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Well, Orks win another Grand Tournament. This is not a surprise. Orks field 45 Lootas. These units have the range of the board. These units average 30 strength 7 hits a turn, or a dead marine squad a turn. At strength 7 they can also penetrate most light armor. And that still leaves 1000 other points of Ork infantry and special units to deal with.

Now, just maybe an 11 Immolator army could survive long enough to get some flamers on the Ork troops. Armies from other codices may be able to 'cower in their landraiders' hoping the megaklaws don't get them. Maybe ORk armies will be paired against ORk armies in the first rounds of tournaments so some other army can sneak through. Maybe tournament organizers will start putting down some LOS blocking terrain to make the Lootas move before they unleash their torrent of doom.

Or maybe the Ork codex has really broken the game. Who wants to play against this 'bleep' all the time?

Maybe the new Space Marine codex will pose some as yet unidentified problem for the Orks. Drop Pod assault doesn't sound like it to me though. Yes, you can drop down and rapid fire three poor ork units. Then guess what, they kill your three drop pods and the kill points are even. Hope you can find some cover to hide behind if there are Lootas left.

Who knows, maybe the flaming Redeemers with some POTMS will negate the entire army. But right now, I'm not seeing why I should go to a tournament.....

Signed,

Disheartened

Im pretty sure Neil had 30 Lootas, not 45.

Besides, he and Marc Parker are close friends and worked on their lists together.

In the picture Redbeard posted of Neil's army it had 30 lootas.

I talked to Jervis a bit on Saturday, after the gaming of the day was over.

I asked what sort of playtesting did they do, what sort of process was involved (I'm a software developer, and there are many many parallels between game development and software development, so I'd think they could benefit a lot from the sorts of process type things that we go through with our QA cycles), and what was their thought about 'extreme' builds.

He told me, unapologetically, that they don't test extreme builds, that they don't care about tournament gamers when they write the rules because we only account for 5% of the gamers out there, and that they had no interest in developing better rules for tournament play. we tournament players should "understand that [we] exist on the far fringes of the hobby", and that we should expect problems related to this. Quoted/Paraphrased.

The emphasis in their testing was, in Jervis's words, about whether they had fun, and was focused on the sorts of armies that you see in W.D. battle reports. He said that he doesn't believe anyone who says one army always wins or can't win, and said that he believes that the 'unbeatable' build actually only wins about 55-60% of its games, and that the army that can't win actually only loses about 40-45% of its games.

And, I brought up how other game companies (WotC, Eurogames, video-fighting games) have managed to achieve systems that work for both casual players and tournament players, and he replied that they're just not interested. That as a game developer, he wants to write games that show you how to play the game the way that they do, and that their failure is a failure to communicate to us how they play, not actually a failure of the rules. He even said that they don't even look at FAQs when they playtest in the studio, because they all 'just know' how it is suposed to be played.

So, yeah, disenheartened to be sure. It's one thing to note that things don't work well. It's another to be told by the lead developer that, not only do they not believe there is a problem, but that even if there was, they wouldn't want to fix it. They want a game that you play in your basement with a beer or two, not a game that works in a competative environment.

And then, he said that they encourage people to write stuff about what changes they've made to how they play. Which seemed almost like an invitation to the competative community to come up with needed changes... almost. I'm sure GW's legal team would squash it.

I always think that tourney gamer = fringe is hysterical. Im building 2 armies purely for tourney play right now.

For the casual gamer, I see the same minis and paint jobs he had 10+ years ago.

I honestly dont see us being so small a market share.

I'm noticing myself that while I am a casual player I look to tournament players to learn the rules better and to see what actually wins games. I hate that these rules have so many damn holes in them. I hate to have to crack open a rulebook or break out in a straight up dispute over some stupid little rule. I play casually but for the moment the crap rules have driven me into a slight hiatus. I just wish they would look into this instead of shrug it off all the time. Yes your selling models, yes the rules help sell those models. A completely crappy rule set will send your market share into the ground.

Redbeard wrote:

He told me, unapologetically, that they don't test extreme builds, that they don't care about tournament gamers when they write the rules because we only account for 5% of the gamers out there, and that they had no interest in developing better rules for tournament play. we tournament players should "understand that [we] exist on the far fringes of the hobby", and that we should expect problems related to this. Quoted/Paraphrased.

