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 Redbeard wrote:


Exactly, because you can't rely on being choppy, it's an inferior approach. But, to a lot of players, lining up toy soldiers and then rolling dice to see which fall down is no better than lining up toy soldiers and firing rubber-bands at them to see which fall down. It's just not as enjoyable.

Yet some how lining up toy soldiers in base to base contact with each other, then rolling dice to see which ones fall down is inherently more fun?

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:


Exactly, because you can't rely on being choppy, it's an inferior approach. But, to a lot of players, lining up toy soldiers and then rolling dice to see which fall down is no better than lining up toy soldiers and firing rubber-bands at them to see which fall down. It's just not as enjoyable.

Yet some how lining up toy soldiers in base to base contact with each other, then rolling dice to see which ones fall down is inherently more fun?

It's because we're wargamers. See, we are actually a subtype of the larger human species, scientifically referred to as Homo sapien wargamus, and also commonly known as "6x4"s or "those nerds with the toy soldiers." We have a debilitating genetic mutation that causes us to become overjoyed when certain results are produced by a numbered cube, assuming these cubes are linked to plastic models owned by the human in question. Usually, the desired numeric result is a 6, unless it is linked to a "leadership test," an event classified by scientists as the "ahdammitIwishIhadatsknf" phenomena. Wargamus are closely related to other human variations such as deetwentya and catansettlerofin, and more distantly related to those such as gambleria, ar-tee-ess-playan, and a currently unnamed primitive group of humans known as "Magic Players."

Well, this reminds me of the time called the dark age of humanity...

The whole flyer issue isn't a big deal for me. More concerned about GW's trend of low-quality products, nasty and mean-spirited business practices/customer relations, and most of all prices. Though I do agree 40k has gotten a lot worse in 6th edition, primarily due to randomness.

 Redbeard wrote:
But, for years, the game has been a "heroic" wargame. The actions of the heros are supposed to matter, and the heroes carry power swords and get into hand-to-hand combat. For years now it has been possible to play an entirely hand-to-hand oriented army, and even have it make sense in the far future. Tyranids spawn more gaunts than you can shoot down. Orks mob you with numbers too. Daemons appear out of the warp, without having given you the opportunity to shoot them.

Flyers change that dynamic. It's no longer possible to play those armies (successfully) as they have no answer to flyers.

I find it funny you lumped Tyranids in there as having no answer to flyers. If that's you're opinion, you've played far too many Tyranid players who don't know a thing about their army.

Personally, I'm glad that my shooting armies are actually viable now instead of just being axe-bait for everyone and their assault squad...

Fandarel wrote:


Look at SW, DE or others and you see a that Problem. No real Anti-Flyer Options!

Now I agree currently with the space wolves part (unless you paid attention to the death from the skies book because there is a flying ace space wolf upgrade (I cannot quote it at this time)), but the razorwing is still mean. "Oh you can deep strike and fire dark lances at 36" at this other flyer? You hit on a 3+ and treat all armor as a 12? So your telling me you have a 66% to hit and a 50% chance to glance or crash any flyer in the game?" Well sir I call that a valid anti-flyer option.

Second edit: my best game so far in this edition was THE BIG GAME last weekend. The world wide Apoc game which was hosted at the US GW store, here in Memphis. There was flyer spam, but nobody cared. There were leman parking lots. Only a total of 2 dakka jets (mine) and 2 helldrakes (1 was mine also). But it has reinvigorated me toward this game. My night lords look forward to the next apoc incursion they face. Maybe trying small games is no fun especially as you claimed, falcon to have been hobbying since 3rd Ed. I Am Not Critcizing, just advocating a more fun use of all your hard work. Because the one truest statement I have seen on any of the fan websites was, "No one needs to be told how to have fun."

All the pre-existing flyers lost Deep Strike as of Death from the Skies.

Being an Elysian IG player I have currently 5 flyers and plan on getting four more...so I know alot of you are probably hating me right now . I will be honest I do not understand the flyer hate, in fact I love it because it brings a different aspect and some variety to both the IG codex and the game in general. And it being 40k I highly doubt that armies would be purely deployed as ground forces and slog it out with purely infantry, bikes/skimmers and tanks.

