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6th. Because otherwise I couldn't have played my army of Stormtroopers.

 Bobthehero wrote:
6th. Because otherwise I couldn't have played my army of Stormtroopers.

There was an all-Stormtrooper/Kasrkin army in 3rd.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

I would have liked to see an iterative middle-ground sort of system. Start with the all-or-nothing as a base, but work in an edge case where the AP is significant enough to degrade the armor but without circumventing it entirely. Force saves to be re-rolled if the AP is equal to the armor, or something along those lines.

Perhaps the old flat AP system with rules like Breaching (X+) or Rending (X+) where if you roll an X+ to wound the shot ignores your armor; the designer could adjust the X+ to figure out what "percentage" of wounds pierced different armor classes, letting certain minis (better than the AP of the weapon of course) get their saves against the rest of the wounds... Hmmm.

They did that with the Choppa/Chainaxe rules in 3rd. I'm not opposed to it until we see that rule proliferate across all weapons and essentially make 3+ meaningless.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
6th. Because otherwise I couldn't have played my army of Stormtroopers.

There was an all-Stormtrooper/Kasrkin army in 3rd.

I started at the tail end of 5th (with Krieg), so I missed that. Also, AP3 Hellguns are neat.

Edit: I think that early 6th, or late 5th, was also when the Hades Breaching Drill was a its best, while the Krieg's artillery was at its best in 6th, too.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
6th. Because otherwise I couldn't have played my army of Stormtroopers.

There was an all-Stormtrooper/Kasrkin army in 3rd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

I would have liked to see an iterative middle-ground sort of system. Start with the all-or-nothing as a base, but work in an edge case where the AP is significant enough to degrade the armor but without circumventing it entirely. Force saves to be re-rolled if the AP is equal to the armor, or something along those lines.

Perhaps the old flat AP system with rules like Breaching (X+) or Rending (X+) where if you roll an X+ to wound the shot ignores your armor; the designer could adjust the X+ to figure out what "percentage" of wounds pierced different armor classes, letting certain minis (better than the AP of the weapon of course) get their saves against the rest of the wounds... Hmmm.

They did that with the Choppa/Chainaxe rules in 3rd. I'm not opposed to it until we see that rule proliferate across all weapons and essentially make 3+ meaningless.

The current HH edition handles plasma (and other weapons) this way. Plasma is AP4 now, but Breaching (4+), so if you roll a 4+ To Wound it's AP2. This means that Plasma is still a fantastic weapon against Marines, but they get their saves against the wounds about 40% of the time (33% of which they still fail, of course).

Breaching and Rending are still somewhat inflexible with the issue they can only upgrade to AP2.

They should have a second input that determined the AP of the breaching or rending hit. E.g Breaching (3, 5+) in which it only upgrades to AP3 on a 5+ to wound as an example.

Otherwise it becomes tricky to balance breaching against 2+ and 3+ saves at the same time.

 Tyran wrote:
Breaching and Rending are still somewhat inflexible with the issue they can only upgrade to AP2.

They should have a second input that determined the AP of the breaching or rending hit. E.g Breaching (3, 5+) in which it only upgrades to AP3 on a 5+ to wound as an example.

Otherwise it becomes tricky to balance breaching against 2+ and 3+ saves at the same time.

I don't disagree that it would open up more design space, but as it stands that's not been a problem so far. 2+ saves are very strong in the Heresy ATM. If it swings against them, I think you're right.

I was thinking more about weapons like the battle cannon that a lot of people have been complaining it is basically useless in HH.

You could give it breaching but that may make it too good against Sv2+ and IIRC a lot blast weapons are stuck in a similar situation.

Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

I would have liked to see an iterative middle-ground sort of system. Start with the all-or-nothing as a base, but work in an edge case where the AP is significant enough to degrade the armor but without circumventing it entirely. Force saves to be re-rolled if the AP is equal to the armor, or something along those lines.

