Thoughts about chapter approved

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**nekooni**

Anyone saying 7th was fine and well-balanced outside of formations: Invisibility was fine? Randomly being assigned a Warlord Trait or Psychic Power was fine? Being unable to jink a shot because the template weapon was initially aimed at another unit was fine? Are you serious? That's just from the top of my head and from what's in the core rules.

**JakeSiren**

Lance845 wrote:
JakeSiren wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
7th edition was not bad other than formations (which I still think was a really cool idea, just they went way overboard. I liked having a "shopping list" to look forward to) and the codex bloat with supplements.

Horus Heresy kinda shows that 7th can work well with a solid set of rules.

I take it you never played against a Daemon Summoning list in 7th? Playing a 1500 point game and having the Daemon player summon another 1500 points is BS - this coming from a Daemon player who exploited the crap out of this.

Also 5 different resolution methods.
Random tables for almst everything in the damn game.
Book keeping to keep track of results on random tables.
Roll for your warlord trait
Roll for your psychic powers
The entire psychic phase being bull gak.
Assault armies being crap because the assault rules were crap.

7ths was a train wreck.

I didn't mind the shared warp charge pool in 7th. It meant that if you needed a power to go off you could make sure that it would but at increased risk of perils. Unfortunately 8th doesn't have a general mechanic to boost your chance of casting and given the Psychic Focus rule it means that certain powers are so unlikely to cast that you might as well not try.

**nekooni**

JakeSiren wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
JakeSiren wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
7th edition was not bad other than formations (which I still think was a really cool idea, just they went way overboard. I liked having a "shopping list" to look forward to) and the codex bloat with supplements.

Horus Heresy kinda shows that 7th can work well with a solid set of rules.

I take it you never played against a Daemon Summoning list in 7th? Playing a 1500 point game and having the Daemon player summon another 1500 points is BS - this coming from a Daemon player who exploited the crap out of this.

Also 5 different resolution methods.
Random tables for almst everything in the damn game.
Book keeping to keep track of results on random tables.
Roll for your warlord trait
Roll for your psychic powers
The entire psychic phase being bull gak.
Assault armies being crap because the assault rules were crap.

7ths was a train wreck.

I didn't mind the shared warp charge pool in 7th. It meant that if you needed a power to go off you could make sure that it would but at increased risk of perils. Unfortunately 8th doesn't have a general mechanic to boost your chance of casting and given the Psychic Focus rule it means that certain powers are so unlikely to cast that you might as well not try.

At least in 8th you can control which powers you have access to. That alone makes it so much better than what 7th did. And the whole point of the WC thing is it being risk-vs-reward. Either you go with the safer choice with a higher chance at success or you risk it failing, but if it goes off it's got much more impact.

**Lance845**

JakeSiren wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
JakeSiren wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
7th edition was not bad other than formations (which I still think was a really cool idea, just they went way overboard. I liked having a "shopping list" to look forward to) and the codex bloat with supplements.

Horus Heresy kinda shows that 7th can work well with a solid set of rules.

I take it you never played against a Daemon Summoning list in 7th? Playing a 1500 point game and having the Daemon player summon another 1500 points is BS - this coming from a Daemon player who exploited the crap out of this.

Also 5 different resolution methods.
Random tables for almst everything in the damn game.
Book keeping to keep track of results on random tables.
Roll for your warlord trait
Roll for your psychic powers
The entire psychic phase being bull gak.
Assault armies being crap because the assault rules were crap.

7ths was a train wreck.

I didn't mind the shared warp charge pool in 7th. It meant that if you needed a power to go off you could make sure that it would but at increased risk of perils. Unfortunately 8th doesn't have a general mechanic to boost your chance of casting and given the Psychic Focus rule it means that certain powers are so unlikely to cast that you might as well not try.

Well you can feel however you feel. But an entire system that turned many units of psykers into batteries so only one model would cast powers is bad.

Psychic focus is also not great. But at leas each of my psykers is doing SOMETHING. Even if thats only smite.

