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This may have been mentioned before but I hadn't seen it.

kinda cool!

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=9400003

off to listen now

Ooohhh... Do we have a transcript somewhere?

I just started it, and I have a few quick thoughts:
1) as a yank, every briton sounds smart and knowledgable in media. Damn BBC!

2) JJ goes out of his way to tell us how to listen to the podcast (with the rules in front of us).

3) alessio sounds goofy.

4) Apparently True line of sight arose when Alessio realized nobody actually played the old LOS rules in 4th, and a lot simply used TLOS anyway. Interesting.

5) Parts of this are more explaining how the new rules work rather than why the new rules were written...

6) No real explantion of why Rending was changed. I'd have loved to have heard that rationale.

7) The volume is wonky, at least for me. I have to keep turning it up to hear them.

8) Alessio thanks JJ for the Defenders React pile-in move.

9) All units swing (unless dead) because they didn't like the tactical casualty removal allowed by 4th. I can see both sides of this, as it is a little unrealistic, but it was a way for clever players to gain advantage. Not a bad change, by any means.

- JJ states that while you can pick apart a rule in isolation, they fit together "like a jigsaw puzzle", and after playing the game it will be seen as balancing things out.

- Last Man standing was lost due to people forgetting about it. Annoyingly, it's true. It never made too much sense, I suppose.

-No actual explanation of why vehicles now get cover saves, just an explantion of how it works.

-Skimmers keep a 24" Flat out move to help keep them special, or more acuratly, non-skimmer fast vehicles were knocked down to make skimmers more special.

- There was a raging debate about defensive weapons, as all agreed that Strength 6 was too much. The example cited was that heavy bolters can kill howling banshees on a 2+, which tips the hand over who wields power in the studio. Apparently, they want to make vehicles make a choice.

- Universal rules no longer are meant to overrule codex rules, as modified by the FAQs, I suppose. This is a full reversal of philosopy, they say.

-Troops as the only scoring units was decided because you need troops to "plant the flag", and it makes troops a vital part of the army.

-KPs are explained as balancing all the troops choices you take for the objective missions, and They fully expect tournaments to use VPs as tie breakers.

Polonius wrote:6) No real explantion of why Rending was changed. I'd have loved to have heard that rationale.

Um, is it too hard to guess?

Rending vs. vehicles was changed because it's already good against infantry, and once the number of attacks are taken into account, very good against vehicles, too. As a result, Assault Cannons were better than Heavy Bolters against infantry and better than a TL Lascannon against armor, which is just ridiculous.

Rending on the wound roll instead of the hit roll was most likely changed so BS/WS actually figures in to it, as well as providing a slight nerf (as, realistically, even with the change to vehicles, Rending is generally undercosted).

Really, it goes along with the change to Obliterators in the new CSM book: Assault Cannons used to be omnipurpose, now they're not as good against vehicles and slightly nerfed against infantry. Obliterators are now not as good against horde infantry and slightly nerfed overall due to a higher point cost. Neither change was huge, and both only hugely impact your army list if you relied on the omnigun to do everything for you.

Lowinor wrote:

Polonius wrote:6) No real explantion of why Rending was changed. I'd have loved to have heard that rationale.

Um, is it too hard to guess?

Oh, I know why it was changed, I was just hoping to hear them explain it. They did so by saying they wanted to bring how rending works against infantry in line with how it works against vehicles, when everybody knows it was because it was stupidly broken.

So, while I sort of live blogged my reactions in my first post, I thought I'd sum up in a new post. All in all, I enjoyed Jervis's soothing voice telling me things, he seemed a bit more interested than Allesio in explaining the why rather than the how, but all in all there wasn't really any illumination. The most contentious changes weren't really explained, while it seems the overriding reason for most rule changes was that they people they saw playing weren't following all of the old rules, so they simplified them. This is a bit unsettling, as while I'll admit I forgot target priority or Last Man standing more than a few times, they seem more concerned with having all gamers play according to the rules rather than writing rules for average or advanced gamers.

All in all the podcast isn't a total waste of time, but it doesn't really explain anything we didn't know.

This is a bit unsettling, as while I'll admit I forgot target priority or Last Man standing more than a few times, they seem more concerned with having all gamers play according to the rules rather than writing rules for average or advanced gamers.

