Yeah, that's actually messed up. Not sure why they ruled so broadly that Militarum Tempestus can never benefit. Was interested to see some mega taurox prime with punisher spam cheese.
Lol, literally every competitive player in the game looked at the nerfs and went "These guys are out of the meta". There wasn't a single dissenting voice, everyone agrees they're done.
You: "They still top tier lul!"
They are not even mid tier now.
Typical custodes (or SM) player response. If they can't autowin against at least most of the factions their army sucks. Really, what's better than custodes? Tau, Aeldari, Drukhari, Tyranids. Nothing else.
And I'd really like to know those competitive players, I bet they're the same ones who said orks were going to be OP due their T5 and Ap-1 choppas .
I mean, Jack Harpster said there is only a "blasted crater" where they used to be. He also said they "don't exist. They're gone". It's not just people whining about their army. Wings on Goonhammer thinks it was too much too and he's a Craftworld guy.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I for one was super glad we got nerfed. It was that or continue listening to all you theory crafters complain about how hard the competitive scene was taking it from the Golden Horrors. Now? Literally silence about the other elephants in the room.
The numbers spoke for themselves. Custodes winrate was oppressively high, only for GW to masterfully one-up themselves with Harlequins. The reason there's no complaining about specific factions being too strong right now is because we have no data. The changes haven't been used in enough tournaments yet to get a good idea of what they've done to the tournament meta, and the same can be said of Tyranids not being out long enough yet.
I know you love your kneejerk reactions and hyperbole, but blaming others for taking a more measured approach only leaves you looking even more ridiculous.
Custodes win rate was down to 54% FYI. Harlies and Nids were driving them way down. It was actually below Chaos Daemons.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Lasguns can auto-wound Titans, but not Hellguns.
That makes sense.
Projectile ammunition is feeble compared to the lasgun-light of the God Emperor.
Psst. Hellguns are just spicy lasguns.
I didn't think GW could somehow make the auto-wound rule dumber, but by golly, they've done it. Someone ought to tell the Schola Progenium that their trained-from-adolescence elite kill squads aren't praying hard enough or whatever the prevailing in-universe justification is.
Lol, literally every competitive player in the game looked at the nerfs and went "These guys are out of the meta". There wasn't a single dissenting voice, everyone agrees they're done.
You: "They still top tier lul!"
They are not even mid tier now.
Typical custodes (or SM) player response. If they can't autowin against at least most of the factions their army sucks. Really, what's better than custodes? Tau, Aeldari, Drukhari, Tyranids. Nothing else.
And I'd really like to know those competitive players, I bet they're the same ones who said orks were going to be OP due their T5 and Ap-1 choppas .
I mean, Jack Harpster said there is only a "blasted crater" where they used to be. He also said they "don't exist. They're gone". It's not just people whining about their army. Wings on Goonhammer thinks it was too much too and he's a Craftworld guy.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I for one was super glad we got nerfed. It was that or continue listening to all you theory crafters complain about how hard the competitive scene was taking it from the Golden Horrors. Now? Literally silence about the other elephants in the room.
The numbers spoke for themselves. Custodes winrate was oppressively high, only for GW to masterfully one-up themselves with Harlequins. The reason there's no complaining about specific factions being too strong right now is because we have no data. The changes haven't been used in enough tournaments yet to get a good idea of what they've done to the tournament meta, and the same can be said of Tyranids not being out long enough yet.
I know you love your kneejerk reactions and hyperbole, but blaming others for taking a more measured approach only leaves you looking even more ridiculous.
Custodes win rate was down to 54% FYI. Harlies and Nids were driving them way down. It was actually below Chaos Daemons.
A 54% win rate? I'm actually impressed GW got so close to well balanced.
If my maths is right, between HotE and AoC, I'm pretty certain that a Scion will actually get the same results from shooting a Hellgun as a Veteran shooting a Lasgun when the target is a Marine.
catbarf wrote: I didn't think GW could somehow make the auto-wound rule dumber, but by golly, they've done it. Someone ought to tell the Schola Progenium that their trained-from-adolescence elite kill squads aren't praying hard enough or whatever the prevailing in-universe justification is.
BuT gUaRd NeEd ThIs To Be CoMpEtItIvE iN tHe MeTa!!!1
Ordana wrote: no other faction whines quite like Custodes.
Are there Custodes players in this thread "whining"?
There's Strat, who seems to have gone snooker loopy claiming that they're trash-tier, but who else is crying about the golden boys?
My local FB group has custodes players. They spent day 1 whining about how bad their army is now and day 2 posting pictures of all their new tyranid model purchases.
As a MT player, I am devastated. fething awful. Before the balance dataslate, MT were arguably worse off than regular guard, but now MT might just be the worst faction/subfaction in the game.
Time to dig out those 200+ Vostroyan minis I've been squirreling away for a rainy day and get to work I guess.
Its probably because "Hammer of the Emperor" is set to be the Guard purity bonus. While mono-Tempestus will probably get something else (Harlequins style). But again - to give something and yank it back makes you look kind of stupid. If anyone at GW was worried about Scions ruling tournaments, well, I feel reasonably safe in saying they wouldn't.
FWIW, I don't think it was a worry about Scions "ruling tournaments"...
I think it was them wanting to head off at the pass people building towards something they had no intention of functioning the way people were thinking.
I think Tyel has a bit of the right track in the idea that Tempestus has their own set of traits coming, but I don't think it will necessarily be mono-Tempestus. I'm thinking it will be a Canticles/Doctrina Imperatives styled system--both of these bonuses can exist when the subfactions are in play together but they can't be in play when there's interlopers.
While Harlies and Nids are going to be really strong, I think this is probably now going to be once of the better balanced times in 9th edition that we've had.
I'm really looking forward to hitting some events in full swing next month.
Lol, literally every competitive player in the game looked at the nerfs and went "These guys are out of the meta". There wasn't a single dissenting voice, everyone agrees they're done.
You: "They still top tier lul!"
They are not even mid tier now.
Typical custodes (or SM) player response. If they can't autowin against at least most of the factions their army sucks. Really, what's better than custodes? Tau, Aeldari, Drukhari, Tyranids. Nothing else.
And I'd really like to know those competitive players, I bet they're the same ones who said orks were going to be OP due their T5 and Ap-1 choppas .
The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
They like it under the theory that it is better to overnerf then undernerf. Neither of them think custodes are competitive.
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Tyel wrote: Roll on the weekend and we can find out.
I think Goonhammer's predictions on the meta so far in 2022 have not been great. But maybe they have more clarity on this.
Custodes were a 70%~ win rate faction except versus the 2022 codexes. They needed significant nerfs - not a minor knock and "don't worry, we expect everyone who isn't playing Custodes to run pointy ears, Tau and Tyranids."
To edit. The problem is - as we see throughout these discussions. At least for me, "Middle of the pack" is the desirable result of balance changes. Not "okay that 65% win rate is a bit much... we really think it should be something sensible. Like 60%". Such motivations are why DE were top tier for the best part of a year. GW thinking "oh don't worry, in a few months time we'll release books that make DE look tame by comparison" isn't great for the game.
Again, what would have been the middle got themselves boosted hard. Custodes are towards the bottom now because the middle is higher then it was before the dataslate balance.
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Ordana wrote: no other faction whines quite like Custodes. Yes its a big nerf, yes it might be a little more then was needed. But there is no way in hell Custodes is one of the worst books of 9th.
And trying to claim that Custodes are not auto-win because they had lower win rates then Harlequins is just hilarious. So because you lose vs 1, struggle with a 2nd and auto-win against almost everything else you didn't need to get slapped by a serious nerf?
Custodes are crybabies.
Who do you think the nerfed custodes are better then?
I crunched some numbers, this is the rapid-fire range damage dealt vs MEQ profile per point for a guard squad of 10 + vox caster, lascannon, plasmagun, and bolt pistol vs a Scion squad of 10 + vox caster, 4 plasmaguns, and plasma pistol, as well as w/ meltaguns instead of plasmaguns:
Tempestus (Before Dataslate) = .0346 Damage/Point (.0709 Damage/Point w/ meltaguns)
Tempestus (w/ HotE, vs no AoC) = .0443 Damage/Point (.0801 Damage/Point w/ meltaguns)
Tempestus (w/ HotE, vs AoC) = .0355 Damage/Point (.0652 Damage/Point w/ meltaguns)
Tempetus (no HotE, vs AoC) = .0278 Damage/Point (.0579 Damage/Point w/ meltaguns)
Obviously theres doctrines, auras, psychic powers, orders, etc. that would impact this and the squads aren't necessarily representative of what players fielded or would field, but I think its a decent gauge of relative power disparity/impact, etc. Be kind to your friendly neighborhood Tempestus player, they are not in a good place today.
Ordana wrote: no other faction whines quite like Custodes. Yes its a big nerf, yes it might be a little more then was needed. But there is no way in hell Custodes is one of the worst books of 9th.
And trying to claim that Custodes are not auto-win because they had lower win rates then Harlequins is just hilarious. So because you lose vs 1, struggle with a 2nd and auto-win against almost everything else you didn't need to get slapped by a serious nerf?
Custodes are crybabies.
I wouldn't say all Custodes players are. Canhammer has competetive Custodes players and they are much more relaxed about it and mostly point at it making more builds look interesting in the book (one of them mentioned Solar Watch looking more interesting).
It makes builds look way less interesting. Cause it's gonna be back to shield guard spam, and that we dull gak in the 8th edition codex, it won't be any more exciting when people try it now.
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
Clearly, all is lost, existence is a banal exercise in futility.
So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
Clearly, all is lost, existence is a banal exercise in futility.
Eh, I find the balance changes to be good for the game (though annoyed at GW's design philosophy of adding more rules to counter rules they added). Just very bad for custodes.
ClockworkZion wrote: So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
none, because as you know, you only need to play something to proof that it is OP, no matter what everyone says, as soon as something gets nerfed you don't even need to read the details to know that is is unplayable and not worth another look
ClockworkZion wrote: So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
none, because as you know, you only need to play something to proof that it is OP, no matter what everyone says, as soon as something gets nerfed you don't even need to read the details to know that is is unplayable and not worth another look
Welcome to Dakkadakka.com where everything is either OP or garbage-tier.
Karol wrote: People that know testers and who have their income based partialy on being known to play w40k did play custodes and other changed armies for sure.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Lasguns can auto-wound Titans, but not Hellguns.
That makes sense.
Projectile ammunition is feeble compared to the lasgun-light of the God Emperor.
Psst. Hellguns are just spicy lasguns.
I didn't think GW could somehow make the auto-wound rule dumber, but by golly, they've done it. Someone ought to tell the Schola Progenium that their trained-from-adolescence elite kill squads aren't praying hard enough or whatever the prevailing in-universe justification is.
The stuff GW ruleswriters seem to smoke should be enough to knock out a noise marine.
The issue is that the "professional" scene has a bar which is "can you expect to place with this list". And so the binary of "OP" and "Trash" sort of feeds through.
Its fair to say, I don't think Custodes are going to be OP any more. I expect this week's tournament winners will be re-worked Harlequins (foot troupes, bikes & characters still busted yo), Ulthwe "good stuff", and Tyranids. I hope to then see a mix of other factions. Some of this may be skewed by low tournament player base.
Karol wrote: People that know testers and who have their income based partialy on being known to play w40k did play custodes and other changed armies for sure.
Not the best is not the same as garbage.
I mean, I think Harpster's quotes were pretty clear. If you want some more though:
Lennon
I’m in the opposite camp, where I believe Custodes were hit too hard here...I don’t think the datasheets are strong enough to just win games anymore, and I think the hard hitting armies will have no problem cleaning out bikes or dreads without their defensive stratagems.
Wings
Too much. Custodes needed a big change, but this is quite a bit harsher than what I personally wanted to see, particularly in the context of Marines getting a big boost
/quote]
A big discussion of the dataslate (and where these quotes are from) is here:
I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
Tyel wrote: The issue is that the "professional" scene has a bar which is "can you expect to place with this list". And so the binary of "OP" and "Trash" sort of feeds through.
Its fair to say, I don't think Custodes are going to be OP any more. I expect this week's tournament winners will be re-worked Harlequins (foot troupes, bikes & characters still busted yo), Ulthwe "good stuff", and Tyranids. I hope to then see a mix of other factions. Some of this may be skewed by low tournament player base.
Exactly. When the "top competitive players" say that a codex is "out of the meta", it just means that it isn't broken, because that's what it takes to get to the top in the competitive scene: the most busted, broken, OP that they can find. If they think that Custodes are "not competitive", then it just means that the codex is now more in line with all of the "normal" codexes.
kingheff wrote: I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
We even had a top 2 finish (beaten by Crusher Stampede) at a GT this past weekend with an off-meta Custodes list that didn't really see too much in the way of nerfs (Emmissaries Saggitarum spam). I'm prety sure the goldybois will be fine.
kingheff wrote: I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
I'm not sure what he was referring to but I can tell you Custodes don't have skimmers. Maybe he meant a Pallas?
The Custodes Codex itself isn't very deep at all. It has 19 datasheets, 8 of which are HQ's and 2 more of which are Elite Characters. That leaves it with only 9 non-Character units.
FW opens that quite a bit, but not everyone wants to buy FW. FW gives an additional 14 non-Character datasheets.
We'll see how the meta unfolds, but I have a feeling you won't see Custodes placing top 5's any more than you see Necrons at best (so one or two here or there now and then).
kingheff wrote: I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
We even had a top 2 finish (beaten by Crusher Stampede) at a GT this past weekend with an off-meta Custodes list that didn't really see too much in the way of nerfs (Emmissaries Saggitarum spam). I'm prety sure the goldybois will be fine.
Competitive players will usually look pretty hard at ways to adjust their armies if they're doing well with them. Not everyone is Mani cheema, bless 'im.
kingheff wrote: I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
Yeah there was a troop heavy list discussed in brief in the AoW hot takes stream as well.
kingheff wrote: I super chatted on the aow stream tonight and specifically asked if they thought the Custodes nerfs were a bit overhyped. Jack harpster admitted that someone I can't remember was running a skimmer list and was very happy with it. Custodes is a deep enough codex that people will make good armies with it still.
I'm not sure what he was referring to but I can tell you Custodes don't have skimmers. Maybe he meant a Pallas?
The Custodes Codex itself isn't very deep at all. It has 19 datasheets, 8 of which are HQ's and 2 more of which are Elite Characters. That leaves it with only 9 non-Character units.
FW opens that quite a bit, but not everyone wants to buy FW. FW gives an additional 14 non-Character datasheets.
We'll see how the meta unfolds, but I have a feeling you won't see Custodes placing top 5's any more than you see Necrons at best (so one or two here or there now and then).
He didn't go into any specifics, maybe I misheard, I thought he said skimmers but I am old. The main thing I took away was that some people were happy with custodes.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I for one was super glad we got nerfed. It was that or continue listening to all you theory crafters complain about how hard the competitive scene was taking it from the Golden Horrors. Now? Literally silence about the other elephants in the room.
I'm pleasantly surprised that GW has published this. It's great that they have 1) established which documents are still considered up to date, and 2) explicitly say what the majority of players already implicitly knew: that supplements are considered invalid once a new Codex comes out.
I'm pleasantly surprised that GW has published this. It's great that they have 1) established which documents are still considered up to date, and 2) explicitly say what the majority of players already implicitly knew: that supplements are considered invalid once a new Codex comes out.
The minority knew it as well.
They were just trying to have it any wich way as best suited them. YOU try & use an outdated source? They'll tell you all about it. THEY try it? Oh how the tune changes....
JakeSiren wrote: 2) explicitly say what the majority of players already implicitly knew: that supplements are considered invalid once a new Codex comes out.
Are they? Is my Black Templars supplement going to become worthless when the new SM codex comes out? If so, how am I supposed to play my army? GW seem to pick and choose at random which supplements and armies of renown will remain legal with a new codex and which ones will be replaced. I think they get the office intern drunk, blindfold him, and tape faction logos to a dartboard. He's got 3 darts and anything he hits is no longer legal. It's like groundhogs day for codexes.
JakeSiren wrote: 2) explicitly say what the majority of players already implicitly knew: that supplements are considered invalid once a new Codex comes out.
Are they? Is my Black Templars supplement going to become worthless when the new SM codex comes out? If so, how am I supposed to play my army? GW seem to pick and choose at random which supplements and armies of renown will remain legal with a new codex and which ones will be replaced. I think they get the office intern drunk, blindfold him, and tape faction logos to a dartboard. He's got 3 darts and anything he hits is no longer legal. It's like groundhogs day for codexes.
Whenever GW release the next SM Codex, then yes, unless they explicitly say so like they did (via a FAQ) with the current SM Codex and supplements that came out before it.
If you cut the hyperbole, it's as simple as: GW writes a supplement for a specific Codex, if the codex is superseded then the supplement is considered invalid unless FAQ'd otherwise.
Yeah, calling hard BS right here. Super easy to run harlies without spamming. HQs, jester, solitaire, troupes in transports, sky weavers, a couple voidweavers, done.
That’s the same with any army, including grey knights. Spamming is a conscious choice, not a forced result.
So the difference between that and a tournament list is the 3 to 6 void weavers. As I said people either under estimate what bad armies play like, they are super protective of their own armies power or all of the above at the same time. As I said the difference between your army and a tournament lists is minimal. Which means the list would be weaker vs an optimised tournament list from other factions. BUT if I were to believe that does are only played in tournaments , we get a situation where johny space marine is going to have great fun with his non optimised marine army playing vs a 75-80% full power tournament harli list.
Do you know anything about Harlequins?
Let’s say I took 3 voidweavers, a reasonable non spammy number, I’m left with 450pts more than the 9 weaver list (pre nerf points). I already have all the characters, so guess what’s left? 3 data sheets… troupes, starweavers, bikes. I can fill 450pts with bikes easily enough and the list would still have been super strong. And if GW had just not allowed the void weaver to be a squadron, this is where would be and there would have been more variety in lists (some dark, light, maybe even twilight) at least as much as harlequins can be varied.
Point is, you didn’t need to take voids to be competitive and we’ll see how they perform now that that choice has been effectively removed.
Blackie wrote: What's the reason behind having different expire dates (January or June 2023) for the supplements?
Got to assume they're loosely tied to the date they become obsolete/replaced. If this isn't a "get daemons and guard by Jan and an inquisitor book by June" I've no idea what's going on.
Point is, you didn’t need to take voids to be competitive and we’ll see how they perform now that that choice has been effectively removed.
That is like saying you don't need to take steroid in sports to be good. No one who saw the stats on the void weavers, followed by its costs, thought to not take more then 3 of those. It would be like GK playrs deciding to not use NDKs or DE saying no to cult of strife.
ClockworkZion wrote: So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. What the hell is wrong with you?
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
If the current competitive meta any 'balanced' codex is out of competitively play because the top is firmly ruled by utterly broken codexes running near or above 70% winrates.
Being good for competitive and being balanced are 2 very different things right now and that is a bad thing. We want those 2 concepts to get closer together. And yes that means any other codex that ends up doing as well as Custodes were doing should get slapped down hard.
I want to live in a world where all codexes have a 45-55% winrate against basically the entire field and not what we have now where its 65+% armies that decide everything, where you can have GT's with the top 10 consisting of 3 codexes. I want the player to decide the outcome, not the army.