However with that being said there are some things that I do not like about this edition:
First and foremost the stupid and slowed prices. With prices being so high its no wonder I am shopping at forgeworld, whats a few bucks more for better quality models but even then, they are way to high....greedy b@$&@*%s

-The dumb new reserves rule where now only half your army can be deployed in reserve. Being an Airborne/Air Assault themed army I hate it that I have to leave some "sacrificial squads" out on the field until my flyers come in. Some people may disagree with that but thats just my personal opinion.

-Creating Codexs with models that do not exist...not really a bad thing since I have seen some amazing conversions but seriously, if your going to make rules for it you should have a model.

-This is probably unrelated but the beef with FW rules and models....dont care what anyone says, they are LEGAL (GW has said sorry cant give me that argument) and if they dont like it then I dont play them, thankfully everyone in my game store is chill with it besides the store owned (another greedy guy).

There are more but these are just a few that "grind my gears." Dont worry not forcing my opinion on everyone just contributing to the thread

With the new codexes we've ben gtting, things see to be taking a far more balanced approach to th game. However, I knew I needn't read any further when I saw the two following words:

Grey Knights.

It's not Corporate GW you need to worry about. It's Matt Ward. The trend of codexes "one-upping" each other really started with him, and each of his codexes (Necrons excluded, they were his good work. Funny how they're the only Xenos he's done...) seems to be trying to top the previous one he or someone else wrote. Space marines were starting to lag behind! Let's make them super-duper fast and remove lack of mobility as a weakness (Blood Angels)! Space Wolves ended up being tougher, now that couldn't be allowed to happen; hence came things like he Dreadknight, Paladins, an ENTIRE squad getting Instant Death attacks off of a SINGLE psychic roll on leadership 10 guys, not to mention the two-wound nightmares led by the fluff nightmare that is Draigo.

As for the rant on flyers: they can win big, or they can fall flat on their faces. Taking them is -not- a requirement as people seem to think, and even when something like a Heldrake or Storm Eagle (mine) shows up, people just use the old tactic of shooting the ever-living crap out of it until it goes down.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gmaleron wrote:

-Creating Codexs with models that do not exist...not really a bad thing since I have seen some amazing conversions but seriously, if your going to make rules for it you should have a model.

-This is probably unrelated but the beef with FW rules and models....dont care what anyone says, they are LEGAL (GW has said sorry cant give me that argument) and if they dont like it then I dont play them, thankfully everyone in my game store is chill with it besides the store owned (another greedy guy).

QFT. The first one they'e gotten a LOT better about, to be honest; with Chaos, everything that was new (as little as it actually was in the grand scheme of things) was out at launch, as were the Dark Angels and Daemons models. If Tau follow that line of releases, then maybe GW's finally gotten their heads out of their asses over leaving "gaps" in their product lines that people like CHS can exploit. The second...I'm a Forgeworld fan myself (Storm Eagles! Though I was building an expanded Stormraven with the exact same wargear shortly before it was unveiled; FW ninja'd me on that one!), and I've run my own comparisons. With the exception of a few items (mostly Space Marine stuff, go figure), most 40k-approved Forgeworld stuff isn't broken-and is even overpriced points-wise, even!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Personally, I'm glad that my shooting armies are actually viable now instead of just being axe-bait for everyone and their assault squad...

As someone who started 40k with Tau in late 4th Edition:

 gmaleron wrote:
-The dumb new reserves rule where now only half your army can be deployed in reserve. Being an Airborne/Air Assault themed army I hate it that I have to leave some "sacrificial squads" out on the field until my flyers come in. Some people may disagree with that but thats just my personal opinion.

All reserves may be fun for the player, but they're terrible for the opponent. Not because they're good, but because it gives you nothing to do for a turn (or two if you happened to go first), which removed two whole turns of potential combat from the game.

