unit(s) is removed immediately. No invulnerable save or other special rule (such as the We'll Be Back special rule) can save them at this stage; for them the battle is over and they can take no further useful part in the fighting."
Periodically I see complaints about the lack of meaty moral rules in modern 40k. Here we are discussing one from past editions and everyone seems to hate it. I think morale rules are rules that people like in theory, especially when they apply to the other guy's units, but not so much in practice when their little soldiers stubbornly refuse to fight to the last man for the glory of the klan, coven, craftworld, chapter et al.
I feel like an inability to hold objectives and use strats IS a sufficient penalty. But I also don't object to pinning (unable to shoot or taking a penalty), or running away.
My problem was "Remove your models if you fail morale."
I feel like I said "I don't like hurricanes" and you somehow heard "I think wind sucks!"
Not really. If you were good at combat, you'd typically win the combat and have no danger of getting swept because you won. In various editions being too good at combat was a problem. You wipe out your target and then get deleted in your opponent's shooting phase. Skilled players learned to pull their punches so the melee unit wouldn't win too hard on the first round of combat. You wanted them to win during the opponent's assault phase. Then wiping out the enemy wasn't a problem.
BanjoJohn wrote:First, a small Joke. I do not know what 11th edition will be like, but 12th edition will be with sticks and stones.
I don't mind vehicles having toughness instead of armor value, if it makes it easier to check one less thing. I think vehicles having wounds and armor saves is a bit much. I prefer the old damage table system, so I'd like to see something like the damage table return instead of pre-selected reductions in vehicle power based on wounds.
I do think the more damage the vehicle has taken from the damage table should be reflected in bonuses on the table, like +1 on the table for each weapon destroyed, +1 on the table if the vehicle has been slowed down, etc, make it harder or impossible to destroy the vehicle in 1-2 hits, but the more hits that get through the more likely it is to result in the destruction.
I also like when psykers have more than 1 power available, it just feels better, I haven't worked out a good system yet but I think it should be done.
My wish for a change to moral is that there should be some units that are Fearless. I can't imagine a squad of lobotomized Servitors running away.
Just like they need to bring back the Psyker Assassin being immune to Pschic powers, instead of giving him FNP vs. PSYCHIC... guess he kinda has a soul after all.
Same with the Sisters of Silence... Soulless no more in 10th.
It would definitely be nice if Battle Shock/Morale had a bit more of an impact on the game. A penalty to the unit's BS or -1 To Hit with shooting as they keep their heads down, an inability to move closer to enemy models, or something similar. But, again, it also seems like a lot of the time people are just picking up entire units that are getting deleted wholesale.
I think the biggest failing for me in 10th is the general "dumbing down" of things like Battle Shock/Morale, terrain, and a few other items while at the same time ramping up the complexity to the tune of outright confusion with special rules. Is there a datacard, anywhere, that doesn't have a special rule on it? Any models at all? Or multiple special rules in many instances? And then you tack on that all 27 factions have multiple detachments, with special rules for every one of them, and 6 "unique" Stratagems (even if some of them, like fight on a 4+ after death, get repeated with new names, so not every one is unique).
There's literally no way for a normal human being, especially a dim one like me, to keep track of all of this. At a certain point, instead of going through every unit, their special rules, and the Stratagems before a game, it feels like it's time to just throw your hands in the air and say "Whatever. Let's just play. If I get screwed by a bunch of stupid add-on rules, I'll blame GW, not you. Don't feel bad if some of mine catch you by surprise."
I mean, it has reached a level of ridiculousness that's astounding to me. Every datacard has some additional printing on it that allows that unit to bend or break some basic rule, adds some modifier, or gives it a special ability. It feels like a desperate attempt to differentiate units just for the sake of doing so. Why?
There's literally no way for a normal human being, especially a dim one like me, to keep track of all of this. At a certain point, instead of going through every unit, their special rules, and the Stratagems before a game, it feels like it's time to just throw your hands in the air and say "Whatever. Let's just play. If I get screwed by a bunch of stupid add-on rules, I'll blame GW, not you. Don't feel bad if some of mine catch you by surprise."
I mean, it has reached a level of ridiculousness that's astounding to me. Every datacard has some additional printing on it that allows that unit to bend or break some basic rule, adds some modifier, or gives it a special ability. It feels like a desperate attempt to differentiate units just for the sake of doing so. Why?
This is why I'm play Imperial Knights... I essentially have 3 different unit types (with different weapon loadouts).
BanjoJohn wrote:First, a small Joke. I do not know what 11th edition will be like, but 12th edition will be with sticks and stones.
I don't mind vehicles having toughness instead of armor value, if it makes it easier to check one less thing. I think vehicles having wounds and armor saves is a bit much. I prefer the old damage table system, so I'd like to see something like the damage table return instead of pre-selected reductions in vehicle power based on wounds.
I do think the more damage the vehicle has taken from the damage table should be reflected in bonuses on the table, like +1 on the table for each weapon destroyed, +1 on the table if the vehicle has been slowed down, etc, make it harder or impossible to destroy the vehicle in 1-2 hits, but the more hits that get through the more likely it is to result in the destruction.
Meanwhile in 30k which still has AV, damage table and hullpoints, vehicles suck.
I don't believe GW has ever gotten the classic vehicles rules right, they either are too fragile or dominate the game with cheap transports (5th ed), no middle point.
I didn't know 30k still used that, I'm not really familiar with that rule set. I do wonder though what you think of the "toughness, wounds, armor save" system of rules that vehicles are using in mainline 40k?
Arschbombe wrote: Periodically I see complaints about the lack of meaty moral rules in modern 40k. Here we are discussing one from past editions and everyone seems to hate it. I think morale rules are rules that people like in theory, especially when they apply to the other guy's units, but not so much in practice when their little soldiers stubbornly refuse to fight to the last man for the glory of the klan, coven, craftworld, chapter et al.
I think this is the rub of all these debates.
I think you've got numerous schools of thought.
1. 40k "as a competitive game". And by competitive, I mean two players intelligently engage with all the tools they have available to them with the objective of winning the game. Rules need to be tight and clear. You want a bit of luck perhaps so its not just chess or checkers - but not so much there's no explicitly right or wrong decisions.
2. 40k as a mashup ("fun" could work - but the above is fun for many people). Put perhaps unfairly/crudely, you want a system which works where two players "don't" intelligently engage with all the tools available to them. You want a system where two players can run their units towards each other, sort of mashup in the middle of the table, one player falls over but both have a good time getting there.
3. 40k as a simulation. This is perhaps the one that gets into the weeds - because everyone has a slightly different idea of what they are trying to simulate. You can take almost as far as turning the game into a limited RPG where armies are controlled by rules or even an interventionist DM/GM than the players themselves. You wind it up and watch it go to a "realistic" conclusion - whatever that is.
"Meaty morale" which takes control away from the player really comes under 3. Players more concerned with 1 and 2 aren't that interested (and in fact actively hate it most of the time). I seem to remember GW saying that it was one of the major complaints they got from players.
There's literally no way for a normal human being, especially a dim one like me, to keep track of all of this. At a certain point, instead of going through every unit, their special rules, and the Stratagems before a game, it feels like it's time to just throw your hands in the air and say "Whatever. Let's just play. If I get screwed by a bunch of stupid add-on rules, I'll blame GW, not you. Don't feel bad if some of mine catch you by surprise."
I mean, it has reached a level of ridiculousness that's astounding to me. Every datacard has some additional printing on it that allows that unit to bend or break some basic rule, adds some modifier, or gives it a special ability. It feels like a desperate attempt to differentiate units just for the sake of doing so. Why?
This is an odd take considering how much more complex the previous edition was by comparison.
And you're literally not supposed to memorize anything- you're literally supposed to have it right in front of you on a convenient card- whether one of the overpriced GW premades or one you create yourself on a cheap 3x five index card. You can use them from directly from the book or app too, but cards are faster because you can spread them out and pass them to your opponent as needed. And the fact that every faction has more than one detachment is irrelevant since the only one that matters is the one you're using for any given game. The other ones are this old thing that used to exist EVERYWHERE in the game: they're called options, and anyone who suggests taking even more of them away from us should probably just find another game that's more in line with their personal preferences.
I don't want to sound like I'm excluding anyone, but you have to understand if the game gets any simpler, it excludes ME.
I was gonna do a huge response, but this line softened me up a bit.
The rule was probably my least favourite rule out of any edition I played. Scattering deepstrike was a close second.
To say that "tag you're dead" made sense because it was a core rule, and that was just how you defeated units in assault doesn't make any sense to me at all. You can scare me off the board, but if you catch me before I get to the edge of the board, I am going to turn around and fight, not just die of fear- that's fething ridiculous.
It created a situation where in order to be a good close combat unit, leadership was almost as important as your ability to fight, which again, is just kinda dumb, core mechanic or not. Resolving combat by attacks + unit rules + possible strats makes WAY more sense to me, even if it's on the datacard rather than being a core mechanic.
Mostly it was a rule ported straight over from fantasy battle where the whole game was far more built around it than 40k ever tried to be.
I didn't know 30k still used that, I'm not really familiar with that rule set. I do wonder though what you think of the "toughness, wounds, armor save" system of rules that vehicles are using in mainline 40k?
I prefer it, I remember late 7th ed when everyone complained how easy to kill vehicles were in comparison to monsters and wanted them to have T, W and SV+. People say they want damage tables, but they also don't want losing tanks to a luckily hit. Which is why every time I have seen homebrew rules try to bring back vehicles damage tables they include ways to make one shots impossible, which at that point I wonder what is the point?
If you want simulationist vehicles rules then one shots are extremely realistic as that is often how tank warfare behaves. And if you want more gamey durable tanks then just give them T, W and SV+.
Also I just found AV an extremely poor simulation system. I mean, you had auto cannons that could one-shot tanks but couldn't penetrate Space Marine armor, and at the other extreme you had hotshot lasguns that penetrated Space Marine armor but couldn't penetrate tank armor. It was ridiculous AP didn't actually help penetrate vehicle armor.
Tyel wrote:
I think you've got numerous schools of thought.
1. 40k "as a competitive game". And by competitive, I mean two players intelligently engage with all the tools they have available to them with the objective of winning the game. Rules need to be tight and clear. You want a bit of luck perhaps so its not just chess or checkers - but not so much there's no explicitly right or wrong decisions.
2. 40k as a mashup ("fun" could work - but the above is fun for many people). Put perhaps unfairly/crudely, you want a system which works where two players "don't" intelligently engage with all the tools available to them. You want a system where two players can run their units towards each other, sort of mashup in the middle of the table, one player falls over but both have a good time getting there.
3. 40k as a simulation. This is perhaps the one that gets into the weeds - because everyone has a slightly different idea of what they are trying to simulate. You can take almost as far as turning the game into a limited RPG where armies are controlled by rules or even an interventionist DM/GM than the players themselves. You wind it up and watch it go to a "realistic" conclusion - whatever that is.
"Meaty morale" which takes control away from the player really comes under 3. Players more concerned with 1 and 2 aren't that interested (and in fact actively hate it most of the time). I seem to remember GW saying that it was one of the major complaints they got from players.
Good breakdown. I'm definitely leanings towards the second camp, personally. To me, much of the fun of 40k comes from creating a flavorful army with a theme and story that can be represented on the table in some fashion, and then mashing the action figures together. With the rules/outcome helping you tell a story. In some ways, I think of this as more of an "RPG" experience than the simulationist approach because it's less interested in getting bogged down in minutia and more interested in letting the "cool stuff" about each army shine.
Camp 2 is D&D. Camp 3 is D&D, but your group spends a bunch of time tracking carrying capacity and checking off rations and agonizing over the watch rotation.
BanjoJohn wrote:
I don't mind vehicles having toughness instead of armor value, if it makes it easier to check one less thing. I think vehicles having wounds and armor saves is a bit much. I prefer the old damage table system, so I'd like to see something like the damage table return instead of pre-selected reductions in vehicle power based on wounds.
I do think the more damage the vehicle has taken from the damage table should be reflected in bonuses on the table, like +1 on the table for each weapon destroyed, +1 on the table if the vehicle has been slowed down, etc, make it harder or impossible to destroy the vehicle in 1-2 hits, but the more hits that get through the more likely it is to result in the destruction.
So as was mentioned previously, giving vehicles Wounds and Toughness is sort of an evolution of the old problems we ran into with AV/the damage charts.
* When I started playing in 5th, vehicles were cheap, spammed, and hard to finish off because the damage chart meant that anything short of a meltagun was probably just going to stun lock them all game. Or possibly immobilize them which was either irrelevant or as good as a kill depending on the vehicle.
* In either 6th or 7th, we added hull points, which were basically wounds for vehicles. So you could still stunlock/damage a vehicle, but the vehicle would perma-die after a few good hits. So instead of stunning a vehicle 5 times, stunning it 3 times meant it was dead. But people hated that because now vehicles were seen as too easy to kill, *and* they could get debuffed by damage mid-game, *and* they were uninteractive with small arms fire making things like imperial knights (introduced in 7th) a problem.
* So then in 8th, they just kind of finished the transition. They'd already given vehicles "wounds" in the form of hull points, and vehicle skew being uninteractive sucked. So they just made vehicles work the same way everything else did. And because 8th was the edition where they cut out a lot of (often clunky) mechanics, they simplified the damage chart with its list of effects you had to track by just giving you the little wounded vehicle charts for vehicles with 10+ wounds. Which we've since streamlined even more by just making it a -1 to-hit for some vehicles.
All of which is to say that if you're going to bring back some form of vehicle damage chart, you have to contend with the problems that came with it.
I also like when psykers have more than 1 power available, it just feels better, I haven't worked out a good system yet but I think it should be done.
Absolutely. The easiest approach is just to give psychic powers a points cost.
There's literally no way for a normal human being, especially a dim one like me, to keep track of all of this. At a certain point, instead of going through every unit, their special rules, and the Stratagems before a game, it feels like it's time to just throw your hands in the air and say "Whatever. Let's just play. If I get screwed by a bunch of stupid add-on rules, I'll blame GW, not you. Don't feel bad if some of mine catch you by surprise."
I mean, it has reached a level of ridiculousness that's astounding to me. Every datacard has some additional printing on it that allows that unit to bend or break some basic rule, adds some modifier, or gives it a special ability. It feels like a desperate attempt to differentiate units just for the sake of doing so. Why?
This is an odd take considering how much more complex the previous edition was by comparison.
And you're literally not supposed to memorize anything- you're literally supposed to have it right in front of you on a convenient card- whether one of the overpriced GW premades or one you create yourself on a cheap 3x five index card. You can use them from directly from the book or app too, but cards are faster because you can spread them out and pass them to your opponent as needed. And the fact that every faction has more than one detachment is irrelevant since the only one that matters is the one you're using for any given game. The other ones are this old thing that used to exist EVERYWHERE in the game: they're called options, and anyone who suggests taking even more of them away from us should probably just find another game that's more in line with their personal preferences.
I don't want to sound like I'm excluding anyone, but you have to understand if the game gets any simpler, it excludes ME.
I think the point I was trying to get at was I used to be able to show up at a table, be told what my opponent was playing, and have a firm grasp on what "Special Rules" that entire army had. Differentiation came from small changes, AND the options you mentioned that you used to pick...a different Chapter of Marines having something cool (like Death Company or an Emperor's Champion), a different Force Org Chart, different units carrying different weapon loadouts, or having different move abilities (jetpacks, for instance), etc.
Now, it's as you say. Literally print out a stack of cards for every unit/detachment/stratagem and hand them out like it's a holiday, spend however long it takes to familiarize yourself with them, then go ahead and forget about them midway through and be caught by surprise anyway.
It was a bad trade...getting rid of actual equipment/unit options and replacing them with a literal encyclopedia of special rules, then trying to figure out how they interact with the normal rules, when both of them are usually worded like crap.
I don't want the game dumbed down any more. Hells, I used to play RT and 3rd edition WFB. I still play Epic. It's been nothing but one long, slow slide to the bottom of complexity for 40 years. But I think what they did in 10th was a crappy solution. If I want simplistic beer-n-pretzels, I'll go back to playing Battletech. But I don't want to have to deal with every new opponent showing up having a completely different set of rules either.
I didn't know 30k still used that, I'm not really familiar with that rule set. I do wonder though what you think of the "toughness, wounds, armor save" system of rules that vehicles are using in mainline 40k?
I prefer it, I remember late 7th ed when everyone complained how easy to kill vehicles were in comparison to monsters and wanted them to have T, W and SV+. People say they want damage tables, but they also don't want losing tanks to a luckily hit. Which is why every time I have seen homebrew rules try to bring back vehicles damage tables they include ways to make one shots impossible, which at that point I wonder what is the point?
If you want simulationist vehicles rules then one shots are extremely realistic as that is often how tank warfare behaves. And if you want more gamey durable tanks then just give them T, W and SV+.
Also I just found AV an extremely poor simulation system. I mean, you had auto cannons that could one-shot tanks but couldn't penetrate Space Marine armor, and at the other extreme you had hotshot lasguns that penetrated Space Marine armor but couldn't penetrate tank armor. It was ridiculous AP didn't actually help penetrate vehicle armor.
You're not wrong. The older AV/Damage Table rules were always problematic. But they significantly differentiated Vehicles from everything else, and that was a good thing. A good thing, poorly implemented.
T/W/Sv for vehicles though, just feels bad, man. What is the difference between a Vehicle and a Monster at that point? I'm struggling to think of any significant ones that actually make a real difference in the game. Typically Vehicles have a bunch more guns, and Monsters have fewer guns but fight well in CC. That's about it, and even that's not a hard and fast rule when you look at Walkers.
I'm not saying I have a solution. There probably isn't one that everyone, or even a majority, would embrace and be happy with. Maybe progressive damage tables for both of them. Take a few wounds, lose 1" off your move. Take a few more, Monsters move even slower, Vehicles lose a gun. A few more, start taking penalties to hit.
Maybe something like that? The problem with it would be it goes against what I was complaining about earlier, which is too many special rules on every datasheet...with this, every Vehicle/Monster would have to have a little table detailing what happened to them as they became wounded. Would that be bad? I dunno. Just spitballing ideas, because right now, Vehicles just seem very boring.
Not so much a prediction but I would really like to see the strategy rules (army rules/stratagems) be more apparent if they are essential in the game. The biggest problem is that they don't have much of a spotlight despise how important they are. The reliable way to learn about them through official GW means is through Codexes and even then, the book isn't the best to lay out. They have been improving, especially with 10th Edition stratagems being clean, having subtext, colors, and small graphics, even if its the plain DnD 4e look.
Deck of cards somewhat help, but having say art matching the stratagem can be a start.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I just hope they never go overboard with the special rules like 30k.
My opponent and I spent more time reading what our weapons did to each other than actually playing the game.
There needs to be a happy balance between Streamlined Gameplay and Wikipedia Entries in the Age of Darkness.
IMOGW pretty much nailed USR this time around. A few kinks had to be ironed out through errata (looking at you, Hazardous and Devastating Wounds), but otherwise it works really well. People hardly ever need to look up any of them unless there is a weird interaction with a bespoke rule.
A small hand full of things like sticky objectives or could probably be changed into USR or keywords, but the list is short.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I just hope they never go overboard with the special rules like 30k.
My opponent and I spent more time reading what our weapons did to each other than actually playing the game.
There needs to be a happy balance between Streamlined Gameplay and Wikipedia Entries in the Age of Darkness.
IMOGW pretty much nailed USR this time around. A few kinks had to be ironed out through errata (looking at you, Hazardous and Devastating Wounds), but otherwise it works really well. People hardly ever need to look up any of them unless there is a weird interaction with a bespoke rule.
A small hand full of things like sticky objectives or could probably be changed into USR or keywords, but the list is short.
I much prefer the way they are doing USRs this time round, the way it was in older editions was horrendous. Now, as jidmah says, you barely have to look any up, each is clear in what it does. I remember in 7th where the description of one rule would just show other USRs it granted so you have to go and look those up, it was horrible. The weapon rules are really simple and work well, when I look at heresy unit or weapon rules it makes me sad.
PenitentJake wrote: It created a situation where in order to be a good close combat unit, leadership was almost as important as your ability to fight, which again, is just kinda dumb, core mechanic or not.
I don't think that's dumb at all- just a holdover of when 40K was a historical wargame with a sci-fi veneer, rather than whatever it currently is. 'Morale is almost as important as your ability to fight' is an evergreen observation of warfare.
And while I do feel that sweeping advance could have been handled differently if you prioritize some sort of simulation over ease of play, in terms of gameplay effect it was a key factor in making melee decisive and worth using. Whittling down enemies with gunfire was slow, but a competent melee unit that made it into combat could break a unit and either force them to flee or wipe them out entirely. Without that capability, melee units need overwhelming kill-a-unit-in-one-turn damage output for them to be worth taking over shooting counterparts, and multirole units like the humble Tactical Marine lost a lot of their utility.
As always, there are ways that gameplay concepts like morale could be implemented other than how 40K used to do it or how 40K does it now.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kagetora wrote: I think the point I was trying to get at was I used to be able to show up at a table, be told what my opponent was playing, and have a firm grasp on what "Special Rules" that entire army had. Differentiation came from small changes, AND the options you mentioned that you used to pick...a different Chapter of Marines having something cool (like Death Company or an Emperor's Champion), a different Force Org Chart, different units carrying different weapon loadouts, or having different move abilities (jetpacks, for instance), etc.
Now, it's as you say. Literally print out a stack of cards for every unit/detachment/stratagem and hand them out like it's a holiday, spend however long it takes to familiarize yourself with them, then go ahead and forget about them midway through and be caught by surprise anyway.
It was a bad trade...getting rid of actual equipment/unit options and replacing them with a literal encyclopedia of special rules, then trying to figure out how they interact with the normal rules, when both of them are usually worded like crap.
GW basically recognized why having a ton of bespoke special rules was a detriment to gameplay and replaced them with a more concise, memorizable set of USRs... and then reimplemented a ton of bespoke special rules anyways.
You hinted at it, but the biggest loss IMO is units having WYSIWYG capabilities. You used to be able to look at an infantry unit, see that it's armed with bolters, and know just from that what its general capabilities are- 6" move, 12" melee threat range, S4/AP5, and oh look the sergeant has a powerfist so he gets double S and ignores armor. Now, you have no idea what a unit is or does without looking at the datasheet- that bolter isn't a normal bolter, it can actually shoot twice if it targets the same unit, and the sergeant's powerfist has different stats from the powerfist in your army.
It's still a step up from the gotcha 'trap card' bs of stratagems in 8th/9th because it's at least directly tied to the models themselves (and the list of stratagems is much shorter), but it's still annoyingly complex to keep track of. For all that people complain about older editions being too complicated, they were simpler to actually play in practice, because once you knew the core rules you were pretty much set. What we have now is the result of trying to pile stuff onto a threadbare core in order to achieve depth.
Eh that argument may have some weight with Imperial armies, but xenos equipment was always kinda bespoke.
I mean, most people cannot even differentiate between a Tyranid barbed strangler or a venom cannon, so I have always needed to explain regardless of edition what each does (and biomorphs in particular were never very WYSIWYG friendly)
Imperials and Chaos comprise the majority of factions in the game and the overwhelming majority of armies on the table, so yeah, that makes a pretty significant difference.
But even with xenos, there was a time when I could say 'the talons give bonus attacks and the claws give Rending' and that was consistent across my entire army. Honestly, I have enough trouble keeping track of my own capabilities now that they're so inconsistent- why do my Tyrant Guard have different profiles for boneswords, crushing claws, or scything talons, but my Warriors lump them all together as 'Tyranid Warrior claws and talons'? I find myself having to constantly double-check the datasheet to make sure I'm remembering the right stat or using my units optimally. It's not unplayable, but it isn't conducive to learnability either.
Yeah, I get ehat Catbarf is saying and it's a problem since 8th and has gotten worse with new units.
For example, in earlier times Orks had a choppa, big choppa or klaw, with named chars or relics being special. Now you have choppa, big choppa, special klaw for the Beast snagga Boss, special klaw for the trike Boss, special big choppa for the warboss, special klaw for the snagga warboss, special CC weapons for named chars. It's a point of needless complexity when at the same time in CSM World some Power fists are power fists and some lightning claws are lightnings claws but other Power fists and lightning claws are accursed weapons So the same bits having different rules. This leads to a need to look up these Profiles over and over (like you would look up the bloated base rules over and over in 6th/7th edition).
I will come out and say that people are playing wrong if they don't like rules that take their decisions away... :p
You're playing a wargame that represents living creatures with personalities, training and behaviour. If the game was robot wars where each side just moved and deployed machines based on objective programming, sure I can see why you would feel that your army should do exactly what you want it to.
but part of the deal of playing a game like this, is that you are directing imperfect warriors across imperfect terrain, with imperfect weapons under imperfect conditions.
Behaviour is a key part of this - not specifically morale, because so many people will pull 'fearless' units out of their pockets to counter that, but behaviour and reactions to events. Fearless units will still duck from incoming fire, or change the direction they move because they might lose more troops if they go directly into the fire.
The concept that rules that take player agency away are bad, is a terrible position for modern games to be in. Part of the game contract you take up when you start to play is that you don't have full control of your army. That's a FEATURE, not a bug.
How those instances of lacking control are modelled however, where the rub is. Not the concept itself.
You can roll suppression, morale, fear, etc all into 'interference' with a unit's actions. It doesn't matter how or why the unit's actions are interfered, only that they are.