**JakeSiren**

Lance845 wrote:
JakeSiren wrote:
I didn't mind the shared warp charge pool in 7th. It meant that if you needed a power to go off you could make sure that it would but at increased risk of perils. Unfortunately 8th doesn't have a general mechanic to boost your chance of casting and given the Psychic Focus rule it means that certain powers are so unlikely to cast that you might as well not try.

Well you can feel however you feel. But an entire system that turned many units of psykers into batteries so only one model would cast powers is bad.

Psychic focus is also not great. But at leas each of my psykers is doing SOMETHING. Even if thats only smite.

I don't disagree, it was just an aspect of the 7th ed psychic phase that I liked however. If Psychic focus was on the successful cast that would allow me to increase my chances that a critical power goes off at the cost of being able to cast other powers.

Also, depending on how the FAQ goes this month you may no longer be reliably casting more than two smites.

**vaurapung**

So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

**Crimson Devil**

Would you rather wait 2 years?

**Farseer_V2**

vaurapung wrote:
So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

Come on man.You'd have posted this same thread whining if instead of Chapter Approved we were still in the 7th model of waiting multiple years for FAQs. You're not going to get perfectly written rules out of the gate so your only options are GW works to try to fix them or they ignore them. Chapter Approved was never going to fix the issues you have with 8th to begin with so what's the malfunction? Or is this just like most everything else where the attempt is to shift the blame to something else?

**Marmatag**

Lance845 wrote:
vaurapung wrote:
Here is a typical board design if i help set it up.

Spoiler:

Tabling in my games come from volume of fire inefficiencies, eldar has such a low rate of low power guns compared to the other armies i face. I would guesstimate that i get one to every two shots that my opponnent has and craftworlds ability to focus down kills blows. 3 fire prisms on odds might kill a carnafex. Or maybe one unit of troops. But 3 lemuns with punishers can kill whatever they point at and some. Or three carnfexes with heavy venoms laying into one tank or 80 necron warriors slogging across the feild. They all out gun and out fire anything i put on the feild and mostly because i have to flootslog most of my army or pay for kit out some wave serpents and reduce my armys total output.

Its these army imbalances that chapter approved should be fixing. Or at least suggesting a set of rules that levels the playing feild.

Btw i have had a couple of good games, like 4 out of 40. And they were all against marines with similar builds as mine. A few troops and few elites and a few tanks with some other supporters. Our list filled the same slots and our games were dead even. Every other army and every other game has been a landslide bloodfest in my opponents favor.

3 venom canons are shooting 3d3 shots with each successful hit/wound doing d3 damage. How many things do you think that is reliably killing?

Small point they do a flat 3 damage now. They're not the garbage they once were.

And small point number 2: 3 fire prisms using linked fire should annihilate a Carnifex with absolutely 0 difficulty.

**Fafnir**

I appreciate fixes in a timely manner. However, GW seems to have a series of problems when it comes to implementing them. Although it could be said that they just have those problems with making games in general, AoS and Newcromunda show that they know how to make good games (let's just not delve into Newcromunda's formatting problems or the campaign books...). Kneejerk reactions and incomplete fixes that act as bandaids that fail to actually address the core issues of the underlying systems, often leading to more problems in themselves.

I think a big part of the problem comes from GW having a real lack of vision for how their game is actually supposed to play.

**TwinPoleTheory**

vaurapung wrote:
So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

Professional game developer here folks. All bugs found by in-house testing prior to release.

Ship it!

**Wayniac**

TwinPoleTheory wrote:
vaurapung wrote:
So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

Professional game developer here folks. All bugs found by in-house testing prior to release.

Ship it!

Bugs? If it compiles, then ship it!

**TwinPoleTheory**

Wayniac wrote:

Bugs? If it compiles, then ship it!

Truer words have never been spoken.

Also:

Works on my machine.

**Jidmah**

It shoudn't be doing that.