Perhaps the old flat AP system with rules like Breaching (X+) or Rending (X+) where if you roll an X+ to wound the shot ignores your armor; the designer could adjust the X+ to figure out what "percentage" of wounds pierced different armor classes, letting certain minis (better than the AP of the weapon of course) get their saves against the rest of the wounds... Hmmm.

I understand why they did it the way they did for HH2.0, but I strongly dislike the practice of kludging special rules onto only certain weapons to address game-wide issues with the mechanics.

I return to autocannons as the perfect example: There's nothing particularly exotic about them that warrants special rules, but otherwise Marine armor being just as likely to stop an autocannon shell as an autopistol round doesn't sit right with me.

HH being a Marine-heavy game exposes the limitations of the all-or-nothing system pretty starkly. I think they did the best they could with 2.0 short of throwing it out and completely redoing it, but the AP modifier system actually suits Horus Heresy better than it does 40K.

Autocannons are [Rending 6] in HH 2.0. Just sayin.

Maybe I phrased it poorly, but that was my point.

If you have to add special rules to an autocannon to make it behave 'correctly'- not a volkite death ray, or a grav gun, or a conversion beamer, or any of the other weirdness in the setting, just a big plain self-loading cannon- something's wrong with the core rules.

The other solution that I don't think have seen anyone seriously propose is having AP vs Armor tables.

 Tyran wrote:
The other solution that I don't think have seen anyone seriously propose is having AP vs Armor tables.

Can you elaborate on this, please?

 Tyran wrote:
The other solution that I don't think have seen anyone seriously propose is having AP vs Armor tables.

When the current edition eliminates the WS v WS table, I don't think replacing the armor save with an Armor v AP (effectively creating a second S v T style stat, but for the defender to roll) would be a viable option. Especially since you'd really want to go through and change all of the Armor and AP numbers to make the chart feel right.

I mean, a Damage vs. Armor roll works fine in Infinity, but that's a D20 system and they don't need to use a chart to figure out what the necessary roll is going to be.

 catbarf wrote:
Maybe I phrased it poorly, but that was my point.

If you have to add special rules to an autocannon to make it behave 'correctly'- not a volkite death ray, or a grav gun, or a conversion beamer, or any of the other weirdness in the setting, just a big plain self-loading cannon- something's wrong with the core rules.

Well, what really happened IMO is that moving the rules towards realism exposed the weakness of the Space Marines, so they had to tone it back.

Last edition, it was extremely obvious that the Space Marines, genetically engineered superhumans in power armor, could be smashed to a paste by artillery and tank cannons just as readily as a regular human (even if the paste is chunkier and slightly more viscous).

Rather than changing the lore, they really had to rethink how weapons as basic as an autocannon, tank cannon, artillery cannons, siege mortars... etc. worked. It is an abstraction I appreciate to keep Marines playable, and I am privately amused that it was necessary.

 catbarf wrote:

Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

I would have liked to see an iterative middle-ground sort of system. Start with the all-or-nothing as a base, but work in an edge case where the AP is significant enough to degrade the armor but without circumventing it entirely. Force saves to be re-rolled if the AP is equal to the armor, or something along those lines.

Perhaps the old flat AP system with rules like Breaching (X+) or Rending (X+) where if you roll an X+ to wound the shot ignores your armor; the designer could adjust the X+ to figure out what "percentage" of wounds pierced different armor classes, letting certain minis (better than the AP of the weapon of course) get their saves against the rest of the wounds... Hmmm.

I understand why they did it the way they did for HH2.0, but I strongly dislike the practice of kludging special rules onto only certain weapons to address game-wide issues with the mechanics.

I return to autocannons as the perfect example: There's nothing particularly exotic about them that warrants special rules, but otherwise Marine armor being just as likely to stop an autocannon shell as an autopistol round doesn't sit right with me.

