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I realise some don't like it - but imo Planes just needed to be treated as fast skimmers and be done with it. Make them about M20" and accept that they are glorified helicopters. They are not real flyers - thats how they manage to stay over the battlefield for more than about 2~ seconds.

You then give them rules and point them appropriately like every other unit in the game. I'm a bit negative on this "thy shalt have only 2 flyers" just because they happened to release Ad Mech and Ork ones with overpowered rules. Most of the flyers in the game are rubbish.

It more has to do with large impassable bases not because a unit is undercosted or overcosted.

But instead of a more elegant fix (which I realize there isn’t a great one) they just sorta fix this issue but don’t since 2 flyer bases can still block a large area from assault.

 Togusa wrote:
2nd wound CSM?

Going to have to wait for the codex it seems.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dendarien wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dendarien wrote:
Planes should just have to start the game in strategic reserve so they can't alpha strike. They should also not zone out reinforcements nor should they force enemies to stay outside of engagement range when moving.

This essentially gives aircraft the better tactical advantage by forcing the opponent to move before it comes in and also keeping it safe without having to spend CP - a more tantalizing prospect the bigger the flyer gets. Removing engagement ranges also makes it somewhat easier for them to slide in and snipe characters. If you restrict its first move to be like other reserves it will have less to game in regards to sniping, but not targeting.

The number 1 problem with aircraft has been alpha strike. Forcing them to start off the board at least ameliorates that. I don't like the approach to fixing planes to be just pricing them to absurdity. I mean a wazbom is already 190 points, how high can you push it?

With regards to taking up space just make aircraft have to respect opponent's models then. It's stupid that you can drive a flyer 50+ inches turn 1 and park right outside your opponent and say sorry you can't move because my aircraft thousands of feet up in the air is blocking you.

Ultimately I agree. I'm just wary of unintended consequences.

Wasn't trying to sound aggressive or anything - you made fair points about unintended consequences. I just think flyers really need a rework with how they interact with the game instead of being hard to interact with damage machines.

I don’t even get what peoples problems with fliers are. We have units that deepstrike with perfect accuracy, not interacting with terrain, units with minuses to hit, and units that put our way too much firepower. Fliers are just another unit in the 40k arsenal.
Kinda just seems like something witchunted.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
2nd wound CSM?

Going to have to wait for the codex it seems.

Ah, life in mediocrity! Such is the destiny of all chaos marine players.

Unfortunately, it may be rooted in our geneseed brother!

 Togusa wrote:

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
2nd wound CSM?

Going to have to wait for the codex it seems.

Ah, life in mediocrity! Such is the destiny of all chaos marine players.

Jokes on you my chaos space marine bolter boys are counts as tactical squads. And my legends bike lord is a bike captain... I already have my 2w chaos space marines!

In the end, the game was supposed to be about ground combat. Flyers add flavour, but it was still supposed to be a predominantly ground battle. Once you have too many planes it always skews stuff because planes have so many wonky rules. And if you make them interactive with ground units, then it just breaks the realism hard. Because how did this squad of berserkers jump up into the sky, pull down and destroyed this plane...

They might relook flyers again in 10th ed. But for now, their fix seems to be to just limit the number of flyers you can bring. Which is fine for most situations. I mean, you can still bring 2 in a 2000 point game.

There is a separate game called Aeronautica if you like spamming planes so much.

They gave Flayed Ones the 'Core' keyword. I mean... *SMH*

And did they increase the cost of AdMech chicken walkers again?

 Third_Age_of_Baggz wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
2+ Leman Russ
But no 2+ Baneblade.

I know...right!? What a missed opportunity.

As I keep saying: GW never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

 Togusa wrote:

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
2nd wound CSM?

Going to have to wait for the codex it seems.

Ah, life in mediocrity! Such is the destiny of all chaos marine players.

Switch to DG and TS until the 9th ed codex drops! That's what I did! To me, DG and TS are still chaos space marines. They are just chaos space marines dedicated to Nurgle and Tzeentch respectively.

Mediocrity would be an improvement.