A unit that isn't scared still gets slowed down by craters created by incoming artillery fire, Still wants to avoid shooting so it can survive long enough to get to the enemy, still changes direction or takes cover to maintain its numbers.
If there's one rules philosophy that I don't like about modern 40k, it's this notion that players should have absolutely as much control over their army as possible, that any random things are removed, that you should be able to judge probability of success by just the number on their stat line.
Counterpoint, this game has both Tyranids and Necrons in it. The latter are literally robots, the former are literally hive-minded.
Like sure once a unit is out of synapse range I shouldn't fully control it anymore, but I do expect to have total control over units within synapse because that is the lore.
I like the idea of randomness to represent the chaotic nature of war and how you might want a squad to advance into a ruin to claim it but other factors stop it etc but I don't have faith in GW doing that justice properly.
How those instances of lacking control are modelled however, where the rub is. Not the concept itself.
And this is the issue. I'm fine with random charges, psychic tests, random to hit, random saves, etc. I'm fine with random effects being associated with specific wargear that I can choose not to use. But for me, wiping out a unit because of a deepstrike mishap or wiping a unit out without swinging cuz you managed to tag are two of those poor instances of lacking control.
It's funny how the supposed "gotcha" of strats will drive some people crazy, yet they feel nostalgia for "woops your entire unit is dead because of a single random die roll which wasn't even associated with an attack."
Of course I suppose you could say the opposite- I'm not bothered in the least by the "gotcha" of strats, but getting wiped out in deepstrike mishaps or sweeping advances used to drive me crazy! I think it's because in the case of strats, there's at least a decision made by the enemy, typically an enemy unit that uses the strat and a resource cost for the action... Whereas mishaps and sweeping advances were just core mechanics that randomly wiped you out.
Tyran wrote: Counterpoint, this game has both Tyranids and Necrons in it. The latter are literally robots, the former are literally hive-minded.
Like sure once a unit is out of synapse range I shouldn't fully control it anymore, but I do expect to have total control over units within synapse because that is the lore.
Yes, but your control is not the hive mind's control. The hive mind would not make gamist decisions over how to use its troops. Just because it can run them into guns ignoring everything, doesn't mean it will at every instance.
This gets into the equivalent of RPGs and metagaming - you as the player not acting as the character/general would. Which is that number 3 simulationist concept - how much of the game is you simulating the army's actions, vs playing an abstract game and making gamist decisions.
ie, you could play an army of orks that never gets into melee, running around shooting with their pistols and you could win the game that way. But is that representative of how the army would have actually acted in that scenario?
EDIT: And that doesn't factor in blast stunning, noise confusing units, being turned around by shots coming from every angle. While your troops are imperfect, there won't be an instance when the phenomena of a battlefield fails to interfere with their behaviour. People are just too used to the conceit that morale is the only way that these effects should be modelled and Fearless allows you to ignore those effects.
Tyran wrote: Counterpoint, this game has both Tyranids and Necrons in it. The latter are literally robots, the former are literally hive-minded.
Like sure once a unit is out of synapse range I shouldn't fully control it anymore, but I do expect to have total control over units within synapse because that is the lore.
Beat me to it. I'd like to see the Bugs go back to essentially being unbreakable until they're outside of Synapse, then revert to some for of Instinctive Behavior. Even if that meant 0OC, and being forced to move/use them in certain ways. Along with independent units, like Lictors, Genestealers, etc. behaving like everyone else. Make Synapse Great Again. Or at least make it mean something, and killing the Synapse nodes/creatures important.
Necrons can pound sand though. They've been OP since their introduction, and should be eliminated from the game entirely, like the Squats.
Kidding, obviously, but partly not. Necrons have always been Marine Tough, Eldar Deadly, and Tyranid Fanatic, with the toughest vehicles and monsters in the game. It's weird to me that they don't completely dominate every game and tournament, and yet they don't. I guess they must be OK, and GW might be balancing things just a tiny bit. They should definitely make them more expensive though, both in points and money. Double would be fine with me.
I hate Necrons, BTW. No, I won't show you on the doll where the Necrons probed me.
This gets into the equivalent of RPGs and metagaming - you as the player not acting as the character/general would. Which is that number 3 simulationist concept - how much of the game is you simulating the army's actions, vs playing an abstract game and making gamist decisions.
ie, you could play an army of orks that never gets into melee, running around shooting with their pistols and you could win the game that way. But is that representative of how the army would have actually acted in that scenario?
I feel that while that argument may work in a historical in which the army and general in question actually existed and you could even find documentation about their tactics... It actually doesn't quite work in fiction and particularly not in 40k.
For example Tyranids can have wildly different tactics depending on hive fleet and situation, they can go from throwing endless waves at imperial defenses to outmaneuvering Orks with guerrilla warfare to bombarding daemons with artillery. Some hive fleets prefer massed subterranean assaults, some prefer air supremacy swarms, some prefer nidzilla monster spam and we even have examples of hive fleets changing prefered strategies over time.
So how can you tell how my army would have actually acted in that scenario? Hive fleet colours? What if it is a custom hive fleet
Orks also can have different strategies and tactics depending on clan culture and/or warboss preferences. Same goes for different Necron dynasties.
I guess the argument kinda works with Space Marines and Imperial Guard that tend to have very rigid Chapter cultures or regimental doctrines, but even there custom Chapters and regiments are a thing.
And to be even more meta, a core aspect of 40k is supposed to be "Your Dudes/ettes/Bugs", the player is supposed to at least partially define how they behave.
Edit: and to be honest, it is highly likely we wouldn't even agree on how an army would have acted in any scenario, because the supposed source that would determine that is highly arbitrary fiction that gets retconned half the time and/or has different authors each one with their own take and interpretation.
Edit#2: but you do have a point with loss of control for non-morale battlefield phenomena like concussions, difficult terrain, etc.
Been thinking more about simulation vs. control- it's a good tangent, so I won't make this long, but Crusade can add to that lack of control, or up the scale on it. So GSC may or may not be successful it infiltrating institutions, Tau may or may not win over planets, etc. These MOSTLY affect the Crusade metagame, but that can trickle down to the table.
For an added layer of simulation, I tend to advocate for escalation in our campaigns as a result of narrative triggers rather than wins/losses or intervals. My GSC grow according to the brood cycle- so I start with Purestrains; their kills become brood brothers who beget acolytes... And so on. It'll probably take 10-15 games per brood cycle.
My Archon Ascendant has to make deals with the various other forces in Commorragh before they'll join him; Guard and Sororitas are reinforced from off world based on their discoveries of Cult activity and other threats, often through the intervention of Imperial Agents.
What happens on the table can be relatively stable when there's a layer of narrative barriers to player agency to create a simulation effect at the level of the war rather than the level of individual battles.
PenitentJake wrote:It's funny how the supposed "gotcha" of strats will drive some people crazy, yet they feel nostalgia for "woops your entire unit is dead because of a single random die roll which wasn't even associated with an attack."
Yeah, because those aren't the same thing at all.
The 'gotcha' of stratagems was that you couldn't reasonably learn and memorize all of them, so you would get caught out by lacking information that was supposed to be available to you. It was the game not functioning as designed.
The 'gotcha' of deep strike was when you deliberately chose a risky drop location and the dice didn't work out. You made an in-game decision with all the necessary information, choosing what level of risk you were willing to accept, and sometimes taking a risk means you're going to get burned. That's working as intended; the negative response is just 40K players being especially averse to randomness even when they have the power to influence how random it actually is.
Tyran wrote: Counterpoint, this game has both Tyranids and Necrons in it. The latter are literally robots, the former are literally hive-minded.
Wouldn't it be at least interesting if the perfectly synchronized psychic hive mind actually behaved differently on the table from press-ganged conscripts, centuries-old veterans, or screaming idiot hooligans?
A game where the hive mind faction's signature advantage is perfect command and control (so long as the psychic leader beasts remain alive), and that actually means something in practice, sounds dangerously close to being fun.
Wouldn't it be at least interesting if the perfectly synchronized psychic hive mind actually behaved differently on the table from press-ganged conscripts, centuries-old veterans, or screaming idiot hooligans?
A game where the hive mind faction's signature advantage is perfect command and control (so long as the psychic leader beasts remain alive), and that actually means something in practice, sounds dangerously close to being fun.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Yeah, I get ehat Catbarf is saying and it's a problem since 8th and has gotten worse with new units.
For example, in earlier times Orks had a choppa, big choppa or klaw, with named chars or relics being special. Now you have choppa, big choppa, special klaw for the Beast snagga Boss, special klaw for the trike Boss, special big choppa for the warboss, special klaw for the snagga warboss, special CC weapons for named chars. It's a point of needless complexity when at the same time in CSM World some Power fists are power fists and some lightning claws are lightnings claws but other Power fists and lightning claws are accursed weapons So the same bits having different rules. This leads to a need to look up these Profiles over and over (like you would look up the bloated base rules over and over in 6th/7th edition).
That's no longer true though. For the codex GW has worked to improve on this issue by a lot. The ork klaws you have given as an example are all AP-2 2 damage now, and 3 attacks S9 or 4 attacks S10 depending on whether a warboss or nob level character is wielding them, just like in the past. All most of the non-klaw weapons like big choppas, beastsnagga and buggy weapons are all Ap-1 2 damage with S6-7. The only odd one out is the powa snappa, which looks like a klaw, but has the profile of a big choppa. Bespoke weapons really only exist on models where having bespoke weapons makes sense.
True 'fearless' units that walk through hails of fire and aren't slowed down should take attrition damage that normal units don't and lose more models/wounds where a normal unit would test.
How those instances of lacking control are modelled however, where the rub is. Not the concept itself.
And this is the issue. I'm fine with random charges, psychic tests, random to hit, random saves, etc. I'm fine with random effects being associated with specific wargear that I can choose not to use. But for me, wiping out a unit because of a deepstrike mishap or wiping a unit out without swinging cuz you managed to tag are two of those poor instances of lacking control.
It's funny how the supposed "gotcha" of strats will drive some people crazy, yet they feel nostalgia for "woops your entire unit is dead because of a single random die roll which wasn't even associated with an attack."
Of course I suppose you could say the opposite- I'm not bothered in the least by the "gotcha" of strats, but getting wiped out in deepstrike mishaps or sweeping advances used to drive me crazy! I think it's because in the case of strats, there's at least a decision made by the enemy, typically an enemy unit that uses the strat and a resource cost for the action... Whereas mishaps and sweeping advances were just core mechanics that randomly wiped you out.
Well, there is science to explain that.
In general, people hate non-interactive rules. If the game or the opponent does something that causes a negative effect which they cannot avoid or influence, it’s always going to ruin most people’s fun. I say most people, because there are always those who love getting completely wrecked by forces outside their control—but we know for sure that they are a minority.
When it comes to taking risks, there’s that familiar matrix you can probably Google in seconds: high risk vs. low risk, and high gain vs. low gain. I think we don’t need to talk about low risk/high gain. Most people enjoy rolling attacks for their big beatstick, firing the main gun on a massive tank, or rolling saves for Terminators—though we all know that one guy who completely flips their gak when they fail a 5" charge.
Competitive players will always try to minimize risk, typically preferring low risk/low gain over high risk/high gain. Beer & Pretzel and narrative gamers, on the other hand, love to go for high risk/high gain because it creates memorable moments—and even if it goes wrong, it was their choice to take that risk. No one likes taking a high risk for a low gain unless they’re desperate. In the vast majority of cases, those are considered misplays.
Based on this:
Gotchas – People dislike them because they remove agency. WH40k is a game with (almost) no hidden information, so players expect to make decisions based on perfect knowledge. If you forget about a stratagem or ability, and that suddenly turns a low-risk move into a high-risk one, then it’s no longer the decision you made. You suddenly find yourself in a situation you didn’t want to be in, just because you missed a nuance. I recently gotcha’d myself when playing against the new EC—charging into a character with "fights first." I was told the character was there and what it does, but with all the new information from a new army, and me being tired and stressed, I still missed it. It just feels bad when a whole game night turns into a fight you didn’t mean to pick.
Deep Strike Mishaps – Deep strike with scatter was mostly high risk, low gain. Even if you didn’t mishap, your unit was susceptible to blasts and flamers, might scatter too far from its target, or take damage from terrain. If you did mishap, there was a high chance your unit would be dead or useless for the rest of the game. All successful deep strike units either had ways to mitigate mishap risks (drop pods, teleport homers, grav-chutes) or were cheap units with powerful weapons (like suicide melta squads) to justify the risk. Most other deep strike units either weren’t played or were just deployed normally. The reason you probably never saw a deep striking Land Raider wasn’t because it was silly—it was because it was very high risk, low gain.
Sweeping Advances – This one is more complex. Older editions had general design flaws: unfair initiative distribution, mechanics that overly favored durable models, and the mess of fearless band-aids layered on top of each other. All of this played a big part in making sweeping advances one of the worst mechanics the game ever had. But even without those issues, sweeping advances were never great. At best, it was a win-more mechanic that let an already-successful unit kill even more enemies to speed up combat. Today, we have better rules that achieve similar results in more balanced ways. At worst, if you didn’t roll well or your opponent made enough saves, you could end up losing your entire unit. In 7th edition, this meant that any charge became a high-risk, low-gain move, because bouncing off a unit with layered re-rollable saves and Feel No Pain would wipe out your melee unit just for losing a single model. Often, the only way to mitigate this risk was simply not to run most melee units.
In short, sweeping advances turned melee into low risk/high gain for some armies and high risk/low gain for others, with no real player interaction beyond choosing your faction. That’s why some people miss the mechanic dearly—while many others hate it.
I believe that the perception of what a rule is affects people more than its actual function.
You have no control over what a dice is going to generate - if people truly hated lack of control, they'd just use little wars rules and play RPS on each unit, or give each unit a fixed damage output they always generate when they target an enemy unit.
The uncertainty of hitting your target is no different to the uncertainty of your unit doing what you want it to, but the perception people have about it affects their enjoyment.
you play around the fact that not everything always hits, it changes your behaviour by having you use multiple units, give up your reroll etc. Because it's seen as a feature of the game that your to hit is uncertain, it's part of the fabric that your unit won't just kill what it targets.
It should also be built in that your unit won't also function 100% at all times and act as if it has omniscient vision of the battlefield. Approaching the game knowing that is a feature means you play around it with the mechanics at hand. That to me is actually a wargame, because it's war in game form.
Modern 40k is very far from a wargame and no amount of super alien intelligences or super soldier discipline will ever override the imperfect conditions of the battlefield and its effects on the outcomes.
Quixote wrote: I never read the book, how exactly do these deep strike rules vary from the regular rules for Deep Strike?
Sorry, I missed your question.
Essentially, once per turn you can do a "surgical deep-strike" outside of 3" instead of deep striking regularly without any risk. If you do, you need to do a deep strike test on 2d6 and you get -1 to that roll for every units within 9" that isn't battle-shocked or OC0. For example, if you deep strike within range of an entire intercessor squad, you get -5 to that roll or +-0 if they are battle-shocked. If you deep strike between two LRBT, you get -2.
4+ you arrive safely
3+ battleshock test
2+ automatically battleshocked
1 or less is a mishap
Mishaps deal d3 or d6 mortal wounds in addition to going back into reserves, being forced to deep strike somewhere else, giving a nearby unit a reactionary move, getting battle-shocked and losing the ability to charge and/or shoot.
Jidmah wrote: In short, sweeping advances turned melee into low risk/high gain for some armies and high risk/low gain for others, with no real player interaction beyond choosing your faction. That’s why some people miss the mechanic dearly—while many others hate it.
I played Guard primarily from 3rd-5th. The implication that anyone who liked sweeping advance as a mechanic only did because it benefitted them personally is bs. Be better.
Edit, regardless:
Jidmah wrote: Today, we have better rules that achieve similar results in more balanced ways.
No, we don't, and that's the problem.
The purpose of morale rules in older editions was to provide a temporary (fall back) or permanent (sweeping advance) incapacitation of a unit through a means other than raw killing power. It allowed for melee units to punch above their weight, making it worth the risk of getting up the board and into combat. It allowed shooting to be effective without needing high lethality. It promoted use of combined arms, shooting units to soften them up before charging to force that critical morale test, making multirole units like Tactical Marines actually worth something. And it allowed units with mediocre to poor morale to have theoretically high raw power for their points, but be susceptible to getting wiped out by shock action- a characterization that fit my Guard much better than being fearless tarpits who now, at worst, become ineligible for stratagems I wouldn't blow on them anyways.
GW played around with the specifics over the editions, but the loss of these mechanics with no substitute has resulted in an escalation of lethality to the point where boards need to be choked with cover to mitigate alpha striking, and melee units expect a 50+% return in a single round of combat or aren't worth taking. In older editions having lower Initiative put you at a disadvantage, but right now between two melee-capable units whoever hits first usually wins.
Sweeping Advance stuck around in Horus Heresy, but the amount of complaining I've seen there is minimal compared to what I hear whenever it's mentioned in the context of 40K. It's a fairly straightforward wargaming staple- that morale failing in close combat can be catastrophic- that could be implemented a bunch of different ways but the simple one has the desired effect.
40k's old morale rules were terrible, and I'm glad they've been removed. They never fit the setting or real circumstances of the game, they were blatantly copied from large-scale ranked-combat historical wargames and shoved in without any regard for who was fighting or how they were fighting.
Very cool to spend the first two turns slogging my orks up the field, finally getting within 7" of the tau gunline, and then having the squad just turn around and all get shot in the back and die rather than charge them and easily win and survive. They weren't even allowed to go behind a building so they would stop getting shot. Nope, just turn around and walk backwards across the field. Back to France, because I am actually a block of 400 French conscripts retreating at Waterloo.
And let's not forget the squad of 20 necron warriors getting instantly obliterated by a couple of models that can't even ignore WBB. Or the 30-man guard squad with a commissar I wiped off of the board by driving an empty truck into them. Or that unit of 10 inquisitorial stormtroopers I wiped out with a single chaos cultist. And how GW just arbitrarily made space marines immune to sweeping advance because it was so "unheroic" to have it happen to you.
It's fine if you have issues with GW's previous morale rules and how they were implemented but personally I feel something is missing with them barely existing at all. I understand that it would be a big idea and there is a more than likely chance that GW would stuff up such a big change in some way but nevertheless it is part of what makes the modern game feel more shallow in my opinion.
Jidmah wrote: In short, sweeping advances turned melee into low risk/high gain for some armies and high risk/low gain for others, with no real player interaction beyond choosing your faction. That’s why some people miss the mechanic dearly—while many others hate it.
I played Guard primarily from 3rd-5th. The implication that anyone who liked sweeping advance as a mechanic only did because it benefitted them personally is bs. Be better.
As I pointed out in the very beginning of my posts, there are people who love losing control and randomly losing their units to game mechanics they cannot influence. Especially among veterans, this is fairly common since that was part of earlier edition's charm - and those who hated it back then simply aren't around anymore to be veterans. However, this is untrue for the majority of gamers. Mechanics like that are proven to drive players away from games, irrespective of how they are implemented.
And to be blunt, IG never cared about losing combat unless they beefed up a unit to be good at combat - and then it usually brough characters which let them ignore moral and sweeps.
permanent (sweeping advance) incapacitation of a unit through a means other than raw killing power.
Permanent incapacitation is killing. You literally made a few rolls to kill a unit, and it's functional identical to rules dealing mortal wounds to units that fail a battle-shock test or after a charge.
It allowed for melee units to punch above their weight, making it worth the risk of getting up the board and into combat. It allowed shooting to be effective without needing high lethality. It promoted use of combined arms, shooting units to soften them up before charging to force that critical morale test, making multirole units like Tactical Marines actually worth something. And it allowed units with mediocre to poor morale to have theoretically high raw power for their points, but be susceptible to getting wiped out by shock action- a characterization that fit my Guard much better than being fearless tarpits who now, at worst, become ineligible for stratagems I wouldn't blow on them anyways.
Yes, that's what it did when everything went right. Except it regularly failed at every single thing you just listed when the armies involved were not marines or eldar. Ork boyz were getting sweeped by necron warriors, tyranid monsters never got to punch above their weight, and when your initiative was high enough, you never cared about your low leadership - assuming that low leadership wasn't ignored anyways.
GW played around with the specifics over the editions, but the loss of these mechanics with no substitute has resulted in an escalation of lethality to the point where boards need to be choked with cover to mitigate alpha striking, and melee units expect a 50+% return in a single round of combat or aren't worth taking. In older editions having lower Initiative put you at a disadvantage, but right now between two melee-capable units whoever hits first usually wins.
I'm not sure what game you are playing, but as a player of two combined arms armies which rely heavily on melee, my games of 10th are a lot less lethal than anything I've played since 5th. Melee often goes on for multiple turns, especially when durable fighters like gravis, terminators or MANz are involved. The main difference is that movement and model placement decide combat between two melee units of similar power instead of unfairly distributed initiative and leadership values. Unless you are a piece of paper picking a fight with scissors, of course, but that's also player agency and there are ways to avoid that. "Sweeping" is much better represented by desparate escape, as it actually requires you to cut off their fall back route rather than just roll dice to prevent them from running down an empty field.
Sweeping Advance stuck around in Horus Heresy, but the amount of complaining I've seen there is minimal compared to what I hear whenever it's mentioned in the context of 40K. It's a fairly straightforward wargaming staple- that morale failing in close combat can be catastrophic- that could be implemented a bunch of different ways but the simple one has the desired effect.
Sweeping advances never was an issue when marines were fighting marines.
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Dai2 wrote: It's fine if you have issues with GW's previous morale rules and how they were implemented but personally I feel something is missing with them barely existing at all. I understand that it would be a big idea and there is a more than likely chance that GW would stuff up such a big change in some way but nevertheless it is part of what makes the modern game feel more shallow in my opinion.
Absolutely agree, battle-shock needs to have more impact. I just explained 10th to a returning veteran last weekend, and he correctly summarized it as "so, it basically does nothing?".
Is this good enough for you, or do we now need to play the "that one doesn't count" game where I keep posting proof and you keep claiming that it doesn't count?
In general, for anyone who is invested in creating games, it should be considered common knowledge that less player agency results in less player enjoyment, and is especially relevant for GMs/DMs.
Sweeping Advance was a rubbish mechanic because not all factions were created equally; some factions had terrible initiative (like necrons), some factions had good initiative (like Eldar) and some factions didn't even suffer from that mechanic but could still inflict it (like Space Marines, because they're the golden child).
So you had some factions that were not only disproportionately affected by it, but can't even do it themselves because good luck trying to beat a roll off against a I6 unit with your I2 unit.
If GW had thought it through they would have given the factions weak to SA some means of protection or evening the odds, but they didn't so end result is a mechanic that harshly punishes some armies but not others, and that doesn't feel good at all.
Battleshock should change depending on if it's shooting or melee. If it's shooting then it should be more like pinning; unit is disabled for a turn and get a bonus to cover. If they aren't in cover then they must make a move to the nearest terrain feature away from an enemy and end their turn.
If it's in melee then the unit that failed its morale test may disengage, and the unit its fleeing from gets to make an attack of opportunity. Defensive grenades can be used to deny these extra attacks.
Alternatively it may hold its ground, but it suffers penalties to hit rolls and if it loses combat again for a consecutive time then it must disengage.
Is this good enough for you, or do we now need to play the "that one doesn't count" game where I keep posting proof and you keep claiming that it doesn't count?
In general, for anyone who is invested in creating games, it should be considered common knowledge that less player agency results in less player enjoyment, and is especially relevant for GMs/DMs.
If you play that game too often, you qualify for your own YouTube Channel.
In all honesty, do you find the removal of potential and devastating negatives to be an improvement or a downside on the game?
In WHFB, the Empire Engineers had Pigeon Bombs that had ridiculous ranges and were great for attacking small units... but there was always the chance that your pigeon came back and blew up over your Engineer.
Skaven had the same issue for a while with the Screaming Bell. It was amazing until it cracked on a poor roll, and then your chances of victory started to diminish quickly.
The only random death I can remember (but we were all happily entertained by it) in 40k was the Void Grenade (and its pretty metal template) deployed in an Apocalypse Mega Battle. The Void Grenade template, never went away, just kept scattering and annihilating everything it touched like Pac-Man on PCP.
Is this good enough for you, or do we now need to play the "that one doesn't count" game where I keep posting proof and you keep claiming that it doesn't count?
In general, for anyone who is invested in creating games, it should be considered common knowledge that less player agency results in less player enjoyment, and is especially relevant for GMs/DMs.
If you play that game too often, you qualify for your own YouTube Channel.
In all honesty, do you find the removal of potential and devastating negatives to be an improvement or a downside on the game?
Well, what's the reward? Having risk/reward mechanics is a stable of game design for a reason; you get a lot of benefits but there's a risk that something goes wrong to balance that out.
Vortex grenades can wipe out your enemies, but there's a chance that it can wipe you out too. The trick is to position your forces so that you have at least a turn to move to a safe area.
Lathe Biosas wrote: In all honesty, do you find the removal of potential and devastating negatives to be an improvement or a downside on the game?
In WHFB, the Empire Engineers had Pigeon Bombs that had ridiculous ranges and were great for attacking small units... but there was always the chance that your pigeon came back and blew up over your Engineer.
Skaven had the same issue for a while with the Screaming Bell. It was amazing until it cracked on a poor roll, and then your chances of victory started to diminish quickly.
The only random death I can remember (but we were all happily entertained by it) in 40k was the Void Grenade (and its pretty metal template) deployed in an Apocalypse Mega Battle. The Void Grenade template, never went away, just kept scattering and annihilating everything it touched like Pac-Man on PCP.