HH being a Marine-heavy game exposes the limitations of the all-or-nothing system pretty starkly. I think they did the best they could with 2.0 short of throwing it out and completely redoing it, but the AP modifier system actually suits Horus Heresy better than it does 40K.

I agree with this point somewhat. There's still the rolling-to-wound aspect of the weapon that's part of the "does this weapon do damage?" question, and the old system held the Autocannons wounding on a 2 while the pistol wounds on a 5 (and the two shots), so once you put it all together the big gun is still far more likely to do result in a kill. But while those relationships work, they still feel a little funny.

I always felt like 4+ armor in that paradigm sorta got the worst of it. While AP 3 weapons were comparatively rare, it still felt like troops with "fancy" 4+ armor were still dealt with a little too casually simply because Heavy Bolters, Shuriken Cannons, Whirlwinds, ets. ets. were all AP 4 and would just cut those units down real fast.

 catbarf wrote:
If you have to add special rules to an autocannon to make it behave 'correctly'- not a volkite death ray, or a grav gun, or a conversion beamer, or any of the other weirdness in the setting, just a big plain self-loading cannon- something's wrong with the core rules.

Or a limitation of a D6 system.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
If you have to add special rules to an autocannon to make it behave 'correctly'- not a volkite death ray, or a grav gun, or a conversion beamer, or any of the other weirdness in the setting, just a big plain self-loading cannon- something's wrong with the core rules.

Or a limitation of a D6 system.

Imo 40K can't really be anything else, the D6 is just too accessible. They/we just have to work around it.

 catbarf wrote:
...but otherwise Marine armor being just as likely to stop an autocannon shell as an autopistol round doesn't sit right with me.

It's the nature of the 'paper/scissors/stone' design.

Modifiers and 'roll X to ignore armour' make having the wrong tool for the job is less costly.
The latter I think they put into HH2 because any non-marine gun is pretty much always the wrong tool for the job compared to the spread armies you might expect to face with an all-comers list at the start of 3rd.

 Tyran wrote:
I was thinking more about weapons like the battle cannon that a lot of people have been complaining it is basically useless in HH.

You could give it breaching but that may make it too good against Sv2+ and IIRC a lot blast weapons are stuck in a similar situation.

the battlecannon is emblematic of the designers overcorrection of artillery to boost armies torwards terminators (even slogging ones) and dreadnoughts. Hence why armies that primarly relied upon artillery because they had to, to attack 3+ or 2+ saves are right now struggling.

Incidentally a better system would have been to tier the breaching number for artillery and ordnance weapons as follows.

Calliope mortar (rocket artillery) breaching 6 +
Thunderblast (normal cannon) Rending 5 +
Earthshaker and BC rending 4+
Medusa and demolisher Rending 3+.

Alternativly you can increase the blast size again for demolishers and battlecannons to 5" again but use lower rending numbers.

I think the general issue is that armies that could tailor against Marines WOULD tailor against Marines, and in real life, the appropriate weapon for the job will reliably destroy it's target.

In HH2.0, they made it so there's almost NO appropriate weapon for marine killing, to try to fight this phenomenon and make Marines the stars.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in anti-TANK weapons becoming spammed, not because tanks are such a huge problem but because they're the next-most-appropriate tool for the job against Marine armies. The Vanquisher cannon is the best Russ against Marines, not because of all it's specific anti-tank and anti-monster special rules, but because it's the only AP2 tank gun on the Russ chassis. 10 men Lascannon squads aren't taken because you need a volley of 10 lascannons to kill a tank. It's because 10 lascannons will kill Marines and Terminators better than krak missiles and volkite culverins.

It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently" - even in a world where the Designers have gone out of their way to remove the entire category of "elite infantry killing weapons" - people just shifted to anti-tank.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think the general issue is that armies that could tailor against Marines WOULD tailor against Marines, and in real life, the appropriate weapon for the job will reliably destroy it's target.