I'm of the opinion that flyers, as in full-on airplane style, just won't work. There is no way to have that be functional within the game's mechanics. IMO treat them all as if they are flying like helicopters. Even if they canonically can go faster it is assumed they have adopted a hover mode to take part in the context of the battle. Actual aircraft flying could be represented by stratagems to do bombing runs & the like, but only if they are in reserve.

Also let units move under them, because duh.

I think out of line of sight guns should be similarly restricted like what they did with flyers because if they can be spammed, they also "break" the game since they bypass terrain which is so important in 9th ed.

Like with all these changes, suddenly, the army that comes to mind that is going to absolutely shoot up the meta now is Tyranids. And the main reason for that is because of their Hive Guard. Like when one artillery unit Hive Guard makes the difference whether an entire codex is viable or possible top dog now (because of Drukhari, Admech and Orks got nerfed). I think its speaks volumes about the problem of out of line shooting artillery.

Its all about degree. When your artillery can only blow up a unit or two (say 10%) of an army in one turn, its perfectly fine. But once your artillery can blow up 25% of an army a turn, your opponent now only has 4 turns to play. And once your artillery can blow up 33% of an army a turn, now your opponent only has 3 turns to play.

You are literally on a clock here. Because artillery can just hide behind obscuring and keep on firing away.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Mediocrity would be an improvement.

I'm of the opinion that flyers, as in full-on airplane style, just won't work. There is no way to have that be functional within the game's mechanics. IMO treat them all as if they are flying like helicopters. Even if they canonically can go faster it is assumed they have adopted a hover mode to take part in the context of the battle. Actual aircraft flying could be represented by stratagems to do bombing runs & the like, but only if they are in reserve.

Also let units move under them, because duh.

You can move through their base presently. It's just a very large space to clear.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
I think out of line of sight guns should be similarly restricted like what they did with flyers because if they can be spammed, they also "break" the game since they bypass terrain which is so important in 9th ed.

If the FoC meant something, and having more than 3HS slots in a standard sized game required significant expenditure of strategic resources, this wouldn't be a problem.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
I think out of line of sight guns should be similarly restricted like what they did with flyers because if they can be spammed, they also "break" the game since they bypass terrain which is so important in 9th ed.

If the FoC meant something, and having more than 3HS slots in a standard sized game required significant expenditure of strategic resources, this wouldn't be a problem.

Well ... 3 squads of max Hive Guard are pretty oppressive. And again, its oppressive because they are out of line of sight guns. And one unit can shoot twice. So effectively that's 4 units. That's the equivalent of 24 hive guard shooting each turn, which is 48 shots of Str 8 that ignore cover and do D3 damage each. So, we are looking at a potential of 48 to 144 damage per turn. And all unmitigated by terrain. See how spamming out of line of sight artillery causes problems ? Like I wouldn't care if all these potential damage wasn't out of line of sight shooting. But once it is, it just changes the entire equation.

Not that it was a top table army, but say goodbye to fluffy IG AirCav lists. All three of you that still used them I salute you.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Not that it was a top table army, but say goodbye to fluffy IG AirCav lists. All three of you that still used them I salute you.

They took away my Inquisitorial Storm Troopers first. Then they came for me Valks.

I feel your pain. I never liked the Valkirie, but dreamed of using somekind of Dune ornithopter as a count as. Now that Dune is out, GW killed my dream.

M.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well ... 3 squads of max Hive Guard are pretty oppressive. And again, its oppressive because they are out of line of sight guns. And one unit can shoot twice. So effectively that's 4 units. That's the equivalent of 24 hive guard shooting each turn, which is 48 shots of Str 8 that ignore cover and do D3 damage each. So, we are looking at a potential of 48 to 144 damage per turn. And all unmitigated by terrain. See how spamming out of line of sight artillery causes problems ? Like I wouldn't care if all these potential damage wasn't out of line of sight shooting. But once it is, it just changes the entire equation.

Yeah I fought Hive Guard squads before the warzone book and they were very painful, can only imagine what it's like now.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Not that it was a top table army, but say goodbye to fluffy IG AirCav lists. All three of you that still used them I salute you.

M.

That's what makes one size fits all rules so hard with the units in this damn game. Like Remoras suffer, but thankfully no one was using them anyway....

