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Hey all! So the last time I played 40k was during 5th edition a few years ago. I've recently gotten interested in it again and have been trying to figure out what I missed, but it seems like a lot has changed.

-How is the current (7th edition, right?) ruleset? I remember death stars, transports, and wound allocation weirdness was big then but I'm not sure if the focus of the game has shifted to be more infantry based?

-I'm a diehard CSM player and their 5th edition codex was pretty lame. I've glanced a bit at their most recent 'dex and it looks like more of the same... are they still working with a weak book?

Thanks!

Yea CSM are pretty weak at the moment. There are rumors of them getting a bit update in a month or so but rumors is rumors.

If you run a bunch of flying mastery level 2 nurgle demon princes you should be fine though.

CSM's are one of the weakest and wonkiest factions currently.

The game as a whole is a gigantic confusing mess, with greater balance issues than in any previous edition. The game doesnt know what it wants to be and is trying to be Epic, old 40k, and a Skirmish game in one system, and does none of it well.

 Vaktathi wrote:
CSM's are one of the weakest and wonkiest factions currently.

The game as a whole is a gigantic confusing mess, with greater balance issues than in any previous edition. The game doesnt know what it wants to be and is trying to be Epic, old 40k, and a Skirmish game in one system, and does none of it well.

I think it's still more balanced than 2nd ed. Not that that's saying much at all.

 odorofdeath wrote:
Hey all! So the last time I played 40k was during 5th edition a few years ago. I've recently gotten interested in it again and have been trying to figure out what I missed, but it seems like a lot has changed.

-How is the current (7th edition, right?) ruleset? I remember death stars, transports, and wound allocation weirdness was big then but I'm not sure if the focus of the game has shifted to be more infantry based?

-I'm a diehard CSM player and their 5th edition codex was pretty lame. I've glanced a bit at their most recent 'dex and it looks like more of the same... are they still working with a weak book?

Thanks!

If anything deathstars are even bigger thing now. Vechiles are however fairly easy to take out except for super heavies. However in return space marines can spam them by bucketload with their special formation free rules.

Balance wise it's been gone from bad to worse. If you want better balance you need to go back to 2nd ed.

The isn't in a good state, but it isn't in a bad one either. Some people will argue it is bloated whilst some (like myself) like having that many options to read through.
External balance is pretty blech while the internal balance for the newer codices isn't glaringly bad, but there is still some oddballs (TWC being the worst offender).

I'd say that it's even less infantry based than before.

Best it's ever been, overall.

 odorofdeath wrote:
Hey all! So the last time I played 40k was during 5th edition a few years ago. I've recently gotten interested in it again and have been trying to figure out what I missed, but it seems like a lot has changed.

-How is the current (7th edition, right?) ruleset? I remember death stars, transports, and wound allocation weirdness was big then but I'm not sure if the focus of the game has shifted to be more infantry based?

-I'm a diehard CSM player and their 5th edition codex was pretty lame. I've glanced a bit at their most recent 'dex and it looks like more of the same... are they still working with a weak book?

Thanks!

Deathstars are still definitely a thing. However, I've found that smaller games tend to discourage their use. If you're playing 1500 and put 600 points of your eggs in one basket, you're going to have a bad time if that unit happens to perform badly. Last week I played against a Space Wolves player who put about 600 points in a Thunderwolf cavalry deathstar. I put a nasty amount of wounds on it with a hive Tyrant and an exocrine. Lo and behold, he makes some very unlucky saving throws and FNP rolls and most of his wolves are now either dead or reduced to a single wound. He is now in deep gak because he had 400 points left in reserve. His other units weren't going to do much either as they weren't equipped properly because he figured his Wolfstar would do the job.

CSM are very much a weak book. That said, I think they're still a fun army to play because you can bring these unique armies to the table. I often rant about how CSM suck, and believe me on a powerscale they do. However, there's something oddly satisfying about playing them. They're able to pull of shenanigans, like mind-controlling your opponents best shooting unit and making them shoot at their allies, which can take people by surprise but it's never so strong that it's infuriating to play against.

