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In my ~15-20 games so far, my Salamanders have tabled an opponent (Tyranids) in 9th once, and it was in turn 5 and can basically be boiled down to "I rolled very well, he rolled very poor"...

My Salamanders have also been tabled once in 9th (by Necrons), also in turn 5.

I've also had several games where I was almost tabled (handful of models left), but where the situation was mutual.
Those makes for the best games.

The notion of turn 2-3 tabling seems really strange to me. Either we're talking rock-hard list vs. butter-hard list or a lack of Dense- and Obscuring terrain, or possibly a combination of the two.

Breton wrote:

Ice_can wrote:


Again while the smaller boards have helped slow melee armies, smaller deployment and the amount of high speed or infultrating units makes going first a bigger advantage as you can shut your opponent into their deployment zone and kill their game play for even a coupel of turns.

Probably not this edition, but I’m betting future ones are going to see a lot of ranges/distances chopped by about the same ratio as the board size. Not just Gun ranges. Movement speeds, not-within-X inches bubbles, etc. a 4x8 foot table (What we used to call a sheet of plywood, Or roughly Onslaught size as GW calls it now) is 4096 square inches. Your not within 9” bubble is about 64 square inches, or about 1.5-2% of the table. 33x40 Or Strike Force the smallest table is 1320 square inches or closer to 5% of the table. A 4x8 table has a diagonal of about 108 inches. A 33x40 table has a diagonal of 51 inches. A 3 inch tank model + a 48 inch las cannon range....

I think the realm of battle boards 6 2x2 plastic panels - the table GW sold to people - were 4x6: 3456 square inches, 86.5 on the diagonal.

I would be a bit concerned with reducing movement and range (moreso movement). I mean, I get it, there's a logic to it, but the game can already feel like a parking lot without a ton of movement as it stands, especially compared to weapon range. Base sizes increasing (gradually) doesn't help, either.

I often find myself comparing current 40K to Apocalypse or Epic. Just compare the infantry movement vs range capabilities.

40K: Base movement 6", extra 1D6" if you forgo shooting, typical range 24", 44x60" board default.
Apocalypse: Base movement 6", extra 6" if you forgo shooting, typical range 24", 72x96" board default.
Epic: Base movement 6", extra 6" or 12" with worse shooting, typical range 6", 48x72" board default.

I feel that Apocalypse, played on a 6x8 table, gives a good balance of 'room to breathe' without movement completely negating range. A 6x8 table has over twice the area of a 44x60 table, but I think straight up halving movement and shooting ranges would be too much.

I could see a '2/3' conversion working. IE instead of 6" move and 24" range, down to 4" move and 16" range. If running just doubled movement distance, then it wouldn't adversely impact mobility too much, but the ability to shoot across the board would be significantly lessened. You'd need what is currently > 36" of range to shoot across the 24" gap between deployment zones, for example.

9th has definitely felt more like Infinity than previous editions, in the sense of weapon range being much less important than line of sight. I don't dislike it, but it means the game is very heavily terrain-dependent, and it seems like the lack of standardization in that respect causes some issues.

I would be a bit concerned with reducing movement and range (moreso movement).

I think we can probably afford a small reduction in range - there are things in the game that can literally fire at something 10' away. Even a 6' range is a bit much. I wouldn't want them to drop too much, but a slight lessening of some of the longer range weapons might not be bad.

Movement I go back and forth on. Right now, what I tend to see (in televised games as well as the games in my own group) when it comes to movement in 9th on the smaller tables, it's often NOT so much about movement itself, but rather about the timing of that movement. As it sits, there are plenty of units in almost every army that can cover nearly the entire board distance on turn 1. That's too many units that can move too fast imo and make sit so that truly tactical movement is not nearly so important. Knowing you can get to wherever you want, when you want does not force you to make as many hard decisions as when the table is bigger. So it becomes less about how you move and more about WHEN you move. And since most of the objectives are currently chilling at midfield, you tend to see either player 1 rushing directly onto objectives immediately, then making player 2 try and force them off those objectives (leading to mosh-pitting and a large kerfuffel at midfield), OR you see two armies sort of tentatively milling about just shy of mid field until someone decides the opponent has been degraded enough that they can start rushing objectives.

I think opening up the field a bit more, or *slightly* slowing down some of the faster units would help mix things up a bit more.

EDIT:

Also would help with some of the slower armies that don't have the capability to to have multiple units covering 10+" per turn.

Tycho wrote:

You know, if this is the Most Playtested Edition... Imagine the crap they did catch.