Good riddance.

 gmaleron wrote:
-Creating Codexs with models that do not exist...not really a bad thing since I have seen some amazing conversions but seriously, if your going to make rules for it you should have a model.

Except they don't do this now outside of characters, with only a few older armies waiting for the odd model. They learned well from the Chapterhouse fiasco, at least on the 'release your gak' perspective.

 gmaleron wrote:
-This is probably unrelated but the beef with FW rules and models....dont care what anyone says, they are LEGAL (GW has said sorry cant give me that argument) and if they dont like it then I dont play them, thankfully everyone in my game store is chill with it besides the store owned (another greedy guy).

No argument, but this single sentence is going to absolutely kill this thread. So get any non related posts in while you can.

To be fair, Blood Angels have always been super-fast even before Matt Ward came onto the scene. Not everything is his fault.

gmaleron - you don't have to use sacrificial squads. I play Elysians too. My 'on field' units are usually Forward Sentries in cover and a Tauros Venator, or a squad from my Sisters army fielded as an allied detachment. You can get around the 50% reserves rule by making sure your platoons have at least one Dedicated valkyrie in there - this forces every squad in the platoon into Reserves, so they don't count towards the 50% maximum units in reserve.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Personally, I'm glad that my shooting armies are actually viable now instead of just being axe-bait for everyone and their assault squad...

Yes, those Razorbacks and Chimerae sure loved ripping people to shreds in CC in 5th edition...

What razorbacks and chimerae? I play air cav, necrons and Sisters.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
What razorbacks and chimerae? I play air cav, necrons and Sisters.

He's referring to the fact that 5th edition was dominated by shooting armies, particularly Space Marines of various stripes in Razorbacks and Guard in Chimera. You might not have played them, but a lot of people did. 5th edition was a shooting edition, so saying 6th edition is a 'nice change' because it's a shooters edition because other shooting armies got more viable is a bit odd.

OP, welcome to the reality of the current gaming world. As far as rules systems go, 40k is low level junk.

Also you should note that GW now openly call themself a miniatures company, not a games company. They are basically telling people they are in business to sell models, not rules. Read between the lines and you see that the rules are engineered to sell models.

GW knows exactly what its doing with the rules structure, price increases, and other silly crap thats all over this site. The only mistake they are making is thinking its a viable long term plan.

The good news is there are several systems out there that will allow you to use all your GW minis in a much better rule system.

Heres a couple that I know of right off the top of my head, though a search of this site and Google will lead you to more.

Warengine...the base rules for a OOP game called Shockforce. The game was great, the fluff and minis were pretty bad, so it never took off. It has a creation system that allows you to build your troops and weapons the way you want them. Heres a link to a free pdf of all the rules: http://web.archive.org/web/20090526223406/http://warengine.darktortoise.com/index.php?title=Main_Page


Theres also Tomorrows War, which uses the Force on Force rule system. I dont know much about it personally, but Ive seen others talking about it on the other games section on here. http://ambushalleygames.com/products/store/product/show/cid-66/name-tomorrows-war/category_pathway-0

 Mad4Minis wrote:


Warengine...the base rules for a OOP game called Shockforce. The game was great, the fluff and minis were pretty bad, so it never took off. It has a creation system that allows you to build your troops and weapons the way you want them. Heres a link to a free pdf of all the rules: http://web.archive.org/web/20090526223406/http://warengine.darktortoise.com/index.php?title=Main_Page


Theres also Tomorrows War, which uses the Force on Force rule system. I dont know much about it personally, but Ive seen others talking about it on the other games section on here. http://ambushalleygames.com/products/store/product/show/cid-66/name-tomorrows-war/category_pathway-0

Out of interest, how do you use WH40K points systems with those rules?

I have heard the April as the release date for the new Tau codex. If that's true, look at this release schedule!
CSM....October 2012
DA......Jan 2013
CD......March 2013
Tau.....April 2013
That would be 4 codex's released in 7 months time.
For a company that previously had a release record of 1-2 codex's a year, that's an incredible release schedule. If they keep this up, they will have every army updated within 2 years. That's staggering, as previously it was not unknown to be working with a codex 9 years old.