I'll refer to my previous post about risks and gains. I don't know any of the WHFB examples you provided, so bear with me just guessing.
The engineer sounds like a low risk, low gain thing, much like Hazardous in 10th. Those are fine for a game. Taking chances is not the same as not being able to influence a mechanic. If you need those engineers to stay alive, I assume you could always just not use the pigeon bombs or bring a different unit. There was no decision you could take to avoid your armies bad initiative or getting sweeped by eldar.
Not too sure how the bell works from your explanation. Might be a high risk, high gain thing, which is not liked by competitive players due to inconsistency, but still can be a fun thing. That is, assuming you could just choose not to play it. If that bell was mandatory to successfully play a skaven army, then there isn't any actual player agency involved and it's a bad mechanic that randomly screws over the skaven player. My admittedly short research to find out what it does tells me that you now can decide how hard to bang the bell, and it's more likely to break if you use a lot of dice. Sounds like a good rule where the player decides how much of a risk they are willing to take.
As for the void grenade, the issue is not the risk and reward involved. It triggered a chain of events that allowed no player interaction and had no counterplay whatsoever. Very similarly, in one of the 9th edition's planetfall crusade there was a mechanic which started every game with orbital fire raining down on the game after deployment, randomly hitting things for random damage. In some games it did absolutely nothing, in others it obliterated half a player's army before moving. My players absolutely hated it, because you could do nothing about it.
I dunno, vortex grenades just moved 1D6 inches a turn, right? That should be plenty of time for players to react to it and move around the hazard.
Orbital bombardment was pretty bad though. Getting nuked before the game even starts with no real way to react to it isn't fun.
Same issue why alpha strikes are such a problem.
Hellebore wrote: I believe that the perception of what a rule is affects people more than its actual function.
You have no control over what a dice is going to generate - if people truly hated lack of control, they'd just use little wars rules and play RPS on each unit, or give each unit a fixed damage output they always generate when they target an enemy unit.
The uncertainty of hitting your target is no different to the uncertainty of your unit doing what you want it to, but the perception people have about it affects their enjoyment.
Do you think it might be less about control/uncertainty and rather about a small number of dice having a disproportional effect on the game?
For the same reason people tend to dislike stuff like the old Jaws of the World Wolf power - which was 'roll well or your monster/character is insta-killed, regardless of toughness, save, wound, points etc.'.
Even if it only ends up being a 1/6 chance, it's of little consolation in those games when you fail the roll. Especially when there's little counterplay beyond 'Roll better, noob'.
It would seem a similar issue with units not doing what you want. e.g. a unit of Necrons might roll 20 d6 for their hit rolls. However, if they first need to roll just 1 or 2 and those 1-2 dice determine whether they get to shoot at all, then the effect of those dice is very skewed compared with the to-hit dice that follow.
Yeah, save or die is a problem. It's fine in RPGs like DnD because in those games you have access to buffs and stats that increase the chances of saving, but you don't get that in 40k, so you are completely at the mercy of dice. And that never feels good.
That's something I think a lot of designers don't seem to understand; the point of RNG mechanics isn't to be random for the sake of randomness, but to provide a level of uncertainty that the player has to prepare and account for.
If there's a mechanic that just outright kills your units with no real risk to the user or counterplay, then it's not a good mechanic.
It's why the Chaos mutation table or the Purple sun were such a stupid mechanics, because you had no control over what mutations you got and if you played a low ini faction and got hit by purple sun you can't do gak. And it was fairly easy to get high level spells like that off, even if you had dispel scrolls because you only had few of them but you're opponent can cast a lot of spells.
Jidmah wrote: Permanent incapacitation is killing. You literally made a few rolls to kill a unit, and it's functional identical to rules dealing mortal wounds to units that fail a battle-shock test or after a charge.
You're still missing the distinction. It is killing, which is the goal- making melee decisive, lethal, and an effective means of removing units from the table- but without requiring melee units to have such high damage output that whoever goes first has a good chance of knocking out the enemy before they can strike back. The damage didn't come from amping up raw killing power, but from losing the combat. Setting up conditions conducive to winning the combat allowed non-melee-specialists to produce decisive results in melee, and mindlessly throwing melee units into full-strength enemies with ways to mitigate morale was risky at best.
If failing a Battleshock test while in melee had more significant consequences then it would be a reasonable substitute. Except the same people would be complaining about 'lose-more' mechanics, even though that's the entire point, amplifying the effects of losing a combat without just dialing up stats. It rewards coordination and planning at a macro level; the current system has reduced combat to optimal weapon-target pairing and finicky millimeter positioning.
Jidmah wrote: Sweeping advances never was an issue when marines were fighting marines.
You know Marines in HH are Ld7 and don't get ATSKNF, right? Sweeping Advance is more relevant than ever there. I have to wonder how much of this common perception of the mechanic is colored by the problems you mentioned of 6th-7th.
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vipoid wrote: It would seem a similar issue with units not doing what you want. e.g. a unit of Necrons might roll 20 d6 for their hit rolls. However, if they first need to roll just 1 or 2 and those 1-2 dice determine whether they get to shoot at all, then the effect of those dice is very skewed compared with the to-hit dice that follow.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
That's part of why a lot of these 'single-check' mechanics rely on 2D6, rather than 1D6, because it produces a bell curve of results that can be used to significantly reduce the likelihood of those extreme events.
You can also incorporate, as a designer, various ways to influence the rolls. 3D6-pick-two-highest is a simple buff, or pick lowest as a debuff- that's how Trench Crusade resolves almost all actions and it works well. Or you can have a sliding scale of results like what The Old World is currently doing; exceeding your modified Leadership value produces different outcomes from exceeding your base Leadership. Or multiple morale states such that it takes extreme outcomes to go straight from 'fine' to 'broken and wiped out'.
There are lots and lots and lots and lots of ways to implement morale systems that detract from perfect player agency over their units (which, frankly, I don't think you can reasonably argue is axiomatically a bad thing- I don't see nearly as much grumbling about Advance or Charge rolls) but don't resort to the sort of 'heads you're fine, tails you die' binaries that lead to feels-bad moments. This is 100% one of those arguments where people unreasonably limit themselves to how 40K used to do it vs how 40K does it now.
@Morale, Two other things spring to mind:
The first is that those morale mechanics had an inbuilt forgiveness in that they often meant that a unit wasn't dead, rather it just lost a turn. But then it could rally and get back into the fight.
The second is that in some versions of the CC rules, outnumbering counted for more than inflicted casualties. This was actually pretty great for further manipulating combat results and giving value to troops that were otherwise pretty bad in combat. Plus it had the added benefit of protecting against potential Sweeping Advances because it was less likely that multiple units would run from combat.
And maybe just more importantly, Morale+Sweeping Advance added a new dimension of tactical solutions to a given problem, and further diversified armies. The complaint that some armies were more affected by Morale effects than others is just a feature in my book.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Yeah, save or die is a problem. It's fine in RPGs like DnD because in those games you have access to buffs and stats that increase the chances of saving, but you don't get that in 40k, so you are completely at the mercy of dice. And that never feels good.
I mean, even D&D has heavily cut back on the number of save-or-die effects. e.g. Petrification now requires two consecutive failed rolls before you turn to stone, and gives an entire round for allies to cast preventative magic.
That's something I think a lot of designers don't seem to understand; the point of RNG mechanics isn't to be random for the sake of randomness, but to provide a level of uncertainty that the player has to prepare and account for.
If there's a mechanic that just outright kills your units with no real risk to the user or counterplay, then it's not a good mechanic.
It's why the Chaos mutation table or the Purple sun were such a stupid mechanics, because you had no control over what mutations you got and if you played a low ini faction and got hit by purple sun you can't do gak. And it was fairly easy to get high level spells like that off, even if you had dispel scrolls because you only had few of them but you're opponent can cast a lot of spells.
Honestly, this was one of the reasons I despised the magic system in WHFB - almost every spell list had a huge AoE spell that was 'toughness test or die' or 'initiative test or die', and it was usually well worth throwing a pile of dice to try and get a Miscast (which would also prevent dispelling). As the damage was all but guaranteed to far exceed any cost, and if you successfully "miscast" then there was no counterplay at all.
That's part of why a lot of these 'single-check' mechanics rely on 2D6, rather than 1D6, because it produces a bell curve of results that can be used to significantly reduce the likelihood of those extreme events.
You can also incorporate, as a designer, various ways to influence the rolls. 3D6-pick-two-highest is a simple buff, or pick lowest as a debuff- that's how Trench Crusade resolves almost all actions and it works well. Or you can have a sliding scale of results like what The Old World is currently doing; exceeding your modified Leadership value produces different outcomes from exceeding your base Leadership. Or multiple morale states such that it takes extreme outcomes to go straight from 'fine' to 'broken and wiped out'.
There are lots and lots and lots and lots of ways to implement morale systems that detract from perfect player agency over their units (which, frankly, I don't think you can reasonably argue is axiomatically a bad thing- I don't see nearly as much grumbling about Advance or Charge rolls) but don't resort to the sort of 'heads you're fine, tails you die' binaries that lead to feels-bad moments. This is 100% one of those arguments where people unreasonably limit themselves to how 40K used to do it vs how 40K does it now.
Oh yeah, I'm not objecting to the reintroduction of a morale system (or a system that means e.g. units have to pass a Ld test to not just shoot the closest target), I was just speculating as to why people might dislike such rules.
Skinflint Games wrote: I have to say, 3 years seems like a ridiculously short time to establish and flesh out an edition with a game of 40ks depth and size. I agree with those who say 5-6 years is far more reasonable.
Particularly with age, my mid-40s, 3 years takes about 5 minutes to pass.
I mean, that MAY actually be the case. 8th edition was a full re-write, but 9th was more like 8.5. 10th was a big overhaul again, and there's a reasonable chance that 11th edition will really be 10.5 and we won't get a big overhaul until 12th.
Honestly, this was one of the reasons I despised the magic system in WHFB - almost every spell list had a huge AoE spell that was 'toughness test or die' or 'initiative test or die', and it was usually well worth throwing a pile of dice to try and get a Miscast (which would also prevent dispelling). As the damage was all but guaranteed to far exceed any cost, and if you successfully "miscast" then there was no counterplay at all.
Yeah, 8th ed magic was pretty bad. Preventing dispel scrolls from blocking irresistible force / miscasts was a mistake, especially when you can just take a cheap spell caster, throw a bunch of dice to trigger it and just delete a whole regiment and not even necessarily lose the spellcaster in the process. Meanwhile your opponent couldn't actually do anything because they took away the ability to dispel irresistible force spells with scrolls or their own dispel attempts, which I'm pretty sure was something you could do in earlier editions.
I know in 7th Miscast and IF were their own separate things and it was a harder to just throw enough dice to trigger it because of how power dice generation worked.
I don't recall mage bombs being a thing in 7th, but it did start to be a thing in 8th ed, and I hated it because it felt wrong. The point of miscasts was to introduce a level of risk to spell-casting because of how effective magic could be. Not only combining it with irresistible force but ALSO allowing you to throw enough dice to intentionally trigger it AND effectively make a resource such as scrolls useless completely misses the point of such a mechanic.
The problem of Sweeping Advance in particular was that a) Marines were immune to it, b) using initiative made it extremely faction locked and C) later (4th+) editions threw away outnumbering mattering for morale so hordes were soft locked out of it.
Orks and Necrons would basically never benefit from it because their faction wide low initiative, even thought Orks were mostly a melee faction and Necrons had their own melee specialist units. Even Tyranids would often struggle to activate it because they tended to lose a lot of bodies in combat if playing a swarm list.
And again most games would be against Marines. The fact that when it worked was such a strong mechanic meant that it basically made it a feel bad mechanic because it wasn't because you were outplayed or even luck, but because your opponent had a high Initiative elite army and you didn't (and in pretty much any other context Sweeping Advance rarely happened).
I'd put more emphasis on Jidmah's point about how faction disparity impacts this.
I'd have more sympathy for older morale for instance - or loss of control mechanics in general - if they were universal. But typically throughout 40ks history they haven't been. If you are the favoured faction (Marines/Eldar) it's often been of no consequence. People on forums aren't constantly saying you as the player should lose control. But you pick one of the other factions? Suddenly you should be piling up debuffs like there's no tomorrow.
In something like Bloodbowl that's fine. In 40k or WHFB it really wasn't.
At least Ork and Nid units were cheap. Necron units were expensive and had to deal with that stupid phase out rule, so losing an entire unit to a single initiative roll when most factions had double the baseline initiative of a necron unit was disproportionately harmful.
Especially when Necrons aren't even that effective in melee; on average they are about as good as tactical marines but without sergeant power weapons, and tac marines are mediocre in melee even with those.
I think only Tau are worse, and they are still cheaper and they could attack at longer ranges.
Honestly, this was one of the reasons I despised the magic system in WHFB - almost every spell list had a huge AoE spell that was 'toughness test or die' or 'initiative test or die', and it was usually well worth throwing a pile of dice to try and get a Miscast (which would also prevent dispelling). As the damage was all but guaranteed to far exceed any cost, and if you successfully "miscast" then there was no counterplay at all.
Yeah, 8th ed magic was pretty bad. Preventing dispel scrolls from blocking irresistible force / miscasts was a mistake, especially when you can just take a cheap spell caster, throw a bunch of dice to trigger it and just delete a whole regiment and not even necessarily lose the spellcaster in the process. Meanwhile your opponent couldn't actually do anything because they took away the ability to dispel irresistible force spells with scrolls or their own dispel attempts, which I'm pretty sure was something you could do in earlier editions.
I know in 7th Miscast and IF were their own separate things and it was a harder to just throw enough dice to trigger it because of how power dice generation worked.
I don't recall mage bombs being a thing in 7th, but it did start to be a thing in 8th ed, and I hated it because it felt wrong. The point of miscasts was to introduce a level of risk to spell-casting because of how effective magic could be. Not only combining it with irresistible force but ALSO allowing you to throw enough dice to intentionally trigger it AND effectively make a resource such as scrolls useless completely misses the point of such a mechanic.
8th was horrible. Having played all of the WFB editions since 3rd, I can attest to the ridiculous pendulum swing that happened each new edition. From Heroes being godlike (you didn't even really need troops in 4th/5th) to barely mattering at all (6th) to what IMO was the best edition (7th) and managed to strike some balance, to 8th where it was simple...bring a L4 Wizard and some back-up, or lose. I don't recall my Slann MP ever losing a game, or my Saurus Oldblood ever winning one. It was dumb.
Hellebore wrote: I believe that the perception of what a rule is affects people more than its actual function.
You have no control over what a dice is going to generate - if people truly hated lack of control, they'd just use little wars rules and play RPS on each unit, or give each unit a fixed damage output they always generate when they target an enemy unit.
The uncertainty of hitting your target is no different to the uncertainty of your unit doing what you want it to, but the perception people have about it affects their enjoyment.
Do you think it might be less about control/uncertainty and rather about a small number of dice having a disproportional effect on the game?
For the same reason people tend to dislike stuff like the old Jaws of the World Wolf power - which was 'roll well or your monster/character is insta-killed, regardless of toughness, save, wound, points etc.'.
Even if it only ends up being a 1/6 chance, it's of little consolation in those games when you fail the roll. Especially when there's little counterplay beyond 'Roll better, noob'.
It would seem a similar issue with units not doing what you want. e.g. a unit of Necrons might roll 20 d6 for their hit rolls. However, if they first need to roll just 1 or 2 and those 1-2 dice determine whether they get to shoot at all, then the effect of those dice is very skewed compared with the to-hit dice that follow.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
Certainly the probability affects how people feel about it. However there are plenty of weapons in the game that due to the mechanics, allow no save to most targets and cause enough damage to kill the target regardless.
And those are successful on a 3+ or 2+ to hit, and a 3+ or 2+ to wound. The target player gets no opportunity to do anything except remove the model. And it's usually only elite army players that complain it happens to their models, while guard et al instant remove their models when they're hit by most weapons.
So I absolutely agree that how the mechanics are implemented (the chance of success) has a big impact, but people are already playing with mechanics that remove player choice anyway. Hence my comments on perception playing a bigger part in this, because people accept the concept, but not evenly across the game.
Disruption/pinning/suppression/morale = interference as a concept is integral to war, it's one of the biggest influences on how soldiers actually perform beyond their training. It's how real wars are actually fought - we all know the bullets fired to casualties caused figures are crazy, because those bullets are causing interference even if not casualties. Hence my somewhat tongue in cheek comment about people playing wargames 'wrong' if they can't accept this as part of the game - it's like complaining your pawn can't move like a queen. It's an integral part of the type of game you're playing and removing it because it 'feels bad' turns the game into a far more abstract and less representative version of what it's claiming to be.
How you implement it (the probability) should be looked at, but like so many things in 40k it seems a lot of players jump from 'this mechanic isn't a good implementation of this concept' straight to 'delete this concept from the game because a bad rule was used to represent it'. Which in my mind is not the answer. You can have satisfying gameplay and good representation of the actual aspects of war that a wargame should be striving to simulate, it's just not as simple as roll a d6.
Tyel wrote:I'd put more emphasis on Jidmah's point about how faction disparity impacts this.
I'd have more sympathy for older morale for instance - or loss of control mechanics in general - if they were universal. But typically throughout 40ks history they haven't been. If you are the favoured faction (Marines/Eldar) it's often been of no consequence. People on forums aren't constantly saying you as the player should lose control. But you pick one of the other factions? Suddenly you should be piling up debuffs like there's no tomorrow.
In something like Bloodbowl that's fine. In 40k or WHFB it really wasn't.
I guess this is very much a YMMV thing but I liked that some factions had advantages in soft factors like morale. Again, I mostly played Guard; watching my army crumble because an officer got ganked was part of the charm, because it was offset by my army having a gakload of firepower as long as it could hold together. On the flipside, it felt fitting that the poster boy newbie faction was highly resilient to morale effects as a 'training wheels' sort of advantage (and paid for it accordingly).
I like that when I play Epic a horde of Orks is more unruly and harder to coordinate than an elite force of Space Marines, and I like that when I play Battlefleet Gothic coordinating my fleet of Tyranids is like trying to pick up jello with chopsticks but will I literally eat the other fleet alive if I can pull a plan together. It makes different factions feel different- and if I don't want to deal with that, I can just play any of the factions that are more reliable.
It just seems a little silly to me to play a faction like Orks and then dislike that the Boyz leg it when the Nob gets krumped, or to play Guard and dislike that the hive ganger trash don't stick around when half the squad gets mulched, or to play Tyranids and dislike that the Gaunts go to ground when all the synapse creatures are dead. It's part of their fluff, part of their character. If you wanted fearless elites, you could just play fearless elites.
The thing that I will complain about is that how GW implemented morale was very rudimentary and binary, and the And They Shall Know No Morale Rules got out of hand. But again, HH2.0 and TOW show how GW has taken the old ideas and given them a bit more depth, and there are plenty of other examples to draw from. For instance, I liked how Heavy Gear's morale system caused units to rack up penalties to their actions, but didn't take control away from the player- you could keep pushing if you wanted, but your effectiveness would diminish until you stopped to rally. Or in Epic: Armageddon, once a unit accumulates enough blast markers to become broken, additional hits inflict extra damage to the unit with no saves allowed. It doesn't flee off the board, but it becomes combat ineffective and highly vulnerable to further damage until you rally.
There are many ways to handle morale, and I resent this notion that it's an 'objectively bad' concept because it 'takes away control' or is 'lose more', as if these are universally bad things to have in a wargame and not just reflections of the very low tolerance for friction expressed by the average 40K player.
There are many ways to handle morale, and I resent this notion that it's an 'objectively bad' concept because it 'takes away control' or is 'lose more', as if these are universally bad things to have in a wargame and not just reflections of the very low tolerance for friction expressed by the average 40K player.
I don't think anyone is actually saying this though?
I think most of the people you think are saying this are actually complaining about a specific implementation of a morale mechanic (sweeping advance) or a particular characteristic of certain types of morale mechanic (a single roll of a single die wiping out an entire unit). The single leadership test or initiative check that removes an entire squad. I think it's pretty much all anyone's complaining about.
Obviously, morale is important, and I think most players want a morale system that matters. You are very much correct about how much those fluffy morale buffs were cool despite not being the optimal upgrades. Commissars shooting a deserter so that the rest of the unit auto-passes morale? Awesome. Whenever I encountered a subfaction with attempts at fear rules, I'd always attempt a build that leaned hard into the ability, just to see if I could make it as effective as it was interesting if I could find the right combination and the right strategy to maximize the impact.
Frequently, even when stacking leadership debuffs across strats, war gear, subfaction ability, unit rule... It still came up a little hollow, and it shouldn't.
Tyel wrote: I'd put more emphasis on Jidmah's point about how faction disparity impacts this.
I'd have more sympathy for older morale for instance - or loss of control mechanics in general - if they were universal. But typically throughout 40ks history they haven't been. If you are the favoured faction (Marines/Eldar) it's often been of no consequence. People on forums aren't constantly saying you as the player should lose control. But you pick one of the other factions? Suddenly you should be piling up debuffs like there's no tomorrow.
In something like Bloodbowl that's fine. In 40k or WHFB it really wasn't.
As a long-time Eldar player, I'd argue that we were a "favored faction" when I came to Morale. We basically had +1 LD over humans and orks. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I lost some models due to bad rolls, failed the check, and fell back, then were completely unable to rally because the squad was below 50%. That was always the dumbest part of those rules. It should have been below 25%, but no, I now have 4 overly-expensive Aspect Warriors beating feet to the table edge and unable to do anything about it. It could be galling.
It really forced you to play certain ways in an attempt to avoid it happening. Smaller squads, maxing out things that didn't run like Wraithlords, Vehicles, and the Avatar, things like that.
I'd really like 10th edition morale and Battle-Shock to actually mean something, but I'm not keen to go back to that level of uncontrollable nonsense...you know, all except for the ATSKNF crowd. As others have pointed out, there is a limit to how much lack of agency people are willing to put up with. I'd love to see some serious penalties applied for failing that Morale Check, things like an inability to move except by falling back, penalties to hit as they keep their heads down and seek cover, etc., but probably not a return to wholesale removal of units. That happens often enough anyway.
I think one of the founding identities for eldar/elves was glass cannon. Which is fine as a core identity but GW have had trouble making them work, it basically creates an all or nothing army who have to be tuned really finely balance wise.
catbarf wrote: I guess this is very much a YMMV thing but I liked that some factions had advantages in soft factors like morale. Again, I mostly played Guard; watching my army crumble because an officer got ganked was part of the charm, because it was offset by my army having a gakload of firepower as long as it could hold together. On the flipside, it felt fitting that the poster boy newbie faction was highly resilient to morale effects as a 'training wheels' sort of advantage (and paid for it accordingly).
I like that when I play Epic a horde of Orks is more unruly and harder to coordinate than an elite force of Space Marines, and I like that when I play Battlefleet Gothic coordinating my fleet of Tyranids is like trying to pick up jello with chopsticks but will I literally eat the other fleet alive if I can pull a plan together. It makes different factions feel different- and if I don't want to deal with that, I can just play any of the factions that are more reliable.
It just seems a little silly to me to play a faction like Orks and then dislike that the Boyz leg it when the Nob gets krumped, or to play Guard and dislike that the hive ganger trash don't stick around when half the squad gets mulched, or to play Tyranids and dislike that the Gaunts go to ground when all the synapse creatures are dead. It's part of their fluff, part of their character. If you wanted fearless elites, you could just play fearless elites.
I think the issue is that certain factions didn't obviously "pay for it accordingly".
I think Synapse is a good rule for Tyranids. But if I remember correctly, the consequences of losing synapse has varied considerably. If Tyranids are "okay" then its kind of "okay". If however Tyranids are bottom tier (lets say 7th edition if you aren't spamming Flying Hive Tyrants and a couple of other units) then it can feel like another cross to bear for no obvious reason.
But I think there's also some tension here. I mean basic unsupported guardsmen are relatively cheap chaff units, typically used as bubblewrap for the more significant units (that bring the "gakload of firepower").
So if they get attacked, panic and run off (or get swept) it kind of doesn't matter - they've still done their job, even if perhaps it would have been better for you if they had held on a little longer.
Whereas GW had to tweak the rules basically every edition (until they gave up) to try and make Ork Boyz work. Because there was a very real prospect this relatively slow unit would waddle across the table getting shot, have difficulty making a charge, then get into combat only to fight second, potentially fluff its attacks, and be promptly wiped out.
I'm not really sure which "fantasy" that was going for, beyond being a sort of comic relief NPC faction. Its not so much the spirit of the game, as just being bad.
After a gap (mainly while I was at university and a bit after) I got back into Fantasy with 8th edition (boo, hiss etc) and I didn't want to take it that seriously - so I built the mainly goblin army I'd wanted but could never have afforded (re: persuaded my parents to buy) 10-15 years earlier. Animosity, stupidity on trolls, warmachines, fanatics and wizards could all conspire to blow up - and there were games where I inflicted significantly more damage on myself than the opponent managed. But since I knew what I was getting myself in for that was fine - like picking Goblins or Haflings in Bloodbowl.
But you've seen the complaints from various people here.
And its beyond morale. I mean CSM had that Champion of Chaos rule. You've just won a duel, woops spawn. Now sure - it wasn't that likely. But I'm not sure if you'd been a chaos player for decades you can be blamed for thinking this was kind of a silly and unwanted addition. Saying "Chaos players should embrace this rule" is at least questionable. Daemons had their weird table of "auto-win and auto-lose" - should they all have felt that was fluffy etc?