It's nice to hear from the source that GW doesn't care about better rules.

The emphasis in their testing was, in Jervis's words, about whether they had fun, and was focused on the sorts of armies that you see in W.D. battle reports. He said that he doesn't believe anyone who says one army always wins or can't win, and said that he believes that the 'unbeatable' build actually only wins about 55-60% of its games, and that the army that can't win actually only loses about 40-45% of its games.

I don't get this. If you aren't testing the extreme builds then why test? And their reasoning is they don't test this stuff because players shouldn't be playing this way. Well take that anyone using 9 oblits and 2 lash princes. You are all bad puppies.

And, I brought up how other game companies (WotC, Eurogames, video-fighting games) have managed to achieve systems that work for both casual players and tournament players, and he replied that they're just not interested. That as a game developer, he wants to write games that show you how to play the game the way that they do, and that their failure is a failure to communicate to us how they play, not actually a failure of the rules. He even said that they don't even look at FAQs when they playtest in the studio, because they all 'just know' how it is suposed to be played.

In my opinion their way of having fun sounds fething stupid. Oops, I mean I guess I won't use obliterators anymore to show what a great person I am.

And their attitude towards FAQ's makes GW sound like a cult to me.

So, yeah, disenheartened to be sure. It's one thing to note that things don't work well. It's another to be told by the lead developer that, not only do they not believe there is a problem, but that even if there was, they wouldn't want to fix it. They want a game that you play in your basement with a beer or two, not a game that works in a competative environment.

Well like you said Redbeard, there are plenty of other companies that already make solid competitive games.

Also, you've completely discouraged me from buying any new models, and my wallet thanks you.

Who knows, maybe the flaming Redeemers with some POTMS will negate the entire army. But right now, I'm not seeing why I should go to a tournament.....

Mikeguth, there are three ways you can react to the situation:

1) The Beat 'Em Approach. Play against that kind of army and gain experience against it.

2) The Join 'Em Approach. If you think the build is that strong, start fielding it yourself.

3) The Pragmatic Approach. Ask yourself, did you regularly win your local RTT's before? Did you regularly find yourself on the top ten tables at GT's before? If not, then nothing has changed.

Two things-

One- I've never seen a tournament with enough terrain. Two hills and a tree is not terrain. Even the blah-blah in the rules encourage at least a quarter of the board should be covered or else your in for a dull shooting match.

Two- Jervis Johnson has got the right take on what is at best a hobby.

we tournament players should "understand that [we] exist on the far fringes of the hobby"

I believe the British term for this would be to say that's a load of BOLLOCKS!

If we are the fringe gamers then why are the absolute biggest highlighted events that Games Workshop runs called "Grand Tournaments"!

I don't see any "Grand Only Friendly Games Days", "Grand Painting Days", Grand Model Building Days" now do I?

Do they honestly believe that the biggest draw to their events is so that people can pay exorbitant ticket prices for the privilege of shopping for their products? Apparently they in all honesty do! Just wow. Those comments are just so short sighted it amazes me.

It's not the casual gamer who buys large amounts of product. The casual gamer buys his stuff off E-bay and makes his tanks out of foam core and other model kits because he won't pay out his ass for something he only plays "casually". It's the hard core committed guys who drop the money on this stuff, and they want to play serious games against other people who have made the same commitment to the hobby as well! If you spend thousands of dollars on models, books, paints, and scenery it feels good to be able to take them into a serious competition.


Now to re-focus back to the Orks: Yeah, I was saying they are broken since the first time I saw their new Codex armies being played in a tournament. I am not surprised they are dominating tournaments, and I think they will continue to dominate tournaments.

Admittedly though, this does remind of Warhammer Fantasy many years ago when the Chaos army was nearly unstoppable.

Well, Orks win another Grand Tournament. This is not a surprise. Orks field 45 Lootas. These units have the range of the board. These units average 30 strength 7 hits a turn, or a dead marine squad a turn. At strength 7 they can also penetrate most light armor. And that still leaves 1000 other points of Ork infantry and special units to deal with.