Form a competitive players standpoint, that's a golden age.

 labmouse42 wrote:

If they keep this up, they will have every army updated within 2 years. That's staggering, as previously it was not unknown to be working with a codex 9 years old.

Form a competitive players standpoint, that's a golden age.

I do not agree with this. It would be better for competitive players to have well-written and balanced codexes released less frequently than a glut of poorly written, unbalanced codexes released in rapid succession.

Of course, this assumes that GW designers could balance a codex if given more time, and I've yet to see any evidence that the current group could do that.

 Redbeard wrote:
I do not agree with this. It would be better for competitive players to have well-written and balanced codexes released less frequently than a glut of poorly written, unbalanced codexes released in rapid succession..

Even if they could do that (which they can not) you will wind up with 2-3 armies that are 'win' and a bunch of garbage armies.

Look at the the end life of any codex thats over 5 years old. Its usually garbage.
- Try running pure Eldar today. Without DE allies, eldar are pretty weak today.
- Tau today are pretty darn weak. This will likely change next month
- Remember Necrons at the end of 5th (before their new codex came out). They were laughable.
- Grey knights before their book came out? They went from 'bottom of the pack' to competitive.
- CSM was probably the best codex at the time of its 'end of life', and that was because of cheap FMCs and lash.

What this schedule will fix is someone stuck with a horribly outdated army that's never going to be updated in the time they play the hobby. This past Friday I saw a new player buying some Eldar models. Its an 8 year old codex. The kid is going to be at a huge disadvantage, and when learning the game it means he will likely get clobbered consistantly. If every codex was re-released every 2 years, then he would not be at as bad of a disadvantage.

It also means that in the competitive scene there are more varieties of armies. Instead of it being 'Play GK or go home' like the end of 5th, there is a greater chance of a variety of different armies.

I have only played 3 games and now I am wondering why I am doing bad at this tournament

I was winning until his guys came in from reserves

Why is my balanced list doing bad in a tournament full of min/max-ers?

I lost so I had no fun, if I won I expect both me and my opponent to have fun

I did not win GW = bad company

Am I being hypercritical? Yes but this is pretty much what OP is saying and complaining about. If in the last 9 months you have only played 3 games then it is not the new rules that pushed you away from the game. There must have been something else that pushed you away from the game before the rules were released. It sounds to me that the OP has been bored with 40k and these new games are new and exciting to him. This is not unreasonable and does not mean GW has failed as a company, it just means that after 15+ years the OP wants to try something different. Then as icing on the cake OP went to a tournament looking for fun. Yes tournaments can be fun but they are also infuriating because all of a sudden every player becomes cut throat and the games feel like they matter so much more. Though I do think complaining about someone taking a hyper competitive list to a tournament is kinda stupid. That is what is to be expected and is not some 6th edition phenomena.

But the general argument comes down to fliers Have they ruined 40k? As of right now, yes. Because not every army has reliable anti-air support. 40k is a game of checks and counters and if you do not have a counter for your enemies plan you are going to go down. But that can be said about almost every mechanic. If you don't have any anti-armor weapons those tanks are going to run right over you. If you don't have any AP 2 weapons those terminators are going to run right over you. The problem with fliers are that because they are new we do not have the proper counters for them yet. But GW is doing a great job of pumping out codices in this edition and so far they have all seemed fairly balanced which is nice because 5th edition was anything but balanced. But already with the few codices out so far we have seen flier spam on the decline. Once everyone has access to fliers and ways to get rid of fliers the whole flier issue will not really be a problem. But this is the cost of adding a new mechanic to the game while not updating all the armies. As for army competitiveness, I think now is the best we have seen it in a long time. Now you can take Tau or Tyranids to the table without being laughed at. There is no clear, worst army and any army played well can do well. Sure it is a lot harder to win with a older/weaker army but that has always been the case, not those old/weaker armies actually have a fighting chance.

