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This is a conversation that is going on all over the place, and I honestly get the frustration with broken, exploitative nonsense. Still I think the fault is with GW for designing a broken, exploitable game. If a video game is released with glitches or exploits that allow players to do something unintended to gain an advantage, the hope is that they will be patched out of the game, not that players will simply adopt the honor system.

Also, not everyone who makes a well-built list is trying to be a jerk and ruin everyone's good time just for the win. I, for example, wouldn't count myself as a WAAC type of player, but I can't help but optimize my list. It's just my OCPD in action.

 Tamereth wrote:
It also has an advantage over any older versions in that it's complete. Every army has a valid useable codex. If only my skaven had gotten a nice hardback 8th edition codex before fantasy was murdered.

wait, how is that unique to 7th? Every army in 5th had a codex too, they were just paperback and half the price with the same page count, or in the case of SoB, a free PDF.

Not seeing where 7th has a leg up on that count unless lots of expensive and heavy books are your thing.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
This is where opinions differ I guess. I personally prefer the cleaner style of AoS and the more current artwork over those pieces. They seem busy to me. Also fetishitic but I think that's intended.

AoS art is just a bland representation of a product. Is the exact opposite of intriguing and expanding, what the old art was. Exceptions are there, but few.
Also, there is some picture that is deviant-art level, as an example the maps. The quality is so low it's insulting. I am amazed people pay all that money for those books.

TBH, those were just some of the older maps. Newer one's are fairly good and detailed, specially Hammerhal Aqsha's.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
It also has an advantage over any older versions in that it's complete. Every army has a valid useable codex. If only my skaven had gotten a nice hardback 8th edition codex before fantasy was murdered.

wait, how is that unique to 7th? Every army in 5th had a codex too, they were just paperback and half the price with the same page count, or in the case of SoB, a free PDF.

Not seeing where 7th has a leg up on that count unless lots of expensive and heavy books are your thing.

5th had several codexes that were at least one edition behind, including Chaos (both), Dark Angels/Black Templar (though they got a temporary lease on life with a FAQ giving them 5e Storm Shields/Typhoon/Cyclone Missiles), and Orks.

By contrast, every codex in 7th was either 7th or 6th+assorted updates.

A more annoying issue was that 7e can be divided into "pre-decurion" vs "post-decurion" armies, and Dark Eldar/Tyranids/Grey Knights didn't get to join in on that party.

 Tamereth wrote:
7th edition has it's problems sure, but when played for fun with friends, ignoring broken formations, it is fun.

It also has an advantage over any older versions in that it's complete. Every army has a valid useable codex.

If only my skaven had gotten a nice hardback 8th edition codex before fantasy was murdered.

If you're playing for fun, with friends, then *any* edition is fun. However, playing 3E-5E is faster and less painful.

Wait, Squats got a 40k 7E Codex? And Sisters, too? When did that happen?

Dogs of War player here... I didn't get an Army Book in WFB 8E. Or 7E. Or 6E. Last time Warhammer Armies: Dogs of War was in print was 5E.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Revenant78 wrote:
I'm not claiming 40k should be ( or any wargame ) as just a casual FFF 100% of the time, I realize the need for tournaments and that players will develop better tactics etc.

40k, as concepted and actually played, is FFF 99% of the time. Tournament play is such a tiny fraction of GW gaming it's not even funny. Talk about tail wagging the dog...

This guy nailed it.

No let 7th edition burn the only reason I can see people sticking with it is if your playing tau or eldar.

Not a chance of me sticking with seventh. I eagerly await the arrival of the new edition.

 Megaknob wrote:
No let 7th edition burn the only reason I can see people sticking with it is if your playing tau or eldar.

Or Word Bearers. Or Black Legion. Or Deathwing. Or Drop Pod armies. Or Lictorshame. Or pretty much any army that was built around null or summoning or having choices of Psychic powers.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
... Or Deathwing.

I wouldn't presume to speak for other folks, especially not DW players. Deathwing don't need to be a null-deploy tele-spam army. Certainly they weren't prior to our 4th Edition codex in 2007 when we got hitched with a soft dependency on the Ravenwing that no one was asking for. Dualwing is neat, but that it became the only way to field DW properly was a terrible move, and 6th/7th just made it worse (especially when they made the RW viable enough to make folks question why they were taking DW in the first place).