Since Harlequins couldn't run more than 3 voidweavers prior to the codex, the idea an innocent casual could accidentally find out 6-9 of them was a bit good but that's all they own so they can't play without them... feels like a leap.
I have a bit more time for someone who perhaps just loved crisis suits - but even then, crisis outside of optimised combinations (weapons, drones, buffing characters, chapter/warlord trait synergies etc) are not nearly as good. Someone just turning up with 3 units of 6 Crisis "cos they like them" is going to probably do a lot less well than someone who was running say 2 units of 5 and 2 units of 3 bodyguards.
The issue usually is just codex power. Harlequins, Tau, Custodes were near universally powerful. So if you made a "bad" list with them, you were still probably going to crush someone with a "bad" list drawn from various underperforming factions. Same with DE a year ago, Marines in late 8th etc. But that's different from "oh look, I'm mysteriously running that exact list that won that tournament the other week, what a coincidence."
“If every unit in your army has the Astra Militarum keyword, then each time a <Regiment> or <Tempestus Regiment> model from your army makes a ranged attack, an unmodified hit roll of 6 automatically wounds the target.”
Point is, you didn’t need to take voids to be competitive and we’ll see how they perform now that that choice has been effectively removed.
That is like saying you don't need to take steroid in sports to be good.
You mean it's 100% accurate?
The problem with competitive 40k is if something isn't bonkers broken you don't see it so we have no real idea if Harlequins with fewer Voidweavers but more bikes might be the new meta terror. I suspect it won't be quite as good but we've seen this problem before when GW nerfed the standard DE build, only to see the Coven Monster Mash army become the new hotness.
ClockworkZion wrote: So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. What the hell is wrong with you?
You're right, I shouldn't assume anyone complaining about the game actually plays it.
ClockworkZion wrote: So with all the talk about Custodes being nerfed, how many people have actually played games with the models and tried seeing if they work instead of theoryhammering how bad they are?
This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. What the hell is wrong with you?
You're right, I should assume anyone complaining about the game actually plays it.
If you play the game, you clearly aren't serious enough about hating it to post on dakka Playing also wastes precious time you could better spend posting in eight nigh identical threads about how you hate every single thing GW has done in the past ten years.
Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
ClockworkZion wrote: Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
funny how it works, the domsayer stalk about how the sky is falling. I didn't like the rules changes as they by proxy nerfed orks, I acknowledged it was going to be rough, now 4 2k points games, several skirmish games, plus a few various 1500-2k point games on TTS I am now reasonable certain I can say the ork codex doesn't work very well in top levels of play now. That said casual themed lists while not on par with other books can work. I personally prefer the play it out and see how this affects me first. spoiler alert orks are on the shelf for a while, fortunately i like the new chaos knights look and will probably be picking up the big box so painting project and likely playing my super cheap chaos marine body spam list (red tide?) while working on that.
ClockworkZion wrote: Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
funny how it works, the domsayer stalk about how the sky is falling. I didn't like the rules changes as they by proxy nerfed orks, I acknowledged it was going to be rough, now 4 2k points games, several skirmish games, plus a few various 1500-2k point games on TTS I am now reasonable certain I can say the ork codex doesn't work very well in top levels of play now. That said casual themed lists while not on par with other books can work. I personally prefer the play it out and see how this affects me first. spoiler alert orks are on the shelf for a while, fortunately i like the new chaos knights look and will probably be picking up the big box so painting project and likely playing my super cheap chaos marine body spam list (red tide?) while working on that.
That's a fair take. I've been there with my Sisters in the past so I can respect the frustration that a bad codex can bring, plus give a nod of respect for you trying it out before shelving it first.
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
If the current competitive meta any 'balanced' codex is out of competitively play because the top is firmly ruled by utterly broken codexes running near or above 70% winrates.
Being good for competitive and being balanced are 2 very different things right now and that is a bad thing. We want those 2 concepts to get closer together. And yes that means any other codex that ends up doing as well as Custodes were doing should get slapped down hard.
I want to live in a world where all codexes have a 45-55% winrate against basically the entire field and not what we have now where its 65+% armies that decide everything, where you can have GT's with the top 10 consisting of 3 codexes. I want the player to decide the outcome, not the army.
There's actually considerably more nuance than just a 45-55% win rate. For example, I played at a large event with my Drukhari. One of the matches I was against a Tau player. The game was won on who got first turn - both of our armies did considerable damage and were not sufficiently resilient. We could have played 100 games and got 50 wins and 50 losses each, but the game came down to the singular dice roll to see who got first turn or not.
Part of the discussion should be what the overall game experience is like. It's no good if "balance" is decided by winning or losing one roll off. I don't think anyone here is interested in playing a glorified coin flip simulator. One of the better metrics I have seen around balance is win/loss rate grouped by first/second turn. An army should have a 45-55% win rate if they go first, and a 45-55% win rate if they go second. To me, this shows that an actual game has been played, rather than the players going through the motions of resolving the foregone conclusion.
ClockworkZion wrote: Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
I really don't need to play a game against the Guard to know that I think them auto-wounding because....Guard. is just a dumb rule.
Dumb mechanically & dumb lore wise.
ClockworkZion wrote: Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
I really don't need to play a game against the Guard to know that I think them auto-wounding because....Guard. is just a dumb rule.
Dumb mechanically & dumb lore wise.
I said "nerfs" as in the Custodes nerf, but nice to make this about Guard who didn't get nerfed.
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
If the current competitive meta any 'balanced' codex is out of competitively play because the top is firmly ruled by utterly broken codexes running near or above 70% winrates.
Being good for competitive and being balanced are 2 very different things right now and that is a bad thing. We want those 2 concepts to get closer together. And yes that means any other codex that ends up doing as well as Custodes were doing should get slapped down hard.
I want to live in a world where all codexes have a 45-55% winrate against basically the entire field and not what we have now where its 65+% armies that decide everything, where you can have GT's with the top 10 consisting of 3 codexes. I want the player to decide the outcome, not the army.
There's actually considerably more nuance than just a 45-55% win rate. For example, I played at a large event with my Drukhari. One of the matches I was against a Tau player. The game was won on who got first turn - both of our armies did considerable damage and were not sufficiently resilient. We could have played 100 games and got 50 wins and 50 losses each, but the game came down to the singular dice roll to see who got first turn or not.
Part of the discussion should be what the overall game experience is like. It's no good if "balance" is decided by winning or losing one roll off. I don't think anyone here is interested in playing a glorified coin flip simulator. One of the better metrics I have seen around balance is win/loss rate grouped by first/second turn. An army should have a 45-55% win rate if they go first, and a 45-55% win rate if they go second. To me, this shows that an actual game has been played, rather than the players going through the motions of resolving the foregone conclusion.
first turn can be so important because lethality is way way to high in 9th. Ofcourse 'balance' is a lot more nuanced then simply win/loss % in a vaccume but this is an internet shouting match, talk about nuances just gets lost in the noise.
Depends really. If two players have built armies which are "go first or be screwed" - then... well, I don't know how the game can fix that. Barring very hard limitations on people building lists like that.
Certain factions should I think be more glass cannons than others. If two of them meet, the game should be quick and deadly. By contrast if two adamantium anvils (?) meet, the game should be protracted, and probably large amounts of both armies should still be there at the end of turn 5. As said, the issue with 9th was that every army was a glass cannon. I think GW are trying to fix that in the new books and AoC, but... yeah. We'll see.
I believe GW wants pretty much everything to be dead at the end of turn 5. That's why there are agendas that are basically "kill everything".
They probably don't want everything dead in the first/second turn, hence AoC and the nerfs to indirect fire/aircraft, but IMHO they want tabling to be common.
Tyran wrote: I believe GW wants pretty much everything to be dead at the end of turn 5. That's why there are agendas that are basically "kill everything".
They probably don't want everything dead in the first/second turn, hence AoC and the nerfs to indirect fire/aircraft, but IMHO they want tabling to be common.
Well they want a game to last 2-3 hours, and want to sell you lots. So the only solution they can see if to have everything die quick enough to achieve that.
Tyran wrote: I believe GW wants pretty much everything to be dead at the end of turn 5. That's why there are agendas that are basically "kill everything".
They probably don't want everything dead in the first/second turn, hence AoC and the nerfs to indirect fire/aircraft, but IMHO they want tabling to be common.
Well they want a game to last 2-3 hours, and want to sell you lots. So the only solution they can see if to have everything die quick enough to achieve that.
They want the game to be good for tournaments which means it shouldn't run over the 3hr time. Making things more lethal across the board was a way to accomplish shorter games. Same with small tables, gets to the action faster and gets the game over faster.
They want MATCHED PLAY with GT Mission Packs to be good for tournaments.
They want MATCHED PLAY with the Tempest of War deck to be good for competitive stand-alone pick-up games.
They want CRUSADE to be good for campaign and narrative players.
They want OPEN play to be good for beginners and ultra casuals.
They also want competitive players to engage in both Incursion level and Strike Force level games. They want Crusade and Open players to engage in games of all 4 sizes.
Any statement less complex than this about what GW wants is a half truth at best. It took a lot of time and investment to create the tools necessary to do all of these things, and they wouldn't have done any of it unless they expected a part of the player base to engage with each of those options.
PenitentJake wrote: They want MATCHED PLAY with GT Mission Packs to be good for tournaments.
They want MATCHED PLAY with the Tempest of War deck to be good for competitive stand-alone pick-up games.
They want CRUSADE to be good for campaign and narrative players.
They want OPEN play to be good for beginners and ultra casuals.
They also want competitive players to engage in both Incursion level and Strike Force level games. They want Crusade and Open players to engage in games of all 4 sizes.
Any statement less complex than this about what GW wants is a half truth at best. It took a lot of time and investment to create the tools necessary to do all of these things, and they wouldn't have done any of it unless they expected a part of the player base to engage with each of those options.
What they want is for a broad enough audience to be placated with their band aid fixes so that they don't lose money.
You may not have noticed the part of the PDF that mentioned that they didn't include any Crusade Content in the document, and that all of it is still valid (according to the rules in the book- ie. you have to fight a battle as part of the campaign to get the "badge" that lets you keep the Crusade upgrades even if your army leaves the campaign setting).
Not being able to use the AoR's or the meager supplements included in cmpaign books isn't that big a deal to me... But even if it was, that's the magical thing about every part of the game that ISN'T Matched play: none of the restrictions that drive people bat$#!+ crazy really apply. If you want to use the AoR's or Supplements in your Crusade games? Talk it out with your opponent and/ or your GM and you're probably good to go.
PenitentJake wrote: You may not have noticed the part of the PDF that mentioned that they didn't include any Crusade Content in the document, and that all of it is still valid (according to the rules in the book- ie. you have to fight a battle as part of the campaign to get the "badge" that lets you keep the Crusade upgrades even if your army leaves the campaign setting).
ClockworkZion wrote: Honestly I was asking because I know sometimes nerfs feel worse on paper than when you actually put the army on the table and I was wondering if anyone upset about the nerfs had gotten a game in to see if they're as bad as the hot takes think they might be.
I really don't need to play a game against the Guard to know that I think them auto-wounding because....Guard. is just a dumb rule.
Dumb mechanically & dumb lore wise.
I said "nerfs" as in the Custodes nerf, but nice to make this about Guard who didn't get nerfed.
My points the same. I have decades if experience playing these & other games. Buff/nerf/change.... I don't need to actually play a game to A) understand it's effect in a game, B) know my opinion of said buff/nerf/change.
But if you bothered to buy one, its Crusade content is still valid.
If you didn't buy one, then I would assume it doesn't matter to you whether or not the content is invalidated, because it was obviously content you didn't care about in the first place.
stratigo wrote: The entirety of art of war. Goonhammer. Mani Cheema. Name a player who regularly places at the top of majors, and if they have said anything about custodes, it's that they were nerfed out of competitive play entirely.
Also, marines (all of them) are better now too. So are admech. So are sisters. Et cetera. Custodes didn't just get nerfed, like half the factions (Or at least it sometimes feels like power armor is half the factions) in the game caught a serious and dramatic buff.
If the current competitive meta any 'balanced' codex is out of competitively play because the top is firmly ruled by utterly broken codexes running near or above 70% winrates.
Being good for competitive and being balanced are 2 very different things right now and that is a bad thing. We want those 2 concepts to get closer together. And yes that means any other codex that ends up doing as well as Custodes were doing should get slapped down hard.
I want to live in a world where all codexes have a 45-55% winrate against basically the entire field and not what we have now where its 65+% armies that decide everything, where you can have GT's with the top 10 consisting of 3 codexes. I want the player to decide the outcome, not the army.
There's actually considerably more nuance than just a 45-55% win rate. For example, I played at a large event with my Drukhari. One of the matches I was against a Tau player. The game was won on who got first turn - both of our armies did considerable damage and were not sufficiently resilient. We could have played 100 games and got 50 wins and 50 losses each, but the game came down to the singular dice roll to see who got first turn or not.
Part of the discussion should be what the overall game experience is like. It's no good if "balance" is decided by winning or losing one roll off. I don't think anyone here is interested in playing a glorified coin flip simulator. One of the better metrics I have seen around balance is win/loss rate grouped by first/second turn. An army should have a 45-55% win rate if they go first, and a 45-55% win rate if they go second. To me, this shows that an actual game has been played, rather than the players going through the motions of resolving the foregone conclusion.
that's actually pretty rare, the first turn bias is at the lowest I think it might have ever been now, especially with indirect nerfs.
Tyran wrote: I believe GW wants pretty much everything to be dead at the end of turn 5. That's why there are agendas that are basically "kill everything".
They probably don't want everything dead in the first/second turn, hence AoC and the nerfs to indirect fire/aircraft, but IMHO they want tabling to be common.
Well they want a game to last 2-3 hours, and want to sell you lots. So the only solution they can see if to have everything die quick enough to achieve that.
They want the game to be good for tournaments which means it shouldn't run over the 3hr time. Making things more lethal across the board was a way to accomplish shorter games. Same with small tables, gets to the action faster and gets the game over faster.
shorter games are generally better because people don't have infinite time
PenitentJake wrote: If you didn't buy one, then I would assume it doesn't matter to you whether or not the content is invalidated, because it was obviously content you didn't care about in the first place.
I didn't buy that because GW's printed 40k material shelf life is so short (and getting shorter) that buying these really expensive books is a fool's errand.
auticus wrote: To many people, out of print is the same as dead is the same as not valid any longer.
"Sorry, that cool scenario from PA is no longer printed, I refuse to have that story told to me." - no crusade player ever
Yeah, it's not a real concern for narrative players. Our Crusade group happily bashes whatever PA, WD, CA, rulebook or some random older book missions to 9th compatible form and haves fun with them. Just yesterday I played a mission from 2018's White Dwarf for funsies. The game before that was from old Cityfight.
Short shelf life is moot on missions, as long as any participating player can just say "I've got this cool baseline here, want to work out how it would play out now?" with whatever publication they have at hand and game happens. For matched purposes this is of course a different story, with supplements coming and going, and I agree on buying 40k expansions solely for that purpose being a fool's errand.
JakeSiren wrote: There's actually considerably more nuance than just a 45-55% win rate. For example, I played at a large event with my Drukhari. One of the matches I was against a Tau player. The game was won on who got first turn - both of our armies did considerable damage and were not sufficiently resilient. We could have played 100 games and got 50 wins and 50 losses each, but the game came down to the singular dice roll to see who got first turn or not.
Part of the discussion should be what the overall game experience is like. It's no good if "balance" is decided by winning or losing one roll off. I don't think anyone here is interested in playing a glorified coin flip simulator. One of the better metrics I have seen around balance is win/loss rate grouped by first/second turn. An army should have a 45-55% win rate if they go first, and a 45-55% win rate if they go second. To me, this shows that an actual game has been played, rather than the players going through the motions of resolving the foregone conclusion.
Well that's what tournament play is and what tournament try hard's wants. And GW has provided. Result is I now fail <0.5% predictions who wins based on hundreds of BR's on youtube and own games.
Crusade already is by far the second most popular way to play, right after tournament-style matched play. For every two people playing matched play, one person is playing crusade.
Oh, and auticus responding a post specifically talking about crusade resources.
And frankly, if you are playing GT40k only, you are a fool if you are taking the bait and paying GW for those campaign books solely for that 5% extra chance to win.
JakeSiren wrote: There's actually considerably more nuance than just a 45-55% win rate. For example, I played at a large event with my Drukhari. One of the matches I was against a Tau player. The game was won on who got first turn - both of our armies did considerable damage and were not sufficiently resilient. We could have played 100 games and got 50 wins and 50 losses each, but the game came down to the singular dice roll to see who got first turn or not.
Part of the discussion should be what the overall game experience is like. It's no good if "balance" is decided by winning or losing one roll off. I don't think anyone here is interested in playing a glorified coin flip simulator. One of the better metrics I have seen around balance is win/loss rate grouped by first/second turn. An army should have a 45-55% win rate if they go first, and a 45-55% win rate if they go second. To me, this shows that an actual game has been played, rather than the players going through the motions of resolving the foregone conclusion.
Well that's what tournament play is and what tournament try hard's wants. And GW has provided. Result is I now fail <0.5% predictions who wins based on hundreds of BR's on youtube and own games.
And why do you think 'whoever gets first turn wins' is something tournament 'try hards' want? Surely people who want to win tournaments don't want to have to win the start coinflip 5-6 times in a row in order to claim the crown. Seems very unreliable as a means to victory but a great way to go 3-2 and then cry about how weak your faction is.
I think you fellas have raised an intriguing point. What is the validity of GW purposely making the game exceptionally deadly, because it's essentially become an extremely slow game of baseball. Like Yankees vs Redsox. (Both US baseball teams known for dragging out the clock in underhanded ways).
GW has to know that the most boring part about their tournaments are the 3-5 hours they have to focus on adults moving plastic toys around, and measuring, then re-measuring, and triple checking, then looking up rules, and finally removing models from a board. They can't run commercials or do ad buys during these. Because they're live most of the time. The best they can do is a banner or a clickable ad schema.
GW might honestly be trying to drop their games to under 2 hours. I could honestly see a savy PR rep saying "This game is selling well, but it's boring as hell to watch. It's Golf but without the crowds. Can we speed it up by 50%? Make the games basically a sudden death? Where 1 wrong move causes a handshake?"
I can seriously get behind the theory that GW is intentionally speeding up the game through sheer killiness. Invulns? What invulns? Auto-MWs on 6's. This Psyker can do 20MWs per turn! This Cannon can bracket a titan in one turn! This HQ model can wipe a Custodes Guardian Shield squad off the map in a single turn!
I don't know. I consider pretty much every game and sports in the world, barring a very few exceptions (all sports), as boring as hell to watch. Even if they are a lot of fun to play in person.
Seriously, do you enjoy watching people playing boardgames, cardgames or videogames? Is there even a market for that?
Blackie wrote: I don't know. I consider pretty much every game and sports in the world, barring a very few exceptions (all sports), as boring as hell to watch. Even if they are a lot of fun to play in person.
Seriously, do you enjoy watching people playing boardgames, cardgames or videogames? Is there even a market for that?
Is this a bad time to introduce someone to Twitch? I don't want that on my conscience.