If that stupid 7 land raider list ever gets popular that may balance the environment a little bit. But probably not.

Jervis is kind of an idiot that doesn't really understand the underpinnings of a functioning game environment but he has a few things right. If you pay too much attention to the tournament format you end up with a situation similar to that found in Warmachine/hordes. A balanced game that functions very well in a tournament environment but isn't very fun to play outside of it. Even wizards of the coast has a known set development process where it releases essentially 2 different sets per expansion. Mixing more interesting casual cards with powercards that will exist in the extended tourny formats. It's an intentional imbalance within the design to cater to both segments of its population.

It's not the casual gamer who buys large amounts of product. The casual gamer buys his stuff off E-bay and makes his tanks out of foam core and other model kits because he won't pay out his ass for something he only plays "casually". It's the hard core committed guys who drop the money on this stuff, and they want to play serious games against other people who have made the same commitment to the hobby as well! If you spend thousands of dollars on models, books, paints, and scenery it feels good to be able to take them into a serious competition.

While you may buy more than the casual gamer, the casual gamer outnumbers the traveling tourny goer fifteen to one.

Look at the UK fantasy GT results, Daemons have 7 out of the top 10 places, and no-one's surprised.

Jervis is quite wrong about having fun. I take my army to the friendly local game store. Look, a new opponent, what've you got, oh, ORKS. Gee, you'd win automatically, anyone else. "Oh, hello, what've you got, oh, ORKs also, gee, not much of a game." Oh, a third new player-wanna play, I have Chaos marines, oh, you've beaten 10 Chaos Marine armies and don't want to beat another one. Wonderful, why don't you guys just play with yourselves", get the message?

There are plenty of historical miniatures games that have both competitive balance and fun, starting with the warhammer derivatives like warhammer ancient battles and flames of war. Too bad my son really likes the 40k models and science fiction.

Dear Dr. Thunder-I've had plenty of experience against Orks. The question is, if the top calibre players can't do better than a draw against Orks in the last two Grand Tournaments, then is there really any army build which can beat them?

DARKNESS-you're part of that wreckingcrew team, Orks, course, have many nasty builds, the Lootas are just the tip of the iceberg. Your crew may play Orks perfectly, but you can't prove to me that the Ork codex isn't broken by continually winning with Orks. Quite the opposite. Come to the Baltimore GT and beat some Ork armies and I will sing your praises-otherwise you're just good players with the broken codex.

Maybe there are three types of players.

1 - Casual - Buy stuff off E-bay, doesn't care about the boards he is playing on.

2 - The hobbiest - The guy who likes the minis for what they are, loves playing with painted armies, using offical mini's in a friendly setting. Wants to play on boards with good terrain.

3 - The Tourny goer - The uber competitive, who seek out the broken and challenging.

I can see GW catering mostly to the #2 guy. These guys spend the money, regardless of what is put out. They actually buy the weak units just to have them (just in case).

mikeguth wrote:

Dear Dr. Thunder-I've had plenty of experience against Orks. The question is, if the top calibre players can't do better than a draw against Orks in the last two Grand Tournaments, then is there really any army build which can beat them?

Doom and Gloom. :S

Lots of armies have had time at the top. Nidzilla was there for a while, so was Mech Eldar and Mach Tau, and SAFH Marines.

40K is a continually shifting game. Even if Orks were unbeatable, which I don't believe they are, sooner or later something will change that will unseat them. It is the nature of the game.

I consider myself pretty hardcore as a warhammer player. I've been playing since around my tenth birthday, I've played all the major Warhammer games and all the specialist games, I've got two armies over three thousand points right now. I don't really consider tournaments a part of my hobby, nor do the vast majority of my friends. I've played all of three or four, and the experience left a sour taste in my mouth. Competive, rude and arrogent players obsessing over minute details and caring only about the hot builds is frankly a bit pathetic. It's a game. It's supposed to be enjoyed. I know I'm not one of that sort of gaming in the first place, as despite the obvious tactical drawbacks, I rank my troops up on the field because it looks awesome, and I play mechanized space marines because it's really really fun, but, damn.