This Dark Angles player is happy that the age of one-trick DW may finally be over. 6th and 7th wasn't really a keen edition for the Deathwing (none of them were if we're being honest). And I certainly wasn't enamoured with how the list played in either edition. So as a Deathwing player, good riddance. At the very least, 2W terminators is more than we've been willing to hope for in decades.

No idea whether terminators, let alone Deathwing will be good this edition, but so far they're looking more viable than they've been in any one previous. But I don't think I'd go crawling back to 7th if they end up being pants in 8th.

If 8th is bad, then I get my lazy arse back on writing my homebrew 2.5e and ignore GW for another while (I'll probably give it longer than 5 years next time just to be safe).

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
It also has an advantage over any older versions in that it's complete. Every army has a valid useable codex. If only my skaven had gotten a nice hardback 8th edition codex before fantasy was murdered.

wait, how is that unique to 7th? Every army in 5th had a codex too, they were just paperback and half the price with the same page count, or in the case of SoB, a free PDF.

Not seeing where 7th has a leg up on that count unless lots of expensive and heavy books are your thing.

5th had several codexes that were at least one edition behind, including Chaos (both), Dark Angels/Black Templar (though they got a temporary lease on life with a FAQ giving them 5e Storm Shields/Typhoon/Cyclone Missiles), and Orks.

By contrast, every codex in 7th was either 7th or 6th+assorted updates.

To me that doesn't sound much different, except again, you paid twice as much and had to carry around a lot heavier bookbag.

Everything is either current or one edition behind. Sure one can argue for some of the expansion material bringing new stuff to some 6E books, but that's not a codex update, many didn't get much of any value, and there were far more design philosophy changes in 6E and 7E than through what 5E dealt with.

A more annoying issue was that 7e can be divided into "pre-decurion" vs "post-decurion" armies, and Dark Eldar/Tyranids/Grey Knights didn't get to join in on that party.

That's part of that whole thing, the 6E/7E era books had toooooons of issues, making many effectively outdated in far less time than happened to any army in 5E (e.g. IG getting a *very* poor update in the last weeks of 6E, then having power levels ramped up massively in under a year and being way behind the curve, and getting bumpkiss for it through 7E).

To be fair, 5th ed was able to mitigate a lot of power escalation simply due to Rhino hulls being that much of a pain to kill off; you "could" in fact end up with a game where bad rolling has you stun the same Razorback 10 times. (Granted, this turned 5e into "suppression-hammer", at least until you ran into Grey Knight Psybacks). The fact that 4 of the 9 codexes released were Marine codexes probably also did a lot to make things appear more balanced overall. Those books did have their own issues too, and 5e was the edition that first really emphasized the wolfywolfwolfness of Space Wolves. That said, I miss the original Magna Grapnel rules from 5e Blood Angels (now, *that* was a tragedy of 7e rulewriting).

Since I skipped 40k between 5th and 6th, one thing I've wondered is: what exactly made the Guard dex for 6e a poor upgrade? The only glaring thing I can see are the point hikes for the Chimera and Vendetta, and Stormtroopers losing Special Mission Orders.

I dunno...it feels like the "core mechanics" of 7th were a decent halfway point between the annoying factors of 5th, and the overcorrections of 6th. Honestly, I feel like if some unit entries were "mix and matched" between codex editions that it wouldn't be too hard to level the playing field.

The only thing Guard really had going for them in 5th were cheap AV12 hulls. Vets were a good scoring option with 3x special weapons at a fair price, and Chimeras were resilient and packed decent firepower for the edition in 5th. The arty options (of which there were more in 5th than 6th) were almost all viable and many were excellent (Manticore especially).

The 6th ed codex made most of the good options more expensive (like Vendettas and Chimeras), didn't improve upon any of the gak units (everything in the elites section, most of the fast attack section), stripped most special characters, gutted the arty section, removed many important special rules from a bunch of units (lumbering behemoth for Russes and the tracking rule for Hydras), and eventually tried to smooth over the whole thing with a vastly underwhelming super formation that was a clear cash grab. The only workable formation was the arty one which made the already overpowered Wyvern into something even more ridiculous.

In short, it nerfed the good stuff, didn't buff the bad stuff, removed a whole lot of flavour, and gave us a single new arty worth taking that was a monstrous pain in the ass to resolve on the table.