Blackie wrote: I don't know. I consider pretty much every game and sports in the world, barring a very few exceptions (all sports), as boring as hell to watch. Even if they are a lot of fun to play in person.
Seriously, do you enjoy watching people playing boardgames, cardgames or videogames? Is there even a market for that?
Putting aside the fact Twitch's existence shows there's a substantial market for watching video games, I can say I do enjoy watching people play board games, card games and other wargames. Not all games, and not all people, but enough to suggest it's not impossible to make these things entertaining under the right circumstances.
We can argue about what those circumstances would be, but one thing I know for sure, is that 40k is the opposite of an enjoyable spectacle to watch online. The "action" is ponderous, there are far too many dice rolled and it's really hard to get good video of what's happening, especially live. If GW's goal was to make 40k more appealing to an online audience they'd need to do more than just cut the game length in half.
I had no idea about the existence of Twitch, and that there was a market for that stuff, honest.
Thing about watching 40k is that the game itself isn't really enjoyable to watch, it's the context that might be fun. I mean watching edited 90min bat reps between people who have entertainment skills might be fun. Watching competitive 40k live games that last 3 hours and in which players act like robots it's certainly not fun to watch for many. Even if they last much less probably.
Several youtube channels get a lot of views by posting bat reps but those videos are either edited and reduced in length or either picture someone that is able to turn the game into a show. Typically both. Competitive players don't care about being part of a show, they barely talk.
I love how tneva82 constantly posts that their predictions are so accurate (or would be, if double turn didn't exist for aos) but has never once rose to the challenge of ever trying to prove it. Like literally once a person posts two lists they fade out of the topic as if they had never posted at alllll.
Part of it is the lack of player decisionmaking as well.
You can make wargames enjoyable with casters - and sometimes the casters can be the players. Tabletop CP does Chain of Command battle reports that are unedited and manage to get a following - and they aren't nearly as young or charismatic as the the TTT folks.
But the game itself.does some of the heavy lifting. Player choice is a lot more castable.when the options aren't so obvious. Rolled a 4,1,3 2,1 for your Command dice? Ooh let"s see how the player runs his army with this roll. Rolled a 6,6,2,1,5? Well, let's see if the player plans to take advantage of the double phase - but his enemy has a COC die and he probably hasn't guessed he has a flamethrower in support...
The WH+ batreps edit the game fairly heavily to focus attention on the action; they're also hidden behind a pay wall, which is problematic...
Back in 2008, a buddy and I set up a table for three days, and we played one or two turns per night. We took somewhere in the neighbourhood of 900 photos with the plan of generating a stop-motion depiction of the action of the game. I did manage to string all the photos together, but I never got around to adding voices and music because the Hard drive died and I lost everything.
I've been meaning to get back into this sort of thing for quite a while- it's why I build such outlandish campaign scenarios. Crusade's progression system provides an interesting framework for linking games and demonstrating the growth of armies both on and off the battlefield- the time has never really been better to do the sort of things I've always wanted to do with the game.
In my ideal world, batreps would have layers that could be toggled on or off; if you wanted the graphic overlay with CP and VP totals and the dice cam, you could toggle that; if you wanted the tactical Crusade meta analysis, toggle; if you want character voices for the models, toggle.
I've been really disappointed with representations of Crusade play on Youtube, and even WH+. There is so much potential being wasted by the focus on competitive optimization and math hammer. I've wanted to do it myself since nobody else is doing it, but by the time I have enough models and terrain painted, the edition will most likely be almost over- a shame, because I don't think people would watch a video of a OOP system.
But man, I've got some wicked ideas. It's why I want a persistent edition as badly as I do. A level 1 - level 20 story arc in D&D took my group four years of almost weekly playing. I expect a GOOD Crusade campaign to be about the same, though the games could be bi-weekly or even monthly for all the painting and terrain construction.
The story I'm working on could take even longer. The planet we started with has eight settlements and a capital city; the former have 25 territories each and the capital has 45. Each territory is represented by a single Onslaught Sized board, complete with detailed building descriptions. Most games are 25PL games, so each batle uses only a slice of the onslaught map.
Crazy thing though?
This is one planet in the system.
The campaign will also involve games set in other systems to establish the origin stories of some of the factions who will travel to our system. It's massive. This is why I've said that 9th probably has to be my forever edition: thinking a game at a time is really boring for me. If the game isn't part of that 5-10 year campaign, it just doesn't have enough to justify the effort it takes to paint the minis and build the table.
In the city I'm from, there was a story in the local paper of a professor at the university who's been running a D&D game since the mid 80's. Not the same setting... The same GAME. People come from all over the world to play live in his campaign- he's had more than 300 players over 35 years, and only one or two of the original players still plays regularly. The first wave of characters have grown into powerful NPCs who play pivotal roles in the world, and the GM still consults with the original players at times to determine how those NPCs should react.
THIS is the kind of thing I want out of a game.
THIS is why I think edition churn is the biggest problem with any game system.
My experience with such grand campaigns isn't that the new edition screws things up. It's that the players change, and it devolves into one-offs anyways because the same people don't keep coming back.
Hard to set up a Slaaneshi seduction of an IG officer if the IG player stops showing up...
Rather like sports, I feel it matters more if you care about the result.
I.E. watching some battle reports is like pulling teeth. You can't hear the players (if they say anything at all) or often much of the table. Its just a lot of standing around, then some dice rolling (which, depending on focus you may not be able to see) and then some models get removed.
But I've watched some big tournament finals online - and yeah it can work. There is a bit of fun to it. You hopefully have some commentators who vaguely know how to talk about the game (or just be somewhat amusing). You have a chat to bounce off. You can really get into thinking about whether player X goes all in this turn, do they hold off, if they do go all in how do the dice fall etc. This is especially true if you want someone to win (either for personal reasons, faction reasons, whatever).
The issue however with tournaments is that you can't have all the improved camera work, graphics etc which are becoming more common on youtube battle report channels. Which must be growing in popularity or there wouldn't be so many.
Really "live 40k" needs some decent casters and some sort of flyable micro-drone that can get good camera work of the table during a game. The former is probably easier to sort out than the second.
But if you bothered to buy one, its Crusade content is still valid.
If you didn't buy one, then I would assume it doesn't matter to you whether or not the content is invalidated, because it was obviously content you didn't care about in the first place.
Or I'm not fool enough to pay GW for a filler book who's content can be read for free online, or by reading a friends copy* (& a scanner may have been involved....).
Don't fret for poor GW though. The $ I didn't waste on more paper was definitely spent a few times over on additional plastic.
*Technichally not free - he did grab a beer out of the fridge....
Battle reports and lore videos and all things digital 40k are usually background noise for hobbying. If I try to watch them just for the sake of watching... I get bored pretty quickly and find something else to do. Movement phases in particular become a bit of a snooze fest to watch. As a medium to have some noise going while painting or assembling or what-have-you, though... not bad
Rihgu wrote: I love how tneva82 constantly posts that their predictions are so accurate (or would be, if double turn didn't exist for aos) but has never once rose to the challenge of ever trying to prove it. Like literally once a person posts two lists they fade out of the topic as if they had never posted at alllll.
Funny. Doubie turn isn't that big issue. Tournament lists handle that out. Noobs complain about double turn. Tournamemt players just deal with it. And gw games aren't deep or tactical enough.
Season of war had br this week. Wasn't too hard to figure bone splitters win. Did opponent get double turn? Yes. Did it matter? Guess delayed defeat. It was still easy win.
If you can't predict it just shows how laughably bad you are
If lists aren't tournament level(those are the 4/5 failures i have had) then it gets harder as it's not as point and click so bad dice roll can have bigger impact.
Rihgu wrote: I love how tneva82 constantly posts that their predictions are so accurate (or would be, if double turn didn't exist for aos) but has never once rose to the challenge of ever trying to prove it. Like literally once a person posts two lists they fade out of the topic as if they had never posted at alllll.
Funny. Doubie turn isn't that big issue. Tournament lists handle that out. Noobs complain about double turn. Tournamemt players just deal with it. And gw games aren't deep or tactical enough.
Season of war had br this week. Wasn't too hard to figure bone splitters win. Did opponent get double turn? Yes. Did it matter? Guess delayed defeat. It was still easy win.
If you can't predict it just shows how laughably bad you are
If lists aren't tournament level(those are the 4/5 failures i have had) then it gets harder as it's not as point and click so bad dice roll can have bigger impact.
I'm literally just quoting you on the double turn thing...
Rihgu wrote: I love how tneva82 constantly posts that their predictions are so accurate (or would be, if double turn didn't exist for aos) but has never once rose to the challenge of ever trying to prove it. Like literally once a person posts two lists they fade out of the topic as if they had never posted at alllll.
Funny. Doubie turn isn't that big issue. Tournament lists handle that out. Noobs complain about double turn. Tournamemt players just deal with it. And gw games aren't deep or tactical enough.
Season of war had br this week. Wasn't too hard to figure bone splitters win. Did opponent get double turn? Yes. Did it matter? Guess delayed defeat. It was still easy win.
If you can't predict it just shows how laughably bad you are
If lists aren't tournament level(those are the 4/5 failures i have had) then it gets harder as it's not as point and click so bad dice roll can have bigger impact.
So you fail 4/5 times concerning non-tourney games? You'd be more accurate if you simply flipped a coin! But yet you're telling others how laughably bad they are? LOL.
Seriously, do you enjoy watching people playing videogames? Is there even a market for that?
It's a multi-billion dollar industry. Go to Twitch right now and look at how many people are watching other people play video games. It's in the tens of millions. You might as well be asking if there's a market for online shopping.
A level 1 - level 20 story arc in D&D took my group four years of almost weekly playing. I expect a GOOD Crusade campaign to be about the same
What kind of magical world do you live in that can keep a campaign going that long? I've never lived anywhere that could even keep a 12 week campaign for any system going without people dropping. A few store managers I've spoken with said they try to keep campaigns to 8-9 weeks because there's usually a big dropoff after that. That's why crusade wasn't meant for that, because their experience and market research shows that only a fraction of a percent of the overall customer base will stay engaged with a campaign longer than 12 weeks.
The 4 years may come from the fact that you play, lets say once a month. then 12 games turn in to a year. On the other hand if you play 3 games each day of a weekend, and maybe 1-3 games durning the week, if things are slower, you burn through content much faster.
At my old store, when we run a new players campaign, at the start of 8th, some people would play 10+ games durning the week and then another 10 durning weekends. Which with a 3W-1L-0D point set up, made some older players ask for a limit of games per weekend, because some of us could generate more points then them, even while losing 20 games per week.
My club plays twice weekly and all 3 Crusade campaigns ground to a halt after a few weeks or so, because after about 10 games people started finishing up their Crusade content and getting legendary characters.
Rihgu wrote: I love how tneva82 constantly posts that their predictions are so accurate (or would be, if double turn didn't exist for aos) but has never once rose to the challenge of ever trying to prove it. Like literally once a person posts two lists they fade out of the topic as if they had never posted at alllll.
Yup, he's that local braggart everyone knows is full of it.
As to the market for video games, I avidly support speed running. I love watching wholesome people like Arcus and PJ have awesome runs, just to shave a tenth of a second off their WR in Ninja Gaiden, or Bionic Commando. Games that used to decimate me as a kid. On the other hand, who doesn't love watching Zallard and Sinister do a Blindfolded speed run of Mike Tyson's Punchout! with each using one hand on the same controller? Epic stuff!
Blackie wrote: I don't know. I consider pretty much every game and sports in the world, barring a very few exceptions (all sports), as boring as hell to watch. Even if they are a lot of fun to play in person.
Seriously, do you enjoy watching people playing boardgames, cardgames or videogames? Is there even a market for that?
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
There's a difference between "I don't need to drive a car because everything is a 5min walk from the house" vs "Who would ever need automobiles? Is there even a market for that?"
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
Same, tbh.
But then, I think the same about the more general streams on youtube that everyone and their dog seems to be doing at the moment.
I'm sure it makes things easier on the creator (no need for editing or other such), but I fail to see why listing to 4 hours of waffle is apparently preferable to 20 minutes of concise discussion.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Part of it is the lack of player decisionmaking as well.
You can make wargames enjoyable with casters - and sometimes the casters can be the players. Tabletop CP does Chain of Command battle reports that are unedited and manage to get a following - and they aren't nearly as young or charismatic as the the TTT folks.
But the game itself.does some of the heavy lifting. Player choice is a lot more castable.when the options aren't so obvious. Rolled a 4,1,3 2,1 for your Command dice? Ooh let"s see how the player runs his army with this roll. Rolled a 6,6,2,1,5? Well, let's see if the player plans to take advantage of the double phase - but his enemy has a COC die and he probably hasn't guessed he has a flamethrower in support...
Etc.
Lack of easily explainable decision making. A high level game of 40k has far more going on in decision making than you give the game credit for and far more than most mid-level 40k games have as well. It's all just relatively difficult to articulate quickly.
Other wargames also have that much (or more) difficult to explain nuance, the difference is they also have easy stuff for the caster to talk about. Legion is a good example with Order chips and cards. Alternate Activation just inherently makes it easy because you can focus down onto a handful of specific interactions rather than "okay, now let me explain why running 7" rather than 9" is important using the current positioning and ranges of EVERY UNIT AND OBJECTIVE ON THE BOARD.'
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
There's a difference between "I don't need to drive a car because everything is a 5min walk from the house" vs "Who would ever need automobiles? Is there even a market for that?"
Especially egregious if you read any of the lore, which is also a close equivalent to 'just watching the game'.
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
Same, tbh.
But then, I think the same about the more general streams on youtube that everyone and their dog seems to be doing at the moment.
I'm sure it makes things easier on the creator (no need for editing or other such), but I fail to see why listing to 4 hours of waffle is apparently preferable to 20 minutes of concise discussion.
For streaming in particular there's 2 general modes of consumption that give it a strong competitive advantage over more traditional video medium:
1. Interactivity. Anyone with an account on the streaming service can talk to the creators real time, as well as other fans. This creates a sense of comraderie or community that's only achieved in external forums or subreddit with traditional media. It's basically dakkadakka in real time. Since you're ON dakkadakka, I'm assuming you can understand the appeal.
2. Non-interactivity. The 'moment by moment' nature of a stream means that your attention can drop in and drop out and you'll likely miss very little, and what you do miss will be relatively easy to catch up on. This makes livestream perfect for 'secondary entertainment modes' when doing something else. Essentially background noise that you can drop in and drop out of without hampering the experience. A traditional tv show/movie/youtube video generally has a beginning/middle/end that makes it much harder to dip in and out of unless you've already seen it before.
Note that even streamed games of 40k, which also have beginning/middle/end, can be enjoyed in that same non-interactive way because you honestly don't really need to follow the arc of the game to enjoy the moment to moment discussion between the players (provided the players are interesting to listen to. Which, if they have a successful stream, means that they're at least mildly entertaining sometimes).
Unit1126PLL wrote: Part of it is the lack of player decisionmaking as well.
You can make wargames enjoyable with casters - and sometimes the casters can be the players. Tabletop CP does Chain of Command battle reports that are unedited and manage to get a following - and they aren't nearly as young or charismatic as the the TTT folks.
But the game itself.does some of the heavy lifting. Player choice is a lot more castable.when the options aren't so obvious. Rolled a 4,1,3 2,1 for your Command dice? Ooh let"s see how the player runs his army with this roll. Rolled a 6,6,2,1,5? Well, let's see if the player plans to take advantage of the double phase - but his enemy has a COC die and he probably hasn't guessed he has a flamethrower in support...
Etc.
Lack of easily explainable decision making. A high level game of 40k has far more going on in decision making than you give the game credit for and far more than most mid-level 40k games have as well. It's all just relatively difficult to articulate quickly.
It can be explained easily enough, the problem is 40k's gameplay is so dense those explanations would be boring as all hell.
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
There's a difference between "I don't need to drive a car because everything is a 5min walk from the house" vs "Who would ever need automobiles? Is there even a market for that?"
Lol, I'm simply not interested in videogames, don't know any friends who are deep into videogames and don't read anything about videogames. I only care about Mass Effect, Fallout and Hitman new releases. Other than that I'm completely ignorant on videogames and anything about its market.
I don't even get the appeal of online playing or multiplayer. But I do understand that lots of people love it. I simply had no idea that there were people, let alone millions of them, who enjoy watching other people play.
Mine could be the boomerest post on dakka but yours is definitely among the most obtuse ones .
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Tyel wrote: Rather like sports, I feel it matters more if you care about the result.
I.E. watching some battle reports is like pulling teeth. You can't hear the players (if they say anything at all) or often much of the table. Its just a lot of standing around, then some dice rolling (which, depending on focus you may not be able to see) and then some models get removed.
But I've watched some big tournament finals online - and yeah it can work. There is a bit of fun to it. You hopefully have some commentators who vaguely know how to talk about the game (or just be somewhat amusing). You have a chat to bounce off. You can really get into thinking about whether player X goes all in this turn, do they hold off, if they do go all in how do the dice fall etc. This is especially true if you want someone to win (either for personal reasons, faction reasons, whatever).
The issue however with tournaments is that you can't have all the improved camera work, graphics etc which are becoming more common on youtube battle report channels. Which must be growing in popularity or there wouldn't be so many.
Really "live 40k" needs some decent casters and some sort of flyable micro-drone that can get good camera work of the table during a game. The former is probably easier to sort out than the second.
Yeah, all of that. And playing on the typical dull terrain, that tournaments always have, with barely acceptable battle ready armies doesn't help either.
This is the boomerest post I have ever seen on Dakkadakka
I'm a millennial and I understand that there's a market for it, but I still don't get the appeal.
There's a difference between "I don't need to drive a car because everything is a 5min walk from the house" vs "Who would ever need automobiles? Is there even a market for that?"
Unit1126PLL wrote: Part of it is the lack of player decisionmaking as well.
You can make wargames enjoyable with casters - and sometimes the casters can be the players. Tabletop CP does Chain of Command battle reports that are unedited and manage to get a following - and they aren't nearly as young or charismatic as the the TTT folks.
But the game itself.does some of the heavy lifting. Player choice is a lot more castable.when the options aren't so obvious. Rolled a 4,1,3 2,1 for your Command dice? Ooh let"s see how the player runs his army with this roll. Rolled a 6,6,2,1,5? Well, let's see if the player plans to take advantage of the double phase - but his enemy has a COC die and he probably hasn't guessed he has a flamethrower in support...
Etc.
Lack of easily explainable decision making. A high level game of 40k has far more going on in decision making than you give the game credit for and far more than most mid-level 40k games have as well. It's all just relatively difficult to articulate quickly.
It can be explained easily enough, the problem is 40k's gameplay is so dense those explanations would be boring as all hell.
What kind of magical world do you live in that can keep a campaign going that long? I've never lived anywhere that could even keep a 12 week campaign for any system going without people dropping. A few store managers I've spoken with said they try to keep campaigns to 8-9 weeks because there's usually a big dropoff after that.
For starters, since 1989, I've played one game in a store, and I've been to I think two events? My best games were always with friends at people's houses where we could do other things in the same space, like drink, or listen to metal loud enough to make models move on their own. In order to get to a place where this was possible, I had to make friends that knew how to play, and I had to teach my non-gamer friends how to play, and I have enough minis that I supply newbs with armies regularly.
