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 MagicJuggler wrote:


7th is simple enough to fix, both on a power and a core mechanic system. Replace "all or nothing" casting with "degrees of success" both for casting and denial, and make individual powers not so roulette-worthy. Maybe make Denial a 5+ base instead of a 6 base (Incidentally, if one rolled 3 successes on a blessing, rolling 18 dice to deny would only have about a 60% chance of stopping it. 4 successes and it drops to about 36%).

I was probably biased for 3rd but I meant: power as a dangerous selected "special equipment" helping the strategy. No randumb.
I fail to get why one should fix 8th psychic system of all of them. It does not even affect all the armies.
7th edition one is so clunky that is better just to trash it and start from scratches.

I have played 8th only a little, and I really have no interest to play it much more. The game is way way too abstracted. Sure 7th was too clunky at places, but now they went to other extreme and removed all the flavour and cinematics from the game. Everything is so bland in 8th - shoot, hit, count wounds, remove models. Nothing interesting or memorable ever happens and the game board looks boring as all the infantry are in clumps, vehicles dont leave craters etc.

It is just so uninteresting.


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 Kaiyanwang wrote:
I prefer 8th edition psychic by far. It remembers me more 3rd edition and has what I want from the phase: simple buffs you choose and you can even tailor you strategy on, with a simple resolution mechanic.

I can see people wanting more nuance in things like terrain or deepstrike/infiltration, and even more risk, but 7th psychic phase was an utter abomination.

Nevermore.

7th edition Psychic phase was actually an improvement over how things worked in 6th system. The old Psychic system simply broke down when Codeci like Space Wolves came out and flooded the game with Psychic powers. It was nearly impossible to keep track on who had done what in which phase. 7th edition put them all in one place and removed lot of ambiguity.


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 Corrode wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
It's weird how big a deal Mortal wounds are for people. Coming from Sigmar, there's barely any in 40k by comparison. Even full smite spam armies don't do as many mortal wounds as things like Disciples of Tzeentch or Blades of Khorne do incidentally.

They're also not even new to 40k - they've existed at least since 5th and Jaws of the World Wolf, calling them "mortal wounds" just codifies the old "removed from play" mechanic.

And before that, for example Mind Worm from 4th edition DA Codex. (though that power was really weak).
Lots of AoS players have complained about Mortal Wound spam, tho.

Did the 8th edition rulebook come with free rose tinted glasses or something?

Even though the Psychic phase sucked in 7th, it was still an improvement over the psychic in 4th, 5th and 6th edition. They should have probably made it more akin the the fantasy magic phase.

Mortal wounds by themselves aren't bad. Being able to spam mortal wounds is the problem.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:


7th is simple enough to fix, both on a power and a core mechanic system. Replace "all or nothing" casting with "degrees of success" both for casting and denial, and make individual powers not so roulette-worthy. Maybe make Denial a 5+ base instead of a 6 base (Incidentally, if one rolled 3 successes on a blessing, rolling 18 dice to deny would only have about a 60% chance of stopping it. 4 successes and it drops to about 36%).

I was probably biased for 3rd but I meant: power as a dangerous selected "special equipment" helping the strategy. No randumb.
I fail to get why one should fix 8th psychic system of all of them. It does not even affect all the armies.
7th edition one is so clunky that is better just to trash it and start from scratches.

It affected a good deal of armies though, and still has its issues. Why dismiss the desire for a better system?

I agree with non-random powers. However, I preferred the "Decide how many dice you want to put into this power" decision, versus "here's 2d6, roll well." Besides, risking Perils for pushing a greater amount of Warp Charge is very iconically 40k, especially in the RPGs. Rebalance individual offending powers, and restructure powers as "degrees of success" rather than "must roll at least X successes", and *maybe* make the extremely "minor"/rote Psykers "Wyrds" (akin to Bound Spells pre-8th WHFB: Less powerful but automatically successful with 1 success).

Darsath wrote:
Even though the Psychic phase sucked in 7th, it was still an improvement over the psychic in 4th, 5th and 6th edition. They should have probably made it more akin the the fantasy magic phase.

4th did at least "try" to put some balancing mechanism in place, by having Psychic Powers cost points. Of course, I infamously remember the 4th Marine Codex where each Psychic Power had two separate point costs, that the second Psychic Power would cost more than if it was the only Psychic Power. Of course, even then, some powers were obviously better than the other ones. ("Gee, do I take Smite, or do I take Veil of Time?") Point-buy is a start, but powers aren't necessarily in a vacuum.

What I imagine would make the most sense would be: Each Discipline has 6 powers (or 3 maybe). A Psyker chooses their powers at *army creation* (being able to choose multiple disciplines to roll from pregame made Marine casters maybe a little too flexible). Each Discipline has 4 Basic Powers and 2 Advanced Powers, and for each Advanced Power a Psyker wants to know, it must know 2 Basic Powers from the same discipline. No "Endurance, Invisibility, Vortex of Doom" superpsyker that doesn't know how to cast Mental Fortitude!

4-6th Psychic system worked well as long as Space Magic was rare and most of it was not really powerful. Dark Angels Codex had 2 powers (Ezekiel knew a third). That was ALL you could have. And psychers who could cast more than 1 power were super rare, even supposedly powerful Psychers like Ezekiel were Mastery Level 1. Things went out of whack about halfway 5th edition with Space Wolves and then Grey Knights.

Now lets make it clear I did not actually LIKE 7th edition Psychic system very much, but it beat what was before it.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Did the 8th edition rulebook come with free rose tinted glasses or something?