Maybe they'll switch to units instead of models at some point.

Joyboozer wrote:
Have they buffed the GW editors yet? Or were they eaten by tyranids?

For what? If you refer to the job ad...It was not for 40k/AOS so wouldn't really matter here.

Eh, by the time I play admech their codex will be completely not as written lol. This is the issue with all this, you pay top dollar for a codex now sure to be relative trash before its life span is over.

I'm happy for the balance touches but less so about paying top money for junk each edition now it seems. As well losing access to all my valks sucks big time, but at least my ground guard are buffed.

I guess you can't ever hope for GW to give without taking away.

Its nice to see that GW has finally decided to join the rest of the wargaming world in doing regular updates/living rules. Some observations that you need to think about that could make this go sideways.

1) What is GW going to do about keeping all its rules and codexes up straight if they are going to do updates every 4 months? Books, card etc will be out of date very quickly so will this all go digital? GW will have to get all their apps up straight and more useful. Your going to need something a-la Warroom for WM/H or the M3E app for Malifaux where all rules, cards, list building, scenario building and tracking in game can be done in one place.

2) In some cases, living rules can encourage a company to do less rules testing, resulting in rules for new releases being above the power curve, sometimes resulting in higher initial sales of those new models. The company then can dial it back 4-8 months later through a rules update.

3) Living rules and regular updates can be captured by the competitive meta cycle. It also encourages more of a formal competitive scene. Do GW players want all the rules and updates to be driven by the top 10% of competitive players or tournament results?

Sunno wrote:
1) What is GW going to do about keeping all its rules and codexes up straight if they are going to do updates every 4 months?

rules coming with "the App" will be the only valid and official source, no need to do something, it is already there

Sunno wrote:
1) What is GW going to do about keeping all its rules and codexes up straight if they are going to do updates every 4 months? Books, card etc will be out of date very quickly so will this all go digital?

That was already a thing since 8th Ed thanks to Day 1 FAQs. It's one of the big complaints for some people here.

Sunno wrote:
2) In some cases, living rules can encourage a company to do less rules testing, resulting in rules for new releases being above the power curve, sometimes resulting in higher initial sales of those new models. The company then can dial it back 4-8 months later through a rules update.

People already accuse them of this, hence the constant mocking of their claim that it's "the most playtested version ever".

Sunno wrote:
3) Living rules and regular updates can be captured by the competitive meta cycle. It also encourages more of a formal competitive scene. Do GW players want all the rules and updates to be driven by the top 10% of competitive players or tournament results?

9th Ed is literally driven by tournament meta. The Secondaries are lifted near straight from the 8th Ed ITC rule set, the ITC guys are well known to have been in the playtests since before 8th,etc. Pretty much every FAQ/Errata release has had things in it that have been very clearly added as the result of tournament metas(nerfing the Castellan in 8th being an obvious example).

 kodos wrote:

Sunno wrote:
1) What is GW going to do about keeping all its rules and codexes up straight if they are going to do updates every 4 months?

rules coming with "the App" will be the only valid and official source, no need to do something, it is already there

Would still need to be done. ATM official source is book+erratas. If book+errata disagrees with app the app loses.

tneva82 wrote:
If book+errata disagrees with app the app loses.

that is a community decision, as by GW the App has priority

One of the big issues I think is the sheer scale of things in the game now (Units, Options, wargear, etc) that playtesting and balance are impossible in 40k as it stands. There are just far too many interactions between various things that GW can not accommodate a rule set that has all the stuff tested.

It isn't just rules bloat, but bloat in general that creates the mess.

Best option would be to scale back to more simple things like 3rd edition did to 2nd edition.

So infantry would have a generic stat line which is modified here and there to help reflect unit differences. Same for vehicles and other stuff.

I understand the desire for 'flavour', but adding all the flavours just makes any meal into an unpalatable mess.

 kodos wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
If book+errata disagrees with app the app loses.

that is a community decision, as by GW the App has priority

Based on what?

Note on that logic none of the yesterday is yet actually usable...So yesterday was actually preview for changes...used...when? Nobody knows.

also it would mean you CANNOT play without app...