It was gak.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
To be fair, 5th ed was able to mitigate a lot of power escalation simply due to Rhino hulls being that much of a pain to kill off; you "could" in fact end up with a game where bad rolling has you stun the same Razorback 10 times. (Granted, this turned 5e into "suppression-hammer", at least until you ran into Grey Knight Psybacks). The fact that 4 of the 9 codexes released were Marine codexes probably also did a lot to make things appear more balanced overall. Those books did have their own issues too, and 5e was the edition that first really emphasized the wolfywolfwolfness of Space Wolves. That said, I miss the original Magna Grapnel rules from 5e Blood Angels (now, *that* was a tragedy of 7e rulewriting).

5E wasn't by any means perfect and had some outrageous issues and awful fluff stuff, but 7E was just its own whole level of weird

Since I skipped 40k between 5th and 6th, one thing I've wondered is: what exactly made the Guard dex for 6e a poor upgrade? The only glaring thing I can see are the point hikes for the Chimera and Vendetta, and Stormtroopers losing Special Mission Orders.

Point hikes on those units coupled with points hikes on both types of command squads, removal of the Medusa, Griffon & Collossus entirely, Hydra becoming Open Topped and losing its "ignores jink" mechanic for no reason, Elites units remaining largely junk, loss of a bunch of characters like Marbo and Al'Rahem, and really the book felt like a response to some excesses of 5E IG rather than a "4 weeks away from 7E" forward looking book, particularly next to books that came out a mere half year later like Necrons.

I dunno...it feels like the "core mechanics" of 7th were a decent halfway point between the annoying factors of 5th, and the overcorrections of 6th. Honestly, I feel like if some unit entries were "mix and matched" between codex editions that it wouldn't be too hard to level the playing field.

the basic game mechanics had some good stuff in places (e.g. rapid fire rules vs 3E-5E rapid fire rules), but this was overshadowed by the glut of special rules, random rolls for random rolls, pointless microdetail (e.g. powersword vs poweraxe on an irrelevant IG sergeant in an irrelevant close combat challenge in a battle between tank companies...), insane army construction, terrible vehicle mechanics, poor missions (both Eternal & Maelstrom), and awful codex bloat.

Comparing it to video games ( mainly online competitive ones ) what generally happens is...if a dev makes something so broken or so exploited...they either 1 patch it ASAP or 2 if they let it go too long the games usually fails, dies or people stop playing . It would seem people have left 40k in general over the years, I don't think this is anything new with just 7th....those reasons can also be many.

GW has and does release faqs to combat certain things of varying natures, these releases themselves can be all over the place in terms of dates vs initial releases, unlike patches....as patches tend to come out very EARLY in a video games life in order make money/avoid total failure...perhaps FFXIV is an example as to waiting a long time and a total overhaul although that's an mmo not really competitive.

There is of course some similarities but I would claim in the case of video games it's usually rectified asap vs typical gw antics over the years, and their answer to problems has mostly been faqs...but more often than not simply a new edition and new army books, which becomes more of a repetitive domino effect.

I make no arguments that GW is the core of the problem over NOT fixing broken things in a timely manner, but I also stand by it being a certain mindset of the player fanbase itself, I fully understand that the so called tournament scene may be a drop in the ocean vs the actual literal entire playerbase. However one thing remains...the majority of list building online tends to follow the "best build possible", and any time you see "themed lists" posted, you almost always get replies of "drop x take this" and the only reason for that is winning based on the rules/mathhammer, not because that input is there for fluff reasons.

Can you even take a pure Deathwing army in 7th ? I thought due to the formation itself you would auto lose due to no models on the table turn 1, or has this been fixed ? I know you could in past editions but I was pretty sure you had to take something else with them just like ven dreads have to be in a pod for that.

And has there actually been any edition where all army books were for that specific edition/released ? I know 7th was the bandaid and not all codex were 7th releases, chaos stuff was all 6th other than the recent warzone and stuff like that the add on books, but csm, cd, and crimson slaughter were all 6th right ? kdk was 7th. Imperial Guard was 6th.

Ah right, 6th removed the Griffon, Colossus and Medusa. Forgot about that. The Colossus was "good on paper, meh in practice" but the other two had their place. Between that, removing DE and Ork special characters (rip Wazdakka/Zogwort) and axing Mycetic Spores (before making Tyrannocites), GW's policy of "no models=no rules" did not do anyone any favors. Gamers lost, GW lost, Chapterhouse Studios lost...all over legalese about 3rd party models due to a gap in rules and model releases.