Yes you can argue all of this is just GW being bad and other games do it differently. And I agree, a re-imagined 40k where damage is largely inflicted by accumulated pinning, rather than a "here's some BS3+ rerolling everything S10 rerolling 1s AP-4 damage 3 shots, why not just take the models off the table" approach could be interesting.
But I can't see it happening.
Also - and I may have asked this before - you've talked about Epic a lot over the years - but I've never really worked out how Orks just aren't "worse"?
Its a bit like Horus Heresy. Maybe its changed in recent times as its in plastic and widely available - but in the old days it used to be the preserve of "deep hobbyists" - who wanted to show off their painting, their conversions, or just that they could afford Forge world tanks costing comical amounts of money. A game system can hide a lot of issues if you don't have players "trying to win" as the primary objective. 7th edition 40k might have even worked.
Also - and I may have asked this before - you've talked about Epic a lot over the years - but I've never really worked out how Orks just aren't "worse"?
Its a bit like Horus Heresy. Maybe its changed in recent times as its in plastic and widely available - but in the old days it used to be the preserve of "deep hobbyists" - who wanted to show off their painting, their conversions, or just that they could afford Forge world tanks costing comical amounts of money. A game system can hide a lot of issues if you don't have players "trying to win" as the primary objective. 7th edition 40k might have even worked.
You didn't ask me, but as an Epic player who has a Feral Ork Horde (among other armies), typically they're pulling off wins despite having low success rates on activations, initiative retention, and such because you often outnumber your opponents, ala the horde part. Someone brings elite, expensive units to the table then looks shocked when they run out of units to activate that turn and I'm only half done. Then I have my way with them. Yeah, I might be pulling troops off the board by the handful sometimes, but there's usually more where those came from. It feels very "orky."
Epic also has the advantage of being abandoned by GW. It has a dedicated fan base that keeps it alive, publishes the rules, does their best to balance it, etc.
I guess this is very much a YMMV thing but I liked that some factions had advantages in soft factors like morale. Again, I mostly played Guard; watching my army crumble because an officer got ganked was part of the charm, because it was offset by my army having a gakload of firepower as long as it could hold together. On the flipside, it felt fitting that the poster boy newbie faction was highly resilient to morale effects as a 'training wheels' sort of advantage (and paid for it accordingly).
I like that when I play Epic a horde of Orks is more unruly and harder to coordinate than an elite force of Space Marines, and I like that when I play Battlefleet Gothic coordinating my fleet of Tyranids is like trying to pick up jello with chopsticks but will I literally eat the other fleet alive if I can pull a plan together. It makes different factions feel different- and if I don't want to deal with that, I can just play any of the factions that are more reliable.
It just seems a little silly to me to play a faction like Orks and then dislike that the Boyz leg it when the Nob gets krumped, or to play Guard and dislike that the hive ganger trash don't stick around when half the squad gets mulched, or to play Tyranids and dislike that the Gaunts go to ground when all the synapse creatures are dead. It's part of their fluff, part of their character. If you wanted fearless elites, you could just play fearless elites.
The thing that I will complain about is that how GW implemented morale was very rudimentary and binary, and the And They Shall Know No Morale Rules got out of hand. But again, HH2.0 and TOW show how GW has taken the old ideas and given them a bit more depth, and there are plenty of other examples to draw from. For instance, I liked how Heavy Gear's morale system caused units to rack up penalties to their actions, but didn't take control away from the player- you could keep pushing if you wanted, but your effectiveness would diminish until you stopped to rally. Or in Epic: Armageddon, once a unit accumulates enough blast markers to become broken, additional hits inflict extra damage to the unit with no saves allowed. It doesn't flee off the board, but it becomes combat ineffective and highly vulnerable to further damage until you rally.
There are many ways to handle morale, and I resent this notion that it's an 'objectively bad' concept because it 'takes away control' or is 'lose more', as if these are universally bad things to have in a wargame and not just reflections of the very low tolerance for friction expressed by the average 40K player.
I can appreciate the idea that some factions get to largely ignore morale effects as part of their fluff, in order to distinguish them and represent their particular characteristics. e.g. Tyranids being fearless so long as they are a Synapse Creature or in range of one. That's fine. It represents the Hive Mind's iron grasp over its creations - such that it can tell them to run headlong into a storm of gunfire and they won't think twice.
However, to my mind, there were two issues with this:
1) The sheer number of armies that ignored morale - whether through rules like Synapse, or And They Shall Know No Rules, or through innate Fearless (Daemons, all monsters, all vehicles) or through easy access to Fearless characters - far outweighed the armies that were actually affected by Morale.
Bear in mind, one of the armies given pseudo-immunity to most of the morale rules was Space Marines - a faction that represented about 8 separate armies all by itself, not to mention being the poster-boy faction.
Thus, we ended up with morale rules that most armies just ended up ignoring for one reason or other.
Maybe you still don't consider that a huge issue. However, it does lead me to:
2) The volume of rules and effects that ended up being pointless as a direct result of the above.
Let's look at some Dark Eldar gear:
Phantasm Grenade Launcher - doesn't work against Fearless/ATSKNF Torment Grenade Launchers - doesn't work against Fearless/ATSKNF The Archangel of Pain - doesn't work against Fearless/ATSKNF The Armour of Misery - Fear special rule (doesn't work against Fearless/ATSKNF)
Ancient Evil - Fear special rule (doesn't work against Fearless/ATSKNF)
Wow, can't wait to use these items in a list. I'm sure it will go well, just so long as I'm not up against Tyranids. Or Space Marines. Or Daemons. Or Blood Angels. Or Space Wolves. Or Grey Knights. Or . . .
You get the picture.
You had swathes of gear that just weren't worth the paper they were printed on - because for every game against, say, your Imperial Guard army, you'd have another five where those items are just dead points because the entire enemy army is outright immune to the effects.
If most of the armies in 40k are going to be immune (or de facto immune) to morale through one form or other, I'd implore that we don't then dump 100 morale mechanics on an already pitiful army. Unfortunately, I don't trust GW to not do this.
A feature of Warhammer both FB and 40k is that it is best played with tailored lists with people working together to make an interesting game rather than trying to gain advantage. In those circumstances those items can be interesting and most people didn't play like that so it is probably better for them the way things have gone. However for those who did play like that it's a big blow to how interesting things can be made in different match ups.
Tyran wrote: If you have a group that can play tailored games, you can house rule whatever you want.
While true, in personal experience I've found the fewer changes you have to make, the better. This is why I like Editions that give me a lot to work with.
10th has given me WAY less to work with than 9th. Having rules for something like Torchbearer Fleets and Armies of Faith is WAY better than trying to houserule something of that magnitude.
No, they were both designed specifically as Crusade armies- you could use the army composition and base rules to field them in matched, but without the XP/ RP growth, you didn't get a lot of the flavour- Torchbearers had a story arc built into crusade- the fleet was bringing Primaris Greyshields to reinforce a marine chapter, so first you had to find them, then the Primaris had to bond with their new Chapter, and then finally they would become full members. For armies of faith, you had to walk the path of the faithful in order to grow spiritual power.
Tyel wrote: But you've seen the complaints from various people here.
And its beyond morale. I mean CSM had that Champion of Chaos rule. You've just won a duel, woops spawn. Now sure - it wasn't that likely. But I'm not sure if you'd been a chaos player for decades you can be blamed for thinking this was kind of a silly and unwanted addition. Saying "Chaos players should embrace this rule" is at least questionable. Daemons had their weird table of "auto-win and auto-lose" - should they all have felt that was fluffy etc?
(Apologies for the late reply, I've been out of town)
Sure, I do think there are specific mechanics where randomness is unwanted and more of an annoyance than anything else. But it depends a lot on your tolerance for friction in a wargame, and how reliable you expect your troops to be, and I think the general perception there has shifted over time. I remember when plasma guns didn't have a safe mode and access to to-hit rerolls was nonexistent- the sort of modern player who considers it horrendously grimderp that the Crimson Fists accidentally blew up their own chapter monastery probably doesn't like morale mechanics or mechanics that punish you for rolling a 1.
What I disagree with in these discussions is the proposition that these sorts of mechanics are axiomatically bad. Because for all the griping about morale, players seem just fine with rolling for Advance distances, rolling for charges, rolling to see how many shots you get, rolling to see if you get to roll, and so on. Randomness for mediating interactions between your army and your opponent's is obviously the core of any dice-based wargame, but in certain mechanics 40K still maintains randomness in your units' execution of their theoretical capabilities without direct interaction with the opponent, and in some ways more randomly than in prior editions. Personally, I find it easier to explain an under-half-strength Eldar unit flubbing a morale check and deciding to retire from the field than the same unit rolling snake eyes on a 3" charge and just not doing it.
The point being, some amount of randomness that takes control away from players is not automatically a bad thing. What matters is what it adds to the game and that it is balanced appropriately. Occasionally turning into a Chaos Spawn when you won a challenge might have been fluffy (I dunno, maybe?) but it didn't add much to gameplay, it wasn't something you could mitigate or plan around, it was just an occasional 'sucks to suck'. Morale was a mechanic that had specific conditions for triggering it, was always present, was something you could mitigate with good positioning of your leaders, and on the flip side was something you could exploit with good positioning and coordination to force tests on vulnerable units.
To Vipoid's point, the worst thing GW ever did with morale was to make some factions essentially immune to it, rather than have them mitigate aspects of it or interact with it differently. Again, taking a page from Epic, treating it as escalating disruption that culminates in the unit becoming temporarily combat ineffective (rather than units being fine until they suddenly decide to turn tail) would make it still applicable to ostensibly fearless armies. On that note:
Tyel wrote: Also - and I may have asked this before - you've talked about Epic a lot over the years - but I've never really worked out how Orks just aren't "worse"?
It's two things.
First, having poorer activation rolls doesn't make them strictly worse for the same reason that having BS5+ and no armor in 40K doesn't make the entire faction strictly worse than Marines- they are balanced around it. Orks in Epic are extremely dangerous at short range and put out a lot of firepower and melee ability for their cost. Every army in E:A pays appropriately for their activation rolls. Frankly, armies like Marines or Eldar with reliable activation (1+, so they can only fail if taking penalties for being under fire or activating two units in a row) have a steeper learning curve than Orks or Guard, simply because you have to make the most of that advantage or you'll get swamped.
Second, Orks have a 3+ activation by default (for reference: Guard are 2+, Marines are 1+), but get a +2 to the orders that allow double-move or charging into combat. Again there can be penalties, but by default that's an auto-pass.
So while it's pretty hard to coordinate a horde of Orks to do any complex maneuvers, they rarely fail to get stuck in and you can reliably get up the board and into combat even while under fire. Meanwhile Guard are slightly more reliable in general, but once they start taking fire have a one-in-three chance of failure that you need to account for. And Marines auto-pass by default and essentially halve all morale effects, but pay accordingly, and if you try to mindlessly slug it out with a horde of Orks you will get eaten alive.
Again, as always there are other ways you could implement the core concept, and industry trends have moved away from 'roll to do anything' (though it isn't quite that bad; a formation that fails still gets to perform one action) and towards 'roll to do extra'. But it does differentiate the factions in fluffy ways and is appropriately balanced through mechanics and points.
Because for all the griping about morale, players seem just fine with rolling for Advance distances, rolling for charges, rolling to see how many shots you get
FWIW, I dislike random advance distances, random numbers of shots, and think random charge distances could probably be implemented better. For exactly the reasons you've expressed. Failing to get on an objective because you rolled a 1 isn't particularly dramatic or interesting. Neither is rolling snake eyes on a charge. They're just "sucks to suck" moments resulting from an unnecessary application of randomness.
(But that's kind of beside the point. I think I agree with your whole post.)
Because for all the griping about morale, players seem just fine with rolling for Advance distances, rolling for charges, rolling to see how many shots you get
FWIW, I dislike random advance distances, random numbers of shots, and think random charge distances could probably be implemented better. For exactly the reasons you've expressed. Failing to get on an objective because you rolled a 1 isn't particularly dramatic or interesting. Neither is rolling snake eyes on a charge. They're just "sucks to suck" moments resulting from an unnecessary application of randomness.
(But that's kind of beside the point. I think I agree with your whole post.)
As someone who spent their time maneuvering blocks of troops around on a table and trying hard to beat my opponent to the charges in nearly every edition of WFB, random charge distances are a TRAVESTY. Even when I was playing 40k, the only randomness was the Fleet-of-Foot roll for my Eldar.
Random charge distances are random. And your point about players griping about Morale when they're fine with all the other random crap every single turn is SPOT ON.
IMO what would work better given 40k's current range of fearlessness etc, is to have a generic 'disruption' mechanic, and have different ways of it implementing depending on the faction. No one is immune, but each faction's reaction to it is different. It's all a disadvantage, but its differently disadvantageous depending on the faction in question.
you could treat it like an old vehicle penetration table with different effects depending on what you rolled and some armies getting a bonus to the rolls, so they don't roll 1s, or 2s on the table. They could be anything from, modifiers to hit, always count as moving, lose OC, move D6" away from closest enemy unit, can only move 1d3" during their next turn etc.
Or a unit is disrupted and you army determines what disruption means. You could even put it in their faction rules, a standard mechanic each faction gets. ie 'waaagh disruption = x', 'disruption protocols', 'gtace under fire' etc.
By making it a standard effect for each faction you also allow for easier balancing, rather than trying to make it equally balanced as a core mechanic.
On the initiative front, I think I see a recurring pattern in these threads where people that played Eldar or other higher initiative factions want initiative to do more and people that played Orks or Necrons don't want it to do anything.
It's a tricky puzzle to solve. The sweeping advance thing I feel has been brushed past a few times but I want to reiterate it again: It really sucked to have your WHOLE ARMY be bad at a core mechanic in this way. And that's also why Jaws sucked - for some armies it's a 1 in 6 chance of dying, alright, we can live with that, but in other armies it's a 4 in 6 chance of dying and that's a lot less palatable.
Initiative had more variance between faction core troops than Toughness and tended to be a bit "faction locked" as high or low, and so core rules that worked based on it were always rough if you played a low initiative faction. And the solution of "make 'em cheaper" only works to a point, eventually it becomes unwieldy to play your army because you have so many guys.
catbarf wrote: (Apologies for the late reply, I've been out of town)
No problem - I'm always interested to know what you think even if I don't necessarily agree with it.
I'm not sure for instance that players are that fond of other sources of friction - I think people have complained about almost every one of those points. Charges have long been debated (and failing extremely short range ones feels bad as you flag). Rolling to how many shots you get is a stupid way of simulating old blast template weapons and frankly I think should go.
I think the hostility has often been there for all or nothing mechanics. Failing a charge for example is often catastrophic. By contrast one unit rolling a under-average in the shooting phase might be bad, but it can be made up elsewhere.
You see the same sort of anguish with vehicle rules. It doesn't necesarilly feel good for tanks shrug off a dozen lascannon shots in one game - and then be taken out by the first shot of the first turn in the next. You can argue its "realistic" but thats not automatically a good thing in a game.
As you say, if GW hadn't made many factions immune to psychology, then it might have been a bigger feature of older editions. But they did - and while I know you say you can't just use GW's back practices in the past to condemn a concept, you do have to deal with the fact its GW writing the rules.
Thanks for replying about Epic. Although I'll admit having never played it I'm still a bit lost. Activations presumably alternate between players? In which case if Orks do just double move or assault, aren't they are functionally Marines - but cheaper/more powerful for the points? I'm now left spinning it the other way - how then do Marines avoid just being "worse Orks"? Presumably because in some scenarios you don't want to double move/charge into close combat? Would that make a "choppy Marine army" (if such exists?) just bad in Epic? I guess Marine players are more likely to go first, and theres ways to activate multiple formations.
I guess my cynical view in 40k is that Ork players have often been told they have to run straight towards the enemy because shooting isn't fluffy etc etc. But then the Marine/Eldar player should (mysteriously) get lots of tools to punish them for doing this. Which prompts this feeling like you are playing the NPC antagonist there to die faction.
Synapse always has that conflict too. "Its really powerful, it makes you immune to psychology". "So like... 2/3rds of the factions in this game?" Well if its not much of a perk, losing it can't really be a major disadvantage, or its just a faction disadvantage. Maybe you can smudge all this with points, but it doesn't necesarilly feel good.
Hellebore wrote:IMO what would work better given 40k's current range of fearlessness etc, is to have a generic 'disruption' mechanic, and have different ways of it implementing depending on the faction. No one is immune, but each faction's reaction to it is different. It's all a disadvantage, but its differently disadvantageous depending on the faction in question.
you could treat it like an old vehicle penetration table with different effects depending on what you rolled and some armies getting a bonus to the rolls, so they don't roll 1s, or 2s on the table. They could be anything from, modifiers to hit, always count as moving, lose OC, move D6" away from closest enemy unit, can only move 1d3" during their next turn etc.
Or a unit is disrupted and you army determines what disruption means. You could even put it in their faction rules, a standard mechanic each faction gets. ie 'waaagh disruption = x', 'disruption protocols', 'gtace under fire' etc.
By making it a standard effect for each faction you also allow for easier balancing, rather than trying to make it equally balanced as a core mechanic.
I feel like the obvious downside there is that it's a lot of extra design work for the designers to create and balance a bespoke set of debuffs for each faction, and then it's a lot of extra rules for players to learn/memorize. Current morale isn't ideal, but at least you know what happens when your opponent fails a batlteshock test without having to memorize a d6 table for their faction in advance.
Da Boss wrote:On the initiative front, I think I see a recurring pattern in these threads where people that played Eldar or other higher initiative factions want initiative to do more and people that played Orks or Necrons don't want it to do anything.
It's a tricky puzzle to solve. The sweeping advance thing I feel has been brushed past a few times but I want to reiterate it again: It really sucked to have your WHOLE ARMY be bad at a core mechanic in this way. And that's also why Jaws sucked - for some armies it's a 1 in 6 chance of dying, alright, we can live with that, but in other armies it's a 4 in 6 chance of dying and that's a lot less palatable.
Initiative had more variance between faction core troops than Toughness and tended to be a bit "faction locked" as high or low, and so core rules that worked based on it were always rough if you played a low initiative faction. And the solution of "make 'em cheaper" only works to a point, eventually it becomes unwieldy to play your army because you have so many guys.
Yeah. Old initiative was bad for the reasons you've mentioned. As an eldar player, I don't really want that version of it back. That said, it feels like initiative was a big part of our survivability that we never really got back/replaced in any fashion. Back in the day, if you charged your hormagaunts into my harlequins, I could take satisfaction in knowing that the expensive clowns who were supposed to be some of the best melee combatants in the galaxy would at least get some licks in before being overwhelmed by your horde of mooks. Now, a trash mob unit can potentially go into melee with a melee specialist and wipe them out with no casualties in return. Which just doesn't feel right.
Going from 7th to 8th, units like harlequins and wyches went from reliably getting some licks in and being harder to hit in the first place (compared WS) to being hit as easily as guardsmen and potentially not swinging a single attack while they're torn apart in melee. Their supposed melee prowess just goes away if they aren't the ones actively rolling dice. It felt better when both sides of a fight were likely to come away scuffed up and getting the charge just meant that the charger came out trading better. As opposed to now where charging means you frequently just wipe out the enemy entirely unless you're bad at melee or are charging a terminator brick.
Da Boss wrote:It really sucked to have your WHOLE ARMY be bad at a core mechanic in this way. And that's also why Jaws sucked - for some armies it's a 1 in 6 chance of dying, alright, we can live with that, but in other armies it's a 4 in 6 chance of dying and that's a lot less palatable.
I don't agree with the underlying implication that core weaknesses are a bad thing, particularly when this is already fairly well tolerated. Having poor army-wide morale is no different from having poor army-wide saves or poor army-wide BS or poor army-wide melee. It just has to be balanced appropriately and not break the game in other ways.
Particularly since, unless I'm forgetting any egregious examples, armies with poor morale always had ways to mitigate it. Tyranids had Synapse, Guard had officers and commissars, Orks had Mob Rule, and so on. If your whole army was getting swept, something had already gone very wrong.
(All that said, I never particularly liked how GW handled Initiative- it seemed like a clunky representation of speed, and using it to make one side unilaterally strike first and to resolve sweeping advance created a lot of issues, see: Orks)
Tyel wrote:I'm not sure for instance that players are that fond of other sources of friction - I think people have complained about almost every one of those points. Charges have long been debated (and failing extremely short range ones feels bad as you flag). Rolling to how many shots you get is a stupid way of simulating old blast template weapons and frankly I think should go.
I apologize for painting with such a broad brush because you and Wyldhunt are right, people do complain about those mechanics. It just isn't always the same people, and I don't see the same sort of sweeping declarations about how random charges are always bad because it takes away control or whatever. Everyone has their own threshold for randomness; I am only making the case that if you're playing a dice-based wargame to begin with, that threshold is not zero, and morale systems ought to remain in consideration.
Tyel wrote:Thanks for replying about Epic. Although I'll admit having never played it I'm still a bit lost. Activations presumably alternate between players? In which case if Orks do just double move or assault, aren't they are functionally Marines - but cheaper/more powerful for the points? I'm now left spinning it the other way - how then do Marines avoid just being "worse Orks"? Presumably because in some scenarios you don't want to double move/charge into close combat? Would that make a "choppy Marine army" (if such exists?) just bad in Epic? I guess Marine players are more likely to go first, and theres ways to activate multiple formations.
After taking an activation you can either turn over to your opponent, or attempt to retain the initiative and make another activation at a -1 penalty. So if you want to get a horde of Orks charging into melee at once, they're pretty reliable at that, where Guard might get the first activation off and then flub the second and then oops you have a problem.
Marines avoid being 'worse Orks' through a couple of means. They're reliable all the time, not just on those two orders, and that gives them flexibility. You can triple-move without shooting, you can sustain fire for +1 to hit at the cost of no moving. Orks have a more limited playbook and if you start trying the sort of fancy redeployments that Marines can do at will, you'll start failing a lot of checks.
Marines also have advantages in morale (they essentially halve the effects of suppression), force concentration, and tactical mobility. A Marine army can apply a lot of damage to a very narrow frontage (weapon ranges are very short compared to 40K), have organic transports allow them to get around the table and put all that force where it's most effective, and avoid getting suppressed or broken which would pin them in place. Orks can mitigate morale to a degree via Mob Rule, but it requires large units that are not nearly so easy to manage.
A choppy Ork army is all about disrupting the enemy with long-range fires enough for the big blobs of Boyz to get stuck in and win through overwhelming force and grinding attrition. A choppy Marine army uses small elite formations to gang up on your key units and dismember them one at a time, while being tough enough to eat the immediate retaliation and redeploy before being bogged down.
Epic's implementations of command-and-control and morale systems are both very simple, but they do an excellent job of differentiating the factions in fundamental (how they're organized, how they fight) rather than superficial (how much armor they wear, what guns they carry) ways. It's somewhat beyond the scope of the current discussion, but I really think that the lack of soft factors in current 40K is a contributing factor to some factions feeling off, or at least disconnected from their fluff, on the table.
Yeah. Old initiative was bad for the reasons you've mentioned. As an eldar player, I don't really want that version of it back. That said, it feels like initiative was a big part of our survivability that we never really got back/replaced in any fashion. Back in the day, if you charged your hormagaunts into my harlequins, I could take satisfaction in knowing that the expensive clowns who were supposed to be some of the best melee combatants in the galaxy would at least get some licks in before being overwhelmed by your horde of mooks. Now, a trash mob unit can potentially go into melee with a melee specialist and wipe them out with no casualties in return. Which just doesn't feel right.
Going from 7th to 8th, units like harlequins and wyches went from reliably getting some licks in and being harder to hit in the first place (compared WS) to being hit as easily as guardsmen and potentially not swinging a single attack while they're torn apart in melee. Their supposed melee prowess just goes away if they aren't the ones actively rolling dice. It felt better when both sides of a fight were likely to come away scuffed up and getting the charge just meant that the charger came out trading better. As opposed to now where charging means you frequently just wipe out the enemy entirely unless you're bad at melee or are charging a terminator brick.
I'd tend to agree with these points. As someone who's been on both ends of the spectrum, Initiative rules have always been kind of crap. I've crammed high-Init units in my Eldar army (or just Banshees) down my opponent's gullet with little they could do in return. On the other hand, my primary WFB army was always Lizardmen, and Saurus Warriors, with the lowest Init in the game (1) were very overpriced blocks of infantry that almost never won an actual fight, especially against anything remotely close to them in points value. Primarily due to always fighting last unless they managed to get a charge off, or they were fighting a unit with 2-handed weapons.
10th 40K, as you say, has not helped the situation. Essentially units like Murder Clowns are one-shot wonders unless you get lucky or your opponent gets stupid. You HAVE to get the charge off with them, they'll likely do really good damage, but unless they somehow delete their enemy and manage to consolidate back onto a Starweaver, they're sitting ducks that go last when return charged. But, that concept seems to be endemic to 10th...do as much damage as you can on the turn you choose to expose yourself, then pick up your models from the return deletion. Most things seem to be over very quickly, one way or another.
It's even weirder with Strikes-First units. You charged my Banshees? Cool, I get to go first in the Strikes-First phase of the fight. My Banshees charged your Von Ryan's Leapers? Or the Leapers used their ability at Heroic Intervention on my turn? They get to go first. It's all a little bizarre. I mean, it's fine, everyone knows the rules, and you just have to think through the consequences of doing something with your little painted figures, but some of the design decisions this edition are just plain odd.