Here's a tip: when your friends tell you that they aren't interested in playing 40k, what they might actually mean is "I'm not interested in buying or painting the models necessary to play 40k." In 30+ years, I've never met a person who wouldn't play when I supplied the models, terrain, play space and books. Not all of them became players, but many did. And with the built-in support for 25PL games in the current edition, the cross compatibility with KT 2021 or BSF, as well as the preponderance of vs boxes (4/ year every year!) and combat patrol boxes, playing this way has never been easier.
In fact, another tip? I honestly don't think it's possible to create your own circle of 40k gamers if you insist on playing 2K games. You play 2k with a newb, and even if they're wicked smart enough to pick up the rules (usually only happens if you're dealing with a certified gamer who has played enough other games that they've learned how to learn rules) and even if they LOVE the game, they still probably won't become players, because they can understand how much money and time it would take for them to get that far- so the only way you get buy in from a newb is to demonstrate to them that 2k ISN'T the default.
In 1998, I ran a teen center where I taught somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15-20 teenagers how to play and supplied all the models that they need for our games at the center. You'd be amazed at how many of those teens I've met as adults, and some of them have armies of their own now. And some of those that don't are still up for games if I bring the models.
Creating your own gaming circle is a skill, and it also requires a lot of luck and a particular set of circumstances, so even among those who have the skill, it isn't always possible to employ it. I recognize this fact, and I am grateful every day for the circumstances that allow me to do this. Did I mention that I met my wife at a games convention? One that I managed as member of the university gaming society? Or that I GMed 5/7 slots that weekend because that's just what WGS Executives did?
(I was also the Vampire Prince of my city for a year and half... And Nosferatu at that! But that's another story....)
That's why crusade wasn't meant for that, because their experience and market research shows that only a fraction of a percent of the overall customer base will stay engaged with a campaign longer than 12 weeks.
Crusade was meant for people to use it in as many different ways as they can think of, as are all forms of 40k. GW doesn't want A demographic: GW wants them ALL. Other games may target A demographic, but GW hasn't been interested in that narrow minded kind of approach since the Kirby "We're a model company" days.
Crusade was designed to be flexible enough for a weekend campaign, a 12 week campaign or a campaign that lasts the entire duration of the edition. Obviously, a 9th edition Crusade campaign is not meant to last more than the length of the edition, because for sure, GW totally wants you to buy the next edition. But don't be surprised to see rules about how to update a 9th edition Crusade to continue moving forward as a 10th edition Crusade, because again, that would capture more demographics. In fact, this is actually a requirement for me, and if they don't do it, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm buying into 10th. Odds are slim even if they do include this in 10th, because edition churn is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for in a game; they almost lost me when 9th dropped, but I decided to stick around long enough to try Crusade, and once I did I discovered that 9th was better for me than the edition I was leaving behind.
Equally obviously, GW expects that six months is a satisfying duration for what MOST Crusade players want, because that's how long a 40k season is. But each season includes 48-54 missions, and GW does expect that there will be at least some people who want to play them all- and you'd be hard pressed to do that in the six months they give you before the next season breaks.
But what's more thematic than Lasguns autowounding Titans on a 6 to hit?
The new rule for the Guard is totally congruent with the way they are represented in the fluff, just like how it makes perfect sense that a metal tube launching hand-fed dumb-fire explosive rounds is more accurate than a system that fires literal smart missiles that seek in on their targets.
As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
No a huge fan of the solution either, but it's still way better than the "get fethed!" response other armies get in the same situation.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
What if - bear with me here - you released everyone's codex at the same time?
That way you wouldn't put yourself in the position of needing to create a single, army-wide ability to make up for the fact that an army isn't getting an updated codex for half a year or so.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
No a huge fan of the solution either, but it's still way better than the "get fethed!" response other armies get in the same situation.
As a not veteran game designer but still a bit of a designer the answer is that no one with any knowledge of game design would drip feed such a vast amount of rules for their game of the course of 3 years while also constantly changing the way the game plays. The problem with Guard is with GWs design/marketing philosophy, it's not something that can be solved by a single rule.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
What if - bear with me here - you released everyone's codex at the same time?
That way you wouldn't put yourself in the position of needing to create a single, army-wide ability to make up for the fact that an army isn't getting an updated codex for half a year or so.
Oh no, why didn't I think of that?
Clearly, that was totally within the power of whoever wrote that update to go to the board, change the entire company's operating model, hire more staff, toss out all the plans for the next years and roll out 20 absolutely perfect codices on the first day of 9th.
Instead, they decided to have lasguns be better at killing titans and called it a day.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I mean, at my company, if something is so badly fethed up that I can't fix it, I am expected to elevate it to the next level to someone who CAN.
What I am NOT supposed to do is waste time trying to figure out one-liner workarounds to unfuck things in hamfisted and potentially harmful ways.
That's any kind of support 101 really, do what you can or have confidence in your ability/remit to do and then pass onto the person on a bigger paycheck to handle the harder stuff. Not so applicable to GW and their internal structure I'd guess though in terms of the rules.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I mean, at my company, if something is so badly fethed up that I can't fix it, I am expected to elevate it to the next level to someone who CAN.
What I am NOT supposed to do is waste time trying to figure out one-liner workarounds to unfuck things in hamfisted and potentially harmful ways.
Yeah, pretty much. Alternatively, with IG, they could have just not bothered implementing a buff that has apparently barely moved the needle on the faction's results. What IG need is a complete rework and not being made to wait over 2 years for a codex. Proper control of the design process in the first place would obviously have helped prevent such a big gap but it appears that's one of GW's many areas of incompetence.
I'm genuinely tossing this idea out here because I personally hate the drip-feed speed of codex release throughout an edition. If GW has done anything above everything else to earn my ire... it is their approach to codex release.
An edition lasts 3 years, it takes them 3 years to release all of the codices... if they can even achieve that. In editions with fundamentally different rules (8th) or addons that are nearly mandatory to have (crusade/army secondaries 9th)... it is a pretty shoddy practice to make large portions of your players have to wait most of that edition without bespoke rules. I imagine Chaos, Guard, probably even this latest wave of books are going to have LESS time in 9th with Crusade and Matched Play secondaries than they will with. The only hope is the system isn't radically upended with 10th edition... but even that seems likely... we're due another system reset as this is the second edition with the same basic kit of rules.
So: would you prefer to continue 9th edition for 3 more years and receive all of the codices at the launch of 10th... and I mean very little 9th support as all of that work is going into 10th (at least for rules). Or do you prefer the codex drip-feed carousel with constant micro-changes every 3 months?
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
Heavy and Special weapons for free (which they did). Points cuts otherwise. Done.
Jidmah wrote: So the general consensus is that IG should better have gotten nothing at all for the next year or so?
Cool.
Looks like the consensus is more "GW should release stuff quicker".
They've changed some things, and they have made some difference. If GW aren't going to get around to a new IG Codex any time soon they should at least take a good proper look at their points in the next update. That's a practical example of something they could do that's helpful.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
Heavy and Special weapons for free (which they did). Points cuts otherwise. Done.
I'd go ahead and throw some of the durability and firepower buffs that they already know they're going to do on there as well. They've already given Leman Russes a 2+, so it's pretty much guaranteed that Baneblades will get the same. And I find it hard to believe that they don't have plans to buff the various Russ turret weapons. Go ahead and get some of that stuff out there.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
Heavy and Special weapons for free (which they did). Points cuts otherwise. Done.
Not a fan of point cuts. Just means bad feelings when they go up later.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
Heavy and Special weapons for free (which they did). Points cuts otherwise. Done.
Not a fan of point cuts. Just means bad feelings when they go up later.
Too bad. You gotta deal with the design changes just like the rest of us
It also depends a LOT on where you're cutting points from, and also why prices might go up later. If vehicle prices are cut, then go up again later when those vehicles get a major buff, I don't think anyone's going to be too upset by it.
Points cut on an army of already cheap models, in an era in which most of the games are played at high formats (yeah, 2000 is pretty high) is a terrible solution.
I certainly prefer something that doesn't make any sense concept wise (like hammer) but helps reducing the gap while also avoiding requiring more time or models to play the same game than before.
If guardsmen were 10ppm and leman russes were 300 points, then yeah points cuts would have been an optimal solution. But this wasn't the case.
Blackie wrote: Points cut on an army of already cheap models, in an era in which most of the games are played at high formats (yeah, 2000 is pretty high) is a terrible solution.
I certainly prefer something that doesn't make any sense concept wise (like hammer) but helps reducing the gap while also avoiding requiring more time or models to play the same game than before.
If guardsmen were 10ppm and leman russes were 300 points, then yeah points cuts would have been an optimal solution. But this wasn't the case.
Are Leman Russes cheap? Baneblades? I'm not going to believe there's no room for point cuts in the IG book.
Too bad. You gotta deal with the design changes just like the rest of us
It also depends a LOT on where you're cutting points from, and also why prices might go up later. If vehicle prices are cut, then go up again later when those vehicles get a major buff, I don't think anyone's going to be too upset by it.
I'd be fine. It's the people forced into potentially buying more models that I worry about.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
Heavy and Special weapons for free (which they did). Points cuts otherwise. Done.
I'd go ahead and throw some of the durability and firepower buffs that they already know they're going to do on there as well. They've already given Leman Russes a 2+, so it's pretty much guaranteed that Baneblades will get the same. And I find it hard to believe that they don't have plans to buff the various Russ turret weapons. Go ahead and get some of that stuff out there.
That only really affects a narrow portion of the army.
I can't say that killing power is necessarily the problem, but instead interacting with the missions and how easily their army might give up points.
Too bad. You gotta deal with the design changes just like the rest of us
It also depends a LOT on where you're cutting points from, and also why prices might go up later. If vehicle prices are cut, then go up again later when those vehicles get a major buff, I don't think anyone's going to be too upset by it.
I'd be fine. It's the people forced into potentially buying more models that I worry about.
You can't be serious.
I'd wager the times people look at their list and say "Golly gee it's a good thing I can't fit anything else in here." is practically 0% of the time.
I'd wager the times people look at their list and say "Golly gee it's a good thing I can't fit anything else in here." is practically 0% of the time.
That may have been true when we had slower codex releases, but when we know they're due a new book that will add rules and increase points it isn't the same outcome as it used to be.
Blackie wrote: Points cut on an army of already cheap models, in an era in which most of the games are played at high formats (yeah, 2000 is pretty high) is a terrible solution.
I certainly prefer something that doesn't make any sense concept wise (like hammer) but helps reducing the gap while also avoiding requiring more time or models to play the same game than before.
If guardsmen were 10ppm and leman russes were 300 points, then yeah points cuts would have been an optimal solution. But this wasn't the case.
Are Leman Russes cheap? Baneblades? I'm not going to believe there's no room for point cuts in the IG book.
How much do they cost?
How much should tanks that size and with their loadout cost?
If they don't perform they need better stats or rules.
Points cuts are fair for units that are extremely overpriced. Like a stompa which is hundreds of points more expensive than a knight and worse than the worst knight.
Jidmah wrote: So the general consensus is that IG should better have gotten nothing at all for the next year or so?
Cool.
Looks like the consensus is more "GW should release stuff quicker".
Claiming the problem shouldn't exist in the first place is not a solution for people affected by said problem though.
I was specifically asking for a better solution than gauss lasguns. I guess dropping points across the board is one, though they really don't do that for datasheets.
Do people really care what other armies are getting, at the end of an edition. Specially considering the last few books. IG could get a rule that for every 10 dudes shoting at a target, they get a +6, then +5 and finaly +4 auto wounds and it wouldn't be broken, the way the game is right now.
These are all the IG players from June '21 to now. I split them out from pre slate and post slate results.
Not pictured are 1022 other IG players who have yet to play since the dataslate.
The image below represents 200 games played post slate. Of those 96 were from people who didn't play at least since June ( so they're pretty fresh to the scene ). Of those 96 games 25.5 were wins ( draw = 0.5 - keeping it simply Dys! ). That's a 26% WR.
The remaining 104 games from recently experienced players had a win rate of 31%. Probably too narrow of a margin to take anything from that.
The top guy with 100% player Sisters, GK, and Nids with Pask, 3 TCs, 2 LRBTs, a Manticore, and some infantry / HWTs.
I'd wager the times people look at their list and say "Golly gee it's a good thing I can't fit anything else in here." is practically 0% of the time.
That may have been true when we had slower codex releases, but when we know they're due a new book that will add rules and increase points it isn't the same outcome as it used to be.
I'm sorry but I genuinely think this is a non-problem.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Points are not the great leveller. If there are problems with the faction, simply changing the points won't fix the problem
I agree, which is why I also gave the Free Weapons rule too. But really I'm just following the brief as well as I can.
Of course a fresh new book with a sweeping array of finely tuned adjustments and changes would be better, but it wasn't the assignment. In the meantime though, I'm going to use a mechanism already in place. Points still work as a balancing tool, they do effect choices and therefore army lists as well as tourney outcomes.
How are the win rates calculated, when those guys didn't even play a 100 games of 9th? 4 games played and a 50% win rate, can be a buy, followed by opponent leaving and then you leaving. And you get a 50% win rate that way.
Karol wrote: How are the win rates calculated, when those guys didn't even play a 100 games of 9th? 4 games played and a 50% win rate, can be a buy, followed by opponent leaving and then you leaving. And you get a 50% win rate that way.
Byes are pretty rare and all these games have an opponent and score recorded.
The best solution for GW to fix IG has very little to do with changing anything about IG and very much to do with changing lots about GW.
If you rule out changes in the way GW does things, then you've overconstrained the problem and of course you're going to get answers that don't work and disgruntled employees.
If I elevate a problem I can't fix, and management says "deal with it, dill weed" then I'm not the one who's wrong for not being able to fix the problem.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The best solution for GW to fix IG has very little to do with changing anything about IG and very much to do with changing lots about GW.
If you rule out changes in the way GW does things, then you've overconstrained the problem and of course you're going to get answers that don't work and disgruntled employees.
If I elevate a problem I can't fix, and management says "deal with it, dill weed" then I'm not the one who's wrong for not being able to fix the problem.
Your task is to fix the problem as it stands with the methods available. Anything surrounding the creation or prevention of the issue is irrelevant, because it is out of scope.
But addressing symptoms without addressing causes is just a road to more of the same. Obviously WE can't fix whatever process or biases govern the GW design process, but we could at least point out why we think it's not working.
Sure, no disagreement there. If GW is doing anything on that front it probably won't be apparent for a year at least...unless pigs fly and they go proper digital.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The best solution for GW to fix IG has very little to do with changing anything about IG and very much to do with changing lots about GW.
If you rule out changes in the way GW does things, then you've overconstrained the problem and of course you're going to get answers that don't work and disgruntled employees.
If I elevate a problem I can't fix, and management says "deal with it, dill weed" then I'm not the one who's wrong for not being able to fix the problem.
Your task is to fix the problem as it stands with the methods available. Anything surrounding the creation or prevention of the issue is irrelevant, because it is out of scope.
Ok. I elevate the task to the next level of authority, since the methods available cannot satisfactorily fix it, and the next level of authority should have more methods available.
The way this works in a sane company is each level tries to fix it with the tools they have, and if they are unable they continue to elevate, until it reaches a high enough level that a fundamental restructuring occurs to fix the problem.
tneva82 wrote: You assume this is error for gw and not intentional feature.
Gw hates idea of balanance as it's less profitable.
I'd still see that as a management issue. I think GW could remain profitable while still keeping the amount of "churn" to a much more acceptable level. I definitely think the game can be better without being at the expense of profit.
I don't think they hate balance or that balance is less profitable. but it would require more work, and to have a core of people that could actualy do and test a balanced system. Plus at the moment we are right now, GW is not much thinking about 9th anymore, they are probably finishing 10th ed rules or just finished them and working on the first space marine codex for the edition. They don't have time to retest stuff, they designed 9 or 12 months ago.
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Hecaton 804430 11354239 wrote:
They definitely *can*. It's not the only way.
In the end it is what we call a theological debate. We can warp ourselfs in to a pretzel, but the chance of GW doing anything is rather minor. I think the only thing that can produce imidiate reaction from GW is stuff like. Suddenly they find out that people could buy and play extremly efficient armies for 400$. Or they actually get to see what happens when someone plays tyranids, 9 voids or similar. And even then it is just a chance of reaction, because sometimes the reaction is. Lets nerf the big bad DE, but also the orks and ad mecha, and suddenly DE have a different build even better then the old one, because the only armies that were given them trouble just got nerfed. Plus they react to meta, probably in no small reason, because of how printed books work, to metas from 6 or 12 months ago. I will never understand the hate boner they had for GK in 8th, or for SoB and DG in 9th.
maybe incompetence, but we lack any proof of malice. Until they know they can sell models, no matter what they do, they will not change. why would they put the effort, It is like training, I have seen guys who were just born better for sports, some of them, specially if they win a lot and don't get a higher rank partner to train with start slacking, because there is no need for them to learn techniques or watch other people fights etc problems of course start when they run in to a just as big or bigger guy. weight cathergory or age group change for those guys are , from my expiriance, a career ending thing. So all we need is for some to create, out of nothing, a table top game the size of w40k, and GW will have to change.
Points have a breaking point. If boys were 5-6pts and grots, 3-4 there would be some degeneracy happening. Not because this would make orcs crazy, but because tyranid troops would have to be adjusted down too. And I don't think anyone would want to see what happens when guants cost 4pts.
Karol wrote: Points have a breaking point. If boys were 5-6pts and grots, 3-4 there would be some degeneracy happening. Not because this would make orcs crazy, but because tyranid troops would have to be adjusted down too. And I don't think anyone would want to see what happens when guants cost 4pts.
Honestly I was all for making Gaunts three points each!
After or before seeing the rules of the new codex? Because right now it feels like the old DE aka as if a 2000pts nid army was more like 2500 or 2750 pts.
Hecaton wrote: On a serious note, it's a mix of incompetence and malice.
I'd say apathy and a lack of understanding of how their game actually functions are the larger contributing factors. tneva82 assertion that GW 'hates' balance doesn't ring true because I don't think GW has strong emotions on balance either way.
Hecaton wrote: On a serious note, it's a mix of incompetence and malice.
I'd say apathy and a lack of understanding of how their game actually functions are the larger contributing factors. tneva82 assertion that GW 'hates' balance doesn't ring true because I don't think GW has strong emotions on balance either way.
But addressing symptoms without addressing causes is just a road to more of the same. Obviously WE can't fix whatever process or biases govern the GW design process, but we could at least point out why we think it's not working.
It's not really a challenge though - as someone who had to deal with having codices which had it worse than 8th edition guard for years, I would have loved if someone in the rules team had thrown orks a bone that looked even remotely like the IG data slate, just to get me by for the next couple of months.
So I genuinely think this is a great thing to happen for IG/AM players, and should happen much more often for any army in a similar predicament.
When, within GW, sales people have the power to tell rules teams to change their rules to improve sales, how high do you think are the chances of a rules team telling sales to change their ways to improve the rules? For all the complaining about it, no one has really provided a better solution outside of waiting for the next round of point updates or asking impossible things to happen.
Jidmah wrote: As a veteran game designer, how would you write a single bullet point army-wide buff to guard that improves their damage in a way that doesn't require a metric ton of re-rolls?
What if - bear with me here - you released everyone's codex at the same time?