As some one that never played anything before 5th edition id say no.

the more I see it played and the more I play it, the more I am convinced it is not only the worst edition of 40k but actually the worst miniature game currently produced. Even "Carnage" seems to be a better game than this "bucket of dice" time sink. I have never seen so many rules arguments over so few actual written rules in over 20 years of gaming. I am also disgusted with the amount of 2-3 turn wipe outs. This game is really badly done. I will believe "most playtested" if they admitted the playtesters actually hate gamers.

My buddy, a big primaris fan (I despise primaris) had me paint him up a blood ravens force (even hunted down the transfer sheet) from his starter primaris force and he was excited to play. went to the gw and watched him get tabled in 2 turns every fight (3 fights total) I played 1 game, with my grey knights, wiped out AM in 3 turns, was the most boring game i have ever played.

Still not as good as 3rd. But it is less of a clusterfrak then 7th. I just wish the indexes and rulebook were all together in ONE book like the 3rd ed. one was.

Something that's becoming more and more clear as I play:

Despite more opportunity than ever to have diverse, unique armies, the game feels incredibly flat even as codices are coming out.
Stats are way more variable now, but are more stratified than ever.
The AP system should be more variable, but since it eliminates abilities like Rending, it actually feels like it makes most AP feel unimportant - Anything past AP-3 feels superfluous most of the time.
Damage SHOULD be interesting, but 99 times out of a hundred, you can predict how much damage a weapon will deal just by looking at its other stats. There's *some* interesting variance here (For example, the Psycannon doing 4 shots with 1 damage, versus the Autocannon doing 2 shots with 2 damage,) but it's few and far between. Anti-tank weapons are universally d6 damage, close combat weapons are universally d3, unless they're the 'Good' version in which case they're 3, unless they're the 'Anti-armor' version in which case they're higher AP and 2.

With all that combined, it's hard to really care about much when picking a weapon, beyond getting the most reliable stats. Do you want S+1 or S+2? It doesn't matter, because you're wounding almost everything on either 3s or 5s whichever you pick, so who cares? AP-2 or AP-3? With as many enemies have invulns, does it matter?


We've only got a few codices out, and we've already got duplicates of most Chapter Tactic ability and Warlord Trait.

Almost all the relics feel pretty identical, with very few of them offering some kind of actual unique ability. There's the 'Better Melee Weapon', the 'Armor buff', the 'Basic Ranged Weapon Buff', a few special effects that are usually either so powerful as to be an auto-include (Steal command points on a 5+!) or so weak as to be completely ignored.
The different unique melee weapons seem to have a huge level of overlap, too, to make matters worse.



Strategems and psychic powers seem to be the only place where there's actually *some* true variance. There's a lot of repetition there, sure, but there's at least LESS repetition.

I've not played 40k in ages before coming back with 8th so can't really comment on how it compares to previous editions. But I've been having fun with the game, my only gripes so far have been the power of turn 1 alpha strikes and the lack of facing with vehicle weapons. While you could abstract that a tank is turning to bring all sides to bear it makes less sense if some of those guns are behind a building or something.

Blandhammer 40,000: In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, You All Look The Same To Me?

Seems to be the way it's going. Duplicated faction traits/stratagems/etc, duplicated special rules... nothing feels unique.

Starting to get bored already.

I want for once defend the choice of recycling traits and stratagems on different armies. Ryza and Alpha Legion have similarities, but do they play the same? I don't think so.
I find more bland the repetition of REROLLS, EVERYONE and the ubiquitous special characters.

@MagicJuggler: I suppose we have to agree to disagree, but nonetheless I respect your point - you don't want to roll the dice because DUDE ROLLIN IS FUN LOL but because you want a more nuanced game in the phase with risk calculation and whatnot. To me less is more, but hey.

I played during RT and quit after the great squatting. Came back for 8th and am thoroughly enjoying it so far.

the pace of the game is really fun and I love the fact that units die quickly and everything can kill everything.

The only thing I would change is unsquatting the Squats.

7th ed almost killed the hobby for me it was such a mess, i think they have done an admirable job of rebalancing and streamlining things though and I've really enjoyed 8th so far. the only complaint that i have is that i wish cover was covered in more detail and maybe modified the hit roll instead of increasing armor. the one thing I really like is how flexible list building is while maintaing a good balance.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
@MagicJuggler: I suppose we have to agree to disagree, but nonetheless I respect your point - you don't want to roll the dice because DUDE ROLLIN IS FUN LOL but because you want a more nuanced game in the phase with risk calculation and whatnot. To me less is more, but hey.

I enjoy nuance. And risk-calculation is half the point of Psykers (not to mention Deathstrikes or Serpent Shields or other "in extremis" measures), so making Psykers cheap yet fairly reliable Mortal Wounds feels...off. I get where you're coming from and definitely do agree there are a lot of situations where less is more (assorted "+1 to do Kung Fu Wardance in a Challenge" bonuses were generally too low-level/granular to apply to 40k at a "company-level" IMO), but making Psychic powers "degrees of success" rather than "pass-fail" doesn't feel like it would necessarily overcomplicate things. Kings of War handles its (admittedly generic) magic as a "degrees of success" die-pool mechanic for example, where it works well enough.

Not perfect but much more enjoyable for me both 6th and 7th edition. I have encountered very few rules issues and have had a lot of fun games (@ 12 so far).

And I am looking forward to the upcoming Craftworld Codex.

It's bad in a different way than 7th. But still bad.