I feel like the obvious downside there is that it's a lot of extra design work for the designers to create and balance a bespoke set of debuffs for each faction, and then it's a lot of extra rules for players to learn/memorize. Current morale isn't ideal, but at least you know what happens when your opponent fails a batlteshock test without having to memorize a d6 table for their faction in advance.
Well in the one case, it would be a single 'disruption effect' that the army receives. one rule for each army.
The old single mechanic fits all only really works well if everyone is affected equally, but GW loves to show how fearless each army is above the other, and it ends up mostly just being a rule that punished a couple of armies and is ignored by others. The old morale mechanics had basically 3 army effects, ignore, rarely a problem and punishment. You can divide most armies across those three effects pretty easily and it's the main reason IMO so many people hated the mechanic. It became another hoop a range of armies had to jump through while others just stepped over it.
A generic disruption mechanic that affects everyone equally will work, but will likely get many fans of fearlessness annoyed that their army is now being affected by 'morale'.
As to the initiative conversation, the issue comes back to what levers you have to make units survivable. High I armies like eldar and tyranids were often easily killed, so being able to strike first gave them survivability by proxy of killing some of their opponents before they could attack back. GW keep shrinking these levers and now the game is tuned entirely to survivability being the stats that a certain set of armies naturally have in abundance but others don't - T, W, Sv.
And because some armies conceptually are highly survivable without those stats, the cognitive dissonance of T6 genestealers to represent their initiative/speed as a a defence doesn't work for most people.
The more they strip, the necessarily more abstract their mechanics need to become to allow for these factors.
The game used to use simulationist RPG representation, Wounds means wounds, toughness means toughness. Because they had enough stats that you could represent the speed, skill, dodge etc defence with stats that mapped to them.
However, now as they remove stuff, these stats don't entirely represent the word used to name them anymore. It's like EPIC where there are so few stats that you have to accept the abstract representation of a unit with low armour and toughness but high reflexes having a high 'save', because save represents ALL the different attributes that go into keeping the unit alive.
If GW are going to insist on 40k only having those basic defence mechanics, then they need to get comfortable using wounds and toughness as abstract survival mechanics and give armies that don't normally look tough higher stats to reflect their survival from other areas.
High initiative didn't really gave that much survivability when half the game (any ranged army) pretty much ignored it.
My I6 genestealers definitely didn't feel survivable every time anyone fired at them, even with just bolters. They always felt like glass cannons (glass hammers? what is the melee equivalent of a glass cannon?) at best.
If want something to feel survivable I play monsters, a Tyrannofex or a Maleceptor feels survivable*. Genestealers? no.
*Well 8th and up. 5th-7th felt kinda horrible with GW refusing to give Tyranid monsters anything above T6 Sv3+
Kagetora wrote:
I'd tend to agree with these points. As someone who's been on both ends of the spectrum, Initiative rules have always been kind of crap. I've crammed high-Init units in my Eldar army (or just Banshees) down my opponent's gullet with little they could do in return. On the other hand, my primary WFB army was always Lizardmen, and Saurus Warriors, with the lowest Init in the game (1) were very overpriced blocks of infantry that almost never won an actual fight, especially against anything remotely close to them in points value. Primarily due to always fighting last unless they managed to get a charge off, or they were fighting a unit with 2-handed weapons.
10th 40K, as you say, has not helped the situation. Essentially units like Murder Clowns are one-shot wonders unless you get lucky or your opponent gets stupid. You HAVE to get the charge off with them, they'll likely do really good damage, but unless they somehow delete their enemy and manage to consolidate back onto a Starweaver, they're sitting ducks that go last when return charged. But, that concept seems to be endemic to 10th...do as much damage as you can on the turn you choose to expose yourself, then pick up your models from the return deletion. Most things seem to be over very quickly, one way or another.
It's even weirder with Strikes-First units. You charged my Banshees? Cool, I get to go first in the Strikes-First phase of the fight. My Banshees charged your Von Ryan's Leapers? Or the Leapers used their ability at Heroic Intervention on my turn? They get to go first. It's all a little bizarre. I mean, it's fine, everyone knows the rules, and you just have to think through the consequences of doing something with your little painted figures, but some of the design decisions this edition are just plain odd.
Exactly. Like I said, it used to feel like most dedicated melee units got their licks in. Either they were higher initiative and thus typically swung first, or else they tanky enough or numerous enough that there would probably be enough of them left to do some damage in return. And then the old sweeping advance rules (feelsbad as they were) meant that it was okay to not cleave your way through every last wound of the enemy squad. It was more about seeing who could do more damage over the course of the whole phase. And charging just meant that you were more likely to trade better thanks to the bonus attacks and possibly bonus strength/initiative from furious charge and similar effects. Whereas now it feels like I'm just launching suicide missiles at the enemy with my melee elves. (My terminators are fine standing around getting hit back.)
The old system had lots of room for improvement, but I think I kind of preferred it on the whole. And not just because my main armies had high initiative.
Hellebore wrote:
Well in the one case, it would be a single 'disruption effect' that the army receives. one rule for each army.
The old single mechanic fits all only really works well if everyone is affected equally, but GW loves to show how fearless each army is above the other, and it ends up mostly just being a rule that punished a couple of armies and is ignored by others. The old morale mechanics had basically 3 army effects, ignore, rarely a problem and punishment. You can divide most armies across those three effects pretty easily and it's the main reason IMO so many people hated the mechanic. It became another hoop a range of armies had to jump through while others just stepped over it.
A generic disruption mechanic that affects everyone equally will work, but will likely get many fans of fearlessness annoyed that their army is now being affected by 'morale'.
I was comparing your suggestion to what we have now in 10th. Battleshock has room for improvement, but it's pretty straightforward to resolve and impacts most armies more or less evenly.
As to the initiative conversation, the issue comes back to what levers you have to make units survivable. High I armies like eldar and tyranids were often easily killed, so being able to strike first gave them survivability by proxy of killing some of their opponents before they could attack back. GW keep shrinking these levers and now the game is tuned entirely to survivability being the stats that a certain set of armies naturally have in abundance but others don't - T, W, Sv.
And because some armies conceptually are highly survivable without those stats, the cognitive dissonance of T6 genestealers to represent their initiative/speed as a a defence doesn't work for most people.
The more they strip, the necessarily more abstract their mechanics need to become to allow for these factors.
The game used to use simulationist RPG representation, Wounds means wounds, toughness means toughness. Because they had enough stats that you could represent the speed, skill, dodge etc defence with stats that mapped to them.
However, now as they remove stuff, these stats don't entirely represent the word used to name them anymore. It's like EPIC where there are so few stats that you have to accept the abstract representation of a unit with low armour and toughness but high reflexes having a high 'save', because save represents ALL the different attributes that go into keeping the unit alive.
If GW are going to insist on 40k only having those basic defence mechanics, then they need to get comfortable using wounds and toughness as abstract survival mechanics and give armies that don't normally look tough higher stats to reflect their survival from other areas.
Yeah. It's not my preferred solution, but theoretically giving eldar several wounds per model and putting a cap on how much damage they can take at a time would actually kind of represent speed as defense pretty well. In an unintuitive, unfluffy sort of way. You'd functionally need to throw out lots of attacks because the first couple of wounds each elf loses would be assumed to represent them dodging around as they moved.
I feel like there's probably a better solution to be had in hit modifiers, general lethality reduction, range-related mechanics, etc., but I hear what you're saying.
Tyran wrote:High initiative didn't really gave that much survivability when half the game (any ranged army) pretty much ignored it.
But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.
In other words, it created interesting decisions and counterplay. Whereas now, so long as they have a melee unit somewhere in the area, they can just throw it into your genestealers and know it will do max damage without fear of losing anything first.
...Unless of course they have the audacity to charge with more than one unit thus opening themselves up to the interrupt stratagem... Which is a whole other strange, annoying design decision. Right up there with fights first units that don't charge being faster than fights first units that do charge even though not-fights-first chargers are faster than not-fights-first non-chargers...
Tyran wrote: IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.
My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.
Or it gets merged with pinned and they can't do anything for a turn other than move to cover if they can. If no cover then they get a bonus to saves.
The thing I liked about the old morale system and pinning is that it's a way to temporarily remove threats without killing them. Right now there's one solution to threats and that's to remove them from the board. Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me; in most tactics games you're given a variety of solutions to a problem.
Consider FiraXCOM; you don't have to kill everything on the same turn (although that is optimal), you have debuffs, buffs, stuns, decoys, etc. You have a lot more solutions to a problem other than just "shoot it until it dies".
That's something that 40k lacks; the only solution you ever have is "shoot it to remove models. If you remove enough models you get to remove more models", and that's a pity.
On a related note, battleshock is a stupid name for a rule and reeks of someone trying hard to be cool. I would call it Squad Morale Broken as a nod to Dawn of War.
It's clear, it's to the point, it's an actual descriptive phrase that explain clearly what it does and it's a reference to what is perhaps the best Warhammer 40k game adaptation released.
Tyran wrote: IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.
My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.
That's not a terrible idea- I could live with it. But it's kinda funny, because if that's the solution, then sure I have to shoot or fight the nearest unit, but I also get to maintain control of the objective I'm standing on, and when I do deal with the nearest unit, I can dump a bucket of strats on the attack to make sure I delete them; the current system prevents both of those things, but does let me deal with whoever I choose. I'm honestly not sure that either system is more or less of a penalty than the other.
Or it gets merged with pinned and they can't do anything for a turn other than move to cover if they can. If no cover then they get a bonus to saves.
Another decent solution that I'd be okay with, but the same situation above applies:
"Hah! You're broken! Run and hide!"
"Yep, I'll do that but the objective is stickied, and I've got more OC than your attackers, so I still score and you don't. Looking forward to attacking me on your next turn? No problem, I'll just drop this strat and go into strategic reserve. Aren't you glad you broke me?"
The thing I liked about the old morale system and pinning is that it's a way to temporarily remove threats without killing them. Right now there's one solution to threats and that's to remove them from the board.
There are strats that represent pinning, though perhaps not as well as it was represented in previous editions, and of course everyone's favourite complaint about strats still applies: they aren't a core mechanic. But I have strats and unit abilities that can penalize your ability to shoot, or to fight, or to move, or to charge, or some combination of the above.
Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me;
Well good news then, the game doesn't have to feel bland, because that ISN'T how morale works. You don't remove ANYTHING when you fail Battleshock- you lose the ability to control objectives and use strats.
in most tactics games you're given a variety of solutions to a problem.
Consider FiraXCOM; you don't have to kill everything on the same turn (although that is optimal), you have debuffs, buffs, stuns, decoys, etc. You have a lot more solutions to a problem other than just "shoot it until it dies".
That's something that 40k lacks; the only solution you ever have is "shoot it to remove models. If you remove enough models you get to remove more models", and that's a pity.
Again, 40k doesn't lack those things at all- they're just strats and unit rules rather than being core mechanics.
On a related note, battleshock is a stupid name for a rule and reeks of someone trying hard to be cool. I would call it Squad Morale Broken as a nod to Dawn of War.
It's clear, it's to the point, it's an actual descriptive phrase that explain clearly what it does and it's a reference to what is perhaps the best Warhammer 40k game adaptation released.
Well, agree to disagree since it's such a small point of semantics... But for the record, shock is a genuine medical condition that causes confusion- something that is very well represented by an inability to control territory or use effective strategy. Typically, shock is caused by injury or other forms of trauma, so Battleshock is Shock caused by battle. And what do you know, it's a single three syllable word.
Squad Morale Broken, on the other hand is three words totalling four syllables, and it doesn't do anything to suggest how the squad with Broken morale will behave unless you know the rule, where as the term "Shock" actually suggests what the behaviour will be whether you know the rule or not.
Like I said though, minor point of semantics, so agree to disagree.
I guess its boring to undermine arguments by bringing up GW's tendency to punch people in the foot.
But I'm kind of remembering assault differently to those posting here due to the rather stupid "strike at initiative 1 if you cross difficult terrain rule and have forgotten your grenades" rule.
Wyches had plasma grenades, but Incubi infamously did not. Which did impact charging into say Guardsmen across anything but planet bowling ball (or your friend's rather empty kitchen table.)
I can't remember every iteration of Tyranids but I think Flesh hooks might have counted as assault grenades in 5th (or did something similar?) but I'm pretty sure by 7th they didn't and Genestealers had the same issue despite move through cover.
The issue with pinning/stunning versus killing in 40k usually stems from the fact there's so few "moves" that can be made in game. If I can pin/stun/blind etc a unit at the top of turn 3, and you functionally won't get control back until the bottom of turn 4 (depending on what else I do to you through a whole new turn), then functionally they may as well be dead - beyond absorbing some action from my turn 4.
Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.
I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)
Tyel wrote: I guess its boring to undermine arguments by bringing up GW's tendency to punch people in the foot.
But I'm kind of remembering assault differently to those posting here due to the rather stupid "strike at initiative 1 if you cross difficult terrain rule and have forgotten your grenades" rule.
Wyches had plasma grenades, but Incubi infamously did not. Which did impact charging into say Guardsmen across anything but planet bowling ball (or your friend's rather empty kitchen table.)
I think the strike-last-when-charging-through-terrain thing is sort of its own discussion. It definitely mattered, but we were discussing the merits of the old initiative system rather than advocating for its return or the return of other problematic elements tied to it. If we were to bring back initiative in some form, we could do so without terrain making the have-nots swing last, or we could mitigate how big an impact it has.
One proposal I've seen for initiative is to do it kind of like Old World(?) does. So you have initiative stats, but you also have lots of little modifiers to it. So charging might give you +1 init or +d3 or whatever the numbers need to be to make it work out. And then you could have charging through terrain apply a -1 to that. So the idea is that an army like eldar will still generally be swinging first or at least simultaneously with enemies in melee, but an army like orks won't be stuck swinging last every time; especially if they charge or otherwise take steps to raise their initiative.
That approach would also potentially have some fun interactions with suppressing fire come to think of it. "Pinning weapons" could lower the init of their targets in the subsequent fight phase.
The issue with pinning/stunning versus killing in 40k usually stems from the fact there's so few "moves" that can be made in game. If I can pin/stun/blind etc a unit at the top of turn 3, and you functionally won't get control back until the bottom of turn 4 (depending on what else I do to you through a whole new turn), then functionally they may as well be dead - beyond absorbing some action from my turn 4.
Yeah. Shrinking table sizes and speeding units up has probably offset this somewhat compared to like, 7th edition. But losing a turn is still a huge penalty. Which is why I tend to call out overly severe morale penalties as a potential problem when they get pitched in Proposed Rules.
Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.
I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)
I feel like my dream version of 40k would probably involve something like 500-1k point armies, would probably have more player turns so that you have time/space to do more of the maneuvering/cat & mouse stuff, and would maybe use AA. But the AA would mostly be there to facilitate trade-offs like giving up movement to shoot sooner in the shooting phase rather than a way to compensate for the low turn count.
But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.
Pretty much any shooting unit down to the humble tactical squad was efficient at shooting into Genestealers.
Your point was true against armies that had pure melee units and a few shooting ones... which was only true against daemons (and ironically another Tyranid player also playing a Genestealer list).
So cute theoretical decisions and counterplay, in practice it meant pretty much nothing aside of edge cases.
But they *did* feel more survivable in melee though. Which meant that your opponent had to shoot them to deal with them without trading inefficiently. Which meant you could do things like going after shooty units first or otherwise trying to tie-up/debuff shooty units so that your opponent was forced to make tough choices about whether it was worth it to charge in or to redirect guns they'd rather point at other targets.
Pretty much any shooting unit down to the humble tactical squad was efficient at shooting into Genestealers.
Your point was true against armies that had pure melee units and a few shooting ones... which was only true against daemons (and ironically another Tyranid player also playing a Genestealer list).
So cute theoretical decisions and counterplay, in practice it meant pretty much nothing aside of edge cases.
It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers. More damage if you swap a bolter out for a flamer. Less if you swap it out for a meltagun. So not typically solo'ing genestealers on their lonesome. And if they wanted to go into melee to try and finish you off, they'd probably die or suffer significant casualties due to the initiative difference.
So in a vacuum, we're talking about genestealers charging something, either killing it off or taking it hostage (I don't think intentionally falling back was a thing even for marines back then). Then, assuming the marine player can shoot at you at all, they either need to commit multiple tac squad type units to it or they need to dedicate something more shooty than a tac squad. (And ideally you'd be making those shooty units your priority targets in the first place.) And then, if your opponent didn't finish the 'stealers off with the shooting available, you're making him choose between either not finishing you off, or else sending a unit into melee to finish you off at which point you probably inflict significant casualties thus making it a less good trade. And he kind of has to finish you off because if he doesn't, you're going to win combat on his turn, then go charge another squad and make the overall trade go even better for yourself.
That's in a vacuum. Realistically, there will be plenty of situations where your opponent just doesn't have a ton of shooty units that can draw a bead on your 'stealer squad thanks to terrain or what have you. And our discussion so far has assumed one squad of 'stealers versus multiple marine units. If we do the tyranids the same courtesy by assuming there are additional 'stealers around or some other support elements, then we can talk about how more of those marine shooty units might reasonably also be tied up in melee or might have their output reduced by debuffs or by casualties from tyranid shooting.
As someone who owns a bunch of genestealers and has been playing 'nids off and on since 5th, we agree that genestealers are squishy vs shooting. But that doesn't change the point that making enemy melee less scary thanks to initiative was a significant benefit. Not every unit with a gun in the game was auto-deleting whole genstealer squads. Making it more costly for opponents to finish you off via melee was a significant plus. Forcing opponents to point guns towards your 'stealers because the melee unit they'd prefer to use would get wiped before swinging an attack was a significant plus. I have trouble believing that you're being honest if you say you don't see the merit in that.
It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers.
AP5 so no save unless cover. So 3 dead genestealers. 5 Marines would literally get 60% returns on Genestealers (as Genestealers were similarly priced to Marines) in a single round of shooting.
Moreover the 2 remaining Genestealers? 3 attacks each on the charge, hitting on 3+ and wounding on 4s with rending. So 6 attacks, 4 hits, 2 wounds with a 52% chance of at least one rending, so chances are a dead marine.
Genestealers were extremely dependent on not getting shot and failing that, having cover.
Also if that Marine unit has a flamer? they can easily kill a 5 genestealer unit, getting a full 100% return.
I have enough of Tyranid trauma trying to play 5th edition Genestealers to know they sucked. The only decent ones were the Ymgarl version thanks to their special deployment that allowed moving and charging from reserves and 4+ armor save (plus extra attacks, strength or toughness with their mutation rule).
Initiative was only truly a survivality boost to units tough enough to not fold to a light breeze of shooting. Stuff like GK Paladins with the +2 initiative power halberds. Now that was scary to assault.
Even morale is just a way to remove models after you just finished removing models. That feels bland to me;
Well good news then, the game doesn't have to feel bland, because that ISN'T how morale works. You don't remove ANYTHING when you fail Battleshock- you lose the ability to control objectives and use strats.
I stand corrected then, good to see that's how it works now.
As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces.
Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.
It has been a while, but I think 5th edition bolter marines were hitting on 3's, wounding on 4s, going into a 5++ on the genestealers. So 5 bolters > 10 shots in rapid fire > 6.7 hits > 3.35 wounds > ~2 failed saves = 2 dead genestealers.
AP5 so no save unless cover. So 3 dead genestealers. 5 Marines would literally get 60% returns on Genestealers (as Genestealers were similarly priced to Marines) in a single round of shooting.
Moreover the 2 remaining Genestealers? 3 attacks each on the charge, hitting on 3+ and wounding on 4s with rending. So 6 attacks, 4 hits, 2 wounds with a 52% chance of at least one rending, so chances are a dead marine.
Genestealers were extremely dependent on not getting shot and failing that, having cover.
Also if that Marine unit has a flamer? they can easily kill a 5 genestealer unit, getting a full 100% return.
I have enough of Tyranid trauma trying to play 5th edition Genestealers to know they sucked. The only decent ones were the Ymgarl version thanks to their special deployment that allowed moving and charging from reserves and 4+ armor save (plus extra attacks, strength or toughness with their mutation rule).
Fair enough. 5th edition was a while ago, so I'm fuzzy on the details. So either no save at all, or else a 4+ cover save meaning less wounds from the non-flamer weapons than before. I know the offense (and thus the cost efficiency vs bolters) could fluxuate a lot depending on which upgrades you gave them. But if 2 'stealers are averaging one dead marine, then that means you were highly likely to take a squad hostage rather than killing it outright. Which would mean you're not getting shot at at all on your opponent's turn unless you accidentally roll too hot on your offense or sent in a squad with roughly double the bodies of the marines.
Initiative was only truly a survivality boost to units tough enough to not fold to a light breeze of shooting. Stuff like GK Paladins with the +2 initiative power halberds. Now that was scary to assault.
So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?
Regarding Initiative, while I think there were issues with the implementation, I do think it was better when the game had another 'lever' to pull.
As it stands, we still have initiative - it's just even more all-or-nothing than before. The old system was a scale and allowed for modifiers (not that they were used much, but still), whilst the new system is just 'normal' or 'strike first'.
One of the things that amuses me is that striking first, while useful, was still only half the battle. A lot of units got to strike first but still did naff-all because they were single-attack units with S3 and no special attacks.
(Though Sweeping Advance probably shouldn't have been initiative based, or at least not a straight initiative duel.)
I'm also of the opinion that units charging through cover should lose the bonus attack for charging - which would affect units far more evenly, as opposed to stripping initiative, which some units didn't have anyway.
So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?
It has defensive merits, but not to the point it can replace actual defensive stats. In particular because 40k is mostly a shooting game in which shooting is extremely common and it would easier to list units that cannot shot vs those that can shot.
As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces.
Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure I like strats either- they don't drive me crazy the way they do some people, but I think there were more elegant ways to do some of the things that are currently done by strats. And I very much do not like equipment strats- I think they were a terrible idea. If GW wanted to limit the use of a piece of equipment, there were way better ways to do that. To get back to 11th, I don't think starts are going anywhere.
As for tying them into a minigame, I actually don't mind that part. I don't see it as a minigame, but rather as an interesting option for unit abilities. It's worth noting as well that in 10th, CP aren't awarded based on which detachments you use the way they were in 8th and 9th, so it's already less pronounced than it was... But lots of units have an ability that lets them use a strat for one less CP or whatever. I think little tweaks like that actually help effectively integrate the CP system into the game as a whole.
Like I said though, the jury's out. I think MOST Dakkanaughts dislike strats, or like me are at best ambivalent.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I stand corrected then, good to see that's how it works now.
As for stratagems, I'm not a big fan of it as a mechanic. Maybe it's better these days, but I remember when everything was connected to a stratagem, even equipment and unit types, and you can really slow down gameplay with them, either by interrupting your opponent's turn with whatever trap card you have or using it during your turn to buff your forces. Not to mention that to balance them they had to introduce a resource management minigame that's also impacted by other mechanics and it got real clunky real fast.
Stratagems are a lot less disruptive. Most armies get way less CP these days, usually 2-3 per battle round. You also don't get them up front, so you have the most CP when there are the least units on the board. At least my armies (Orks and DG) tend to use a lot of the default ones, so tank shock, throwing grenades, counter attack or overwatch. In addition, every other detachment has some army specific defensive stratagem (kind of like going to ground, but balanced to work for your army).
Between those there usually is not that many CP left to activate a lot of trap cards, and many of the really bad gotcha's are gone anyways. And even if there is one, you now have exactly one page with 6 color-coded stratagems to worry about which tell you at one glance whether they can be used in the current phase. Most detachments also don't allow super-charging units by stacking stratagems anymore. If a detachment has two damage buffs, they often are mutually exclusive and have to be played on different units.
They pretty much implemented exactly what people suggested in all those "how to fix stratagems?" threads we had.
So to clarify, you do acknowledge that high initiative had defensive merits; you just wanted to side tangent to complain about 'stealers being vulnerable to shooting?
It has defensive merits, but not to the point it can replace actual defensive stats.
In particular because 40k is mostly a shooting game in which shooting is extremely common and it would easier to list units that cannot shot vs those that can shot.
Well, my comments about initiative on the previous page were in regards to "elite" units taking one-sided beatdowns in melee specifically as a result of initiative going away. So it sounds like you and I have been having semi-unrelated conversations. Bolters killing wyches and genestealers and harlequins is fine. That's how you're supposed to counter them. My gripe was that something like a mob of hormagaunts or ork boyz used to come away knowing they'd scrapped with a serious threat when they charged something like a harlequin squad, whereas now they can punch all the clowns to death and not take a single casualty in return. That's the part that bugs me.
PenitentJake wrote:
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure I like strats either- they don't drive me crazy the way they do some people, but I think there were more elegant ways to do some of the things that are currently done by strats. And I very much do not like equipment strats- I think they were a terrible idea. If GW wanted to limit the use of a piece of equipment, there were way better ways to do that. To get back to 11th, I don't think starts are going anywhere.
As for tying them into a minigame, I actually don't mind that part. I don't see it as a minigame, but rather as an interesting option for unit abilities. It's worth noting as well that in 10th, CP aren't awarded based on which detachments you use the way they were in 8th and 9th, so it's already less pronounced than it was... But lots of units have an ability that lets them use a strat for one less CP or whatever. I think little tweaks like that actually help effectively integrate the CP system into the game as a whole.
Like I said though, the jury's out. I think MOST Dakkanaughts dislike strats, or like me are at beast ambivalent.