Wouldn't being concerned with having all gamers play acording to the rules and writing rules for the average gamer be one and the same?

Let the RAI flames begin!!!!

ShumaGorath wrote:
Wouldn't being concerned with having all gamers play acording to the rules and writing rules for the average gamer be one and the same?

Not necessarily. Writing rules for all gamers includes casual players, infrequent players, the young, the old, the busy, the harried, and the people who just don't care very much about rules. I don't know who AC saw not playing by the rules, maybe it was vets and tourny gamers, I don't know. I'm worried that he walked into a GW shop, saw some guys that play 4 games a year playing wrong, and decided that they needed to play properly.

I think rules should be written for the people that care about rules, not for the people that care far less about rules than about having fun.

My point, whcih maybe is a bit arrogant, is that I'd rather have rules that the average gamer can master, and the folks that can't or won't keep up just have fun. Instead, rules are written so that everybody, even the people that don't want tight rules, get them. Writing rules so that every player is 100% legal will require some genuine simplification.

Edit: Like I said earlier, I think that a lot of the cuts are good cuts. Even vets were screwing up some of the rules, and if rules aren't used, they should be modified. I like the result, but the intent behind them is just vaguely worrying.

Polonius wrote:3) alessio sounds goofy.

He's Italian.

BrookM wrote:

Polonius wrote:3) alessio sounds goofy.

He's Italian.

Ah, well, that explains it. I've never heard an Italian accent merged with the British accent. I'm from the midwest, where our accent is as flat as the terrain.

I'm not picking on the guy, learning a new language and communicating in it is difficult. It was a bit hard to understand him at first, is all.

Edit: Like I said earlier, I think that a lot of the cuts are good cuts. Even vets were screwing up some of the rules, and if rules aren't used, they should be modified. I like the result, but the intent behind them is just vaguely worrying.

Well fifth eddition is out so were your worries justified? I for one think its a much tighter ruleset that is much more difficult to exploit. You act as if writing a ruleset that is intuitive and easy to use and writing one that can be mastered to effect can not be done together.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Edit: Like I said earlier, I think that a lot of the cuts are good cuts. Even vets were screwing up some of the rules, and if rules aren't used, they should be modified. I like the result, but the intent behind them is just vaguely worrying.

Well fifth eddition is out so were your worries justified? I for one think its a much tighter ruleset that is much more difficult to exploit. You act as if writing a ruleset that is intuitive and easy to use and writing one that can be mastered to effect can not be done together.

Well, these worries surfaced today, so no, the release of 5th hasn't really justified anything. I'm mostly musing, I'm really not worried: GW will do what it does for reasons beyond what they'd ever explain to us.

As for acting like you can't have simple, elegant and intuitive systems with deep tactical possibilities: well, that's not at all what I'm saying. All I'm saying is that I hoped that the threshold for what the designers see as "how gamers play the game" is based on an accurate sample, not the top table at a GT or beginners night at a GW shop.

Polonius wrote:I hoped that the threshold for what the designers see as "how gamers play the game" is based on an accurate sample, not the top table at a GT or beginners night at a GW shop.

I'd be generous and assume that the designers really do have a pretty good handle on "how *typical* gamers play the game".

And when you get down to it, the typical Dakka gamer is *not* a typical gamer. The typical Dakka gamer has been playing 40k far longer than the typical player, with much more GW stuff than the typical gamer could ever aspire to.

Simplifying the game to cut the dead weight and clarify the rules is a great step forward. And on balance, GW has done an excellent job of this for 5th Edition. The new rulebook is impressively solid in comparison to any of its predecessors.

Hey I understand that. I really want to stress that I'm not sweating bullets or pissed or anything. When I say I was hoping, it wasn't saracstically or ironically. I think GW is making strides to show that they're not as clueless as they were even 2 years ago.

So, I'm not attacking GW. I don't think they're going to make us play Chutes and Ladders. Yes, I'm taking one statement in a 45 minute podcast out of context. I know that there are old debates that tend to bring out the usual arguments, but I was just musing....