Of course, Fire on My Target & Bring it Down got notably buffed, Vets were cheaper anyway (10 points cheaper, so really the same as the old Chimera team...it's not like you were using Krak Grenades...), so *shrug.*

Also, I almost never remember the Hydra tracking rule ever mattering in a 5e game I ever played. Eldar Bikes were already 3+ armor and gave 50% cover to Serpents/Falcons, while Tau had Disruption Pods, Ork Bikes had Exhaust Clouds, and Marine Land Speeders either hanged back with Typhoons or were suicidal Deep Strike...honestly, Hydra tracking ended up being a "rule that did nothing in most games I ever encountered them with.

KDK was only 7th on a technicality lol. Being copied pretty much 1:1 from the 6th source books. It's more of a pseudo dex really.

 Roknar wrote:
KDK was only 7th on a technicality lol. Being copied pretty much 1:1 from the 6th source books. It's more of a pseudo dex really.

Technically the same can be said of the Tau codex, as most of the rules were directly copied from the 6e dex as well.

It wasn't much of a codex really, more of a compilation of supplements. Those supplements partially did add new units though so...a 6.5 dex?
Although I suppose in that sense the new blood thirsters would play much the same roll for kdk.

I thought KDK was pretty good for what it was, a themed khorne warband that semi brought back the csm and daemons together ( with even more options vs 3.5 ) of the 3.5 glory dex ( or ok it was technically 3rd ed but was usable in 4th till 4th one came out which got the horror train rolling till now ). I know you could KINDA do this with allies anyway but after the circus bs after 3.5 we have not really been able to do a themed chaos list like that for ages now. It's not perfect but overall it seems it was well received.

If 8th is as much a watered down sheepfest that AoS is, I will sell off everything except for my one completely painted prized army and shelve it. I have been slowly downsizing my collection and focusing on other hobbies. I get more enjoyment from painting anyway, and worse case I could do contract painting to scratch that itch if necessary.

Yikes, I haven't played for a while but 7th ed must be bad if players are talking about 5th ed as some kind of golden age. I remember 5th as 'carparkhammer/parkinglothammer'.

There are issues with every version of the 3rd-7th era. Some stem from core mechanics and others from the codex balance. Due to perpetual codex creep and edition change, there hasn't really been any one time when the codex balance was fantastic.

If I had to go back to any previous 3-7 version it would probably be late 3rd with the trial assault and vehicle rules (although I'm not sure how easy it is to get your hands on those now) or 4th.

The balance in 4th wasn't terrible to be honest. Holo-falcons were annoying so if you're really concerned about them then you can just make the holofield an invulnerable save or something along those lines.

the same company that made the previous gak are making this one too. its not like they ever really learn their lesson.

Revenant78 wrote:

Can you even take a pure Deathwing army in 7th ? I thought due to the formation itself you would auto lose due to no models on the table turn 1, or has this been fixed ?

Indeed this is true. All units must be placed in Deepstrike Reserve.

 Luciferian wrote:

Revenant78 wrote:

Can you even take a pure Deathwing army in 7th ? I thought due to the formation itself you would auto lose due to no models on the table turn 1, or has this been fixed ?

Indeed this is true. All units must be placed in Deepstrike Reserve.

That's why you bring like 3 Dreads in Pods.

I know some people will complain about it not being only Termintors, but that looks boring on the table and Dreads look cool (plus they also got that small buff with getting 4 attacks as well, but yeah).

Ok so here is a serious question, let's forget ( in case this is part of the reason I don't know not to sound like some x files episode ) that GW may intentionally be making the rules far less than perfect each edition. Let's forget about their business practice also to sell more models...

Is it reasonable to say given GW's rather strange ways, that over the years...yes this includes rick and andy etc, that NONE of these "designers" have ever been competent enough or dare I say it...even cared enough to tweak and fix and do the very best to their ability to make 40k and army books balanced ? One would think working internally in the studio ( and being privy to things months ahead since they work along side the sculptors and create the units they sculpt later ) that they do discuss rules and units and so on with other designers.

Or is it a case that no mattere who is designing or working for them for the rules, that given human nature people will forever break the game ? or is it a case of just a total lack of serious playtesting ?

I know people for years claim GW never playstests or x designer is to blame for ww2 and many other things but what is the true reality here sarcasm and anger aside ? does anyone know truly ?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

Revenant78 wrote:

Can you even take a pure Deathwing army in 7th ? I thought due to the formation itself you would auto lose due to no models on the table turn 1, or has this been fixed ?

Indeed this is true. All units must be placed in Deepstrike Reserve.

That's why you bring like 3 Dreads in Pods.