This is the best post I've seen on Dakka in a very long time and I'm upset I didn't think of saying it!

Just wanted to say, I caught this, I'm honored, and thank you!

Might go and start a comedy thread based on that...

Ice_can wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Also it's not like marines can't just wipe most other factions of the board wholesale so why bother with gimics when you can just table your opponents before scoring uncontested.

I play against Salamanders weekly and this has yet to happen.

Simply put how? What arr you playing and what is he playing?

6 Aggressors
6 Eradicators
3 Eliminators
3 Suppressors (with new profile)
3 Outriders
2x5 Infiltrators
1x5 SBRs
1x5 Assault Intercessors
Redemptor

And I run somewhere between this more infantry heavy list with few vehicles and a patrol of nurglings.

So has he managed to tag those mini-knights or the Vindicator with the eradicators yet? How'd they hold up?

 MinscS2 wrote:
In my ~15-20 games so far, my Salamanders have tabled an opponent (Tyranids) in 9th once, and it was in turn 5 and can basically be boiled down to "I rolled very well, he rolled very poor"...

My Salamanders have also been tabled once in 9th (by Necrons), also in turn 5.

I've also had several games where I was almost tabled (handful of models left), but where the situation was mutual.
Those makes for the best games.

The notion of turn 2-3 tabling seems really strange to me. Either we're talking rock-hard list vs. butter-hard list or a lack of Dense- and Obscuring terrain, or possibly a combination of the two.

In our group we currently play mostly 1000 points and out of 10 games I witnessed or played myself I've been able to table my opponent twice in round 3 and 4 respectively. But both games were against new players who had 3 or less games and just brought what they had without it fitting together or using it to full capacity. I'm talking about bringing a Farseer and not casting a single psychic power once in three rounds inexperienced, or not using a single stratagem the whole game apart from a re roll.

Against other players in the group who are playing the game for some years it usually ends up in mutual destruction where at the end both sides have a handful of models left.

 MinscS2 wrote:
In my ~15-20 games so far, my Salamanders have tabled an opponent (Tyranids) in 9th once, and it was in turn 5 and can basically be boiled down to "I rolled very well, he rolled very poor"...

My Salamanders have also been tabled once in 9th (by Necrons), also in turn 5.

I've also had several games where I was almost tabled (handful of models left), but where the situation was mutual.
Those makes for the best games.

The notion of turn 2-3 tabling seems really strange to me. Either we're talking rock-hard list vs. butter-hard list or a lack of Dense- and Obscuring terrain, or possibly a combination of the two.

The tablings I've seen so far have been

1) Drukhari list with a big variety of stuff vs a chaos daemon engine list. Both pretty casual. Daemons got drukhari down to 2 characters turn 4, tabled turn 5, it was a pretty onesided game.

2) speed freek buggy orks vs blood angels. Blood angels went first and orks were able to get a whole bunch of turn 1 charges off onto objectives, and counterpunching units like invictor suits and death company that had charged in against them.Blood Angels were tabled completely bottom of turn 3.

3) A list that was 1 big knight, 2 knight helverins plus a robot-heavy admech Spearhead that was mostly melee focused units vs an eldar wraiths+bikes list. The admech got turn 1, used a ton of flat 3/flat 2 weaponry to blow away the shining spears, a pair of shootybots to kill 2 squads of 5 rangers straight through their camoflage gear, and a neutron laser to blow away a wraithlord. The game only lasted to turn 3 because there was a big squad of super buffed up wraithblades with like +1 armor save, -1 to hit, 5++ fnp stacked up on them and a squad of wraiths that were in deep strike so I physically could not kill them until turn 3. Worth noting that this table was basically made of terrain, every single shooting attack was -1 to hit pretty much.

I have played many games of 9th so far and have loved every moment. Most of my games have come down to t5 to decide the winner. I have also watched many games.

The only 2 times I have seen someone tabled was eldar vs dark eldar, end of t4 eldar player only had his wraithknight left and i had plenty left to deal with it, and eldar vs tau. Tau lost end of t4 but that was the tau players first game of 9th and he played his army like an 8th ed gunline with a ton of firewarriors and not much moving. In the end since he never went out to grab objectives until t3 the eldar player was so far ahead he didn't have a chance.

Even if your getting tabled you can still win 9th if you play the objectives. One of my last games my ultramarines had 200pts left on the table vs my opponent having over 1000 with an unwounded castellen and admech. But I had played the objectives better and the score was 62 to 38. He focused on killing, I focused on winning.