In HH2.0, they made it so there's almost NO appropriate weapon for marine killing, to try to fight this phenomenon and make Marines the stars.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in anti-TANK weapons becoming spammed, not because tanks are such a huge problem but because they're the next-most-appropriate tool for the job against Marine armies. The Vanquisher cannon is the best Russ against Marines, not because of all it's specific anti-tank and anti-monster special rules, but because it's the only AP2 tank gun on the Russ chassis. 10 men Lascannon squads aren't taken because you need a volley of 10 lascannons to kill a tank. It's because 10 lascannons will kill Marines and Terminators better than krak missiles and volkite culverins.

It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently" - even in a world where the Designers have gone out of their way to remove the entire category of "elite infantry killing weapons" - people just shifted to anti-tank.

No, no, Unit. Clearly the solution is to make Marines tougher than tanks so that not even anti-tank weapons will penetrate their pauldrons.

Only then will Marines feel sufficiently elite.

As far as rules, 4th was my favorite. 5th was ok but not really s good as 4th. with a few changes it would have been a really good edition.

I was still neck deep into Orks back then and the 3rd ed codex was for the most part superior to the 4th ed codex. If they had kept more from the 3rd ed codex i would have been a very happy camper.
Rules wise The way fearless units were made to suffer if they lost close combat was very poorly done. That is the big stand out I recall from 5th, I hated that.
Close combat in 4th was basically perfect.

It's been too long and I have forgotten most of my grievances with 5th. I just know everything after 4th has been less and less enjoyable.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently"

I've not played HH2.0 - what are heavy weapon costs like, still mirroring the big price crash from 5th?

Lascannons and plamas cannons were 35pts each until late 4th and 35pts for the pair by mid 5th edition. As I recall the subsequent HH 1.0 ruleset dropped heavy weapon costs lower still.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think the general issue is that armies that could tailor against Marines WOULD tailor against Marines, and in real life, the appropriate weapon for the job will reliably destroy it's target.

In HH2.0, they made it so there's almost NO appropriate weapon for marine killing, to try to fight this phenomenon and make Marines the stars.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in anti-TANK weapons becoming spammed, not because tanks are such a huge problem but because they're the next-most-appropriate tool for the job against Marine armies. The Vanquisher cannon is the best Russ against Marines, not because of all it's specific anti-tank and anti-monster special rules, but because it's the only AP2 tank gun on the Russ chassis. 10 men Lascannon squads aren't taken because you need a volley of 10 lascannons to kill a tank. It's because 10 lascannons will kill Marines and Terminators better than krak missiles and volkite culverins.

It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently" - even in a world where the Designers have gone out of their way to remove the entire category of "elite infantry killing weapons" - people just shifted to anti-tank.

I feel this speaks to the "point costs for upgrades" thread as well. Weapons can theoretically have different "roles" and be sidegrades, but those big, high AP weapons always wind up feeling more worthwhile because of the array of high-value targets one can meaningfully engage. If you don't have decent AT, anit-MC, or anti-Elite weapons, you can basically find yourself to be **** out of luck. Whereas if you take a plethora of them, they'll basically always be useful because you can remove those big-time threats in short order, and then pound away at MEQs or anything else dangerous, while whatever small arms in your force deal with the rest.


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A.T. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently"

I've not played HH2.0 - what are heavy weapon costs like, still mirroring the big price crash from 5th?

Lascannons and plamas cannons were 35pts each until late 4th and 35pts for the pair by mid 5th edition. As I recall the subsequent HH 1.0 ruleset dropped heavy weapon costs lower still.

It depended on the squad, but yeah. Lascannons and PCs were 35 points for Devastators. Missile Launcher and Multimeltas 20, then HB at 15. Fort he Tactical Squad the costs were 15, 10 and 5 in the same order. The big premium for the Heavies made you really think about their deployment.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel this speaks to the "point costs for upgrades" thread as well. Weapons can theoretically have different "roles" and be sidegrades, but those big, high AP weapons always wind up feeling more worthwhile because of the array of high-value targets one can meaningfully engage. If you don't have decent AT, anit-MC, or anti-Elite weapons, you can basically find yourself to be **** out of luck. Whereas if you take a plethora of them, they'll basically always be useful because you can remove those big-time threats in short order, and then pound away at MEQs or anything else dangerous, while whatever small arms in your force deal with the rest.