**tneva82**

TwinPoleTheory wrote:
vaurapung wrote:
So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

Professional game developer here folks. All bugs found by in-house testing prior to release.

Ship it!

There's difference with though finding all and finding most especially the obvious ones.

Seriously if players can accurately spot rule and balance issues within 5 minutes of first leaks how hard it can be for supposed professionals to do it in course of months? We aren't even talking about minor typo's but totally unplayable rules that as written don't even work. As it is you cannot even play the game without heavy house ruling.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
TwinPoleTheory wrote:
vaurapung wrote:
So 8th is so good that they had to implement fixes to the rules within 4 months.

Sounds playtested to me.

Professional game developer here folks. All bugs found by in-house testing prior to release.

Ship it!

Bugs? If it compiles, then ship it!

Well 40k does not compile. You cannot play it without changing it.

**hobojebus**

Yeah how they missed that assault weapons can't fire according to RAW being my favourite example.

**Wayniac**

hobojebus wrote:
Yeah how they missed that assault weapons can't fire according to RAW being my favourite example.

It's an example, but it's also an example of:

1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

**Peregrine**

Wayniac wrote:
1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

IOW, inexcusable incompetence. Part of good playtesting is giving the rules to a super-literal rules lawyer who has never seen them before and having them play a few games. If only people who "know" how the rules work are involved then that is a failure of basic playtesting standards.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

IOW, excuses for inexcusable incompetence. The rules should work correctly as-printed, intent should not matter. Don't make excuses for GW's failure to write functioning rules.

**Wayniac**

Peregrine wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

IOW, inexcusable incompetence. Part of good playtesting is giving the rules to a super-literal rules lawyer who has never seen them before and having them play a few games. If only people who "know" how the rules work are involved then that is a failure of basic playtesting standards.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

IOW, excuses for inexcusable incompetence. The rules should work correctly as-printed, intent should not matter. Don't make excuses for GW's failure to write functioning rules.

Oh believe me I feel it's wrong, but that's how GW has done it and will always do it, and really it's not that terrible unless you are/play with people who look to abuse rules based on the precise wording. You sure like to get your jabs in at "Hahaha look at how incompetent they are! GW designers are morons!" whenever you can, don't you?

**Sherrypie**

Wayniac wrote:
Peregrine wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

IOW, inexcusable incompetence. Part of good playtesting is giving the rules to a super-literal rules lawyer who has never seen them before and having them play a few games. If only people who "know" how the rules work are involved then that is a failure of basic playtesting standards.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

IOW, excuses for inexcusable incompetence. The rules should work correctly as-printed, intent should not matter. Don't make excuses for GW's failure to write functioning rules.

Oh believe me I feel it's wrong, but that's how GW has done it and will always do it, and really it's not that terrible unless you are/play with people who look to abuse rules based on the precise wording. You sure like to get your jabs in at "Hahaha look at how incompetent they are! GW designers are morons!" whenever you can, don't you?

It's almost like people have managed to play it just fine, even with all these "critical" failures of rules-lawyering in the text...

Though I do support the idea that rules should be tested and written more thoroughly before publishing, I cannot but find it utterly hilarious how extreme people here tend to be with their wailing. Like the thing with Assault weapons, come on, behave like grown-ups with obvious RAI questions.

**nekooni**

Peregrine wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

IOW, inexcusable incompetence. Part of good playtesting is giving the rules to a super-literal rules lawyer who has never seen them before and having them play a few games. If only people who "know" how the rules work are involved then that is a failure of basic playtesting standards.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

IOW, excuses for inexcusable incompetence. The rules should work correctly as-printed, intent should not matter. Don't make excuses for GW's failure to write functioning rules.

1) is literally one of the most common issues with testing anything. Yes, it's bad, but it's a REALLY common problem. "inexcusable incompetence" is a bit strong for something that happens almost everywhere.

2) isn't an "excuse", it's just how you should deal with it. Because that way you can easily make the rules work fine. Saying "ok, the game is broken, lets pack up" just because you managed to have two wounded models in the same unit just isn't a reasonable reaction.