I know some people will complain about it not being only Termintors, but that looks boring on the table and Dreads look cool (plus they also got that small buff with getting 4 attacks as well, but yeah).

That or a small Ravenwing detachment as stated by someone earlier.

 Luciferian wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

Revenant78 wrote:

Can you even take a pure Deathwing army in 7th ? I thought due to the formation itself you would auto lose due to no models on the table turn 1, or has this been fixed ?

Indeed this is true. All units must be placed in Deepstrike Reserve.

That's why you bring like 3 Dreads in Pods.

I know some people will complain about it not being only Termintors, but that looks boring on the table and Dreads look cool (plus they also got that small buff with getting 4 attacks as well, but yeah).

That or a small Ravenwing detachment as stated by someone earlier.

Although pure deathwing itself vs what the last codex is I think is a bit questionable anyway. I think GW tried to sorta make the formations for the latest more themed to their structure, supposedly it's actually quite rare that deathwing suddenly shows up with tons of terminators, I mean I know they deathwing and ravenwing technically hunt the fallen but it would seem that GW kinda intends to be running DA as more of a mixed force or elements of each section rather than a pure section of one.

I could certainly see 2-3 squads of deathwing in a large da force or for a specific task....but an entire army of them like 6+ squads...hmm that to me is pushing it a bit. Don't get me wrong they may look cool on the table but even in 3rd I felt it was a tad off with it being 100% pure DW.

Revenant78 wrote:

Although pure deathwing itself vs what the last codex is I think is a bit questionable anyway. I think GW tried to sorta make the formations for the latest more themed to their structure, supposedly it's actually quite rare that deathwing suddenly shows up with tons of terminators, I mean I know they deathwing and ravenwing technically hunt the fallen but it would seem that GW kinda intends to be running DA as more of a mixed force or elements of each section rather than a pure section of one.

I could certainly see 2-3 squads of deathwing in a large da force or for a specific task....but an entire army of them like 6+ squads...hmm that to me is pushing it a bit. Don't get me wrong they may look cool on the table but even in 3rd I felt it was a tad off with it being 100% pure DW.

It's pretty easy to run pure Ravenwing, though. In any case, pure Deathwing would have been a pretty low tier army to play in 7th.

Revenant78 wrote:
Ok so here is a serious question, let's forget ( in case this is part of the reason I don't know not to sound like some x files episode ) that GW may intentionally be making the rules far less than perfect each edition. Let's forget about their business practice also to sell more models...

Is it reasonable to say given GW's rather strange ways, that over the years...yes this includes rick and andy etc, that NONE of these "designers" have ever been competent enough or dare I say it...even cared enough to tweak and fix and do the very best to their ability to make 40k and army books balanced ? One would think working internally in the studio ( and being privy to things months ahead since they work along side the sculptors and create the units they sculpt later ) that they do discuss rules and units and so on with other designers.

Or is it a case that no mattere who is designing or working for them for the rules, that given human nature people will forever break the game ? or is it a case of just a total lack of serious playtesting ?

I know people for years claim GW never playstests or x designer is to blame for ww2 and many other things but what is the true reality here sarcasm and anger aside ? does anyone know truly ?

Good question. I suspect that while they were aware of problems, they were following orders from upper management. Note that a good few of them left to start up their own rulesets. Kirby has been quiet of late, but back at the time he kept saying things that implied the models were the main focus and the rules were just a way of selling them. Paraphrasing a bit, but one quote was along the lines of - we make models that customers are grateful to buy from us. Jewel-like models of wonder or somesuch. I'd have to check my collection of annual reports to get the specifics, but it was usually along those lines. From that perspective, 'fixing' the current rules would be a waste of time and money when you could be focusing on creating new (and probably just as broken) rules to sell the customers. I've got the mba (i think that's what its called) of robin dews back from when it was freely available online (have to pay now), and it painted a less than stellar picture of the management system at the time. My interpretation of the whole period is that those who were keen on writing good rulesets left, and those who remained were happy to be company men and not worry about the quality of the rules. Wasn't the prospero burns (or whatever that boxed game was called) outsourced for the rule set? It doesn't paint a good picture of the talent remaining if it was.

I'm going off on a tangent here, so stand back. My question of interest is, has that really changed now that whatshisface has taken the reins? We keep hearing about Nu-GW, but apparently the verdict is still out on whether or not AoS is relatively balanced or being actively balanced as time goes on.

Anywho, that's my 2 cents.