We're three editions into giving stratagems a shot. They're better now than they were in 8th and 9th, but I still feel like they've ultimately done more harm than good. It feels like a lot of our cool wargear or special abilities that were formerly used to customize units and give armies personality got rolled into strats, and then largely got removed. And the ones that stuck around in some form being stuck in strat form means that you only use them when they're the most efficient use of your CP. And even then, you're stuck only being able to use them on one unit per round.
Lathe Biosas wrote:I wish strats were 1/game abilities tied into different units.
And these abilities are granted by what Detachment you take.
For Example:
Deathwing Terminators gain 1/game Rapid Ingress, when fielding a Dark Angels Detachment.
See, I'm the opposite. I feel like one of the main problems with stratagems is that they're limited to one unit per round meaning that one of the main sources of your army's flavor can only be felt in one place at a time. So back in the day, eldar tanks or jetbikes could all choose to Jink (giving up offense on the following turn for defense when they were targeted with attacks). Now, that has been replaced by a single unit in your army being allowed to use Lightning Fast Reactions (-1 to-hit strat), and the downside being paid in CP instead of offense on the following turn means it feels more gamey and less like a fluffy in-universe decision being made by the pilot. There are lots of little things like that where it feels like widely-available, flavorful abilities that could help define an army have become locked to the one or two units per turn that will get the most out of them.
That's why I'd like to see stratagems get dropped and replaced with something closer to Rites of War. You want to play the vroom vroom detachment? You get bikes as troops, have to start all your infantry in transports, and you get some rules revolving around keeping your units in motion every turn. Army-wide stuff. Stuff that doesn't have to be amazingly strong but changes how your army plays/feels as a whole. I think that would go a long way towards getting rid of the "esports"/"card game" feeling people talk about these days.
I really don't like how stratagems aren't actually what they're described as, but that's part and parcel of GW continuing down the gamification abstraction of 40k, where terms can't be taken literally anymore.
A stratagem is an an action or behaviour, not wargear. If you took the stratagem 'grenades' then what that SHOULD mean, is that your command issued grenades to everyone as part of their strategy.
It shouldn't mean that your squads remember they have grenades one at a time and at random times.
But I think it's just the old manning of preferring simulationist style gaming over the modern game for gamesake perspective.
Hellebore wrote: I really don't like how stratagems aren't actually what they're described as, but that's part and parcel of GW continuing down the gamification abstraction of 40k, where terms can't be taken literally anymore.
A stratagem is an an action or behaviour, not wargear. If you took the stratagem 'grenades' then what that SHOULD mean, is that your command issued grenades to everyone as part of their strategy.
It shouldn't mean that your squads remember they have grenades one at a time and at random times.
But I think it's just the old manning of preferring simulationist style gaming over the modern game for gamesake perspective.
No. That's a pretty good example of what I'm trying to get at with my previous post.
"We're a detachment of tank hunters given krak grenades and melta bombs to cripple the enemy artillery before it reaches our fortifications."
Cool concept. Giving access to special explosives is a good way to represent that. I think 7th edition corsairs had something similar with vibro mines in one of their don't-call-it-a-detachment formations?
Nowadays, a single unit per turn can throw some grenades against a single target.
Back in the day, you could put shock prows on all your raiders. It wasn't super points efficient, but it was cute, and it meant you could give your army a little personality by letting your fleet of pirate ships turn themselves into battering rams! Nowadays? One raider per turn can use the tank shock strat.
RE: The discussion on Initiative values in older editions and the Genestealers vs Marines examples.
Genestealers had more than initiative to protect them in combat. The also had Weapon Skill to make them harder to hit. Since their WS was higher than the marines, they would hit the marines on 3+ and only get hit in return on 4s. Another thing that made them potent in 4th edition was Rending. Rending triggered on a hit roll of 6 and caused that hit to automatically wound and bypass armor saves. Terrain and LOS were abstracted making it easier for them to avoid fire. Genestealers started at 16 points each. They could take flesh hooks for 1 point per model. Those counted as frag grenades and allowed them to assault through cover and attack at Initiative 10 which was convenient because defenders in cover also attacked at I10 except for Powerfists and Thunder Hammers. Stealers could also improve their save to 4+ for 3 ppm and get the Scout special rule for 3 ppm as well.
Then came 5th edition which hammered the Genestealers on multiple fronts. TLOS and terrain changes made it harder for them to avoid getting shot on the way in even as it improved their cover save. Rending changed to triggering on the to-wound roll. This dropped their lethality by 38% in the marine scenario. Instead of 10 Stealers averaging a little under 7 dead marines on the charge, they would only average a little over 4. The final blow came with the actual release of the 5th edition codex. Genestealer broods could no longer take flesh hooks and could no longer charge into terrain effectively. In 4th assaulting through or into cover gave the bonus to the defender, but did not alter the Initiative value of the assaulting unit. In 5th this was reversed to a penalty on the attacking unit making them I1. So they faded away from use. Except the special Ymgarl variant which stuck around because of a special hidden deployment rule and a rule that gave them +1 S, +1A, or +1T at the start of each assault phase.
There were only three entries in the 5th edition Nid codex that could charge units in cover and still attack at initiative: Carnifexes with spine banks and adrenal glands, Lictors and Deathleaper. None of them were especially popular. Carnifexes were wildly overpriced at 160 base. With the spines and glands they came in at 175. A Trygon with two additional wounds was only 25 points more. Lictors suffered from being in the overcrowded Elites slot where they had to compete for table time with Hive Guard, Zoanthropes and the Doom of Malantai.
Anyway, lots of words to say that it was always more than just Initiative at play in these interactions and subtle rules changes could have big impacts on how units performed.
Well for starters, we could hope that equipment strats are eliminated from the game. That would be a huge improvement right there.
I think they'll keep them linked to detachments, and continue to limit them to six per detachment.
They COULD go back to having one big list and just let people build their own set instead of forcing us to just choose from a mere handful of prebuild for the sake of OUR DUDES, but I doubt they will.
Arschbombe wrote: RE: The discussion on Initiative values in older editions and the Genestealers vs Marines examples.
Genestealers had more than initiative to protect them in combat. The also had Weapon Skill to make them harder to hit. Since their WS was higher than the marines, they would hit the marines on 3+ and only get hit in return on 4s. Another thing that made them potent in 4th edition was Rending. Rending triggered on a hit roll of 6 and caused that hit to automatically wound and bypass armor saves. Terrain and LOS were abstracted making it easier for them to avoid fire. Genestealers started at 16 points each. They could take flesh hooks for 1 point per model. Those counted as frag grenades and allowed them to assault through cover and attack at Initiative 10 which was convenient because defenders in cover also attacked at I10 except for Powerfists and Thunder Hammers. Stealers could also improve their save to 4+ for 3 ppm and get the Scout special rule for 3 ppm as well.
Then came 5th edition which hammered the Genestealers on multiple fronts. TLOS and terrain changes made it harder for them to avoid getting shot on the way in even as it improved their cover save. Rending changed to triggering on the to-wound roll. This dropped their lethality by 38% in the marine scenario. Instead of 10 Stealers averaging a little under 7 dead marines on the charge, they would only average a little over 4. The final blow came with the actual release of the 5th edition codex. Genestealer broods could no longer take flesh hooks and could no longer charge into terrain effectively. In 4th assaulting through or into cover gave the bonus to the defender, but did not alter the Initiative value of the assaulting unit. In 5th this was reversed to a penalty on the attacking unit making them I1. So they faded away from use. Except the special Ymgarl variant which stuck around because of a special hidden deployment rule and a rule that gave them +1 S, +1A, or +1T at the start of each assault phase.
There were only three entries in the 5th edition Nid codex that could charge units in cover and still attack at initiative: Carnifexes with spine banks and adrenal glands, Lictors and Deathleaper. None of them were especially popular. Carnifexes were wildly overpriced at 160 base. With the spines and glands they came in at 175. A Trygon with two additional wounds was only 25 points more. Lictors suffered from being in the overcrowded Elites slot where they had to compete for table time with Hive Guard, Zoanthropes and the Doom of Malantai.
Anyway, lots of words to say that it was always more than just Initiative at play in these interactions and subtle rules changes could have big impacts on how units performed.
While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.
If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.
Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.
I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)
I think shortening the game to 5 turns, and at competitive events dropping each game down to 1.5 hours, has been a serious negative overall. I mean...aren't we supposed to be playing a game and actually having some form of fun here?
Right now, it's boiled down to "you get 9 minutes to move everything, make all your decisions, pick up triple-handfuls of dices and try to delete your opponent's units. Make sure after you roll to hit and wound you put them back on their clock for making their saves. Then they'll do the same to you."
Yes, I realize that's not what happens in your buddy's garage over beers, but the "delete unit/trade the next turn" concept is still in full force. Every bit of subtlety has been stripped out of this edition.
As for alternating activations, while I'm a diehard Epic: Armageddon fan, it's not without it's issues as well. If I wanted to win a game of 40k playing with alternating activations, I'd do my best to bring 2x my opponent's number of units, so that when they run out of activations during the turn, I'm only half done (and have only used my chaff units so far), and now I'm just going to have my way with them with the best I brought. It would require a complete re-write/re-structuring of the game.
If there is a discussion about trying to fix stratagems, and you go in there screeching about how the whole system is terrible and that it should be thrown out, that's a non-contribution - no matter how popular this kind of behavior was among a certain group of people here at dakka.
Your opinion is not invalid. I can see why people feel a disconnect in immersion when only one unit can throw grenades per turn, that a landraider needs specific order from a commander to bust through a wall and that team bravo cannot duck into cover because team alpha already did. Maybe it's because 5th the first edition I was really invested in, but I never had the feeling that WH40k was game that was particularly close to simulating anything - therefore I also don't mind such a disconnect personally.
The stratagem framework doesn't come without advantages though. Limiting such actions to once per phase/turn and making them cost a resource allows these effects to be much more powerful. Throwing grenades and tank shock are things that really can have an impact and turn the tide in a battle. There is a limit to how powerful you can make grenades when an army like space marines or orks can have 10 units throwing them, and tripple and quadruple wave serpent tank shocks at the current power level wouldn't be healthy for the game at all. Defensive stratagems allow you to actually do something during your opponent's turn and throw a wrench in their plans. Mean while they try to bait you into using it on a different unit, split fire to make that stratagem less effective or just force their way through it, or they could try to drain your CP pool by giving you chance to spend them. There also is the question whether it makes sense to keep a unit a live or use the CP to retaliate with a different unit next turn. That's a whole layer of tactical decisions added to the game, which is good in general as it gives players more options. If you could just throw 'ard as nails, dodge or disgustingly resilient onto every unit which your opponent wants to kill, it's just a game of "who has the most CP". That's what why stratagems failed so spectacularly in 8th.
In my opinion stratagems, now implemented properly, add a lot to the game, despite not being represented properly in the narrative. I see that people in my playing group who struggle with complex rules have no issues with the current amount of stratagems or detachment rules. The main reason why I see people getting gotcha'ed these days are because they didn't pay attention or an opponent intentionally tried to obscure what his stratagems can do. So my two main points of criticism is gone as well. It's also my opinion that a game should first and foremost be fun to play, and a simulation of realistic(whatever that means) events second. It's perfectly valid to not share this opinion. You just need to be aware that fun sells stuff, pseudo-realism doesn't
Overall I'm with Jidmah on stratagems and 10th is the best Implementation of the concept so far. However, I find widespread equipment like grenades should have stayed as just that, equipment. Tank shock as something tanks could do in general would also be something I'd prefer.
Stratagems in 8th started as something to reign in the insane Formation Boni that crashed 7th edition. And then GW crashed 8th and 9th with Stratagems again However, I'd like strats as something truly outlandish that's not a usual tactic and they also shouldn't just be kill more things. Faction specific strats are usually okay for flavor and personally I'd even reduce strats to reactions. I like rapid ingress, overwatch and the CC one. These are strats that provoke tactical desicions and make your opponent ask you how many CP you have left. Kill stuff without a way to mitigate should be reduced or be extremely pricey, even the "hit back when already dead" stuff.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Overall I'm with Jidmah on stratagems and 10th is the best Implementation of the concept so far. However, I find widespread equipment like grenades should have stayed as just that, equipment. Tank shock as something tanks could do in general would also be something I'd prefer.
Stratagems in 8th started as something to reign in the insane Formation Boni that crashed 7th edition. And then GW crashed 8th and 9th with Stratagems again However, I'd like strats as something truly outlandish that's not a usual tactic and they also shouldn't just be kill more things. Faction specific strats are usually okay for flavor and personally I'd even reduce strats to reactions. I like rapid ingress, overwatch and the CC one. These are strats that provoke tactical desicions and make your opponent ask you how many CP you have left. Kill stuff without a way to mitigate should be reduced or be extremely pricey, even the "hit back when already dead" stuff.
Yeah. I'm kind of torn because I do think strats are handled much better now than they were in 8th and 9th, and I was excited for the concept of them when they were first introduced. But so many of them are either boring kill-more strats whose only downside is paying the CP, or effects that seem like they should just always be available to the army. It makes a lot of strats feel like I've clicked a button to use one of my video game abilities, and now it's on cooldown for the rest of the turn.
Like I said earlier, I think my preference would be to swap them for expanded detachment rules. But failing that, maybe they should just behave like doctrines? So instead of my autarch going,
"Okay Bob. Take evasive maneuvers. And I can't be bothered to tell the rest of you to do the same," we get,
"Okay everyone on a bike, take evasive maneuvers. Good job. Now next turn we're going to go on the offensive. Make sure you've set up enfillading fire against your target."
And then your autarch/captain type models who normally get CP discounts instead let you point at a unit and give them a different or extra doctrine for the turn.
In general, I just want strats to feel less like putting a video game ability on cooldown and more like a maneuver being pulled off by my forces. Instead of my guns suddenly hurting more because I paid a CP, I want rules that reward me for setting up a crossfire or that let me hit harder when I sneak up on the enemy. Instead of pointing at a single unit and telling it it's allowed to dodge, I want the army-wide ability to Jink.
Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.
All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.
Your opponent won't know what they are until used.
It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.
All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.
Your opponent won't know what they are until used.
It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.
Seems like that would run into problems. The basic concept seems to just encourage you to run into gotcha moments? And I feel like people will generally have a pretty good idea of what you took.
"I'm playing Thousand sons, so I can pretty safely ditch tank shock, heroic intervention, and counter charge. I shouldn't need go to ground either. I can safely ditch these two detachment strats that are super niche/I never us anyway. Cool. Now I get free overwatch with my flamer brick every turn, and my bolter shooting will always be strength 5, psychic, my choice of SH/LH/DW, and I can shoot through walls for free once per turn as needed. And I guess I'll ignore damage one per phase and grab Grenades just in case."
Wyldhunt wrote: It makes a lot of strats feel like I've clicked a button to use one of my video game abilities, and now it's on cooldown for the rest of the turn.
In general, I just want strats to feel less like putting a video game ability on cooldown and more like a maneuver being pulled off by my forces. Instead of my guns suddenly hurting more because I paid a CP, I want rules that reward me for setting up a crossfire or that let me hit harder when I sneak up on the enemy. Instead of pointing at a single unit and telling it it's allowed to dodge, I want the army-wide ability to Jink.
Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. Like one of those abilities from Call of Duty or League of Legends, where if you have enough of a resource you can pull off this move on your opponents and screw them over.
I would just drop CP, remove all of the silly equipment or unit ability strats, limit stratagems to only one activation in general and actually make them feel like a stratagem.
Like, when you activate this stratagem your army gets a bonus to movement and attack rolls to represent them going over the top, or conversely your army gets a defensive bonus for a turn to represent defensive strategies at play. But you only get one, because usually such gambits take a lot of planning to pull off and it's not something armies can do all the time.
And when I mean one I mean one. Not one stratagem per turn, not one use of each stratagem, I mean one.
A unit throwing a grenade is not a stratagem, it's just a tactical move that soldiers are trained to do. Using grenades in breaching tactics that are supported by long range precision shooting though? That's a stratagem.
Likewise, a soldier shooting at enemies that cross his line of sight isn't a stratagem either. That's just...basic military training.
Using artillery to flush enemies out of cover so they can be gunned down in a killzone though? That's a stratagem.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.
All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.
Your opponent won't know what they are until used.
It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.
Seems like that would run into problems. The basic concept seems to just encourage you to run into gotcha moments? And I feel like people will generally have a pretty good idea of what you took.
"I'm playing Thousand sons, so I can pretty safely ditch tank shock, heroic intervention, and counter charge. I shouldn't need go to ground either. I can safely ditch these two detachment strats that are super niche/I never us anyway. Cool. Now I get free overwatch with my flamer brick every turn, and my bolter shooting will always be strength 5, psychic, my choice of SH/LH/DW, and I can shoot through walls for free once per turn as needed. And I guess I'll ignore damage one per phase and grab Grenades just in case."
OK, so you take 5 turns of overwatch, that leaves you with one stratagem remaining. You have 6 stratagems total throughout the entire game.
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. Like one of those abilities from Call of Duty or League of Legends, where if you have enough of a resource you can pull off this move on your opponents and screw them over.
I would just drop CP, remove all of the silly equipment or unit ability strats, limit stratagems to only one activation in general and actually make them feel like a stratagem.
Like, when you activate this stratagem your army gets a bonus to movement and attack rolls to represent them going over the top, or conversely your army gets a defensive bonus for a turn to represent defensive strategies at play. But you only get one, because usually such gambits take a lot of planning to pull off and it's not something armies can do all the time.
And when I mean one I mean one. Not one stratagem per turn, not one use of stratagem each, I mean one.
A unit throwing a grenade is not a stratagem, it's just a tactical move that soldiers are trained to do. Coordinating grenades with breaching tactics and supported by long range precision shooting though? That's a stratagem.
Likewise, a soldier shooting at enemies that cross his line of sight isn't a stratagem either. That's just...basic military training.
Using artillery to flush enemies out of cover so they can be gunned down in a killzone though? That's a stratagem.
Yeah. This. Like, when stratagems were first announced, I thought we were going to see things like "put a bunch of your army in outflank because they arrived from a webway portal off camera," or, "choose a quadrant of the table to bombard rad weapons pregame. Standing in that quadrant makes your Toughness worse," or, "Scout all your drukhari raiders pregame, and give them a 4+ cover save because this is a high-speed night raid."
So something like doctrines and/or a pregame rule of some sort would probably fit that vibe better than the commander yelling, "Use your guns better for a few seconds, vespid unit C!"
Lathe Biosas wrote:
OK, so you take 5 turns of overwatch, that leaves you with one stratagem remaining. You have 6 stratagems total throughout the entire game.
Oh. I like that even less but for very different reasons. You only get to do a cool thing 6 times per game? You only get to do a flavorful detachment-related thing less than 6 times per game if you want someone in your army to throw a grenade or tank shock a target or overwatch with their flamers? And you kind of just remove all the more situational stratagems from the game because no one should ever take a niche option at the expense of a more powerful/generally useful/improtant option. And the artificial nature of only being able to do all these things a limited number of times and having to choose which ones you'll use in advance kind of doubles down on the "gamey" feeling of them.
Not trying to be harsh. If you and your group are enjoying this, then that's awesome. But holy cow that sounds like the worst of all worlds to me.
Maybe its bias from playing too many computer games (and idk, Warmachine), but this idea that you activate abilities that are then limited by cooldowns or resources never felt unreasonable to me.
As Jidmah says, it allows you to have powerful abilities while constraining them from being army wide and all the time.
Tbh I really like the detachment system. There are some negatives - the recent EC codex for example feels a bit 8th edition Harlequins where you are trying for 6 detachments in a faction that only has about 6 units. But for the most part it works well in combining flavour, fluff and power.
Jidmah wrote: The stratagem framework doesn't come without advantages though. Limiting such actions to once per phase/turn and making them cost a resource allows these effects to be much more powerful. Throwing grenades and tank shock are things that really can have an impact and turn the tide in a battle. There is a limit to how powerful you can make grenades when an army like space marines or orks can have 10 units throwing them, and tripple and quadruple wave serpent tank shocks at the current power level wouldn't be healthy for the game at all.
Defensive stratagems allow you to actually do something during your opponent's turn and throw a wrench in their plans. Mean while they try to bait you into using it on a different unit, split fire to make that stratagem less effective or just force their way through it, or they could try to drain your CP pool by giving you chance to spend them. There also is the question whether it makes sense to keep a unit a live or use the CP to retaliate with a different unit next turn. That's a whole layer of tactical decisions added to the game, which is good in general as it gives players more options.
If you could just throw 'ard as nails, dodge or disgustingly resilient onto every unit which your opponent wants to kill, it's just a game of "who has the most CP". That's what why stratagems failed so spectacularly in 8th.
In general, I like the use of resource systems to promote interesting decision-making and am not against stratagems in principle. It reminds me a fair bit of the Focus system in Warmachine.
What I don't like about stratagems, even in this best-yet implementation, is how they sideline capabilities that I feel ought to be core systems. Crossfire, tank shock, suppression, overwatch, opportunity fire, etc are all things that I would like to see baked into the game, not special abilities that only certain armies get sometimes. Yeah, maybe it's harder to balance those capabilities when everyone has them- but it's also easier to balance in general when you don't have to account for situational power buffs or try to put a resource cost on an ability that could potentially be applied to any unit in your army, so I'd call that a wash.
Essentially, stratagems are being used to graft some tactical depth onto otherwise bland and shallow core rules. You indirectly point this out in talking about defensive stratagems- if they're the only thing keeping you from going to make a sandwich while your opponent takes their turn, that says more about the lack of interaction in 80s-era IGOUGO than it does about the value of stratagems as a mechanic.
I don't think even GW has a good idea of what stratagems are. We all have a very good idea of what they do, which is enable resource-locked and once-per-turn abilities, but they represent everything from logistical decisions to command directives to innate capabilities to special equipment to spur-of-the-moment reactions, and that lack of coherent identity both contributes to the abstract video game feel and makes it all the more apparent when a unit's capabilities have been excised and locked behind a stratagem. I think a lot of people would be happier if the designers took cues from AOS and how command abilities are handled there; tying the abilities to leaders both reinforces the implicit narrative and helps to scope which things ought to be strats and which ought to be wargear or core rules.
We are trying new things out... some work better than others.
You should see some of the horrible house missions we play.
1. Eyes of the Storm
Your forces were caught in a Warp Storm, and are desperately trying to locate a stable break in the storm to signal your ship in orbit.
Deploy 6 objectives on the map, alternate between players. Each objective is numbered 1 through six.
At the start of turn 2, and each subsequent turn, the player who is first rolls a d6. Only the objective rolled counts as a viable objective this turn.
(ie Player 2 rolls a "3." Only objective 3 counts for VP, until a new number is rolled)
2. Undercover Operations
Both sides are fighting a shadow war that their commands are unaware of. Your enemy knows which of your forces have been infiltrated and are looking to destroy them.
Before Deployment, select one BATTLELINE unit from your enemy's army list and make a note of it in secret.
If that unit has been destroyed by the end of the game, you gain 25 VP.
While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.
If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.
On the other hand, the current system is all about movement and placing well your charging units. Genestealers more often than not still hit first because they have a high movement value and access to run and charge rules, which gives them a larger threat range.
If they fail to do is either because they are going against an even faster movement unit, a "Fight First" unit (which historically had even better initiative than Genestealers) or you basically got outplayed.
The tools, decisions and counterplay are still there, even if they are different.
If there is a discussion about trying to fix stratagems, and you go in there screeching about how the whole system is terrible and that it should be thrown out, that's a non-contribution - no matter how popular this kind of behavior was among a certain group of people here at dakka.
If someone has a malignant tumour, and a doctor suggests removing it, would you screech and whine at them for not properly contributing to your highly special and productive discussion about what colour to paint the tumour?
I am under absolutely no obligation to like stratagems as a concept. And the idea that suggesting removing them is in some way verboten to a discussion on their future is beyond absurd. The game worked just fine without them for 7 entire editions, yet suddenly we're supposed to pretend that the game can't possibly survive without them? It's like claiming that a statue can't survive without the pile of bird-droppings splattered on it.
Moreover, Stratagems are not merely superfluous , they are an active detriment to the game. They absorb what might otherwise be interesting rules and wargear and lock them behind a limited resource and often a specific subfaction. Further, they take up valuable design space in an edition where GW is determined to limit faction and subfaction resources. So that this godawful mechanic takes up literally half the available space for every single subfaction.
We're not talking about a core mechanic that the entire game has been built around from the offset. We're talking about a relatively new mechanic that's been badly bolted on to the main game to try and hide how shallow the core rules are. And while I do appreciate the desire to fix things, sometimes the best fix is to remove the bad mechanic and start again. This wasn't me screeching in anger. This was merely me giving an honest assessment of a mechanic that's so botched in both concept and execution that I don't consider it to be salvageable, nor worth the effort of trying to save.
But no, instead I'm supposed to look at this and say "Why yes, what a splendid leap forward this obnoxious and extraneous mechanic has been. How great it is that a unit's wargear and even physiology exists in a constant state of quantum flux and may exist or not exist at any given moment. How splendid that we don't need to go through the arduous process of setting up cross-fire on a unit when you can just yell 'CROSSFIRE!' and slap down your Yugioh card, irrespective of the actual position of your units relative to their target. Why, with just a few more small tweaks, we could turn Stratagems into a still-extraneous but marginally-less-obnoxious mechanic. This is definitely far better than just not having this bad mechanic."
While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.
If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.