 Furyou Miko wrote:


gmaleron - you don't have to use sacrificial squads. I play Elysians too. My 'on field' units are usually Forward Sentries in cover and a Tauros Venator, or a squad from my Sisters army fielded as an allied detachment. You can get around the 50% reserves rule by making sure your platoons have at least one Dedicated valkyrie in there - this forces every squad in the platoon into Reserves, so they don't count towards the 50% maximum units in reserve.

I see what your saying but you would still have to leave the squad on the table because of the "not having any models on the board for a game turn" rule wouldnt you?

Yeah, GW isn't what they used to be, I've been painting their miniatures since I was very young and it has been a large part of my life. It's truly a bummer how they've been lately

I have only one issue with 6th ed 40k;

'Assault Transport'.

I feel like limiting charges when exiting transports is lame. Overwatch, grenades and challenges can really help against mêlée already; the change to transports was a bit much.

And I'm primarily a shooty kinda guy...

How do Striking Scorpions and assault marines without jump-packs do their thing anymore? :I

I started in 5E as a disclaimer.

I really enjoy Sixth. And while GW does a lot of poor business practices that hurt the hobby, the pricing and brinigng out new models (and giving incentive to buy them) does keep them in business. If everyone could play their same armies for 25 years, the company would last past 10... There has to be a reason for growth. New models, new rules, etc. make that happen.

Flyer spam sucks. My first army was Space Wolves, so I was everyone's bane in 5E. I switched to Necrons at the end of 5E because I LOVED the models and the new fluff. I dabbled in daemons a bit, but didn't enjoy painting the models. I intend to get a SoB / GK Inquisition army rolling (8 sisters and an Exorcist, it's a start!!!).

Maybe after 25 years it's that you're ready to move on?

When going to tournaments quite a few people (or the ones who want to actually do well) take enough cheaper units/guns to completely table all flier lists. It's not incredibly hard and I don't think it breaks the game. Let the idiots who spend £500 on fliers do it, just laugh in their face when you annihilate them with your £30 worth of dark lances...

Rustgob wrote:
I have only one issue with 6th ed 40k;

'Assault Transport'.

I feel like limiting charges when exiting transports is lame. Overwatch, grenades and challenges can really help against mêlée already; the change to transports was a bit much.

And I'm primarily a shooty kinda guy...

How do Striking Scorpions and assault marines without jump-packs do their thing anymore? :I

Assault has changed, and likewise assault units have changed. Look at which transports are impacted by the change to 'assault transports;
- Rhinos/Razorbacks
- Wave Serpents
- Chimeras
- Night Scythes
- Devilfish
All other armies (orks, DE, etc) have transports that they can assault out of. Heck -- even the necrons can assault out of a ghost arc if they really want to assault.
Most of those transports are ones that you would never assault out of anyway. Really, what necron player is going to assault from a night scythe, or Tau rush out and assault from a devilfish? Sure, it might happen once in a blue moon, but its pretty darn rare.

Even in 5th edition, wave serpents were marginal assault vehicles at best. Generally you had to show your arse of the wave serpent to the enemy. Unless you were very close to the enemy unit, you could not disembark from the rear, run around the side of the transport and assault. Eldar units without fleet were even hit harder by this.

So the only units really hit by the change are those coming out of rhinos/razorbacks. The armies most heavily impacted by this are CSM, BA, and SoB (to a lesser extent SW, but they usually want to get assaulted and not assault)

So how big of an impact is this change? Well if your playing a list that relied upon the rhino assault rush its a big issue! If your playing a khorne bezerekers rhino assault army your going to be pissed -- you need to buy some land raiders. If you were playing a SoB list with DCAs, you need to ally in GK ones in a LR.
On the game as a whole though, its actually a fairly minor change. Of all the army lists you can bring today, very few are negatively impacted by the lack of ability to assault from a rhino.

gmaleron wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:


gmaleron - you don't have to use sacrificial squads. I play Elysians too. My 'on field' units are usually Forward Sentries in cover and a Tauros Venator, or a squad from my Sisters army fielded as an allied detachment. You can get around the 50% reserves rule by making sure your platoons have at least one Dedicated valkyrie in there - this forces every squad in the platoon into Reserves, so they don't count towards the 50% maximum units in reserve.