That way you wouldn't put yourself in the position of needing to create a single, army-wide ability to make up for the fact that an army isn't getting an updated codex for half a year or so.
That would disbalance the sales data over the quartals and as such would make their shareholders unhappy.
So never gonna happen, because codices sales are probably quite important, despite it being better for the game. Also WAAAY more gametesting time required which would increase cost.
They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
Having a look at the new codexes it's pretty clear that they weren't designed in the same time as the first codexes of the edition.
I'm ok with "slowly" releasing the codexes (IMHO the codex cycle of release is already extremely fast, and way too fast), I'm not ok with codexes getting rules and stats that belong to different leagues. Like weapons with D3+3 damage or even higher when the older counterparts are D6 or 3.
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
it would still be unfair , especially for the last released faction.
It would not solve the issues of the codex cycle at all.
It would force them to commit upfront hours and then have writers being obsolete, for quite a while, before the next edition comes out.
it is unlikely, purely from a company standpoint, and even if it would happen there would still be severe missbalance for older codices.
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
If we are already going to "what-if" land, nothing really forces them to do whole armies at once, right?
If they had a digital way to distribute their rules, they could just pick a part of their ruleset, for example add crusade rules for everyone, polish all the main battle tanks which are durable as wet paper bags or delete two thirds of the stratagems in existence and only do a big rework of a whole army when it's really necessary.
Not Online!!! wrote: It would force them to commit upfront hours and then have writers being obsolete, for quite a while, before the next edition comes out.
How? Those writers could then put their efforts into other types of rules-based products.
Not Online!!! wrote: it is unlikely, purely from a company standpoint, and even if it would happen there would still be severe missbalance for older codices.
I don't see how, because there wouldn't be "older codices".
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
it would still be unfair , especially for the last released faction. It would not solve the issues of the codex cycle at all.
It would force them to commit upfront hours and then have writers being obsolete, for quite a while, before the next edition comes out.
They can't work on supplements? Campaign books? Playtest fixes for the current codex cycle? Test new models for the next codex cycle or aforementioned supplements? Write rules for other games like Warcry, Underworlds, Aeronautica, Titanicus, Warhammer Quest?
There's pleny for GWs rules writers to do, which is probably why they suffer so much under the current design philosophy.
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
I don't know if the timescales on the kit production currently allows them to write rules for something that won't exist for 3 years or may not even be designed yet. They've always been adamant that the minis get given to the rules team to fit in.
they don't even need to be written at the same time but the problem is GW is utterly incapable of sticking to a system.
Designers would need to sit down and write a solid baseline for the entire edition to be based on and test this baseline thoroughly because its the foundation of the entire edition. Then from said baseline they can write all the codexes as they do now, and if they did a good job it all ends roughly equal and anything that slips through the cracks can get balanced out in updates.
The issue is that this is fundamentally not how GW operates, as we see time and time again.
They throw stuff together and make things up as they go along and that obviously doesn't work.
I think that by now the commercial model is clear. They are doing the same as other similar companies.
New releases need to generate a good profit, it is a big issue when they don't. A good profit is made by good models with good rules. They never had issues with the good models part, but the rules part is not 100% deterministic and play test can only get you so far. If the dex underperforms, it sells much less, so in doubt you aim at it being a bit stronger than the other ones, ready to fix them once you have more data. This means that sometimes you make them weaker than expected and get a balanced dex (TS, sisters, GSC and so on), sometimes you get it just right and it is a strong dex (DA, GK), sometimes you make them stronger than intended and you get meta monsters (Admech, Drukhari and so on).
With this sytem, in any case you don't get underpowered factions which don't sell. As long as you keep going with the nerfs, this works.
The issue obviously is that almost at all times you will have that faction which just came out which can potentially be too strong.
Blackie wrote: They can write all the codexes at once, with a comparable level of power in mind, and then slowly release them like they do now.
I was about to say. You don't need to release them all at once, but do write them all at once.
It would breed a level of cohesion, rather than each Codex building upon the last one, paradigm shifts in design ethos, and so on. Less designing in a vacuum and more deliberate control over the content of each book in the context of itself and every other book.
I don't know if the timescales on the kit production currently allows them to write rules for something that won't exist for 3 years or may not even be designed yet. They've always been adamant that the minis get given to the rules team to fit in.
There's no reason that that's how rules and models have to interact though.
'GW can't do anything about [problem] because of [other problem caused by GW]' isn't very convincing as an argument.
I don't know if the timescales on the kit production currently allows them to write rules for something that won't exist for 3 years or may not even be designed yet. They've always been adamant that the minis get given to the rules team to fit in.
But pretty much everything already exists from the beginning. Most of the armies don't get many new releases in each edition, some get even none for years. And to add a few more new stuff on top on something that has already been written (note I mean written/designed, not already printed) isn't a big deal.
Take the new tyranids codex. I think there's just one unit that's really new, anything else already existed since the launch of 9th edition. It wouldn't have been hard to write the codex at that moment and then add the lone new monster, and correct a few things here and there considering the state of the game. Same with Aeldari, custodes, tau... and many factions before them.
I don't understand the argument that sides with staggered codex releases. It's obvious to even the newest player that it's intentional design to have the newest codexes be more powerful. With some VERY slight exceptions, there has been a rampant power creep and increase in imbalance with every new codex. Special Faction rules that completely invalidate other factions. Special rules that are targeted to benefiting an imperialist faction over say, a chaos one (SECOND WOUND COUGH COUGH).
I was team incompetance for the first half of this edition, what with the day 1 DLCs and obvious misprints in codexes. But now it's just pissing in my face and calling it Covid-related shipping issues.
The fact that Chaos didn't get their second wound until 3 years into the edition, the fact that DE were until very recently still borked, the fact that Custodes and Harlies were even going to print in their respective fashions, tells me that the rules team is made up not of incompetents, but of vindictive fanbois. And the fact that GW is letting it happen is because, well, look at the numbers. GW is experiencing a surge not seen since well, ever.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
I don't know if the timescales on the kit production currently allows them to write rules for something that won't exist for 3 years or may not even be designed yet. They've always been adamant that the minis get given to the rules team to fit in.
But pretty much everything already exists from the beginning. Most of the armies don't get many new releases in each edition, some get even none for years. And to add a few more new stuff on top on something that has already been written (note I mean written/designed, not already printed) isn't a big deal.
Take the new tyranids codex. I think there's just one unit that's really new, anything else already existed since the launch of 9th edition. It wouldn't have been hard to write the codex at that moment and then add the lone new monster, and correct a few things here and there considering the state of the game. Same with Aeldari, custodes, tau... and many factions before them.
To take chaos marines as an example, they're being released mid 2022, 2 years after the edition launch, the mini design process for some of these units would be just beginning in 2020. True, lots of factions don't get much, but that's not what the majority of people want or ask for.
How do you let the designer create with freedom or writers create rules for something you can't envision at this point?
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:I don't understand the argument that sides with staggered codex releases. It's obvious to even the newest player that it's intentional design to have the newest codexes be more powerful. With some VERY slight exceptions, there has been a rampant power creep and increase in imbalance with every new codex. Special Faction rules that completely invalidate other factions. Special rules that are targeted to benefiting an imperialist faction over say, a chaos one (SECOND WOUND COUGH COUGH).
I was team incompetance for the first half of this edition, what with the day 1 DLCs and obvious misprints in codexes. But now it's just pissing in my face and calling it Covid-related shipping issues.
The fact that Chaos didn't get their second wound until 3 years into the edition, the fact that DE were until very recently still borked, the fact that Custodes and Harlies were even going to print in their respective fashions, tells me that the rules team is made up not of incompetents, but of vindictive fanbois. And the fact that GW is letting it happen is because, well, look at the numbers. GW is experiencing a surge not seen since well, ever.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
You need to stop being involved with the hobby, it doesn't seem to be good for you at this time. You have a good mix of overreaction, exaggeration and hyperbole going on here.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
No more profit? They are crushing numbers year after year even during a pandemic and even without having managed to ramp up production of plastic kits.
Now that their second manufacturing plant comes online, they won't have entire product lines "out of stock" every time a new book comes out.
If you're so confident about their imminent doomfall, download a trading app and buy some put options to short the stock. You'd make some money out of it.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: tells me that the rules team is made up not of incompetents, but of vindictive fanbois. And the fact that GW is letting it happen is because, well, look at the numbers. GW is experiencing a surge not seen since well, ever.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
As someone with a 3d printer and multiple fully printed armies, its not a threat to GW no matter what people say. It's still very time consuming and inaccessible for most, a resin printer requires fiddling with the settings (don't underestimate the computer illiteracy that many people have), it also requires a properly ventilated area and quite some space for the cleaning station too, before moving in my house, there was no way i could get myself one in my old apartment.
and even if you get all this, printing an entire army is basically working your printer nonstop for a few days, it takes a lot of time, especially if you introduce any vehicles in there
We're still many years away from having "plug and play" resin printers which *could* theoretically start scaring GW
You need to stop being involved with the hobby, it doesn't seem to be good for you at this time. You have a good mix of overreaction, exaggeration and hyperbole going on here.
This.
As much as i hate telling people that this isnt the hobby for them. In Fezzik's case it's true. I've never seen a positive post from them, only doomposting and claiming the end of GW is coming and that the designers will come and kill your dog for some reason. It's truly unhealthy.
To take chaos marines as an example, they're being released mid 2022, 2 years after the edition launch, the mini design process for some of these units would be just beginning in 2020. True, lots of factions don't get much, but that's not what the majority of people want or ask for.
How do you let the designer create with freedom or writers create rules for something you can't envision at this point?
You're overestimating the desire people have for new releases. I don't think the vast majority of people even wants new releases, I actually believe it's a tiny fraction of the playerbase that wants something new on a regular basis. Most people want to stick with a collection for a long period, without being forced to replace their old stuff with new ones which is what typically happens when new stuff is released. They're left behind or even get their collections invalidated. That's definitely what the vast majority DOESN'T want. Others want to collect multiple armies, maybe even from different games.
The GW roster is already huge, there's no need of new stuff. Start another army instead! Or even another game. That's what I've done and I'm still doing: I have tons of SW and orks, I didn't need to buy anything that was released in 8th or 9th and frankly I didn't even want to get new pricey models that are basically a slightly alternative version of already existing units, like the whole snagga line and even the whole primaris line. I bought Necromunda and fantasy models instead, loads of them.
And lots of new releases are just already existing units that get a new sculpts, so those new releases have nothing to do with "freedom" for the writers.
Ordana wrote: they don't even need to be written at the same time but the problem is GW is utterly incapable of sticking to a system.
Designers would need to sit down and write a solid baseline for the entire edition to be based on and test this baseline thoroughly because its the foundation of the entire edition. Then from said baseline they can write all the codexes as they do now, and if they did a good job it all ends roughly equal and anything that slips through the cracks can get balanced out in updates.
The issue is that this is fundamentally not how GW operates, as we see time and time again.
They throw stuff together and make things up as they go along and that obviously doesn't work.
It's essentially because they have to hit a release year.
They literally started conceiving 9th about 6 to 12 months ( or somewhere near - can't recall precisely what they said ) after 8th was released. For them to write and release all the 8th edition books while ALSO writing ninth while ALSO writing Psychic Awakening is just a recipe for disaster. There are not enough people to make a smooth transition for that in 3 years time.
With Horus this year and AoS last year then 40K will be next year. That gives them 18 months with a mostly clear slate regarding codexes, but they're going to fill that space likely with marine supplement redos and warzone stuff.
Not Online!!! wrote: it would still be unfair , especially for the last released faction.
Why?
Because you'd still get the codex that is and was on par with the other new ones, just at the end of it, meaning that for those factions, depending upon gw rulesteam being not capable of packing their nonsense in to be a hellscape to play in until your codex gets released.
Not Online!!! wrote: It would force them to commit upfront hours and then have writers being obsolete, for quite a while, before the next edition comes out.
How? Those writers could then put their efforts into other types of rules-based products.
Could , but codices are far more likely to actually sell, compared to other rules products.
Not Online!!! wrote: it is unlikely, purely from a company standpoint, and even if it would happen there would still be severe missbalance for older codices.
I don't see how, because there wouldn't be "older codices".
Yes, until your codex get's updated in the cycle it will not matter that the new codex is tested against the new codices, because you still will be playing the old codices against the new ones until then. It would out of a playerperspective change very little, untill all codices are released, then we may very well look at a superior product indeed for probably 1-3 months before rulessupplements get vommited out and or a new edition comes starting the wheel of nonsense again.
Daedalus81 wrote: They literally started conceiving 9th about 6 to 12 months ( or somewhere near - can't recall precisely what they said ) after 8th was released. For them to write and release all the 8th edition books while ALSO writing ninth while ALSO writing Psychic Awakening is just a recipe for disaster. There are not enough people to make a smooth transition for that in 3 years time.
Yeah, again:
Lord Damocles wrote: 'GW can't do anything about [problem] because of [other problem caused by GW]' isn't very convincing as an argument.
Not Online!!! wrote: Because you'd still get the codex that is and was on par with the other new ones, just at the end of it, meaning that for those factions, depending upon gw rulesteam being not capable of packing their nonsense in to be a hellscape to play in until your codex gets released.
...
Yes, until your codex get's updated in the cycle it will not matter that the new codex is tested against the new codices, because you still will be playing the old codices against the new ones until then. It would out of a playerperspective change very little, untill all codices are released, then we may very well look at a superior product indeed for probably 1-3 months before rulessupplements get vommited out and or a new edition comes starting the wheel of nonsense again.
And this is different to now, how, exactly?
The end result would be worth the 'downtime' (so to speak) from such an endeavour.
Not Online!!! wrote: Could , but codices are far more likely to actually sell, compared to other rules products.
You don't know that, and you especially don't know that in a world where all the Codices have been written in conjunction with one another. In such an environment dedicated narrative and, yes, even tournament releases could thrive, because they'd be completely free of the escalation and creep of the Codex cycle. They could be written knowing exactly what every army has right from the start.
Or, to put it another way, a rising tide raises all ships.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
They can't work on supplements? Campaign books? Playtest fixes for the current codex cycle? Test new models for the next codex cycle or aforementioned supplements? Write rules for other games like Warcry, Underworlds, Aeronautica, Titanicus, Warhammer Quest?
There's pleny for GWs rules writers to do, which is probably why they suffer so much under the current design philosophy.
Well they can of course. Problem with how GW writes rules is, that if they put out all basic rules for all armies at the same time, for the entire edition, you would on one hand have stuff like eldar, tyranids or tau and on the other hand stuff like necron or imperial fist. Lets assumes the community goes really slow this time and it takes 4-6 weeks to solve the over all meta game. The number of people who are willingly going to start necron or imperial fists, is going to be extremly low. Their entire flag ship faction, which is marines, would not have the early edition grace period of being the only updated one, nor would it have the false feeling that it is all good. Anyone who sees marines rules and the good armies rules, or even rules of armies like BT or GK and other marines would know that something ain't right there.
The fact that writers would have time to write the extra books, wouldn't help much either. Campaign etc rule sets mostly help already good and establish armies. In 9th only crusher stamped was an extra rule set that helped a weaker army.
They can't work on supplements? Campaign books? Playtest fixes for the current codex cycle? Test new models for the next codex cycle or aforementioned supplements? Write rules for other games like Warcry, Underworlds, Aeronautica, Titanicus, Warhammer Quest?
There's pleny for GWs rules writers to do, which is probably why they suffer so much under the current design philosophy.
Well they can of course. Problem with how GW writes rules is, that if they put out all basic rules for all armies at the same time, for the entire edition, you would on one hand have stuff like eldar, tyranids or tau and on the other hand stuff like necron or imperial fist. Lets assumes the community goes really slow this time and it takes 4-6 weeks to solve the over all meta game. The number of people who are willingly going to start necron or imperial fists, is going to be extremly low. Their entire flag ship faction, which is marines, would not have the early edition grace period of being the only updated one, nor would it have the false feeling that it is all good. Anyone who sees marines rules and the good armies rules, or even rules of armies like BT or GK and other marines would know that something ain't right there.
The fact that writers would have time to write the extra books, wouldn't help much either. Campaign etc rule sets mostly help already good and establish armies. In 9th only crusher stamped was an extra rule set that helped a weaker army.
Or, crazy idea-they could playtest and iterate the Codecs, so that they're reasonably well-balanced, and could give errata and points adjustments for free if a combo or interaction that was unforeseen ends up being too powerful.
They can't work on supplements? Campaign books? Playtest fixes for the current codex cycle? Test new models for the next codex cycle or aforementioned supplements? Write rules for other games like Warcry, Underworlds, Aeronautica, Titanicus, Warhammer Quest?
There's pleny for GWs rules writers to do, which is probably why they suffer so much under the current design philosophy.
Well they can of course. Problem with how GW writes rules is, that if they put out all basic rules for all armies at the same time, for the entire edition, you would on one hand have stuff like eldar, tyranids or tau and on the other hand stuff like necron or imperial fist. Lets assumes the community goes really slow this time and it takes 4-6 weeks to solve the over all meta game. The number of people who are willingly going to start necron or imperial fists, is going to be extremly low. Their entire flag ship faction, which is marines, would not have the early edition grace period of being the only updated one, nor would it have the false feeling that it is all good. Anyone who sees marines rules and the good armies rules, or even rules of armies like BT or GK and other marines would know that something ain't right there.
The fact that writers would have time to write the extra books, wouldn't help much either. Campaign etc rule sets mostly help already good and establish armies. In 9th only crusher stamped was an extra rule set that helped a weaker army.
SimLife litterally answered the imaginary problem you pointed out : use the "downtime" to playtest fixes for the current codex cycle
JNAProductions wrote: Or, crazy idea-they could playtest and iterate the Codecs, so that they're reasonably well-balanced, and could give errata and points adjustments for free if a combo or interaction that was unforeseen ends up being too powerful.
And who would those playtesters suppose to be? Can't be random dudes, because GW ain't at the level where design people can hang around all days at stores to find people they think ar representative of how the game is played all around the world. It could be friends or in house testing, but this gives the results GW gets since the begining of time itself or at least since GW started to sell rules for models. They can hire known tournament players, which is good, because those guys do have credentials that they know at least something about the game. But they come with a problem too. If you take 10 top footballers from europe and make them write rules for not just football leagues, but football itself for everyone, you will get a system which is extremly skewed in favour tournament way of playing and not much anyone else. On top of that is faction bias and company bias for specific factions. Core marines can not have a new edition without at least a few sets. After you update lets say necrons, you may not give them any new models next edition or you give them a character. Some factions clearly have more care and thought put in to both writing their rules, and fitting them in to a 2000pts army. Others on the other hand feel as if someone was given a codex to write as a punishment. Which often means a lot of copy paste and armies in this edtion need to have X, Y and Z system, and that is it. And this is just the rules part, there is also the , for GW more important, sales part. They clearly undercut armies, to nerf them later on , just so people who want to get an army now or updated it comparing to prior builds, spend more money.
GW to do something you say would have to kick out the entire design team, create a playtest team from only God knows who and it would have to not come in to conflict with the sales departament actions. Possible for a company working from a dudes garage, where a "team" means 1-2 dudes. Not really possible in a company the size of GW, with established people who wrote and designed stuff for a few decades for the company.