On the other hand, the current system is all about movement and placing well your charging units. Genestealers more often than not still hit first because they have a high movement value and access to run and charge rules, which gives them a larger threat range.
If they fail to do is either because they are going against an even faster movement unit, a "Fight First" unit (which historically had even better initiative than Genestealers) or you basically got outplayed.
The tools, decisions and counterplay are still there, even if they are different.
As a mainly eldar player, I've never liked the, "You got an extra inch of movement, so it balances out," argument. The issue isn't with scenarios where my units get the charge off. (Although the interrupt strat weirdly punishes people for wanting to charge with more than one squishy unit in a single turn.) The issue is when one of my oppononet's units subsequently charges in and proceeds to wipe the floor with my squishy melee unit and takes no damage in return.
In the past, charging into a unit of harlequins or incubi or a squad of daemonettes generally meant you were going to feel it afterwards. You might still win the combat. Getting the charge off meant that your (surviving) models would hit that much harder. But the story being told was that getting within sword's reach of the stabby unit usually meant that you had some scratches to show for it afterwards. And on the flip side, even melee specialists weren't usually completely wiping out tanky melee specialists like meganobz or terminators or hordes of melee models like hormagaunts or bloodletters. So the end result was that, when you get into melee with a melee unit, you came away bloody.
Compare that to now where a squad of hormagaunts can charge some harlies and, and the harlies might not get a chance to swing a single attack before the mooks wipe them out. It feels wrong. It feels weird.
Being able to get the first charge off is mostly irrelevant to discussing that weirdness.
And without going too far on a tangent, slightly higher basic movement is absolutely not a replacement for the old speed/skill -as-defense mechancis we used to have. Like flatout cover saves on vehicles that normally didn't have saves, comapred WS, jink, etc. As I said earlier, old initiative was bad and shouldn't come back in the same form, but it feels like armies that depended on it to mitigate incoming damage never really received any sort of replacement. And as a result, our units feel more like suicide missiles being launched across the table as trade pieces. Whereas before it was more about trying to pace the momentum of your melee units so that they'd stay hidden in melee, or finding ways to tie up or debuff threats around them to keep them safe.
As a mainly eldar player, I've never liked the, "You got an extra inch of movement, so it balances out," argument. The issue isn't with scenarios where my units get the charge off. (Although the interrupt strat weirdly punishes people for wanting to charge with more than one squishy unit in a single turn.) The issue is when one of my oppononet's units subsequently charges in and proceeds to wipe the floor with my squishy melee unit and takes no damage in return.
In the past, charging into a unit of harlequins or incubi or a squad of daemonettes generally meant you were going to feel it afterwards. You might still win the combat. Getting the charge off meant that your (surviving) models would hit that much harder. But the story being told was that getting within sword's reach of the stabby unit usually meant that you had some scratches to show for it afterwards. And on the flip side, even melee specialists weren't usually completely wiping out tanky melee specialists like meganobz or terminators or hordes of melee models like hormagaunts or bloodletters. So the end result was that, when you get into melee with a melee unit, you came away bloody.
Compare that to now where a squad of hormagaunts can charge some harlies and, and the harlies might not get a chance to swing a single attack before the mooks wipe them out. It feels wrong. It feels weird.
Out of interest, do you think it would help if Eldar had a bonus consolidation move? So they could reduce the chance of being counter-charged after wiping out a unit.
Just trying to think of something that would work in the current paradigm.
I suppose you could give them Always Strikes First, but at that point we might as well just bring Initiative back.
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
My Nurgle Daemons could handle it, since they're more durable than killy and they take damage back already anyway.
But Khorne Daemons, for example? They'd have a much, much rougher time.
JNAProductions wrote: It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.
A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.
JNAProductions wrote: It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
But surely it works both ways?
The point is, at the moment, many melee units have lost the degree of protection high initiative used to afford them. So even if they win a combat, it's often a Pyrrhic victory because even a relatively weak enemy unit can counter-charge and wipe them out.
vipoid wrote:
Out of interest, do you think it would help if Eldar had a bonus consolidation move? So they could reduce the chance of being counter-charged after wiping out a unit.
Hmm. I mean, if it was like, a 6" consolidation in any direction, maybe? We already have the agile maneuver for when enemies fall back from us, and I haven't found that to be super useful because I need to have some terrain to hide behind (to protect my unit from shooting), and then I need to roll high enough to get there.
Something I've suggested in the past is to basically just give sufficiently "elite" melee units guaranteed fights on death. It's a far from perfect solution, but it basically guarantees your badass melee specialists do *some* damage whenever they end up in melee.
There's also probably a way to do a variation on the old initiative system where you shrink the gaps between base initiative stats and/or have more ways to modify initiative. So like, maybe orks are I1, humans I2, eldar I3, but charging grants +1d3I for that turn. So orks aren't stuck forever going last, and charging is rewarded, but my eldar are still typically going to be swinging either first or simultaneously.
Extra wonky solution that I don't like but would maybe work: break up a unit's offense into "sets" of attacks. So instead of a melee unit getting 4 attacks when it activates, maybe it gets 2 attacks but can activate twice. And only your first set of activations benefits from strikes first/charging. So the end result is that my hypothetical 2x2 Attacks unit charges, gets to swing its first batch of attacks to take the edge off the enemy, but then the enemy is going to get to do their first set of attacks back. And then my unit gets to do their second set of attacks, and if the enemy is still around, the survivors get to do their second set of attacks. It makes charging a lot less beneficial, but you could maybe play around with that by moving attacks from one set to the other. So maybe my unit specializes in alpha strike melee attacks, so they actually swing a set of 3 and a set of 1 instead of two sets of 2.
But as I said, I probably don't like that approach. It would slow things down a fair bit and seems like it has a good chance of disproportionately hurting squishy armies.
Insectum7 wrote:
JNAProductions wrote: It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.
A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.
You can definitely still feel the ghost of Sweeping Advance in the game. It used to be that melee was about "winning combat" by giving better than you got and letting the sweep mechanic be responsible for actually finishing up fights. When we lost that, we had to start transitioning towards just wiping out every last model through overwhelming force. Which I suspect might be why we don't have opposed weapon skill any more. Marines always hitting on 3s instead of sometimes hitting on 4s means that they finish up melee fights faster.
Tyran wrote: IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.
My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.
That would be a good solution, since it has more to do with the unit being out of effective command rather than the individual troops becoming weaker (which wouldn't make sense for over half of the armies).
JNAProductions wrote: It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
My Nurgle Daemons could handle it, since they're more durable than killy and they take damage back already anyway.
But Khorne Daemons, for example? They'd have a much, much rougher time.
I think this is the issue. It creates an artificial barrier.
I think if charging is hard, you should get a major benefit to successfully making a charge - i.e. fighting first.
There can be a class of units which have fights first - but they should be elite, and pay for it. YMMV on whether GW has got it right - but I feel it comes down to that pecking order again.
I think rules where there's whole factions that say Hormagaunts or Boyz get insta-deleted if they charge is just horrible gameplay. The obvious conclusion is to never take Hormagaunts or Boyz.
I'm afraid I think "+D3 initiative" is incredibly weak. So I might get to fight, or I might get deleted? Okay we are back to "never run these units". Or they have to be incredibly cheap, and they'll destroy in some games and be destroyed in others. Which I don't think is great.
You could create a system of intiative+ a flat bonus for charging, where the charging unit gets to go first except for certain special combos. But then I feel the stat would need to be set on game-play based reasons, rather than anything to do with simulating fluff.
9th and 10th are so much more melee friendly than 7th and 8th. Partly this is because of objectives. But it kind of makes me think you are chasing shadows. DE have many problems - the fact Incubi might die if they get charged isn't one of them.
PenitentJake wrote: Many fast Aeldari units have been given invulnerable saves that only apply in melee to represent speed-as-defense.
Sometimes it's a split invul- like 6+ vs guns/ 4+ vs melee.
Ain't saying it's an adequate replacement, just saying don't forget it's there.
I think we might be down to only two units having this actually: banshees and wyches. Minus wyches if you don't consider that they've had that rule since before initiative went away. Or plus avengers if you count the shimmershield (which I think also existed in more or less its current form back when initiative was a thing.) Shining spears lost their 4++ but might have gained it as a shimmer shield exarch option?
Not a lot of places is what I'm getting at. The 5++ they gave aspect warriors in general seems like it was maybe meant to be our "speed as defense" mechanic. It's reasonably impactful, but I'd trade it away fast for something that works against all/most attacks instead.
I think rules where there's whole factions that say Hormagaunts or Boyz get insta-deleted if they charge is just horrible gameplay. The obvious conclusion is to never take Hormagaunts or Boyz.
I'm afraid I think "+D3 initiative" is incredibly weak. So I might get to fight, or I might get deleted? Okay we are back to "never run these units". Or they have to be incredibly cheap, and they'll destroy in some games and be destroyed in others. Which I don't think is great.
Well, in the example I threw together, it would be a 2/3rds chance to strike simultaneously with or before baseline eldar, and be even more potent against slower targets. But also, this is where the game's hyperlethality comes into play. Back in the day, it was fairly common to not wipe out enemies with your attacks; you had to hope you swept the enemy, and generally you were more focused on trading well than wiping the enemy out.
Getting rid of sweep is understandable, but it means units need to be able to finish eachother off in melee at a reasonable rate. And some units are tougher than others. So we've ended up in this place where something like a squad of incubi or harlequins is pretty likely to just get wiped out without doing any damage back in melee. And again, that lack of retaliation is what makes it feel weird.
9th and 10th are so much more melee friendly than 7th and 8th. Partly this is because of objectives. But it kind of makes me think you are chasing shadows. DE have many problems - the fact Incubi might die if they get charged isn't one of them.
We agree. Incubi dying in melee isn't a problem, and no one ever said it was.
To reiterate the stance I'm taking:
* It feels weird when melee specialists (be they incubi or meganobz) die in melee without doing any damage in retaliation.
* Armies like eldar feel this more keenly because initiative was more important to our ability to do return damage than it was for other factions. Those meganobz are beefy enough that they have a pretty good chance of having survivors who will then proceed to punch something back. Similarly, horde units might survive reasonably well in some matchups thanks to raw numbers. But squishier elite units like wyches or incubi or harlies don't have a bunch of extra bodies and are T3 W1. They have a good chance of dying when the enemy swings first. Their "defense stats" were WS and Initiative back in the day. One of those went away, and the other is no longer a defense stat, but eldar largely didn't get any kind of defensive rule to replace it.
Imagine if 11th edition decided to switch us over to AoS's flat wounding system. Setting aside all the other balance issues that would create, you'd have units like Nobz who just lost one of their main sources of durability. Now imagine if 11th didn't give them something to replace that removed Toughness stat. It would feel a bit off, right?
vipoid wrote:We're not talking about a core mechanic that the entire game has been built around from the offset. We're talking about a relatively new mechanic that's been badly bolted on to the main game to try and hide how shallow the core rules are. And while I do appreciate the desire to fix things, sometimes the best fix is to remove the bad mechanic and start again. This wasn't me screeching in anger. This was merely me giving an honest assessment of a mechanic that's so botched in both concept and execution that I don't consider it to be salvageable, nor worth the effort of trying to save.
But no, instead I'm supposed to look at this and say "Why yes, what a splendid leap forward this obnoxious and extraneous mechanic has been. How great it is that a unit's wargear and even physiology exists in a constant state of quantum flux and may exist or not exist at any given moment. How splendid that we don't need to go through the arduous process of setting up cross-fire on a unit when you can just yell 'CROSSFIRE!' and slap down your Yugioh card, irrespective of the actual position of your units relative to their target. Why, with just a few more small tweaks, we could turn Stratagems into a still-extraneous but marginally-less-obnoxious mechanic. This is definitely far better than just not having this bad mechanic."
To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.
In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.
JNAProductions wrote:Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault. If pinning a unit with fire caused it to strike last and be incapable of overwatch, then getting into melee without getting shot up on the way in could become more viable.
(Admittedly, that's not a direct response to the concern of melee specialists getting charged and wiped out before they can strike- something which I'm not convinced is a huge problem, given that it inherently rewards positioning and maneuver- but it would add another tool to the toolbox for both softening up units prior to assault and incapacitating threatening assault units)
That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.
Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.
To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules.
Technically, Overwatch is still a core mechanic: yes it's a strat, but it's BRB from and appears in the free digital rules, so everyone can use it- as are some of the others (Heroic intervention, Insane Bravery, etc.). Now we can debate whether or not you want it to continue to be a strat, but it IS a core mechanic.
So to take overwatch as an example, do you want EVERY unit to be able to use overwatch every turn? I'm personally fine with that- needing 6 to hit prevents it from being OP if it does become something that everyone can just do... But some abilities make units better at Overwatching... And that might take it to an OP place if you make it a thing that every unit can do every turn. One of the things fans of 10th have said is that it's somewhat friendlier to melee than some other editions... And I don't know, maybe overwatch being a strat is part of that.
Before I move on, some other cool interactions that can happen when overwatch is a strat: not only can you buff the to-hit, you can lower the CP cost, or your enemy can raise that CP cost, representing the enemy commander anticipate overwatch and taking action to disrupt that tactic. My personal favourite is the Bespoke strats that AREN'T Overwatch, but let you take an overwatch shot (often with a better to-hit) IF a fluff trigger occurs- the example of the top of my head is the Sisters one- I think it's from the Martyr detachment, and it lets a unit the unit do Overwatch shots that hit 4+, but only in response to the Martyrdom of fellow sisters (I think the unit itself can shoot back if the offending attack killed anyone in the unit, but it might also be that a unit can do this to avenge a unit that was wiped out). The best part is that using the Triggered Overwatch allows another unit to use the regular Overwatch strat. So the units avenging the Martyrs have such righteous fury that they hit on 4+ while another unit that's just reacting to enemy movement is snap firing and hoping for 6's (except for the specials, which will burn MD to autohit, relying on the Emperor rather than mere hope).
That ecosystem of rules interactions DOES tell a story, right? ANd I find that tended to happen less with "Everyone just gets to overwatch every turn."
But again, I myself am ambivalent- Ive played both ways and enjoyed them both, so it's more just a discussion question.
I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.
Some strats already do this- you actually have to target a nearby leader in order for the unit to be able to use the strat, representing the leader's role in commanding the unit that is receiving the bonus. And sometimes it's not a leader unit: I was reading the EC Daemon detachment today, and there's one strat in there that makes Daemons better at melee when they're near EC and another that makes EC better at melee when they're near daemons. And it's cool, because if you send one unit of each, both units can use their respective strat if you have the CP and feel like burning it- or you have to shoose which gets to use their strat... And again, that feels like a story to me, whereas if you make that a unit rule or a detachment rule, it feels less narrative, because both units are ALWAYS going to use it, even in situations where it isn't important just because they can.
In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new.
As I hope I've at least somewhat succeeded in pointing out, many strats already DO add something new, whether it's the action that the strat facilitates itself or other rules that influence the ecosystem in which the strat is used in order to add narrative differentiation between uses of the same strat. It just isn't as simple as "All current strats are flavourless and dull, so make them core rules and then use strats to do something cooler." It's very nuanced, and again, that's not to say that improvements can't be made.
I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities.
Agreed- and I am whole-heartedly onboard with the 100% removal of Equipment strats, and there probably are others that could go too, but....
But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.
a lot of strats... probably at least half ALREADY do this.
Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault.
What, like forcing a Battleshock test against the unit you want to charge so they can't use a strat to overwatch you or use the strat theat lets you run when someone charges you? (Many factions have a detachment that includes one of these, though being strats, they all have different names)
Cuz that's also kinda how it already works. And of course, the thing that provokes the Battleshock test might be regular attrition, a unit rule, or a strat, and the Battleshock test might also be modified by a unit rule or a strat... Which again is a narrative thing.
If pinning a unit with fire caused it to strike last and be incapable of overwatch, then getting into melee without getting shot up on the way in could become more viable.
Or battle shock' em to deny overwatch as described above and use your strat to make them strike last? Now again, not everyone has one of those, but a lot of factions do.
Anyway, I'm not 100% white-knighting here- I'm ambivalent on most of your suggestions, and again 100% endorse all equipment strats dying a humiliating and permanent death... But I think that the current system may already have more of the things you want than you think it does.
JNAProductions wrote: That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.
Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.
Nurgle Demons have guns/shooting. Not alot, but they're there.
They also have access to Chaos Knights....
JNAProductions wrote: That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.
Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.
Nurgle Demons have guns/shooting. Not alot, but they're there.
They also have access to Chaos Knights....
Splashing in another faction is not the answer to a faction missing something.
As for shooting, Nurgle Daemons have...
GUO has one gun always, at 12" range. Can take a second with 6" range.
Rotigus has the 12" gun.
Scrivener has a 6" sneeze.
The FWGUO has the Torrent vomit, but at 6".
Plague Drones have d3+Blast 12" range guns.
Plague Toads and Pox Riders have 9" Tongues.
If you include generic Daemon units...
Be'Lakor has an 18" Witchfire.
Daemon Princes (both types) have a Heavy Bolter that trades SH1 for 2+ BS.
Soul Grinder has a 36" Battle Cannon and a 36" Phlegm Mortar.
So yes. They technically have shooting. A full 2,000 point list might have the equivalent of a few Heavy Bolters and maybe a Battle Cannon for anything past 12".
Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.
I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)
I think shortening the game to 5 turns, and at competitive events dropping each game down to 1.5 hours, has been a serious negative overall. I mean...aren't we supposed to be playing a game and actually having some form of fun here?
Right now, it's boiled down to "you get 9 minutes to move everything, make all your decisions, pick up triple-handfuls of dices and try to delete your opponent's units. Make sure after you roll to hit and wound you put them back on their clock for making their saves. Then they'll do the same to you."
Yes, I realize that's not what happens in your buddy's garage over beers, but the "delete unit/trade the next turn" concept is still in full force. Every bit of subtlety has been stripped out of this edition.
As for alternating activations, while I'm a diehard Epic: Armageddon fan, it's not without it's issues as well. If I wanted to win a game of 40k playing with alternating activations, I'd do my best to bring 2x my opponent's number of units, so that when they run out of activations during the turn, I'm only half done (and have only used my chaff units so far), and now I'm just going to have my way with them with the best I brought. It would require a complete re-write/re-structuring of the game.
I don't know what world you're in where comp games are taking 1.5 hours.
To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.
In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.
The thing is, aside from the loss of wargear and such, one of the things I dislike about Stratagems is that they just don't feel connected to the rest of the game.
It seems like a mechanic that should be naturally tied to HQs/leaders, but instead it operates in a parallel dimension. e.g. one might think that damaging the leadership structure - e.g. killing HQs (or Synapse units in the case of Tyranids), or otherwise isolating units from their leaders might have some impact on the ability of said leaders to effectively command troops. Instead, it makes no difference whatsoever - your entire command roster can be turned into paste, yet you can just carry on issuing stratagems to units like nothing happened.
I think AoS had the right idea by tying command abilities to actual heroes, rather than this weird card game 40k has going.
Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.
I don't know what world you're in where comp games are taking 1.5 hours.
When I was getting the itch to paint again, and started looking into the competitive scene around me (in the US), I saw some tournament rules packets listing out times per round, and the actual game (5 turns) was only allotted 90 minutes. Some of them even have chess clocks on the high-ranking tables for the last couple rounds. To me, who hasn't been to a tournament in a while, that's crazy. Was 2 hours really that much of an ordeal for the short-attention-span children of today? From most of the battle reports I see from such events, a lot of games don't get through 5 turns in that time. It certainly precludes bringing horde armies to an extent, when your clock only gives you an average of 9 minutes to think, move, roll dice, move again, roll more dice, etc. It feels like working at a crappy company that will penalize you for taking a bathroom break.
I see some other events where the limits are longer, but they cram everything into the time, including getting to a table, setting up, going over the oddities of lists and units with your opponent, etc. And then there are a few where the time limit is double what I described, up to 3 hours per round (again, to do everything). That's leisurely, and I'd probably enjoy that. But actually needing a chess clock to time rounds? Putting your opponent on their clock when it's time for them to, say, make armor saves or make a reactive move on your turn? Do people really do that?
The goal of a game should be to make it as fun to play as possible, not just as fast to play as possible. Maybe those events are rare, but when I was doing some searches earlier in the year to see if I was going to drag my Eldar out of storage and use some vacation days, it seemed like there were a lot of them. It's possible I'm mistaken about the commonality of what I'm complaining about, but the thought of needing a chess clock to play Warhammer is nausea-inducing. I mean, back in the day, Sportsmanship Scoring was very far from perfect, but it certainly limited the slow-play tactics some people would want to trot out when they started to lose.
I'd be thrilled to be completely wrong about this, because when I was looking those things up, it was a real turn-off.
ETA: ANNNNDDDD...wait for it...yep. I'm wrong. Going back over some of the events rules packets and discussions, it appears I misinterpreted them, and that EACH PLAYER gets 1.5 hours during the game. To be fair, they were written poorly.
Now I'm reading some horror stories on boards about slow-play opponents taking their 90 minutes just to get through 2 turns, taking forever to deploy, etc. Even one poor bastard who tabled his opponent (who also showed 00:00 on their clock) and STILL lost, because said opponent was able to score Primary from a stickied deployment zone objective AND Secondary for some reason.
Shouldn't running out of time pretty much be an instant loss? That would certainly prevent slow-play BS. Or, maybe not an instant loss, but -20 points for each unplayed turn you still have when your time runs out?
Yes, I just flip-flopped from complaining about not having enough time and being on a clock to complaining about slow-play BS opponents limiting your game and needing harsher penalties. Let it not be said I can't admit when I'm wrong and change my mind.
To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.
In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.
The thing is, aside from the loss of wargear and such, one of the things I dislike about Stratagems is that they just don't feel connected to the rest of the game.
It seems like a mechanic that should be naturally tied to HQs/leaders, but instead it operates in a parallel dimension. e.g. one might think that damaging the leadership structure - e.g. killing HQs (or Synapse units in the case of Tyranids), or otherwise isolating units from their leaders might have some impact on the ability of said leaders to effectively command troops. Instead, it makes no difference whatsoever - your entire command roster can be turned into paste, yet you can just carry on issuing stratagems to units like nothing happened.
I think AoS had the right idea by tying command abilities to actual heroes, rather than this weird card game 40k has going.
While it's not my *main* gripe about stratagems, I do feel this. If we were to go the route of replacing strats with something akin to doctrines, you could maybe do something like, "Only units with 9 inches of units with the Commander keyword may benefit from doctrines." So then it becomes more important to have some sort of character or vox unit or attached warlock in the general area of each major chunk of your army and creates counterplay by letting players essentially debuff their opponents by removing the leadership in an area of the table.
And then obviously you can play around with mechanics for where Command is coming from. Ex: synapse creatures, models with vox units, attached warlocks, a type of drone on certain tau units, some of the blander, less interesting transports, etc. Maybe marines get to be extra special coordinated boys by letting them count as being within command range so long as their sergeant is alive. So it's hard to keep marines from being coordinated, but now there's an incentive to not kill the sergeant first in squads like devastators. Just spitballing.
While I'm getting to the point of acknowledging it probably won't happen, I'd like to see better use of keywords when it comes to weapons - things like BOLT, LAS, SHURIKEN, etc.
There have been several examples of rules over the years that try and target this sort of subset, and end up having to list the affected weapons instead - always hilarious if looking at the BOLT weapons in the SM list, for example.
Personally, I'd add a specific column to the weapon table for these, but that's just me.
I think the question comes down to whether it's worth the extra ink/page realestate to add a "weapon keywords" column for the sake of the number of rules that interact with it.
Right now I think there are two(?) rules that work on "pulse" weapons for tau: pulse accelerator drones and the cadre fire blade. So while it's awkward to spell out what weapons are impacted in those two abilities, it might arguably be more awkward to have a column on every weapon list of every datasheet just for the sake of those two abilities. Obviously you could have *more* abilities take advantage of the new column to help justify it, but you'd have to reach that critical threshold, you know?
There's also probably a non-zero amount of concern over giving a weapon a keyword because it makes sense, but not actually wanting that weapon to benefit from certain buffs. So off the top of my head, maybe you bring back the old Raptors chapter tactic that lets units count their bolters as pseudo sniper rifles if they hold still. So maybe you do something like
If a unit with this rule does not move in your Movement phase, treat any bolt weapons as having the Precision rule until the end of the turn.
So you do that thinking you're giving people a cool new way to use boltguns, but then you realize that the heavy bolter as has the Bolt keyword (because of course it does), but now you're sniping characters with a sustained hits D2 S5 machinegun instead of a heavy bolter.
So not a bad idea, but I sort of get why GW's designers might prefer to stick to awkward-but-explicit wording.
Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault.
What, like forcing a Battleshock test against the unit you want to charge so they can't use a strat to overwatch you or use the strat theat lets you run when someone charges you? (Many factions have a detachment that includes one of these, though being strats, they all have different names)
Cuz that's also kinda how it already works. And of course, the thing that provokes the Battleshock test might be regular attrition, a unit rule, or a strat, and the Battleshock test might also be modified by a unit rule or a strat... Which again is a narrative thing.
I apologize if this looks like cherry-picking, because I don't think it's productive to turn this into a huge line-by-line re-quote, but I want to point out that Battleshock tests occur in the Command Phase. I can wipe out half of a unit in my shooting phase, but it isn't going to take that test until my opponent's turn. I won't be able to exploit a failed test until my next turn, so the idea of damaging a unit to force a morale test so it's vulnerable to an immediate charge does not exist in the current game structure.