9th is better than 8th. My table has a lot of terrain options so there are plenty of places to hide behind obscuring or bunker down in dense cover, maybe that's why i feel this way. But the missions seem to favor movement and objectives more than killing (unless killing is your objective). Your not stuck with worrying about first stike, slay the warlord, and linebreaker at the end of a game where you don't know if the game continues. So many of my 8th ed games came down to the roll of the dice to see if there was another turn, i hated it.

And if you want to play like 8th, talk to your opponent. If you both take line breaker, slay the warlord, and first stike its not that different vs 8th for objectives.

Finally I love some of the rules changes. Not being able to fall back and shoot with fly, flyers can leave the table and come back, the persons whos turn it isnt goes first in cc after chargers, overwatch is now a strat, auto pass moral is now a 1 use strat, limitations on reroll strat, these things were needed. It makes the game more interesting to me and helps with some of the problems it had before.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
So has he managed to tag those mini-knights or the Vindicator with the eradicators yet? How'd they hold up?

It has proven dangerous for Eradicators to be on the table in the event I get first turn. 9 of them might be a different story. The heldrake always gets the drop on them otherwise. Vindicator stays on the far end of their run range. I've transitioned to Duplicity to redeploy - so crucial at times - especially for teleporting units for secondaries. If he plops them on table I can shift. I use the rhino to push opposite so i'll usually lose that and another vehicle. With a 14" move and 30" range the moirax just insta-gib without getting in too much of a pickle. The problem is I feel like I have too little to hold objectives.

But I reaaaally want to run Cult of Time with a bunch of Scarabs and push a 3++ in the face of the Eradicators...waiting for the update to do that though.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
So has he managed to tag those mini-knights or the Vindicator with the eradicators yet? How'd they hold up?

It has proven dangerous for Eradicators to be on the table in the event I get first turn. 9 of them might be a different story. The heldrake always gets the drop on them otherwise. Vindicator stays on the far end of their run range. I've transitioned to Duplicity to redeploy - so crucial at times - especially for teleporting units for secondaries. If he plops them on table I can shift. I use the rhino to push opposite so i'll usually lose that and another vehicle. With a 14" move and 30" range the moirax just insta-gib without getting in too much of a pickle. The problem is I feel like I have too little to hold objectives.

But I reaaaally want to run Cult of Time with a bunch of Scarabs and push a 3++ in the face of the Eradicators...waiting for the update to do that though.

So it's best to either out range them or force them to deal with something so tough even they'll have trouble with it. That's what I thought. Luckily I have just the unit to do both....

And yeah, Scarabs with a 3++ would probably ruin their day.

I've transitioned to Duplicity to redeploy

Duplicity is amazing for so many things in this edition.

Just came across this:

https://www.goonhammer.com/goonhammer-round-table-the-9th-edition-meta-analysis/

It's a really good breakdown of what we've been talking about here. Covering both the issue w/going first as well as some of the issues w/terrain. It's well balanced imo and a pretty interesting read.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

So it's best to either out range them or force them to deal with something so tough even they'll have trouble with it. That's what I thought. Luckily I have just the unit to do both....

And yeah, Scarabs with a 3++ would probably ruin their day.

Not going second seems to be generaly a good thing to do in 9th ed. Alfa strike and swarming objectives is still very much a thing. Also sometimes, killing or trying to kill 6 erdictors can be a trap. If you don't have a very killy army, it may require a big investment of force to pull off, and in the mean time your marine opponent is claiming objectives, rising banners etc.

Played against a fellow for his first game of 9th Ed. He had Deathguard, and we decided to see how 2W Plaguemarines would do (using CA20 points). I tell you what, 2W Plaguemarines in Rhinos are no joke. Being able to project onto an objective and stay there is huge. He also noted that Obscuring Terrain was a big change.

The meta never settles, and your local meta is the only one that matters, but I think that we are in for a fun ride.

To the OP my experience has been as follows:

Necrons - Situationally ok. I kill more but tend to lose out on objectives as other armies just do that far better.

Death Guard - Hilariously good. MBH are my new favourites and I field at least 3 each game. Cheap poxwalkers at the back, plague marines for the advance and because I can give disgustingly resilient to other vehicles, I can play a proper daemon engine force. Wish we had Heldrakes however.

Tyranids - suck hard. The points increases nerfed the hell out of them and new SM units seem almost designed exclusively to kill them. They have been moved to storage for the immediate future. Diversity is fun, losing 90% of your army on turn 2 is not.

Custodes - The new project and only a small 1000 points painted so far. In small scale games they're ok but not numerous enough to play the objective game.