I see what your saying but you would still have to leave the squad on the table because of the "not having any models on the board for a game turn" rule wouldnt you?

You have to have them on the table, yes, but what I'm saying is that they don't have to be sacrificial. They're just a squad that were dropped in two minutes ahead of the rest of the army to deploy locator beacons to make sure the rest of the army arrives on target and deploy the heavier gear (like target relays). Use them tactically, not just as throw-aways to make the army legal.

 labmouse42 wrote:
On the game as a whole though, its actually a fairly minor change. Of all the army lists you can bring today, very few are negatively impacted by the lack of ability to assault from a rhino.

Yep, only Chaos Space Marines, Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Black Templars. 25% of the Codices (two of which are immensely popular) and every single MEQ Codex that's supposed to be meele-centric. No biggie.

labmouse42 wrote:
Look at the the end life of any codex thats over 5 years old. Its usually garbage.

That's because currently there's no larger ideal governing what balance is. It hasn't always been this way. When I started playing, between the end of 3rd and start of 4th, I played one of the older armies out there (at that time), orks. I won several tournaments with them, and got top-ten finishes in GTs with them (battle points, not overall). My friend Jon took Best General at Adepticon with the oldest codex in the game in 2006.

When I started playing competitively, around this time, there was no army that I'd write-off as something not to expect to see at a tournament, and I'd often go several events without playing against the same codex twice.

It's only been since the end of 4th/start of 5th (starting with the 5th Dark Angels and Chaos Marines design philosophy, which rapidly morphed into the mid-5th design philosophy, which then changed, yet again, to the 6th design philosophy) that the codexes have been quite this bad. Blatantly obvious stuff is either slipping through the cracks due to the rush to get everything out the door - or is simply intentionally poorly balanced.

Some of the obvious flaws in the system are that any given codex can be skipped for an entire version of the game, like Eldar, Tau and Orks were skipped during 5th ed, and Dark Eldar and Necrons skipped during 4th. Orks came out of that okay, Eldar & Tau, as you mention, really didn't.

What this schedule will fix is someone stuck with a horribly outdated army that's never going to be updated in the time they play the hobby. This past Friday I saw a new player buying some Eldar models. Its an 8 year old codex. The kid is going to be at a huge disadvantage, and when learning the game it means he will likely get clobbered consistantly.

Exactly. This kid is also likely to quit the game, unless the army is redone before he gets frustrated, so this cyclical design approach is not good for recruiting long-term customers. If someone picks the wrong army to start with, they're not going to enjoy the experience. It's probably good for short-term churn&burn sales though.

If every codex was re-released every 2 years, then he would not be at as bad of a disadvantage.

Well, possibly. He could have the bad luck of getting an update that also sucked, or that took the handful of models that he discovered that did work, and turned them into the chaff, necessitating a wholescale repurchase of the army he already figured out. Every two years...

It also means that in the competitive scene there are more varieties of armies. Instead of it being 'Play GK or go home' like the end of 5th, there is a greater chance of a variety of different armies.

See, here I disagree in your analysis. Like I said, I've never seen as much variety in the scene as I did in 2005-2007. Back when Andy Chambers was the head design guy, the codexes lasted, you could pick one based on what fluff or play style you liked, and be good to go. Since Jervis, and then Kelly&Ward became 'the guys', it's been a revolving door of what's the more recent poorly balanced book, and how do we exploit it. I don't believe that a faster release cycle is going to fix this, I believe that a faster release cycle is going to compound the mess. Maybe you'll see more variety, but only because people can't prep an entire army each month to take advantage of the newest release. And I think we'll see even more mistakes slip through the cracks.

To me, balance isn't something you achieve by adding more random tables to a game, it's something that has to be planned for and developed as a cohesive whole. And we're not seeing that.