I mean a few games ago I gave a sorceror a Relic (from one of the supplements) that allowed him to cast a specific nova power with the added benefit that its range became 18" instead of 6", but the disadvantage that if I rolled a double to cast he'd blow himself up in the proces. I deepstruck him directly into an Imperial Guard infantry gunline and cast that power with all the dice I had. Of course I rolled doubles but that was all part of the plan. My sorcerer went up in smoke, taking along most of the infantry standing within 18" of him. Competitive? Probably not because the sorcerer probably costed about as much as all those guardsmen combined. However, it was funny. I did end up winning that game and I like to believe that it was all due to my sorcerer's heroic, I mean heretic, sacrifice.



IMHO the biggest problem with CSM is that their rules are so scattered throughout different books. There's the regular codex, Black legion supplement, the Crimson slaughter supplement and finally a fistful of different dataslates.

Yeah, all of these different supplements and formations and things definitely make it kind of overwhelming. I don't remember 40k requiring a library of random mini-releases to get access to all the rules.

Yeah, with something like sixty valid rules books and probably at least as many individual dataslate releases, keeping track of everything has become largely impossible (especially if you're trying to actually buy them all).

Oh ffs people.

The game is currently pretty balanced compared to 5th edition. CSM are weak but not unplayable.

At a tourney level you are seeing a rotation of 4-5 armies taking over the top spot, people just want old hammer back.

Rotating at that top spot are a combo of Eldar, Tau, Space Marines & Co, Knights, and Daemons.

You see a ton of strong armies that also include Necrons, Nids, and Khorne Daemonkin. (That also win sometimes at the GT level.)

Everyone else is somewhere below but have a habit of winning a major gt here or there.

Allies are STRONG at the moment, so if you plan on playing "one" army, or just the traditional force org chart, you are going to get stomped. There is a vocal faction of oldhammer that hates all this and want us back to bland old space marine CAD type armies blowing everyone away. (Grey Knights at the end of 5th ed were stupid)

To be honest. This is the best it has ever been. The 4 power codex (Eldar, Spacemarines, Tau, Necron) are very well matched between each other. Space wolves and deamons are also able to compete against power codex through pure abuse of broken mechanics alone - (Thunderstars and Flying circus). Thats 6 solid army choices. Compared to 5th where you had basically 3 options - GK, BA, or IG. All the other codex are very limited in their ability to compete in a TAC format in 7th. However if they keep releasing codex this should be the most externally balanced edition ever.

5th ed balance wasnt perfect by any means, but 5E had nowhere near the balance gap that exists now, and hoping everyone else gets updated on kind has never panned out in any edition. Even in 5th we've seen at least two, if not three, decidedly major shifts in design philosphy, that have rendered the first 7E books nigh helpless in the face of the 2015 release armies.

One could do far better with an underdog army like Orks or CSM's in 5E than one can on 7E, especially without having to rely on things like allies gimmicks.

Orks in 5th could beat face using a 4th ed codex. I saw them do it to SW. I saw them do it to BA. I even saw them do it to GK, because battlewagons were damn good vs GKs. That kind of thing is simply not possible with a 6th ed codex vs the power 7th ed codices. I even saw the much maligned 4th ed Eldar run a tournament using scatterlaser spam with warwalkers in ruins using Eldrad fortune shenanigans. Scatterlasers: burning down meqs since 1999 or so.

If your going to be a die hard CSM player in 7th learn to love flying things, Psychic powers, and cultisits.

 Vaktathi wrote:
5th ed balance wasnt perfect by any means, but 5E had nowhere near the balance gap that exists now, and hoping everyone else gets updated on kind has never panned out in any edition. Even in 5th we've seen at least two, if not three, decidedly major shifts in design philosphy, that have rendered the first 7E books nigh helpless in the face of the 2015 release armies.

One could do far better with an underdog army like Orks or CSM's in 5E than one can on 7E, especially without having to rely on things like allies gimmicks.

This is patently false. The joke at the end of 5th was that if you had not played GK then you must not have played well. (Since GK had top tables.)

 sfshilo wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
5th ed balance wasnt perfect by any means, but 5E had nowhere near the balance gap that exists now, and hoping everyone else gets updated on kind has never panned out in any edition. Even in 5th we've seen at least two, if not three, decidedly major shifts in design philosphy, that have rendered the first 7E books nigh helpless in the face of the 2015 release armies.