Claiming the game is broken beyond salvation or the rules are utterly incomprehensible or that it's inexcusable to have any rule issues is just a tiny bit at odds with how well it actually plays on an actual table, with real people.

**TwinPoleTheory**

tneva82 wrote:
There's difference with though finding all and finding most especially the obvious ones.

Seriously if players can accurately spot rule and balance issues within 5 minutes of first leaks how hard it can be for supposed professionals to do it in course of months? We aren't even talking about minor typo's but totally unplayable rules that as written don't even work. As it is you cannot even play the game without heavy house ruling.

Ahh, the Monday morning quarterback is here folks. I'm sure they had a ton of time which was spent enthusiastically shoving their thumbs up their asses. I mean, they only had to whip out rules for 20 different armies on the biggest rules re-write the game has had in a quarter century.

But you're right, I'm sure they had completely manageable deadlines and just decided to blow it.

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k does not compile. You cannot play it without changing it.

Strange, my group was playing from the first weekend and we were able to play multiple games with no confusion. Which part of the rules was really causing problems for you? Assault weapons? Did that grind your game to a halt all by itself?

**nekooni**

tneva82 wrote:
Well 40k does not compile. You cannot play it without changing it.

Wait - are you saying that any software that compiles is bug-free? Can I get that in print for my customers?

**EnTyme**

So what am I missing about assault weapons that makes them "unplayable"?

**hobojebus**

Wayniac wrote:
hobojebus wrote:
Yeah how they missed that assault weapons can't fire according to RAW being my favourite example.

It's an example, but it's also an example of:

1) GW playing very lax, so they likely never actually read the specific sentence because they "knew" how it worked, and knew how it was supposed to work, so seeing that if you carefully read it you could point out that it doesn't work never even occurred to them.

2) The idea that you SHOULD be applying intent, and not "as written" to the rules.

My telepathy only reaches fifty miles Nottingham is out of range and as a transcendent being I don't have the same neural pathways as you primates so I can only take things as written

**Lance845**

EnTyme wrote:
So what am I missing about assault weapons that makes them "unplayable"?

It's the order of operations for shooting.

step 1, you select a UNIT to shoot.

But if you advance, you are not allowed to select that UNIT to shoot in the shooting phase.

The assault weapon rules say the MODEL may fire it's weapon even if you advanced. But nothing ever actually gives you permission to select the UNIT at step 1.

The same thing for pistols and being within 1" of an enemy unit. RAW, you can't use those guns when you "normally" could because your incapable of reaching the step where you select which weapon you want to fire.

**EnTyme**

Wow. Starting to remember why I stopped reading YMDC.

**Lance845**

EnTyme wrote:
Wow. Starting to remember why I stopped reading YMDC.

Sure, but it's STILL true that GW wrote 8 pages of core rules and managed to let slip that their core rules don't even actually work. Some argue that to some degree people should stop nit picking. On the other hand while assault and pistol rules are obvious oversights YMDC is full of things that are significantly less clear.

I've never played any other game that required more pages of rules errata than rules to actually play it because the rules writers were so bad at their jobs. Rules writing should be clear and concise and have 1 definitive meaning. There is just no argument in GWs favor for their gak storm writing.

**EnTyme**

*edit* Redacted. *edit*

Trying to be above making comments like that.

**dosiere**

In fairness, everyone knows GW write their rules like they write fluff. They don’t do technical writing well, or at all. Look at the mess the simple keyword system can be. Their rules are messy, wordy, and sometimes ill-conceived from the start. They love adding layer upon layer to the rules to make them complicated. It’s unfortunate from time to time but if you’re going to play a GW game it’s just how it is.

The case for assault weapons, while funny, is such a clear case of Nonsensical RAW interpretation trumping an obvious RAI one though it’s not even worth mentioning IMO. Yeah, you can lawyer it up, but was ANYONE IRL actually arguing with an opponent that assault weapons didn’t work and could never fire? No, I don’t think so.