SimLife litterally answered the imaginary problem you pointed out : use the "downtime" to playtest fixes for the current codex cycle
They don't know how to pick the playtesters. In house playtesters give them the results w40k has seen since for ever. But lets assume it works, somehow. Now imagine someone like me wants to start to play GK under such a system. They get to see all the rules for all the factions day 1, there is no years of waiting that "maybe" GW will fix my codex. You get a book, you see in what state it is and it it looks unfun, you will not start to play it. If money ain't a problem and you want to start something else, which is fun, GW doesn't lose money. Buf it the person only wants to play this one army, they will just not play GW games at all probably.
Spoletta wrote: I think that by now the commercial model is clear. They are doing the same as other similar companies.
New releases need to generate a good profit, it is a big issue when they don't. A good profit is made by good models with good rules. They never had issues with the good models part, but the rules part is not 100% deterministic and play test can only get you so far. If the dex underperforms, it sells much less, so in doubt you aim at it being a bit stronger than the other ones, ready to fix them once you have more data. This means that sometimes you make them weaker than expected and get a balanced dex (TS, sisters, GSC and so on), sometimes you get it just right and it is a strong dex (DA, GK), sometimes you make them stronger than intended and you get meta monsters (Admech, Drukhari and so on).
With this sytem, in any case you don't get underpowered factions which don't sell. As long as you keep going with the nerfs, this works.
The issue obviously is that almost at all times you will have that faction which just came out which can potentially be too strong.
I appreciate that you didn't just go with the lazy and easily disprovable 'GW does OP 'cause Money!' route.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I don't understand the argument that sides with staggered codex releases.
I don't think anyone LIKES the staggered codex releases- I think all of us would prefer that they all drop at the same time. The issue is that some of us are thinking about the economics of the company instead thinking only about the player experience, and we know that going to a "release it all one day one" model would probably damage the company's bottom line, which could have negative consequences for the game in the long term.
It's the difference between "liking" staggered releases and "understanding" why they might be necessary.
I was team incompetance for the first half of this edition, what with the day 1 DLCs and obvious misprints in codexes. But now it's just pissing in my face and calling it Covid-related shipping issues.
There are many crises affecting the global supply chain- it isn't all Covid. But they are legit issues- we do see it in other industries.
I'm ambivalent about the DLC label on Campaign books. I'll acknowledge that it's a complex and nuanced argument that can go on for pages and pages, and then leave it at that. (Actually, I won't- because I'm going to reference someone else's comment about campaign books before the end of this post, but we'll get there soon enough)
The fact that Chaos didn't get their second wound until 3 years into the edition,
I agree totally- I think this is probably the single most egregious error of the edition, simply because it would have been so damn easy to fix. May not agree with some of the stuff in the rest of the post, but we are definitely on the same page here.
GW is experiencing a surge not seen since well, ever.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to last. GW sees the writing on the wall. They are squeezing their cheeto-fingered cash cows hard right now, because groups like one page rules and other home printing groups offer entire 2k armies for under 300$. And the rules are basically free with the STLs.
GW can't compete with that. What they can do is simple economics. Gouge the business for every last bit of capital, and then sell. I will not be surprised if GW gives up the game with 10th, or if there even is a 10th. There is no more profit in this model.
People have been predicting the death of GW or 40k for most of 40k's 35 year lifespan. I won't say it's impossible- by all accounts, they did come close in 6th and 7th, and I've also gone on record saying I don't think I will stick around for 10th. In my case, it's because I actually really like 9th, and I think 10th, though it might be better for all of you, it will probably be worse for me.
3D printing will take a chunk of the player base, it's true. But it's still farther away than enthusiasts may think, and it only replaces the modelling aspect of GW's suite of offerings- and yes, I acknowledge that it's the biggest chunk of the GW pie, but it isn't the only chunk.
Personally, I believe one of the keys to GW's current level of success is the diversity of play styles. It can be hard for people to relate to this because many of us only engage with our own slice of the game. I know that the vast majority of Dakka posters are 2k Matched players, but I'm less convinced that this group represents the largest portion of GW's customer base. And again, I acknowledge that it's possible- but I think it's very difficult to prove.
Voss wrote: Well, since PA was a disaster anyway (as are the new warzones), the solution is obvious...
I wasn't a huge fan of PA either, but I quite like the new campaign books. Keep in mind, that this is from my own particular set of preferences- stand-alone pick-up games aren't terribly interesting or exciting for me. My interest in this game (any game really) is escalation campaign style.
I also think that campaign books are an important part of sustaining a persistent edition, which is my ultimate hope for future of the game. I'm not saying that it's ever going to happen- I'd just like it to happen, and I think campaign books would be almost essential in order to make it happen.
Don't get me wrong, I do think the campaign books can be improved, for sure- merging the two hard-backs and mission packs into a single volume would be a huge improvement- heck, even just combine Mission Pack 1 with hardback 1, and mission pack 2 with hardback 2 so that we end up with 2 instead of 4.
GW or w40k will "die" when my generation is 30+, the old timers of today are gone, and suddenly GW finds out that there is too few w40k players to support the sales even if a starting army costs 4k$.
Karol wrote: GW or w40k will "die" when my generation is 30+, the old timers of today are gone, and suddenly GW finds out that there is too few w40k players to support the sales even if a starting army costs 4k$.
Dude I started over 30 years ago. It will be fine.
Karol wrote: GW or w40k will "die" when my generation is 30+, the old timers of today are gone, and suddenly GW finds out that there is too few w40k players to support the sales even if a starting army costs 4k$.
Dude I started over 30 years ago. It will be fine.
I am sure many people with many things over the ages thought so. But what I see is that, clearly the game is moving its focus from younger people to older people being the main consumers of the hobby. w40k is popular, but as an activity has more and more things to compete in the same price range. There seem to be fewer younger people playing, and the new players are not really new players, but people that played when they were teens and now returned to the game. Such a progression means that in 20+ years there will be fewer base w40k players to support the company, then there is now.
The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.
Exactly. When I was a teen in 2001 or 2002, and deep into the hobby since a couple of years, I had the exact same feelings Karol have now. I though the game was focussing towards younger people back then.
40k will likely be much different in 2040, but I'm sure GW will still be around and healthy.
The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.
I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.
And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.
The former is totally fine and makes sense for having product to bring to market over a long term period.
The latter actively makes the game worse.
TwinPoleTheory wrote: It explains a lot of things, not the least of which is the general discourse on these boards.
You just flat out attacked everyone at the board as lead-eaters. How nice of you.
The problem is that developing and testing (because just writing and not testing won't change a thing) 24? separate codices at the same time before releasing them is just not practical for any company to do. If your only dealing with 4-5 armies you can do that but not with 20+.
Nor is there even a reason to assume it actually would change anything. They don't have 20 senior rules writers so its not going to be 20 codexes designed at the same time, they would be written 1-2 at a time just like now, so what actually does change by not releasing them? Do they stop getting new idea's and refining them over the course of writing and internal testing? If they are done do they go back and start over to update all the old books with old, unrefined, idea's before then releasing them after what? 3+ years of cooking?
No matter if you write them all before releasing or as you release, the fundamental problem is not when they are being written, but the lack of consistency. GW needs a solid baseline and formula that every codex derives from and keeps everything at a roughly equal level and actually stick to that foundation for an entire edition.
Even if you were to get 24 senior rules writers and wrote every codex at the exact same time you would get the same swings you do now as different writers do different things and solve questions in different ways.
it is possible, and other companies have done it with less money and personal than GW
the main problem why GW cannot do it, is that they always introduce fundamental changes in the core rules, which makes any previous testing/design worthless
if 10th would use the same core rules as 9th, and you get a basic design sheet what the factions should be able to do, it would be no problem to have all factions written and tested on release, give out balance updates for the not released books to bring them in line and keep releasing
with 11th, you would have the balanced game and can do the new model release stuff to keep going
and it looks like that this was already the plan with 9th, but they made the mistake to change to new faction rules on release to bring them in line with the existing ones instead of updating the old ones
which screwed the whole thing over and the mid-edition design shift did the rest
The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.
I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.
And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.
All those kids bought units one at a time and played with what they had in their houses with friends. Magically you don't need 2000 points to play.
When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.
Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.
Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.
this means by the time they buy their 9th or 6th something , the army maybe low tier or nerfed heavily. Even more elite armies that use fewer models. 6 boxs of power armoured dudes, 4 NDK kits, maybe a box of termintors. That is a year of saving up, to get an army that can play normal games. Only in a year you may get the jump from 9th to 10th ed. If you started to build your army at the end of 8th, and started buying paladins/termintor boxs and then 4 months later you found out that in 9th anything in terminator armour is bad, you just lost those 4 months of hobby progress. And this is a low number of units elite faction we are talking about. It gets much worse when you try something more vehicle heavy, like orks, or swarmy.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: When I started the hobby at the age of 14 I had 20€ per month that I spent on the hobby. I would buy a blister for 10€ in one month, a Set with 24 plastic models (Lotr) for 20€ the next month and something for 30€ the month after that. By the age of 17 I had 3 pretty large Lotr armies ready to play.
Middle class Kids in Germany today get about 40-50€ per month (that's what my pupils say), even with GWs high prices they can do the same I did back then. One plastic Box per month will get you a playable army pretty fast.
The real problem are the expensive books in 40K, because once you finished your first army the edition has changed.
this means by the time they buy their 9th or 6th something , the army maybe low tier or nerfed heavily. Even more elite armies that use fewer models. 6 boxs of power armoured dudes, 4 NDK kits, maybe a box of termintors. That is a year of saving up, to get an army that can play normal games. Only in a year you may get the jump from 9th to 10th ed. If you started to build your army at the end of 8th, and started buying paladins/termintor boxs and then 4 months later you found out that in 9th anything in terminator armour is bad, you just lost those 4 months of hobby progress. And this is a low number of units elite faction we are talking about. It gets much worse when you try something more vehicle heavy, like orks, or swarmy.
I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .
I am not talking about comeptitive sceen. I know that the argument that people play "what they like" is being brought forth over and over again, but even by looking what gets sold out on both GW and non GW online stores or the multiple versions of ebay, it clearly seems like people tend to buy the good stuff. The actual tournament rankers, who want to win tournaments, are only early 20s or late teens, if they have a dad or older brother playing. There is no way anyone can keep up with a 2-3 month army rotation even on a 100 euro monthly pocket money.
And narrative is definitly not the basic game played. the closest to the standard way to play for starting player vs other starting players, is what ever they have points for, matched played, no objectives, we play till one army dies.
I think if you were going to try to design the game for all of the factions at once you would do a salami slicing tactic. So:
Release 1 - 4 Books for Space Marines, Imperium, Chaos, Xenos covering all the datasheets but with few special rules for now. Think 8th edition indexes or the 8th edition Daemons codex which never got the memo about adding special rules to the datasheets in the codex.
Release 2 - 4 Books adding in super doctrines for the factions.
Release 3 - 4 Books adding in chapter tactics for the factions.
etc.
etc.
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for troops.
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for elites.
or
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for infiltrating units. (This might help GW realise that some factions have no units of this kind and make them go "huh this does seem a bit unfair").
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for MBTs.
In theory this would mean everyone would have the same amount of rules at the same time and everyones elites or heavy supports or MBTs (whichever slot they are in) have similar rules to each other, e.g. no more one faction gets d6 shots that do d6 damage while the other faction gets 3 d3+3 shots.
It would also mean you could at some point slate a release like:
Release 14 - 4 Books altering the chapter tactics for the factions now we know that morale based chapter tactics are awful.
Release 15 - 4 Books altering the secondary objectives now we know that do a psychic action 3 times get 4 VP per turn is a bit too good.
Of course, GW being GW, I'm sure they would find several ways to make this a terribly implemented idea.
Jidmah wrote: Points can fix some problems but not all of them. I don't know enough about the current guard army to tell.
Point drops would certainly help Guard, but it doesn't fix their output or durability sadly.
For example, in terms of durability and firepower Leman Russ tanks (not Tank Commanders) are incredibly similar to Dunecrawlers. So Leman Russes should cost around:
- Vanquisher: 110 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Eradicator and Exterminator: 115 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Executioner: 120 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Battle Tank: 125 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Demolisher and Punisher: 130 points (including hull heavy bolter)
That's anywhere from a 20 - 35 point drop. The sad thing is, even at those point levels they're unlikely to be good. Dunecrawlers aren't a meta vehicle right now either.
I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .
As a kid of 12-15 it took me 3 years to buy, assemble and paint a 1500 points force of orks. Basic stuff with a bit of everything, nothing close to a competitive list.
I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.
The sky is not falling. Your conclusions are just speculation. The company is in rude health.
I have seen pictures from games in stores in the 90s or early 2000s, they seemed to be full of people my age or younger. Stores don't look like that anymore. Adds, army construction, the basic entry army non of those things is build for someone who is 13-15y old. 2-3 squads, 1-2 vehicles and 1-2 heros is a game a teen can play. Starting with 9+ of anything is not. The focus on large kits, on nostalgia only someone playing 10 or even 20+ years ago, those are things that GW does. Which clearly point at the fact that they do seem to think their buyers are older. The complication in the game systems, not impossible to learn when you are a teen, but to be honest boring. Who wants to go through 4 multiple steps of overlaping rules that could have just been changed to unit X wounds on +2 and hits on +2 this turn.
And you can easily check it. Take older rules from older editions and ask someone who is my age or younger, if they would rather play those or something like 9th ed ad mecha.
Babe, I’ve been playing since 2nd. Tell me those rules were simple and you’re clearly trolling. But let’s not get into that trap discussion as it’s been done to death in other threads.
Honestly Karol, we know you play in an ultratoxic meta but you’ve extrapolated your personal opinions and presented them as fact. That’s not how the world works.
EightFoldPath wrote: I think if you were going to try to design the game for all of the factions at once you would do a salami slicing tactic. So:
Release 1 - 4 Books for Space Marines, Imperium, Chaos, Xenos covering all the datasheets but with few special rules for now. Think 8th edition indexes or the 8th edition Daemons codex which never got the memo about adding special rules to the datasheets in the codex.
Release 2 - 4 Books adding in super doctrines for the factions.
Release 3 - 4 Books adding in chapter tactics for the factions.
etc.
etc.
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for troops.
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for elites.
or
Release 8 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for infiltrating units. (This might help GW realise that some factions have no units of this kind and make them go "huh this does seem a bit unfair").
Release 9 - 4 Books expanding on the datasheets for MBTs.
In theory this would mean everyone would have the same amount of rules at the same time and everyones elites or heavy supports or MBTs (whichever slot they are in) have similar rules to each other, e.g. no more one faction gets d6 shots that do d6 damage while the other faction gets 3 d3+3 shots.
It would also mean you could at some point slate a release like:
Release 14 - 4 Books altering the chapter tactics for the factions now we know that morale based chapter tactics are awful.
Release 15 - 4 Books altering the secondary objectives now we know that do a psychic action 3 times get 4 VP per turn is a bit too good.
Of course, GW being GW, I'm sure they would find several ways to make this a terribly implemented idea.
That is a way of doing it, and I think similar to what Warmachine has done in the distant past?
Certainly easier when you only have 5 factions rather then 24 but you probably could make it work if you wanted to.
Ofcourse GW would complain that releasing 4 factions books at once cuts into their profits compared to selling you 1 book every month.
I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.
Because if you start playing lets say with people at school, you may wake up at the start of a new edition, 3 years later, and suddenly no one plays the game anymore. Or you have 3-4 people playing it. And that is if you really are super casual, focused on painting etc. If you just want to play the game, then most armies are very lucky, if they stay relevant for over a year. Some armies, don't even get a relevant phase every edition.
I think GW's problem on the long rollout is both mathhammer creep - and feature creep. The TL/DR of this post is "Tyranids are busted for crushing me yesterday, also Tzaangors suck".
For example the Maleceptor is arguably not new. It obviously existed in the 8th codex, and IIRC had sort of similarish rules of doing mortals on successful casts. But it was much, much weaker so people didn't use it.
Now however, 170 points buys you a model which is T8, 3+/4++ and potentially has an aura (after a psychic action) for -1S for ranged attacks on units in 6 inches. Which, if your main heavy weapon is S8, is kind of a blow (and transhuman helps if you have some silly double digit strength weapons). This would be a potential question mark on its own merits - although if the damage output wasn't there you might not care. But it then gets the ability to throw out 15-20+ mortal wounds in a turn. Obviously this requires various features in your list and CP to fuel stratagems etc - but this is not remotely normal. In another book, I think this model could be 250-270 points. Its clearly not in a "woops, we need to add 10 points so its borderline whether you'd bring one or not" category. If it wants to be 170 points, it needs all those rules that allow it to be absurdly tough and absurdly lethal stripped away (some of which are on the datasheet, and some are from the army synergy).
You've then got Encircle the Prey. Which isn't I guess a mathhammer concern but is frankly broken given how 40k works. And I'm sure when it gets the inevitable nerf (idk, 3 CP, can only be used once a game) it will still be broken. In a game all about exchanges (whether you like it or not) - being able to get a full turn out of a fairly expensive model, only to then go "and now its off the board so I can just do my damage again next turn" is crazy. It should not exist. Context of Tyranids relative to everything else could I guess leave this overpowered or rubbish - but still. Its just a problem for game design. Do you take a hammer to every Tyranid unit that can benefit from this rule to keep it in the game?
To switch to Eldar, its a similar sort of feeling for Baharroth (and to a degree all Eldar movement rules). Arguably the ability to teleport models around is not new. Da Jump exists. Cult of Duplicity's Sorcerous Facade (I think?) exists. But this ability to essentially play out your whole turn, through to combat etc and then go "nope, I'm going to a completely different part of the board, to either be safe so I can do this again - or more likely claim/deny you victory points" is ludicrous. I guess if Baharroth was 500 points he'd be an auto-lose so points could theoretically find a solution - but it seems easier if this sort of thing just wasn't in the game to begin with.
I've been thinking about this sort of feature creep due to the trailered Tzaangor focused army of renown. I know most Thousand Sons players want Tzaangors like a hole in the head (despite GW insisting you get some with every purchase) - but the concept is interesting to me. A few months back we had Daed ask why Ork Boyz can't play a bit like Wracks in a Thin City build. And so I'm left thinking - why couldn't Tzaangor do the same (and why havn't they so far)?
The answer obviously is because Tzaangor suck. But they suck at 7 points in numerous levels compared with OP superhuman now just sleeping 8 point Wracks.
The first issue is that they do a bit less damage. 2 WS4+ S4 AP-1 attacks, versus 2 WS3+ (2+ from turn 3) poison 4+ AP-1 attacks, where 6s to wound are at -2. And wracks can upgrade a champion to 6 attacks at AP-2, AP-3 on 6s. Wracks can also bring a gun if they want.
The second is defence. Tzaangors with T4 5++ feels like an okay profile. But its worse than T4/6++/5+++ into T4/5++/5+++ from turn 4 onwards. And possibly quasi-transhuman if you take Prophets of Flesh (probably the way to go these days?). You can also take Haemoxytes (although whether its worth it can be debated.)