Of course, i think it's going to be easier to bridge the gap between the below average and above average gamers in 5th, as the rules are crisper and far better laid out. Even the complex things, like wound allocation and determining cover, are far simpler than the old Mixed Armor or Assault rules.

I'm impressed, this is a good sign. It's great that GW is responding to the popularity of PodHammer, 40K Radio, D6 Gen, and others and releasing their own podcast. I hope it actually gets updated with each new rules release.

the 5 edition is way beter than the 4ed se me plaing way more game's now whit the 5 edition

Polonius wrote:

6) No real explantion of why Rending was changed. I'd have loved to have heard that rationale.

-No actual explanation of why vehicles now get cover saves, just an explantion of how it works.

I thought I heard Alessio say that he felt it was inconsistent for vehicles to hide behind a flat piece of terrain with a few sticks and claim that you could not see them, so to keep things in line with infantry LOS and cover, they changed vehicles to work the same way.

Also, they did skirt the rending change reasons, but I suspect it was for the same reasons as the defensive weapons nerf. Rending was too good, just like S5~6 defensive weapons were great for Marines but stunk for everyone else with T3 and 4+ or worse saves.

Did they explain why a building is easier to destroy when infantry are standing on top of it? Did that explain that little bit of 'WTF?' rules?

Did they explain how, in their drive to simplify things and speed up the game, they decided to make you roll scatter for every blast, maintain the idiocy of having to place and resolve each template before moving onto the next, and the needless process of keeping track of what models took what hit before rolling like-saves.

BYE

@HBMC -- You don't have to keep track of anything but how many models are under the template (and doesn't matter which model types). No allocation or rolling saves until all the units hit/wounds are resolved. hth

Warlocks got a bump with the Last Man Standing rule gone. Combat Squads too, for that matter. As did everyone else I suppose.

ANYONE HAVE SUBTITLES FOR THIS PODCAST?!

My small Amerikan mind cannot COMPREHEND!

H.B.M.C. wrote:Did they explain why a building is easier to destroy when infantry are standing on top of it? Did that explain that little bit of 'WTF?' rules?

As far as I can see, it's not a case of the building being easier to destroy when occupied... it's simply that the rules don't allow you to attack an unoccupied building.

Did they explain how, in their drive to simplify things and speed up the game, they decided to make you roll scatter for every blast, maintain the idiocy of having to place and resolve each template before moving onto the next, and the needless process of keeping track of what models took what hit before rolling like-saves.

Having the aim of speeding up and simplifying the game doesn't mean that every individual game mechanic has to be simpler and faster... just that the game overall should be simpler and faster.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Did they explain how, in their drive to simplify things and speed up the game, they decided to make you roll scatter for every blast, maintain the idiocy of having to place and resolve each template before moving onto the next, and the needless process of keeping track of what models took what hit before rolling like-saves.

Um, this isn't a difficult process. 4th Edition was template-by-template, so remembering a running count of hits is no change. Or great math skill.

But final template resolution is almost certainly faster, because yes, you scatter each template, but that's in lieu of rolling BS or rolling for partials.

Methinks someone maketh a mountain out of a molehill.

The 3rd Ed way was simpler.

Roll to hit with, say, 4 Frag Missiles. Place one marker. Count the hits. Count the partials. Roll for partials. Multiple hits by amount of Frag Missiles that hit.

Done.

Or flamers. Place a flamer template, count the hits. Place the next one, count the hits, place the next one, count the hits. Total. Roll To Wound. Now it's place, work out hits, roll To Wound, do saves, removed casualties... then do it all over again.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:The 3rd Ed way was simpler.

Roll to hit with, say, 4 Frag Missiles. Place one marker. Count the hits. Count the partials. Roll for partials. Multiple hits by amount of Frag Missiles that hit.

Done.

Or flamers. Place a flamer template, count the hits. Place the next one, count the hits, place the next one, count the hits. Total. Roll To Wound. Now it's place, work out hits, roll To Wound, do saves, removed casualties... then do it all over again.

BYE

You are incorrect, 4th edition worked that way but not 5th.

In 5th edition you resolve the *placement* of each blast/template (along with what models it hits) but then you also roll 'to hit' with any regular shooting the unit has and then you total all those things together and roll your 'to wound' rolls together (with different colored dice for each weapon).