Partly, IMHO one of the requirements for a sidegrades approach to function is that you need a wide variety of targets in the meta.
It goes without saying 40k has never been good at achieving that.

If horde was viable then anti-horde weapons could be true sidegrades AT weapons.

That being said it does feel there is some degree of "sidegradeness" between AT weapons and anti-elite weapons at the moment.

If I was forced to pick an edition, I think 4th edition was the best overall in terms of core rules, and the 3.5ed and 4th ed codexes were pretty solid and had some of the best customization options ever. I played the most by far during 4th edition.

Presently, I'm playing ProHammer (see signature) exclusively within our group. It's been a while since I talked about it, but as a general reminder, ProHammer started out as a mashup of 4th and 5th core rules, with a host of compatibility rules to let you use any codex from 3rd-7th edition within the ruleset. We also layered on some new elements (e.g. proper overwatch, crossfire rules, etc.), cleaned up a bunch of rule oversights (e.g. a way properly determine vehicle facings), tweaked core rules for balance (AP system, vehicle damage, deep strike, etc.) and tried to make the whole thing an homage to what we always wanted to the game to be.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel this speaks to the "point costs for upgrades" thread as well. Weapons can theoretically have different "roles" and be sidegrades, but those big, high AP weapons always wind up feeling more worthwhile because of the array of high-value targets one can meaningfully engage. If you don't have decent AT, anit-MC, or anti-Elite weapons, you can basically find yourself to be **** out of luck. Whereas if you take a plethora of them, they'll basically always be useful because you can remove those big-time threats in short order, and then pound away at MEQs or anything else dangerous, while whatever small arms in your force deal with the rest.

Partly, IMHO one of the requirements for a sidegrades approach to function is that you need a wide variety of targets in the meta.
It goes without saying 40k has never been good at achieving that.

If horde was viable then anti-horde weapons could be true sidegrades AT weapons.

That being said it does feel there is some degree of "sidegradeness" between AT weapons and anti-elite weapons at the moment.

It'd be great to see some true hordes hit the meta again. Some of my favorite games were against this Ork player who would field 140 Boyz or something. It's fun to see the battlefield smothered in troops, and it has at least occasiinally offered a unique challenge to play with/against.

I have 120 painted Gants waiting for the opportunity.

But most units have access to more than one anti-horde weapon, and more than one anti-tank weapon, and if everything is free then you're always going to take the better of the respective choices. Not everything can (or should) be a sidegrade. Some things are upgrades, and should cost as such.

First. Its really the only one I'll play. After that, though there were still some good new ideas (I remember the original necrons) it largely became a money-grab. But more importantly, that was the one edition in which you were really free to do wshat you wanted.

Sure, you could buy your boxed set of space marines and the land raider, but you could also buy half a dozen minis of whatever type and go exploring the galaxy as a navigator, rogue trader, inquisitor, whatever. If it hadn't been for 1ed, I really think the game would have been a flash in the pan.

I was also looking at the poll. Its interesting how 4ok's popularity seems to peak at 5th ed, and then rapidly goes flatline.

Why so? Not being snarky, I really don't know.

Lots of very controversial decisions.

6th saw the introduction of fliers, many still deem unreasonable to fit into the scale of 40k.

7th made super heavy vehicles a regular model, like fliers in 6th. It also introduced absurd formations and power creep.

Both editions had a lot of randumb tables like for warlord traits and psychic powers.

8th and 9th are bloated to death and took regular wargear and made it into stratagems.
Balance was a turbulent journey all the time.