Thirdly - and perhaps more importantly - they are slow. Wracks are 1" faster base (which Tzaangor can sort of match by bringing a 10 point horn) - but get advance and charge from turn 2 onwards. A free 6" move at the start of a game for Tzaangor may go someway to compensate this - but its probably not enough From turn 2 Wracks are fairly reliably charging 18-19"~ across the table (and if you roll high on that initial advance, further). On a sort of similar basis, Tzaangor are covering just 15" - and on a failed charge get nowhere. In terms of positioning, wracks are just better.
Last - but by no means least - there are a range of stratagems you can use to help wracks. Rerolls to hit. Rerolls to wound. Fall back and charge. Get an extra 7" of movement if you have a gun but want some bodies on a currently uncontested objective so you wouldn't be able to charge. Some of these are expensive (i.e. 2CP to make poison work on vehicles) - but if you want it, you can. Tzaangor get a 2CP stratagem to reroll hits, which isn't great. The AoR will presumably bring more stratagems - but will they really make up the difference? What would you need, 2 CP, all Tzaangor units can now advance and charge?
Now I guess the counter argument would be "well, sure Tzaangor are worse than wracks. But Exalted Sorcerers contribute quite a bit more than Haemonculi are expecting to do". Which is fair. But it sort of points to how if a unit has bad functionality, its very hard to make it competitive, unless the mathhammer were to be so ludicrously in its favour (and as we see above, the mathhammer favours the Wracks as well). Again, you'd expect the AoR to have more as yet unrevealed rules which further help Tzaangor - but right now, its not obvious what they could be given the limitations covered above. If Wracks aren't cutting it, Tzaangor definitely won't. (And its why its hard to easily fix Boyz etc as well.)
So basically what I'm saying is that GW should write all the books with a common acceptable functionality. The mathhammer of something being WS3+ and something else being WS4+ can be debated and calculated. But its much harder to put a points cost to "I can do X+Y, and you can't". If you are going to start breaking your core rules, every faction sort of needs to be able to break the core rules. Otherwise you will inevitably end up with haves and have nots.
And when this feature creep is combined with mathhammer creep - you get extreme amounts of imbalance and consequent faction dominance of the competitive scene I think the game has experienced in recent months.
Anyone find it funny how a lot of the Big changes to 9th from 8th ended up being completely useless? No one even bothers with Blast weapons now, because no one uses more than 5 models in a unit. No one bothers with the new leadership system because it never comes up.
The new board sizes, base missions, and major game play changes from 8th were mostly a wash.
It's funny to me because GW took a look at the problems of 8th, and thought, this must be the fault of the game! Lets invent a new rule that prevents issues with big cannons being used (Which was never an issue in 8th, it was giant stompy dakka boats and silly rule interactions with fly) Now MSU is the name of the game, and all that work down the pipe.
I agree with the problem of edition change, but for beginners the competitive scene is usually of no concern, so balance issues aren't as relevant to the majority as they are to you. Instead the normal way to start with the hobby is playing some small games or some narrative scenarios, put some models on the table and throw some dice. I've read it was a different experience for you, but I think you are a very special case .
As a kid of 12-15 it took me 3 years to buy, assemble and paint a 1500 points force of orks. Basic stuff with a bit of everything, nothing close to a competitive list.
I don't get why kids have to demand EVERYTHING NOW these days. Get your beloved kits, learn the basics of the hobby, enjoy the hobby, play with pals. After years into the hobby, maybe, start looking at competitive play. I think every beginners, not just kids, should have this kind of mentality to last in this hobby.
Kids love competing publically now. Why do you think DotA2, LoL, Fortnite, Overwatch, PUBG etc are all so popular and rankings and leaderboards etc are such an important part of those things? The future of 40k and its audience is not in the thematic fluffbunny crowd, its with the people who demand multiplayer in video games so they can try to show off that they're better than other people. I'm waiting for the inevitable day that GW somehow manages to make a public leaderboard for 40k games. (Arguably it already exists and is called Daedalus81)
I wouldn't compare videogames to this hobby. Kids get a console and a videogame and they're ready to go, while it takes much longer to be ready to go if you start collecting an army. That's a significant difference and I'm not sure those who love competing in such videogames are the primary target for GW.
Also, in something like 40k it's universally known that it's typically the best list that wins the game, much more than players. Those who want to show off wouldn't tolerate to get their results diminished thanks to that notion. I still believe that in this hobby such WAAC and overly competitive people are the exception, not the norm.
If GW really wants to target those people they have to design a game in which all that matters is skill. And I'm pretty sure they'll never gonna do that.
Kids love competing publically now. Why do you think DotA2, LoL, Fortnite, Overwatch, PUBG etc are all so popular and rankings and leaderboards etc are such an important part of those things? The future of 40k and its audience is not in the thematic fluffbunny crowd, its with the people who demand multiplayer in video games so they can try to show off that they're better than other people. I'm waiting for the inevitable day that GW somehow manages to make a public leaderboard for 40k games. (Arguably it already exists and is called Daedalus81)
One of the things that made people dislike the battlefield 2042 was the fact that it didn't have leaderboards, scoreboards, best squad etc. Most of the games, and I mean those played socially by regular gamers and not paid sportlike players, have seson passes and stores so you can show others what you achived. It is not even that important how good you are at the game, although of course it is better to be good then bad, but what skins you have is your seson pass normal or premium, and it always shows on your character. You not just want, but have to have store mounts, LE skins or gear. Not sure if it is the same in other countries but default skin is used as an insult here. A few months ago people at my sisters school were in total uproar, that the skin they bought don't show for other people. There were people who stopped playing because of that, because they didn't want to be branded a someone who can't afford skins.
Now I guess the counter argument would be "well, sure Tzaangor are worse than wracks. But Exalted Sorcerers contribute quite a bit more than Haemonculi are expecting to do". Which is fair. But it sort of points to how if a unit has bad functionality, its very hard to make it competitive, unless the mathhammer were to be so ludicrously in its favour (and as we see above, the mathhammer favours the Wracks as well). Again, you'd expect the AoR to have more as yet unrevealed rules which further help Tzaangor - but right now, its not obvious what they could be given the limitations covered above. If Wracks aren't cutting it, Tzaangor definitely won't. (And its why its hard to easily fix Boyz etc as well.)
Just on this point, I think this is a problem with a lot of units that rely on force-multipliers in the form of psykers or the like. I don't know whether such units are intentionally made to be bad for their points ("because they'll have psyker support") or whether they just wind up being bad because GW span a roulette wheel to determine their cost. Either way, the issue is that you're almost always better off using your force-multiplier on a unit that's actually good to begin with. That is, it's usually more efficient to make an already good unit great than it is to make a poor unit merely okay.
In fact, I remember this coming up a lot in earlier editions with units like Howling Banshees. It was frequently pointed out that Banshees were a lot better with support in the form of Doom. The counter was that almost everything could benefit from Doom support - so why would you specifically include a unit that needed it to avoid sucking, rather than a unit that could still perform its role without it (that way you're not screwed if you lose your psyker, if the power gets denied, if you need it for a different target etc.).
I don't know if the use of CORE was intended to solve this problem but I'd argue that it certainly hasn't. Maybe if we instead had psychic powers only work on CRAP units.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone find it funny how a lot of the Big changes to 9th from 8th ended up being completely useless? No one even bothers with Blast weapons now, because no one uses more than 5 models in a unit. No one bothers with the new leadership system because it never comes up.
The new board sizes, base missions, and major game play changes from 8th were mostly a wash.
It's funny to me because GW took a look at the problems of 8th, and thought, this must be the fault of the game! Lets invent a new rule that prevents issues with big cannons being used (Which was never an issue in 8th, it was giant stompy dakka boats and silly rule interactions with fly) Now MSU is the name of the game, and all that work down the pipe.
I mean, I look at an awful lot of the changes 9th brought and scratch my head as to what problems they were supposed to be fixing. e.g.:
- Stratagems still exist and they're every bit as pointlessly padded as they were before.
- Auras also still exist, despite adding nothing to the game.
- The already-bloated faction rules now also have loyalty rules, despite the new detachment system already heavily favouring loyal armies via CP.
- They spent the whole of 9th tweaking point costs, only to throw it all away and instead adopt Power Level Lite.
- What was the main problem with LoS? Er... we could have Guilliman hiding behind a dude 1/20th his size. Or weird situations wherein Old One Eye and a CCB can both hide behind infantry, yet virtually identical counterparts (Carnifexes and Annihilation Barges, respectively) can't. Okay, so let's leave all of that in place and instead just say that characters have to be really, really, really close to units to be untergetable.
- What's the problem with the leadership system? Well, it just functions as another way to kill models rather than pinning or suppressing models or causing them to flee. So clearly the solution is to still have it kill models but split it into two phases for no reason whatsoever.
- Blast and Template weapons were too random and unreliable. So we'll fix this by giving blast weapons either a minimum number of hits (with no regard to the number of dice rolled - meaning 3d3 blast weapons get no benefit) or even the maximum number of hits, based on extremely arbitrary definitions of 'Horde'. And you'll give this bonus to template weapons too, right?
And you'll give this bonus to template weapons too, right?
...
Wouldn't it be cool, which doesn't mean good, if Ld did stuff like make units shot less or worse, be unable to recive aura bonus, stratagems or army specific order like buff. Suffered too many loses, you can't concentrate enough to cast psychic powers etc
There could even be weapons that aren't very much damaging, specially to more armoured stuff, but which slow stuff down or make stuff like jetbikes(hit by grav weapons) half its movement. Some stuff could have a +X Stack rule, so if you get hit by one mortar it is different then being shelled by 9 or more.
Karol wrote: Wouldn't it be cool, which doesn't mean good, if Ld did stuff like make units shot less or worse, be unable to recive aura bonus, stratagems or army specific order like buff. Suffered too many loses, you can't concentrate enough to cast psychic powers etc
There could even be weapons that aren't very much damaging, specially to more armoured stuff, but which slow stuff down or make stuff like jetbikes(hit by grav weapons) half its movement. Some stuff could have a +X Stack rule, so if you get hit by one mortar it is different then being shelled by 9 or more.
It would.
And that stuff existed prior to 8th. Some weapons, especially those using blast templates, caused pinning. Pinned units couldn't move & their shooting was either impossible or greatly hindered. At the start of your turn you'd make LD tests for units to become unpinned.
And even earlier? Failed LD tests due to taking casualties didn't cause models to just vanish. The unit made a MV away towards your board edge. Failing the LD test in your next turn resulted in them continuing the retreat.
It was possible for units to retreat right off the board. Or recover waaay out of position. Another effect of these retreats was that they could screw up the movements of other units.
Jidmah wrote: Points can fix some problems but not all of them. I don't know enough about the current guard army to tell.
Point drops would certainly help Guard, but it doesn't fix their output or durability sadly.
For example, in terms of durability and firepower Leman Russ tanks (not Tank Commanders) are incredibly similar to Dunecrawlers. So Leman Russes should cost around:
- Vanquisher: 110 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Eradicator and Exterminator: 115 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Executioner: 120 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Battle Tank: 125 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Demolisher and Punisher: 130 points (including hull heavy bolter)
That's anywhere from a 20 - 35 point drop. The sad thing is, even at those point levels they're unlikely to be good. Dunecrawlers aren't a meta vehicle right now either.
Problem with points drops is that they have a non-linear impact and guard are so close to the floor that its not practical. Currently they effectively cost 6ppm (including upgrades), if you were to buy 2000pts of units you would get 33.3 squads. If you drop them 1 point to 5ppm you get 40 squads (~+7), if you drop them 2 to 4ppm you get 50 squads (+10 from 5ppm), if you drop them 3 to 3ppm you get 66 squads (+16 from 4ppm).
Obviously nobody is fielding 2000 pts of infantry squads, but the bugger picture here is that you can only realistically screw with the points so much before guard make a very sudden jump from underpowered to overpowered, thst "balance" point is very finite - and also maybe dropping points on guardsmen and making guard players have to build and paint even more models isn't the way to go
vipoid wrote: Just on this point, I think this is a problem with a lot of units that rely on force-multipliers in the form of psykers or the like. I don't know whether such units are intentionally made to be bad for their points ("because they'll have psyker support") or whether they just wind up being bad because GW span a roulette wheel to determine their cost. Either way, the issue is that you're almost always better off using your force-multiplier on a unit that's actually good to begin with. That is, it's usually more efficient to make an already good unit great than it is to make a poor unit merely okay.
In fact, I remember this coming up a lot in earlier editions with units like Howling Banshees. It was frequently pointed out that Banshees were a lot better with support in the form of Doom. The counter was that almost everything could benefit from Doom support - so why would you specifically include a unit that needed it to avoid sucking, rather than a unit that could still perform its role without it (that way you're not screwed if you lose your psyker, if the power gets denied, if you need it for a different target etc.).
I don't know if the use of CORE was intended to solve this problem but I'd argue that it certainly hasn't. Maybe if we instead had psychic powers only work on CRAP units.
I agree. I think GW have a very... disjointed idea of how synergy works or should work. Sometimes they seem to have things in that seem clearly designed. So for example I doubt the Leviathan+Maleceptor+Neurothrope potential is an accident. I assume someone went "wouldn't it be cool if..."
I think CORE is there for two reasons. There's the gameplay one - and this idea of "oh I don't like those heroes sitting behind a tank just so it gets buffs - that's not how I imagine 40k". Which is sort of a... cinematic concern rather than a practical one. And the two constantly rub up against each other. (I mean I don't see what's unfluffy about an Archon buffing Ravagers - its just he'd probably be standing on one rather than jogging along behind them.)
Catulle wrote: It's pretty clear after all these years that GW views 40K (and all of its games, tbh) through an almost purely aesthetic lens.
Which clashes directly with some of the decisions they have made.
"No 3rd party models! All daemons of a given type must look EXACTLY THE SAME. As we know, this is fluffy for daemons because uniformity is in the name: chaos."
Catulle wrote: It's pretty clear after all these years that GW views 40K (and all of its games, tbh) through an almost purely aesthetic lens.
That isn't even remotely true. Age Of Sigmar is full of abominations that look like rejected WoW designs.
Do you have any examples in mind?
Most of the Fyreslayer line, those Khorne guys with axe flail things, the bonereaper(?) guys. I don't pay much attention to AoS so I can't tell you their specific names or remember them that well. Oh and that dragon thing the Stormcast have that has armour on its wing elbows that looks like it probably stabs through their wing membrane. And those new dragons that look like they came straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. (Do they still show cartoons on Saturday mornings?)
Jidmah wrote: Points can fix some problems but not all of them. I don't know enough about the current guard army to tell.
Point drops would certainly help Guard, but it doesn't fix their output or durability sadly.
For example, in terms of durability and firepower Leman Russ tanks (not Tank Commanders) are incredibly similar to Dunecrawlers. So Leman Russes should cost around:
- Vanquisher: 110 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Eradicator and Exterminator: 115 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Executioner: 120 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Battle Tank: 125 points (including hull heavy bolter)
- Demolisher and Punisher: 130 points (including hull heavy bolter)
That's anywhere from a 20 - 35 point drop. The sad thing is, even at those point levels they're unlikely to be good. Dunecrawlers aren't a meta vehicle right now either.
There is no scenario where your LEMAN RUSS tanks should cost slightly more than Ork Buggies. T8 and 2+ saves should never be that cheap. The problem the guard have is that GW doesn't know how to stack your damage output without breaking the game. A Leman russ by itself is dropping 2D6 shots at S8 -2AP D3dmg with incredibly easy access to re-roll 1s and other buffs. Its just not realistic for them to cost that little.
And yet Ork Buggies are really really good and the foundation of one of the most broken builds in 9th edition to date... and Leman Russes are not and people are actively advised against fielding most of them.
chaos0xomega wrote: And yet Ork Buggies are really really good and the foundation of one of the most broken builds in 9th edition to date... and Leman Russes are not and people are actively advised against fielding most of them.
umm, I don't know how to tell you this but...buggies were in no way shape or form "one of the most broken builds in 9th edition to date". Leman russes's are also part of an 8th edition codex which is why they have none of the new rules that everyone else is getting in spades. But arguing for a 25pt price cut on a T8 2+ unit is a bit ridiculous. Making it 15pts more expensive than a squigbuggy is just stupid. Durability is usually overvalued but not by the amounts you seem to think it is.
Put another way, if a Leman russ was 125pts and I played guard, I would spam 9 of them without even thinking twice. 108 T8 2+ wounds for 1,125pts is a no brainer.
H.B.M.C. wrote: GW made an entire rule limiting Buggies because they were dominating the tournament scene.
That's a pretty good indication that they were part of a broken list.
Ork codex originally came out in July but few allowed it in tournament play until September. In September orkz had 8 tournament placings, only 1 #1 finish. in that same month Drukhari had 10 top 4 placings including 4 first place finishes, Ad-Mech had 9 top 4 placings and 3 first place finishes.
So when you say buggies were one of the most broken lists in the game...no, no they weren't. Even at their height, pre-nerf, they were losing on a regular basis to Ad-Mech and Drukhari. Their biggest mistake was tabling a Drukhari player at a top table which then caused the entire competitive meta to demand a nerf.
Put another way, at the height of the ork codex power they were playing 3rd string to Drukhari and Ad-Mech so saying they were broken is just patently false based on basic game statistics.
Catulle wrote: It's pretty clear after all these years that GW views 40K (and all of its games, tbh) through an almost purely aesthetic lens.
That isn't even remotely true. Age Of Sigmar is full of abominations that look like rejected WoW designs.
Do you have any examples in mind?
Most of the Fyreslayer line, those Khorne guys with axe flail things, the bonereaper(?) guys. I don't pay much attention to AoS so I can't tell you their specific names or remember them that well. Oh and that dragon thing the Stormcast have that has armour on its wing elbows that looks like it probably stabs through their wing membrane.
Thank you for sating my morbid curiosity. I certainly can't disagree with any of those.
Sim-Life wrote: And those new dragons that look like they came straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. (Do they still show cartoons on Saturday mornings?)
I wouldn't know . . . these days I tend to get my cartoons online.
Leadership was only ever good when legit horde units existed. Even then there were ways to ignore it, which made it dumb. Queue the meme of the Commissar shooting the entire squad due to failed attrition tests repeatedly.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Leadership was only ever good when legit horde units existed. Even then there were ways to ignore it, which made it dumb. Queue the meme of the Commissar shooting the entire squad due to failed attrition tests repeatedly.
Thats gotta be the dumbest use of leadership. GW just doenst know what to do with that stat. They shouldve tied actions to leadership IMO (and add back pinning )
I've said it before, but the leadership rules as they exist in 9th are nothing but a "lose more" mechanic that punishes players for losing models.
"Oh, you lost some models? Well now you get to lose some more!"
But, somehow, it gets worse, because when you think about causing casualties you have to remember the various facets and overlapping systems:
1. Rolling To Hit (range considerations, cover, re-rolls, bonuses, penalties, etc.). 2. Rolling To Wound (strength vs toughness, and again bonuses/penalties/re-rolls/etc.). 3. Saves (of various types). 4. Applying damage/losing wounds/removing casualties.
The morale/attrition rules ignore all of these. You just lose models, with no mind paid to the standard methods for causing casualties. Like I said - it's a "lose more" mechanic punishing the player unfairly.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've said it before, but the leadership rules as they exist in 9th are nothing but a "lose more" mechanic that punishes players for losing models.
"Oh, you lost some models? Well now you get to lose some more!"