And actually 3rd edition had *no* rules for multiple blasts coming from the same unit. Late in the game cycle they added the rule that you place one blast and then multiply it by how many blasts the firing unit has, but for most of 3rd edition players had to figure out for themselves how to resolve multiple blasts from a single firing unit.


IMHO, the 3rd edition 'fix' was waaaaay too powerful for blasts, since it allowed players to target one small clump of enemy models in the target unit and then multiply this amount out by how many blasts they had. This created a situation where a unit would sustain a metric ton of hits just because they had 3 or 4 guys standing too close to each other even though the rest of the unit was very spread out.

I would wager it was *exactly* this reason that GW changed it in 4th edition although their solution was far from elegant.

5th edition is happy medium IMO, since you don't remove any casualties between rolling for each blast hit you don't cannibalize your ability to hit many enemy models with your blasts but at the same time the fact that you potentially scatter with each blast also means you won't always be able to totally hammer a unit that happens to have a few models standing next to each other.


After playing 4 games of fifth edition I believe the blast rules are a big improvement.

I have only read the rulebook once. I thought that you resolved each flamer template before moving onto the next.

I still think that scattering every blast is counter-productive when it comes to creating a tighter game. Ditto for casualty allocation.


But does someone want to quickly check the section on destroying buildings. Unless we read it wrong, having people standing on the roof of a bunker makes the bunker easier to destroy in 5th.

Now I'm sorry, but there's good, there's bad, there's ugly, and then there's just plain WTF. If that is true, and we read it right, that wins the award for the 'most pointless rule written in 5th' award, and probably one of the first that slips people's minds (like Last Man Standing tests).

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:I have only read the rulebook once. I thought that you resolved each flamer template before moving onto the next.

I still think that scattering every blast is counter-productive when it comes to creating a tighter game. Ditto for casualty allocation.

It does take more time to resolve multiple blasts in the new rules, but like I mentioned above, the alternative of resolving all hits off of a single blast (and then multiplying that by the number of blasts in the unit) has some pretty dire consequences.

It's possible to come up with work around solutions (like saying each blast after the first hits one less model per blast), but all of those solutions end up adding more minutiae to the rule.

As it stands now, the rules for multiple blasts are simple and don't require any additional rules beyond the normal rules for blast weapons and that makes it easy for anyone and everyone to figure out how to play it.

IMO that simplicity is worth the amount of extra time it takes.

But does someone want to quickly check the section on destroying buildings. Unless we read it wrong, having people standing on the roof of a bunker makes the bunker easier to destroy in 5th.

Now I'm sorry, but there's good, there's bad, there's ugly, and then there's just plain WTF. If that is true, and we read it right, that wins the award for the 'most pointless rule written in 5th' award, and probably one of the first that slips people's minds (like Last Man Standing tests).

You are correct, but again I have to completely disagree.

This rule is completely in line with the vehicle rules GW has used for the Chimera's hatch and with all open-topped vehicles. Basically, you just assume that since models are standing on the parapet/battlement enemies are then able to lob a shot into the top hatch of the building or the increased weight of the troops on the roof makes the building a bit more susceptible to collapse.

But the real reason is that troops on top of the building make the building weaker is balance. Since the troops on the roof cannot be directly targeted by the enemy (just like open-topped vehicles) they *have* to make the building weaker to balance out the positive the enemy unit gets from being up there (increased vision and the ability to fire way more weapons than when they are inside the building and firing out of fire points).

Basically if you just think of the 'roof' rule like the 'open-topped' rule the whole thing fits together just fine.

I can't wait to hear the reports from the LV GT. That will be the true test of the new rules under GT conditions.

I wasn't aware that you couldn't shoot at the troops. I just thought it meant if you placed people on a building.

I'll have to check that section again. In our rules we added the 'treat bunkers as transports' thing a while back, but we're still kicking the bugs out of it. Some of the new 5th stuff for that we'll probably borrow.


Oh, and one other thing Yak - assume for a moment that I was correct and that troops on a building were not 'in it' and could actually be fired at normally, but by putting them there the building itself became (somehow) weaker. Would you see how that might be a WTF moment when reading the rules?

BYE