And sure, Overwatch is a universal stratagem that everyone can use. Once per turn. For one unit. At the cost of a command point. It isn't a core part of the game, it's a minor add-on that is relevant for some units and completely worthless for others. All those other interactions that improve its efficacy or reduce its cost come down to listbuilding, and frankly I don't award a lot of points to mechanics whose depth comes down to 'pick the right units before the game starts' and has nothing to do with decisions made on the table.
I don't think all current strats are flavorless and dull. I just don't find them especially compelling as a substitute for the core mechanics they have displaced, particularly when the implementation seems so scattershot in its conceptual identity, so disconnected from board state, and so heavily tied to listbuilding rather than intelligent use of a limited resource in response to emergent gameplay. The comparisons to playing a secondary card game to influence the actual wargame feel apt.
vipoid wrote: Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.
I really just meant that the core concept of accruing points to spend on abilities to boost your troops isn't inherently a bad idea. What it lacks is a framing mechanism to intuitively explain why your units are performing better beyond 'the rules said so'. Where do the points come from? Who is spending them? What do these abilities represent? For instance, in Warmachine your warcasters accumulate Focus points that they spend to cast spells or boost the abilities of warjacks under their command. It's pretty clear that those points represent the magical influence of your leaders.
So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops
You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.
You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.
I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.
vipoid wrote: Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.
I really just meant that the core concept of accruing points to spend on abilities to boost your troops isn't inherently a bad idea. What it lacks is a framing mechanism to intuitively explain why your units are performing better beyond 'the rules said so'. Where do the points come from? Who is spending them? What do these abilities represent? For instance, in Warmachine your warcasters accumulate Focus points that they spend to cast spells or boost the abilities of warjacks under their command. It's pretty clear that those points represent the magical influence of your leaders.
So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops
You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.
You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.
I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.
Thanks for replying.
What you're proposing does sound like a more reasonable system, and one that would help with many of my current gripes regarding Stratagems.
I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.
I think tying stratagems to characters would help them feel more involved (as they're active abilities, not just auras), while also removing many of the issues caused by auras in 8th/9th.
vipoid wrote: I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.
I forgot to mention that it seems to me like there's a major missed opportunity for characters to provide character-specific stratagems. You could have Chaplains buff the troops around them, Captains buff themselves to do beatstick things, Librarians create aura effects, et cetera. That way not only would stratagems be tied to leaders, but also your choice of leaders would determine what abilities are at your disposal and provide roles for your characters beyond raw damage output.
Quixote wrote: I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.
You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.
Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.
Quixote wrote: I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.
You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.
Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.
I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,
"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."
Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
catbarf wrote:
So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops
You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.
You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.
I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.
Hm. Come to think of it, I feel like the Librarius(?) and Seer Council detachments are kind of interesting current examples of what this might look like. The librarian detachment basically just gives all your librarians a bunch of additional psychic powers to cast. So it *feels* like your psykers are the ones performing those effects, and it makes those psykers more useful/flexible/important in your army. This isn't some abstract notion of weird wargear or a commander yelling "shoot more betterer" to a squad; it's a specific guy telekinetically shoving stuff around or raising magical flames or whatever. (I haven't looked at the detachment recently and don't remember the actual specific psychic effects.)
The seer council detachment similarly requires you have targets be within range of psykers to pull things off, and the effects are fluffed as being tied to a psyker. The uppy downy strat isn't some abstract notion of a jump pack maneuver that can't be repeated for some reason. It's a space wizard putting up an illussion to hide you as you discretely reposition, or it's a psyker magically bolstering your attacks, or the psyker is straight up throwing magic lightning at you to hurt you.
catbarf wrote:
vipoid wrote: I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.
I forgot to mention that it seems to me like there's a major missed opportunity for characters to provide character-specific stratagems. You could have Chaplains buff the troops around them, Captains buff themselves to do beatstick things, Librarians create aura effects, et cetera. That way not only would stratagems be tied to leaders, but also your choice of leaders would determine what abilities are at your disposal and provide roles for your characters beyond raw damage output.
Fully agree here. I'd take it a step further and say that maybe detachments could unlock additional/alternate abilities for some characters. We sort of kind of have enhancements doing this right now, but it could be neat to make it a more widespread concept that isn't dependent on you spending points to upgrade a unit. Maybe my archon could lose one of her current abilities while in a Sky Splinter Assault detachment (the transport-focused detachment) and replace it with an ability that functions while she rides around in her favorite venom.
Quixote wrote: I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.
You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.
Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.
I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,
"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."
Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.
No, I'm talking about units like supressors, cethonian berserks or earthshakers which apply a shaken or suppressed debuff to units they attack. The mechanics are there, they are just seldomly used.
Attacks causing battleshock suck for so many reasons, but I went into detail on that somewhere at the beginning of the thread.
Quixote wrote: I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.
You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.
Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.
I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,
"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."
Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.
No, I'm talking about units like supressors, cethonian berserks or earthshakers which apply a shaken or suppressed debuff to units they attack. The mechanics are there, they are just seldomly used.
Attacks causing battleshock suck for so many reasons, but I went into detail on that somewhere at the beginning of the thread.
Gotcha. Quixote seemed to be using "pinning" to refer to weapons that cause battleshock tests, so I thought you were referring to the same thing.
Agreed that the weapons that impose movement penalties are neat. I feel like eldar can *almost* build a gimmicky list around. I could see a guard detachment that leans into that sort of thing in a similar way to how DG can reach out and AFFLICT you with plague marines.
It isn't even limited to affliction. Pretty much every shooting unit in the codex applies another debuff, like remove cover, reduce armor give re-rolls, spread spores for MW, etc...
Jidmah wrote: It isn't even limited to affliction. Pretty much every shooting unit in the codex applies another debuff, like remove cover, reduce armor give re-rolls, spread spores for MW, etc...
Can't wait to play them.
The ones I'm surprised never make it into any battle report lists are Barbgaunts. 55 points for 5 models with T4/4+ save/2 wounds and d6 24" S5 Blast/Heavy shots each. Infantry getting hit by them suffer -2" to Move, -2" to Advance rolls, AND -2" to Charge rolls. That's a pretty good Pinning effect.
It seems like these would just be a no-brainer option to take. Against any actual Infantry units they're throwing out 5D6+5 or +10 shots (plus potentially Sustained 1 in Invasion Fleet) that can hit on a 3+ if you sit still, S5, and apply a total of up to -6" to the enemy's move (if they can, for example, Advance and Charge). Even against armies that don't have much Infantry or are Monster/Vehicle heavy, you can still play them in Invasion Fleet and get Lethal Hits with 5D6 shots to make the opponent start rolling saves.
I watch/read a lot of battle reports, and they just never seem to make anyone's list. I picked up 10 of them, and I'm sure going to try them out.
JNAProductions wrote: It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.
Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.
A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.
I hope you enjoy it, IMO the best tactical ruleset GW ever produced. Never had a bad game. Even thought about trying to play it using 40k minis to replace stands at one point.
EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.
Making those mechanics one offs doesn't stop them adding bloat to the system and you could argue are even more complex than just making them core rules - you have to learn the activation conditions and play the resource management game for strategems in addition to knowing how tank shock works.
My question about strategems is, what do they do for the game that having them as either core special rules for certain units, or just basic mechanics ala tank shock wouldn't do? Because it seems to be game for game sake, adding a resource management mini game to give you combo moves. But you could still do this with them as core rules, so the only thing I can see they add is ... artificially enforced scarcity? Giving the perception of coolness and specialness?
Lathe Biosas wrote: I agree that the current rules set has a forced resource management game installed.
But if we are forced to have one, I'd prefer one that rewards tactical game play.
Have objectives grant CP. Your soldiers are rewarded by holding objectives or completing actions during the game.
Thoughts?
Very easy to make a death spiral.
I hold more objectives than you->I get more CP than you->I can better hold the objectives that are needed to get even more CP and win the game.
Which isn't inherently bad, but given how long a game of 40k can take, I'd be against that.
There has to be a more interactive fix than the "you gain one cp at the start of your turn."
Does there have to be? Or rather, is making CP farming more interactive an inherently good direction to take the game? Could design efforts get better bang for their buck by taking a different approach? I've preferred the suggestions I've seen (and made) in this thread over adding more CP farming. Replacing strats with character abilities or some sort of doctrine-esque mechanic, or simply with more extensive detachment rules designed to evoke a theme all seem preferable to me.
Maybe you gain a bonus for completing actions that can be completed in your deployment zone?
Maybe you can gain a second CP at the end of your turn on a d6 roll of 6+. Plus 1 to your roll for each action completed or objective controlled?
The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with. And also I'm not sure that having a squad of guardsmen or ranger or whatever hiding in my backfield all game doing... something... intuitively connects to the idea of my commanders giving orders. My autarch is right there on the battlefield. What are the rangers hiding in the ruin to his left doing that makes him better at giving orders?
I'd also add that tying CP to holding objectives means that beefy armies are going to run away with CP compared to my eldar who generally aren't great at standing in the death circles while they wait to have their W1 T3 profiles used for target practice.
Double-also, a steady amount of CP per round arguably does an okay job of representing a commander taking in information and issuing orders. The breakdown is more with what those orders (the strats) are and what they effect. Why is doing a barrel roll a thing my eldar have to wait for the autarch to tell them to do? And why is it impossible for two units to barrel roll in the same turn? That sort of thing.
Wyldhunt wrote: The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with.
That's true but not necessarily a problem. The rules are after all presumably going to favour some form of army structure over others.
For example a core rule of "If at the start of your command phase you have more Battleline Units holding objectives than your opponent you get +1 CP" sort of encourages taking Battleline units.
I guess that's bias against "here's my 6 C'Tan and some characters list". But I don't know if that's a bad thing.
It would provoke the usual hostility that certain factions don't like their Battleline units - and more detachments could do with making certain units Battleline.
But I wouldn't hate it. You could even have this while keeping a limit on only being able to take 3 copies of a given datasheet if you were worried it might break.
As I said at the start of the edition, aesthetically I really disliked what I called "AoS lists" that looked something like:
Big Monster
Tank
Tank
Tank
Buffbot 1
Scoring Character
Deep Strike Scoring Unit 1
Deepstrike Scoring unit 2
Brick
(Think Avatar, Fire Prisms, Farseer and Winged-Autarch, Wraithguard brick and some Hawks or something to score.)
Effectively there's no "meat". Its very hard to believe this force would ever exist as a real fighting formation. (And yes, 8 years or so ago people claimed until blue in their face their Knight+loyal 32+3 BA captains was fluffy, but lets be honest, it just wasn't.)
Its perfectly legitimate to say "its a game, it doesn't matter". But equally I can want the rules to make armies look more like how I imagine armies should look. And not "superfriends+tanks".
But clearly its subjective.
EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.
I kinda hinted around about this in a post to CB ealier in the thread. I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic- especially the two you mention here- Grenade and Tank Shock, but also Overwatch, Insane Bravery, and Heroic Intervention. They appear in the BRB, the free PDF, and all of the books that have included Core rules.
Just because you don't like the way the mechanic functions, that does not mean it isn't a part of the core rules.
Now, I DO know what you mean- you mean a rule that doesn't require a limited resource to use. But that definition does not match the term "Core rule"- which just means any rule from the core set (as opposed to a rule from a dex or other supplement).
My question about strategems is, what do they do for the game that having them as either core special rules for certain units, or just basic mechanics ala tank shock wouldn't do? Because it seems to be game for game sake, adding a resource management mini game to give you combo moves. But you could still do this with them as core rules, so the only thing I can see they add is ... artificially enforced scarcity? Giving the perception of coolness and specialness?
Strategems have limitations on their use. Some will say this good, others say it's bad, and still others will say it depends on the strat. And again, I'm ambivalent; I don't mind most strats- the equipment ones bug me, but I'm generally cool with the others. I think GW though there was a problem if every unit in your army got to overwatch against every unit in your opponent's army, so they limited it by making it a strat. And for all the time I've seen people whine about time wasting rolls to fish for sixes, I'm surprised anyone WANTS their entire army to overwatch every unit in their opponent's army. I think when we're talking about strats (which people seem to universally hate) they THINK they want that... But if they ever actually played it to see how it felt, they'd be grateful for the limitation... But then that's just one strat, and some of the others are different, and might make better common use rules (my substitute for core).
How many times per turn do you WANT your opponent to use Heroic Intervention or Insane Bravery?
And obviously, strats themselves in 10th exist more to make detachments matter. If you take away strats, how do detachments add flavour to the game? Detachments, I'm sure we can agree, are a good idea, as they facilitate multiple builds and themes for a single army... But they really couldn't exist without strats to provide most of the flavour they bring to the game.
And from a design perspective, I think rules designers just looked at the effects that Core strats create and said "Hey, we need to limit these rules so that people don't overuse them, and we've already got these things called strats that define our detachments and come with the built in limitation of a resource system, so instead of coming up with a secondary method to limit these common actions, why don't we just call them strats? That way all of the limitations on their use are already handled."
Wyldhunt wrote: The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with.
That's true but not necessarily a problem. The rules are after all presumably going to favour some form of army structure over others.
For example a core rule of "If at the start of your command phase you have more Battleline Units holding objectives than your opponent you get +1 CP" sort of encourages taking Battleline units.
I guess that's bias against "here's my 6 C'Tan and some characters list". But I don't know if that's a bad thing.
It would provoke the usual hostility that certain factions don't like their Battleline units - and more detachments could do with making certain units Battleline.
But I wouldn't hate it. You could even have this while keeping a limit on only being able to take 3 copies of a given datasheet if you were worried it might break.
As I said at the start of the edition, aesthetically I really disliked what I called "AoS lists" that looked something like:
Big Monster
Tank
Tank
Tank
Buffbot 1
Scoring Character
Deep Strike Scoring Unit 1
Deepstrike Scoring unit 2
Brick
(Think Avatar, Fire Prisms, Farseer and Winged-Autarch, Wraithguard brick and some Hawks or something to score.)
Effectively there's no "meat". Its very hard to believe this force would ever exist as a real fighting formation. (And yes, 8 years or so ago people claimed until blue in their face their Knight+loyal 32+3 BA captains was fluffy, but lets be honest, it just wasn't.)
Its perfectly legitimate to say "its a game, it doesn't matter". But equally I can want the rules to make armies look more like how I imagine armies should look. And not "superfriends+tanks".
But clearly its subjective.
Just to say, I'm very much in the same boat of disliking "armies" that are just a bunch of characters, monsters and/or vehicles, with maybe a couple of token infantry units.
I'd agree with you that it's not aesthetically pleasing, even if they are painted well. For all WHFB's faults (and it had many faults), at least the armies generally looked like actual armies. You might have a dragon or a big demon or such, but you would still have ranks of infantry, cavalry etc. making up the bulk of your forces. Nowadays, you can just take six dragons or demons or whatever, with the infantry that should be the core of the army being nothing more than a tiny afterthought (if taken at all).
And sadly it seems 40k is very much going in the same direction.
I think this is an issue not just because of aesthetics but also mechanically. Grounding armies in infantry, while sometimes annoying, also means that standard/small-arms weapons are actually relevant.
Otherwise, it would seem to create a feedback loop where people not using infantry means other infantry is less useful as their standard weapons have fewer/no viable targets. Thus, people take fewer infantry, which means standard infantry weapons are even less useful etc.
EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.
I kinda hinted around about this in a post to CB ealier in the thread. I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic- especially the two you mention here- Grenade and Tank Shock, but also Overwatch, Insane Bravery, and Heroic Intervention. They appear in the BRB, the free PDF, and all of the books that have included Core rules.
I don't know if I'm one of the people you're referring to, but what I mean is that, while technically core rules, Stratagems are in no way core to the overall game.
I believe I've talked about this in detail already, but to reiterate: there is a fundamental disconnect between the actual core rules and the rules for stratagems.
You could remove the entire stratagem section from the core rules and cut stratagems off every detachment, and the game would still be perfectly playable. Really, the only difference is that people might finally wake up to how shallow the rules actually are, now that they no longer have that gimmick to give the illusion of depth.
Compare that to removing Focus or Fury from Warmachine/Hordes. This isn't just an extra - it's the basis of how Warcasters and Warlocks cast spells, it's also how Warjacks and Warbeasts use and enhance their abilities. If you cut it out, you'd have to completely re-write the game.
Meanwhile, Stratagems just aren't built into the rules the same way. Far from being core to the unit rules, they operate almost entirely independently from the units and from the state of the battlefield. They feel more like DLC for a video game.
The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return
Automatically Appended Next Post: If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game. Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to not be helpless against certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place. Removing them would have a huge impact on the game, the are by no means a tacked-on DLC. Removing terrain rules from the game would not have less of an impact.
I understand that many of you have strong feelings about stratagems and would prefer a game without. That's why I stopped responding to most, as you can't argue about taste. But if you claim that stratagems are objectively bad for the game (a "tumor"), useless or don't add anything to the game, you are just plain wrong.
Jidmah wrote: The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return
Automatically Appended Next Post: If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game. Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to counter certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place.
Removing them would have a huge impact on the game, the are by no means a tacked-on DLC.
I understand that many of you have strong feelings about stratagems and would prefer a game without, but if you claim that stratagems are objectively bad for the game (a "tumor"), useless or don't add anything to the game, you are just plain wrong.
They certainly add something to the game, it's just something that would be better expressed in a less tacked-on kind of way.
PenitentJake wrote:
I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic-
...
Now, I DO know what you mean- you mean a rule that doesn't require a limited resource to use.
Tbf, if we all knew what he meant, then he was communicating effectively. And as vipoid pointed out, strats are "less core" than most of the other rules in the main rules document. I don't disagree that a change of language might help though. Suggestions?
Strategems have limitations on their use. Some will say this good, others say it's bad, and still others will say it depends on the strat. And again, I'm ambivalent; I don't mind most strats- the equipment ones bug me, but I'm generally cool with the others. I think GW though there was a problem if every unit in your army got to overwatch against every unit in your opponent's army, so they limited it by making it a strat. And for all the time I've seen people whine about time wasting rolls to fish for sixes, I'm surprised anyone WANTS their entire army to overwatch every unit in their opponent's army. I think when we're talking about strats (which people seem to universally hate) they THINK they want that... But if they ever actually played it to see how it felt, they'd be grateful for the limitation... But then that's just one strat, and some of the others are different, and might make better common use rules (my substitute for core).
Respectfully, I feel like you're misrepresenting what people opposed to strats want. I haven't seen anyone saying they want unlimited use of Overwatch in its current form or that they want every unit with the Grenades keyword to be spamming mortal wounds every turn. Rather, we've been saying that the general notions of these things are desirable but that we simply think the execution of how they're included in the game could be improved.
So instead of overwatch as a stratagem, maybe it becomes a special unit ability or an action units can take ala Boarding Actions (making it a trade-off between good shooting now versus worse shooting on your opponent's turn), or maybe it becomes a special rule on certain weapons... Lots of possibilities. Lots of ways to include some form of "overwatch" without it just being unlimited uses of the stratagem.
How many times per turn do you WANT your opponent to use Heroic Intervention or Insane Bravery?
I feel like those two in particular could reasonably be removed entirely or else become abilities tied to specific units. Insane Bravery is more or less what the Chaplain does now. Heroic Intervention seems like something an Autarch might hand out with his "choose from this list" special abilities.
And obviously, strats themselves in 10th exist more to make detachments matter. If you take away strats, how do detachments add flavour to the game? Detachments, I'm sure we can agree, are a good idea, as they facilitate multiple builds and themes for a single army... But they really couldn't exist without strats to provide most of the flavour they bring to the game.
Not to repeat myself overly frequently, but I've suggested earlier in this thread that you replace strats with more extensive detachment rules. So instead of a physical page of strats in the Windriders detachment, we instead grant Fly units in that detachment the option to Jink. Maybe we let autarchs swap out one of their usual rules for a detachment-specific one. Or if we're moving stratagems to character abilities, maybe the Windrider detachment unlocks additional Heroic Commands or whatever they're called in AoS.
Again, lots of options. I'm sure you didn't mean to, but you've kind of framed it as this binary where we either keep strats, or else we can't possibly have fluffy army rules and a functional game at all.
And from a design perspective, I think rules designers just looked at the effects that Core strats create and said "Hey, we need to limit these rules so that people don't overuse them, and we've already got these things called strats that define our detachments and come with the built in limitation of a resource system, so instead of coming up with a secondary method to limit these common actions, why don't we just call them strats? That way all of the limitations on their use are already handled."
See, that might make sense except that most strats existed in non-strat form before 8th edition. They didn't invent the concept of grenades for the first time in 8th edition and then look around for a way to limit them; they decided that stratagems were a fun concept and then looked for core mechanics they could turn into strats to help justify stratagems' existence and give people something to spend CP on while they wait for their codices to drop.
In 7th, grenades were just weapons. You either paid points to take them if you didn't have them, or their value was (supposedly) factored into the cost of the models that had them by default. Tank shocking was a thing all vehicles could do and were presumably priced around. Switching tank shock to a strat just meant they got to delete a couple of clunky paragraphs from the rest of the core rules in favor of a streamlined mechanic. Overwatch was the free fishing for 6s thing that we all hated, so they made it a strat to keep the general mechanic for those who wanted it, but spared everyone the tedium of the 6 fishing.
Jidmah wrote: The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return
Nuance though. We're allowed to think strats could be handled better (possibly by removing the stratagem mechanic entirely) and also miss being able to customize our psykers.
They certainly add something to the game, it's just something that would be better expressed in a less tacked-on kind of way.
This. No one is saying that we want to rip out stratagems and make zero other changes to the game. We're mostly saying we want the mechanics currently accessed via stratagems to instead be accessed through some other means.
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Just to say, I'm very much in the same boat of disliking "armies" that are just a bunch of characters, monsters and/or vehicles, with maybe a couple of token infantry units.
I get the sentiment. But that said, I don't think it's about wanting to force people to spam "troops." It's about wanting armies to look/feel thematic. A white scars army that's all bikes and vehicles "feels like an army" even if there are zero tactical marines or intercessors in it.
What makes an army "feel like an army" is kind of nebulous. For me, I think it mostly comes down to the army either
A.) Looking like it could all move coherently from one place to another. So bikes and tanks can all roll around together, but transportless centurions waddling next to predators while outriders zoom past both of them feels off.
or B.) Having multiple units that look and feel similar. Again, white scars bike armies "feel like armies" because you look at them and see a bunch of bikes next to eachother. The units kind of belong together. An Iyanden wraith host feels like an army with all of its robo-zombies stomping around near eachother, and the occassional squad of swooping hawks or vypers feel like auxiliary forces that have linked up with the main force of the army.
Forcing me to spam guardians would force me to satisfy condition B. I think that's why some people like the idea of forcing people to spam troops.
Jidmah wrote: The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return
Well, there are a couple of things to consider here.
Firstly, while you could argue that psychic powers aren't core to the game, they are core to the lore. And the lore is one of the big draws of 40k.
Thus, you can argue (not necessarily incorrectly) until you're blue in the face that psychic powers aren't really needed as core rules. But it won't get around the fundamental issue that reducing psychic powers to guns and unit-buffs (the latter being indistinguishable from non-psyker character buffs) doesn't feel right to many people.
The other aspect is that a lot of people dislike the removal of options. Being able to choose psychic powers presented a way for someone to differentiate their psychic characters (if using more than one), rather than every psyker basically being a clone unless they're riding a different vehicle.
Not core to the game. But many older players might consider that sort of thing core to the 'Your Dudes' philosophy that once existed.
Stratagems don't have the same ties to the lore, being extremely vague and nebulous in what they actually represent.
Moreover, while having a choice of psychic powers added to the 'Your Dudes' philosophy, Stratagems actively take away from it by absorbing wargear choices that would otherwise allow for greater customisation of units/characters.
If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game.
(Emphasis mine.)
I wonder if, perhaps, you are misunderstanding my point?
You say that they are essential to the current game. However, I am not talking merely about 10th edition but the game as a whole. Remember, this is the 10th edition of the game, and Stratagems have only existed for the last 3 editions.
Moreover, I believe some of those stratagems you're referring to were introduced in 10th edition.
Thus, it's hard to see how these rules can be absolutely core to the game when we had at least 7 prior editions that didn't need them.
Jidmah wrote: Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to not be helpless against certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place.
I find this particularly puzzling. Why do we need stratagems to facilitate Tank Shock? We already had rules for that in prior editions, before Stratagems even existed.
Likewise, Grenade rules have long predated Stratagems. They were, far more sensibly, wargear items that units could purchase.
I was going to try this with a lot of quotes, but I'll shorten it up. I think folks are using CORE to describe rules they like, and saying that strats aren't CORE because they don't like strats. If overwatch was CORE when it wasn't a strat, what makes it less CORE now that it is?
It is your right to not like strats... and again, I don't like all of them. But this core/ not core thing is pure bs. The system feels added on because it's relatively new- it was added to the game. But it IS an integral concept- it can interact with rules from every other phase of the game, and it can affect literally any action that can be taken in the game.
If that ISN'T CORE, neither is any other mechanic in the game. Remember, whether or not strats are good is another thing. Whether you like them is another thing. I was posting specifically about the semantics of the word CORE.
Does GW describe the PDF as CORE rules? Yes they do.
Are strats in that PDF? Yes they are.
Therefore, objectively, semantically, strats are core.
It's fine not to like them and talk about how they have been better represented in the past, and might be better represented in the future. You'll even find me agreeing with much of what you say when you have that discussion. Just drop the damn Core/ Not Core thing.
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No, I won't show you on the doll where the Necrons probed me.