But, somehow, it gets worse, because when you think about causing casualties you have to remember the various facets and overlapping systems:
1. Rolling To Hit (range considerations, cover, re-rolls, bonuses, penalties, etc.).
2. Rolling To Wound (strength vs toughness, and again bonuses/penalties/re-rolls/etc.).
3. Saves (of various types).
4. Applying damage/losing wounds/removing casualties.
The morale/attrition rules ignore all of these. You just lose models, with no mind paid to the standard methods for causing casualties. Like I said - it's a "lose more" mechanic punishing the player unfairly.
The only time morale is interesting is when NIghtLords use it to buff themselves
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've said it before, but the leadership rules as they exist in 9th are nothing but a "lose more" mechanic that punishes players for losing models.
"Oh, you lost some models? Well now you get to lose some more!"
But, somehow, it gets worse, because when you think about causing casualties you have to remember the various facets and overlapping systems:
1. Rolling To Hit (range considerations, cover, re-rolls, bonuses, penalties, etc.).
2. Rolling To Wound (strength vs toughness, and again bonuses/penalties/re-rolls/etc.).
3. Saves (of various types).
4. Applying damage/losing wounds/removing casualties.
The morale/attrition rules ignore all of these. You just lose models, with no mind paid to the standard methods for causing casualties. Like I said - it's a "lose more" mechanic punishing the player unfairly.
The only time morale is interesting is when NIghtLords use it to buff themselves
While it's certainly useful, I really don't consider getting +1 to hit very "interesting".
chaos0xomega wrote: And yet Ork Buggies are really really good and the foundation of one of the most broken builds in 9th edition to date... and Leman Russes are not and people are actively advised against fielding most of them.
Except that had everything to do with indirect fire being broken and not with buggies - the one buggy which was a problem has been now nerfed into the ground and is considered the worst one in the book.
If you want all your artillery to be as good as squig buggies, let me tell you, you aren't going to be happy with the result.
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H.B.M.C. wrote: GW made an entire rule limiting Buggies because they were dominating the tournament scene.
That's a pretty good indication that they were part of a broken list.
They made a rule which nerfed three completely harmless models which were not spammed at all and also broke internal mechanics of the codex while doing so. They essentially nerfed predators, vindicators and razorbacks because whirlwinds were being a problem.
They also applied an even harder nerf to the completely unrelated goff archetype which was barely showing up in top spots, resulting in a harder nerf to that list than drukhari got - which had higher win % than those "dominating" buggies before AND after said nerf.
Anything GW does related to orks is usually a pretty good indicator what should not be done. The have no fething clue what they are doing and don't give a feth either. The only thing that matters is that they don't show up as a relevant faction in competitive play.
Jidmah wrote: They made a rule which nerfed three completely harmless models which were not spammed at all and also broke internal mechanics of the codex while doing so.
Well of course they did. It's GW. They don't how to balance anything.
Jidmah wrote: They essentially nerfed predators, vindicators and razorbacks because whirlwinds were being a problem.
They nerfed every aircraft in the game because of Orky and AdMech flyers.
Jidmah wrote: Anything GW does related to orks is usually a pretty good indicator what should not be done.
I'd argue anything they do with anything as a reactionary lurching pendulum swing is a good indicator of the complete opposite way of writing rules. I await the complete fethery that is sure to result in Zoanthropes and Maleceptors being nerfed into the dirt because of a specific combo that most people will never do.
[EDIT]: Ah, so the word filter does not catch that word...
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've said it before, but the leadership rules as they exist in 9th are nothing but a "lose more" mechanic that punishes players for losing models.
"Oh, you lost some models? Well now you get to lose some more!"
But, somehow, it gets worse, because when you think about causing casualties you have to remember the various facets and overlapping systems:
1. Rolling To Hit (range considerations, cover, re-rolls, bonuses, penalties, etc.). 2. Rolling To Wound (strength vs toughness, and again bonuses/penalties/re-rolls/etc.). 3. Saves (of various types). 4. Applying damage/losing wounds/removing casualties.
The morale/attrition rules ignore all of these. You just lose models, with no mind paid to the standard methods for causing casualties. Like I said - it's a "lose more" mechanic punishing the player unfairly.
Yeah, that's something I really don't like seeing. It's one of the flaws of Parabellum conquest too, imo, where failing morale is just another way of losing models. Morale failures should really result in turn skips or debuffs, not casualties. From a simulation / narrative point of a view a turn skip makes more sense than taking losses; turn skip would represent the squad panicking or order breaking down as they lose the tactical advantage. Right now the morale system seems to simulate individual soldiers just vanishing from the unit. I guess its supposed to represent them fleeing, but for some reason I can't imagine a heavily indoctrinated and fanatical soldier like a Space Marine or Ork crapping himself and running away from his unit, never to return.
Jidmah wrote: They essentially nerfed predators, vindicators and razorbacks because whirlwinds were being a problem.
They nerfed every aircraft in the game because of Orky and AdMech flyers.
After they nerfed marine flier spam and eldar flier spam and guard flier spam and heldrake spam and FMC spam and necron flier spam across multiple editions after each of them had become a problem for the very same reasons, I'd argue assuming that fliers are the problem and not specific models is fair game.
It's also not like any of the fliers have actually become worse from that change, unlike buggies who lost the ability to split up or take kustom jobs.
Lord Damocles wrote: Or failing morale tests could result in a unit having to fall back, or becoming pinned down.
But it's probably impossibly difficult to write rules to represent something like that.
Getting pinned was basically a turn skip, iirc. I do miss falling back, but from a game flow perspective I can see why one would want to do away with it, as it's yet more models being moved and yet more book keeping, as you'd have to remember who's retreating, who has regrouped, who needs to regroup and who's eligible for a regroup. Resolving fall back for a horde was quite tedious, I recall.
Jidmah wrote: They essentially nerfed predators, vindicators and razorbacks because whirlwinds were being a problem.
They nerfed every aircraft in the game because of Orky and AdMech flyers.
After they nerfed marine flier spam and eldar flier spam and guard flier spam and heldrake spam and FMC spam and necron flier spam across multiple editions after each of them had become a problem for the very same reasons, I'd argue assuming that fliers are the problem and not specific models is fair game.
It's also not like any of the fliers have actually become worse from that change, unlike buggies who lost the ability to split up or take kustom jobs.
Agree. And the reason why the nerfed ork flyers specifically is that player could abuse thier massive footprints to prevent assaults, which combined to powerful indirect fire resulted in a very oppressive lists. But it had nothing to do with ork flyers stats, in fact ork flyers were never nerfed.
Spamming good flyers has always been a problem, due to their mechanics and abilities (I mean related to the unit's type, not to the specific model) rather than stats.
Lord Damocles wrote: Or failing morale tests could result in a unit having to fall back, or becoming pinned down.
But it's probably impossibly difficult to write rules to represent something like that.
Getting pinned was basically a turn skip, iirc.
I do miss falling back, but from a game flow perspective I can see why one would want to do away with it, as it's yet more models being moved and yet more book keeping, as you'd have to remember who's retreating, who has regrouped, who needs to regroup and who's eligible for a regroup.
Resolving fall back for a horde was quite tedious, I recall.
In fairness, you probably could do it in a more streamlined fashion.
e.g. instead of models moving in the Morale phase, models that Fall Back could instead do so in the next movement phase (as if they were falling back from combat, except that they *have* to do so and *have* to move their full movement towards their table edge). Ditch the rules about regrouping and instead just apply the same penalties as are currently bestowed by the Fall Back rules.
Its just the conflict between whether you want 40k to be a sort of collective RPG sim, or futuristic chess.
IIRCGW have said (rightly imo) that the feedback they got on people losing control of their models (pinning, falling back etc) was very negative. Which is why they rolled out fearless to almost every faction.
The only time morale is interesting is when NIghtLords use it to buff themselves
While it's certainly useful, I really don't consider getting +1 to hit very "interesting".
more interesting than just "you lose models because you lost models" is what i meant.
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Lord Damocles wrote: Or failing morale tests could result in a unit having to fall back, or becoming pinned down.
But it's probably impossibly difficult to write rules to represent something like that.
pinned :
If you activate a unit that is pinned, reduce its movement by half and it can only hit on 6's. At the end of their activation, consider them no longer pinned.
fallback :
If you activate a unit that is retreating, you must move their full movement and end their movement as close as possible to your deployment zone.
Only hitting on 6's is probably to restrictive, pinned units shouldn't forget how to shoot. Having their BS reduced by one should be enough.
As for fallback, it did had the issue that in certain scenarios it became a "kill more", e.g if you were too close to your table edge or in melee with high initiative unit or there wasn't any room to fall back.
And of course there is the lore issue that pretty much everyone had access to morale mitigation if not outright nullification rules. I think the only times I saw morale have any effect was against Tau.
Jarms48 wrote: Somehow Guard scored a 41% winrate across tournaments this weekend. Really curious what changed and what lists they used.
Like I mentioned earlier - it takes time for people to swing back into the scene. Similarly people seem to be abandoning AdMech so they slumped to 26%. Iron Hands went from 40% to 20%, but had just two people playing so the quantity and quality of players affects our perception a ton.
Another interesting thing to note -- these were the winning factions:
CW
Dark Angels
Space Wolves
Tyranids
Tau
Tyranids
Tau
GK DE Tau
Tyran wrote: Only hitting on 6's is probably to restrictive, pinned units shouldn't forget how to shoot. Having their BS reduced by one should be enough.
As for fallback, it did had the issue that in certain scenarios it became a "kill more", e.g if you were too close to your table edge or in melee with high initiative unit or there wasn't any room to fall back.
And of course there is the lore issue that pretty much everyone had access to morale mitigation if not outright nullification rules. I think the only times I saw morale have any effect was against Tau.
i'd honestly be down for pinning to straight up remove all shooting honestly. Or add suppressive fire.
The version of fallback i gave doesnt have the units destroyed once they reach the board edge, just brought further away from the fight.
remove the morale mitigation rules or make them extra rare (keep it for extra elite/emotionless factions)
remove the morale mitigation rules or make them extra rare (keep it for extra elite/emotionless factions)
I mean, extra elite/emotionless kinda describes 3/4 of the factions. Extra elite: Custodes, (Chaos) Space Marines of all flavors (half of the game there), Sororitas and Knights. Emotionless: Tyranids, Necrons and debatably Demons and Orks.
remove the morale mitigation rules or make them extra rare (keep it for extra elite/emotionless factions)
I mean, extra elite/emotionless kinda describes 3/4 of the factions. Extra elite: Custodes, (Chaos) Space Marines of all flavors (half of the game there), Sororitas and Knights. Emotionless: Tyranids, Necrons and debatably Demons and Orks.
Extra elite : Custodes, Knights, Harlequins
emotionless : necrons, nids
giving Marines/Sisters a higher leadership is enough to differentiate them
Magnus (with some TS in tow) was at a top table this weekend, clearly a sign of the apocalypse.
Magnus was a big risk in 8th, because it was all guns all the time. Now with Harlies out of the way you could face lots of lists with pretty low shooting and with AoC he picks up a 2+ against small arms, which is pretty useful.
It's tempting for sure. Especially for carving through bugs.
Daedalus81 wrote: Magnus was a big risk in 8th, because it was all guns all the time. Now with Harlies out of the way you could face lots of lists with pretty low shooting and with AoC he picks up a 2+ against small arms, which is pretty useful.
It's tempting for sure. Especially for carving through bugs.
Magnus was still a liability, it was just interesting to see the model pop up in a semi-final match. Against Nanavati's Eldar, and it was still a very close game.
Tyel wrote: Its just the conflict between whether you want 40k to be a sort of collective RPG sim, or futuristic chess.
IIRCGW have said (rightly imo) that the feedback they got on people losing control of their models (pinning, falling back etc) was very negative. Which is why they rolled out fearless to almost every faction.
9th edition has been a perfect case study of changing the game to make it "more fun and more action packed" and then trashing the game in the process.
Making the engagement space smaller and shooting ranges longer, is meant to make the game more exciting, as Timmy gets to roll dice and kill models even in turn 1. This makes lethality go nuts, and negates maneuvering aside from "are you behind LOS blocking cover, y/n."
Removing things like pinning debuffs, forced fallbacks, etc is meant to ensure that Timmy doesn't get frustrated when he can't do what he wants whenever he wants. This strips out tactical effects from the game beyond "kill models," and makes the ruleset dumber and (again) cranks up the lethality.
IIRCGW have said (rightly imo) that the feedback they got on people losing control of their models (pinning, falling back etc) was very negative. Which is why they rolled out fearless to almost every faction.
That's terrible game design philosophy though. Most strategy games have stunning effects and debuffs for a reason.
It doesn't even make sense, because in the end they just ramped up the lethality. How is losing entire squads not "losing control of your models?"
Tyel wrote: Its just the conflict between whether you want 40k to be a sort of collective RPG sim, or futuristic chess.
IIRCGW have said (rightly imo) that the feedback they got on people losing control of their models (pinning, falling back etc) was very negative. Which is why they rolled out fearless to almost every faction.
9th edition has been a perfect case study of changing the game to make it "more fun and more action packed" and then trashing the game in the process.
Making the engagement space smaller and shooting ranges longer, is meant to make the game more exciting, as Timmy gets to roll dice and kill models even in turn 1. This makes lethality go nuts, and negates maneuvering aside from "are you behind LOS blocking cover, y/n."
Removing things like pinning debuffs, forced fallbacks, etc is meant to ensure that Timmy doesn't get frustrated when he can't do what he wants whenever he wants. This strips out tactical effects from the game beyond "kill models," and makes the ruleset dumber and (again) cranks up the lethality.
Pretty much, yeah. It just dumbs down the game into a contest of who has the bigger gun.
"Tactics and manuvering? What's that? Buy our biggest model that can go brrr, peasant." - GW.
IIRCGW have said (rightly imo) that the feedback they got on people losing control of their models (pinning, falling back etc) was very negative. Which is why they rolled out fearless to almost every faction.
The customer is not always right. And really, customers are going to give them feedback in all sorts of directions, the trick is knowing which feedback to listen to. This is why a strong design lead/team is important.
Look at the Dallas Open, the same 10 people you expect to win the event, won the event and the number 5 guy, Jack Harpster, played a Sisters list that, on paper, looks like complete doggak. He brought a Castigator with it's basic autocannon. A model that kills ONE MARINE per turn on average for 155pts and came in 5th. He won 100% on tactics and manuvering because he was at a massive numerical disadvantage for the whole event.
Tactics and manuvering are more important in 40k than anyone gives it credit for, but usually gets dismissed because it's "gamey"; like a tank having wet paper mache for rear armor isn't 'gamey'.
I think maneuver and tactics matter, but not in a way that is "realistic", and so it doesn't feel like tactics.
A tank having wet paper mache for rear armor is realistic (depending on the tank), so shooting it in the butt with less powerful weapons but still having effects feels tactical.
An objective being exactly 40mm around, so standing a 40mm or bigger base directly on top of it and saying "you can't score this objective without getting in Heroic Intervention range so I can slap you on your turn" is /tactical/ (and I do it all the time with my KOS) and pretty smart from a game winning perspective, but it is hard to reason through logically.*
*Depending on whether or not you even consider the idea of 40mm objectives logical.
How is a vehicle having weak rear armour not tactical? That encourages the player to flank around and try to get a rear strike and the vehicle's owner to keep his flanks secure. Not to mention that historically tanks tended to have relatively weak armour and the best place to attack a tank is from behind.
That's like tactics 101, that is hardly "gamey."
CthuluIsSpy wrote: How is a vehicle having weak rear armour not tactical? That encourages the player to flank around and try to get a rear strike and the vehicle's owner to keep his flanks secure.
That's like tactics 101, that is hardly "gamey."
I think the concept works better at a smaller scale. Even at 4x6 the table was too small to effect a meaningful difference. The typical way for me was to just deepstrike the smallest footprint with multimeltas, but unless I was playing against all vehicles the tanks were usually parked in corners or against buildings. It essence it was cute, but not a very effective means of taking out most vehicles.
There were weapon arcs which were tactical, but in reality all they did was make tanks who didn't care about arcs more valuable and the rest weak.
9th is not simply exposed or unexposed. You have to understand what the opponent has available, the distance they can cover or when they might appear and where, and measure the lethality/obsec control potential. You need to weigh blocking out the objective with bodies and if your unit could sustain enough casualties to make spreading out like that worth it. The finer movement during melee can make or break objective control and their response options. Throwing a unit away to move block can have significant consequences at the right place and time.
There's a guy who went 6-2 with conscripts at Dallas, but it wasn't simply putting the most dice into their face. He designed his list and tucked away 3 units into reserves and didn't bring them on until turn 3 as a TTL objective. That's playing 450 points down for the majority of the game to score 15. He also took another unit and commander into reserves as a response force.
That sort of combination of a "strategy phase" in list building and then tactics in execution is what keeps me interested.
ERJAK wrote: because it's "gamey"; like a tank having wet paper mache for rear armor isn't 'gamey'.
That's not gamey, that's just how tanks work. Designing a tank is a balance between durability, firepower, and mobility. If you lose 100 tanks, 80 will be from front hits, maybe 15-18 will be side hits and a couple outliers will be rear hits, usually from infantry with man-portable AT, as the guy commanding the tank brigade is majorly fething up if your tanks are getting shot in the ass end by other tanks. Thick rear armor makes a tank heavier, meaning it will have less range without resupply and more issues with engine/transmission/getting stuck in the mud. If you can omit the rear armor, you actually make the tank more survivable because it has better speed, more range, and won't get stuck or break down as easily. Those things cause far more losses than shots to the rear armor. I would say that's more of a simulation game aspect than a "gamey" one. To me, "gamey" mechanics are things that use cards/tokens and make little sense as to why they're 1 use only. Why can only 1 guy in my whole army try to use a melta bomb per turn if everyone has them? THAT is gamey. Tanks having thin rear armor is the opposite of gamey IMO
Magnus (with some TS in tow) was at a top table this weekend, clearly a sign of the apocalypse.
Magnus was a big risk in 8th, because it was all guns all the time. Now with Harlies out of the way you could face lots of lists with pretty low shooting and with AoC he picks up a 2+ against small arms, which is pretty useful.
It's tempting for sure. Especially for carving through bugs.
Magnus is still crap to take on the field. Him showing up in a final was an outlier for sure. But the big issue with magnus is all of his survivability is based off him going first to buff himself. unbuffed he can cleared off the table with minimal effort. In the land of 9th ed, a T7 with a 4++ means Nothing.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Kill team really helped crack down on the sneering 40k elite that don't like the "poors" playing their luxury hobby.
fething who?
I think we've solved the mystery of who's been vandalizing all those windmills.
I've played Warhammer in a dozen states and 3 countries. Somehow I've never met the people that seem to plague Bullgryns local stores. Either I haven't gotten around enough or he is telling some tall tales. Hmm...
I can imagine that if a generation of generation of players focuses on playing the game at a points level which is equal to the local or world standard tournament game, the acceptance to someone asking to play half or a third of that, could be rather low. Plus there could also be a few factions whose player wouldn't be interested in playing 500pts games. Not many knight, custodes or GK would like that, when their codex are build for playing with at least three times as many points.
that they can find. If they think that Custodes are "not competitive", then it just means that the codex is now more in line with all of the "normal" codexes.