One could do far better with an underdog army like Orks or CSM's in 5E than one can on 7E, especially without having to rely on things like allies gimmicks.

This is patently false. The joke at the end of 5th was that if you had not played GK then you must not have played well. (Since GK had top tables.)

I didnt say there werent balance issues, but no, it's hardly "patently false", nor is it true that it was only GK all the time, nor were you as helpless before them with an army like CSM's or Orks as you are now with such armies against Eldar or Necrons or SM's in 7E. 5E was hardly a perfect edition, but it wasnt just "lol GK's win errything GG".

Can we not turn this thread into a discussion about previous editions ?

He asked what he needs to know to play in the current edition.

The game suffers from a lack of point values for formations. Even AoS has point values for them now. It is sad that 40k stays behind like this.

 oldzoggy wrote:
The game suffers from a lack of point values for formations. Even AoS has point values for them now. It is sad that 40k stays behind like this.

How do the points for AOS formations work?

The game is right now a mess.

From my personal experience, it's only enjoyable if you happen to have a group of like-minded players who agree to self-restrict themselves to a certain degree.

The latest additions from a rules point of view (Death from the Skies) have only made things worse by adding yet another phase to a game in serious need of streamlining. Deep down 7th edition still uses the core 3rd edition rules but it has piled up so much gak over them that it can barely function at this point.

40k can still be fun under the right circunstances, but the market is simply getting crowded with better alternatives. That's the way I see it.

pm713 wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
The game suffers from a lack of point values for formations. Even AoS has point values for them now. It is sad that 40k stays behind like this.

How do the points for AOS formations work?

Simple. To field formation you pay cost of units in it PLUS certain amount of points.

So let's say you want to take bully boyz formation. You take the 3 units of meganobz and then say pay 50 pts more.

Then elsewhere eldar takes aspect host and pays say 75 pts.

This way different formation bonuses can be balanced by pricing special abilities.

If you were to add this also to detachments(cad costs say 25 pts) you could fight against spamming detachments to get more HS choices. Would give more incentive to look instead for example FA.

Before switching to 2nd ed I was actually toying around with this kind of idea. Dumped it though as rewriting 7th ed to fit what we wanted would require like 80% rewrite though. Too much work.

I played 5th, got bored of it, then tried 6th when it came out.

I found the rules had gotten SO MUCH clunkier and 7th only worsened that from what I saw.

Challenges, removing casualties from the front of the unit, overwatch, a psyker phase... not to mention adding in superheavies (including all Knight armies!), maelstrom of war objectives and unbound...

5th played so much cleaner and faster than I found 6th ed... I'm still staying away and keeping half an eye out to see if 8th changes anything.

 jonolikespie wrote:
5th played so much cleaner and faster than I found 6th ed... I'm still staying away and keeping half an eye out to see if 8th changes anything.

Pity to keep models in shelf though. Find opponents to play 5th instead. That way you can enjoy the game rather than have expensive shelf fillers.

Eh, between starting Uni and the recent fluff I have neither the time nor the desire these days really.

It depends on who you are playing with. If you are playing against the strong armies like Necrons, the game can still be fun when your opponent is willing to restrict himself.
CSM can hold their own with Nurgle and some Forgeworld support. Or Daemons.
However, it's not everything about the army strength, the maelstrom missions brought in a very dynamic gameplay. It's not everybodies taste, but I think it balances the game and makes for a good experience.

Well, the game is not in a good state.
In our gaming group, we play largely apoc games (just for fun) but no longer organize tournaments for the reasons already said above.
On the other hand, 30k is fun if you restrict to Marine armies.

I don't understand how pulling from the front made the game clunkier. In fact, it makes it faster, as you don't have to figure out which model is more advantageous to take off.

 Crazyterran wrote:
I don't understand how pulling from the front made the game clunkier. In fact, it makes it faster, as you don't have to figure out which model is more advantageous to take off.

You have clearly never spent several minutes trying to decide who is one millimetre closer, the bod you thought was or the bod your opponent is pointing too. Doubly so if the bod they want dead is a specialist gunner.