I still win a lot of games. I lose a lot too. And you know what? I really, really enjoy myself. So do the people I play with, so do the people watching the game.

Then, I watch tourney guys freak out over each new list, whine every single time a new army or edition comes out, constantly threaten to 'leave the hobby' if things don't go their way, then have the nerve, the fracking nerve, to tell me I play the game wrong, and that I'm not a "true fan".

We play a game decided by random number cubes. Tactics and strategy and uber-lists and whatever take you as far as the table edge and turn one, and after that it's in the hands of fate and nobody else. Trying to pack your mathematically optimized lists and 'winning is everything' mentality into the game is maybe the reason you don't enjoy it, far beyond and above any broken lists and cheap builds. Munchkin play is condemned in role-playing games, but power gaming is seen as some sort of ultimate goal in GW games for some reason. Really, it's just sad. Win, lose, whatever, enjoying yourself is the most important part. If Orks are always going to win, FINE. Play Orks if you NEED to win, and know you're going to have to switch when the new hot crap is out. Get frustrated? Maybe you're just in the wrong damn hobby.

They may not play test and provide feedback on the extreme army builds, but I can tell you now that some of the external play testers certainly do.

I wouldnt quite take Jervis' words at face value, he's pushing a new angle - and exaggurating for effect. Also keep in mind he probably gets asked the exact same questions at every event he goes to, and is, i imagine, really quite tired and grumpy with answering them !

Still, external play testing has probably seen the last of its days thanks to the pretty regular leaks I imagine :(

The thing I find amusing about Jervis' comments is that he admits to not playtesting extreme builds, but then turns around and says that they'd only win ~60% of their games. How would he know, unless those games were played? I mean, if he said, "we ran a bunch of games with two lash princes and 9 oblits and they only won 60% of their games, so we left the options in there", I'd at least understand that there is a method. But to simply take as a given that broken lists aren't that effective just seems sloppy.

The point is that he just isn't considering the powergame-tourney scene as far as general rules design is concerned. What he means by his percentage is probably just that anyone can build an uber-army, but someone can also just counter-build it.

In a tournament you have to field for all comers, and you can't 'counter-build' except that you might know what is popular. It has nothing to do with enjoying the game. Swooping hawks may be poop, but they're great models with fluff and all of that... You know, the background is just as big a part of this franchise. You're the ones who got sucked in.
I didn't start playing this game to pwn people. The expression didn't even exist back then. If someone came and said they were going to pwn me twelve years ago I would have taken their jaw off. That's how you deal with TFG.

I hate all of you. Have a nice day

As a tourney gamer I find this perception of tourney gamer= power gamer thing horrifying. I have had a handful of bad opponents in nearly a decade of tourneys. And only truely met 2 Power Gamers. However, my games at the FLGS are about 50/50 on bad opponents. And its not isolated. Thats 3 cities, 2 states, and 7 stores.

As a Chaos player, I can tell you that Lash Princes with Oblits have seen their day. Many, but not all armies have anti-psychic abilities that neuter the Lash. Never try it against Eldar for example, it is a dice throw against most marines. Lash has a 24 inch range, which means that the Lashing Demons are usually left out in range of any number of enemy heavy weapons after they get their lash off. Doesn't work against Grey Knights very well either.

Oblits, like every other infantry are dogfood for Ork Lootas. You take an average of 30 hits from three units of Lootas, which is 5 unsaved or 2 dead Obliterators a turn. They shoot further than your plasma cannons...

Oblits also suffer instant death from melta weapons and Lascannons. Gee, Landraiders have twin linked Lascannons. Which leaves you with hiding your Oblits, or trying desperately to deep strike with them to get first crack at some of the nastier targets out there. Once they land, they're no better than Terminators.

Jervis lives in a fantasy world where everyone plays nice and doesn't care about winning, just admiring the pretty figures and rolling some dice and making random moves-since winning isn't important.. Why have 90 pages of rules then? Why have a points system?? Why not just let everyone bring what they want and decide if it 'looks fair'....

Why is it bad for business if a codex is broken? Obviously, no one buys anything BUT that particular army. So, I bow down to the inevitability of Ork victory, and every time any customer at my friendly GW store asks, I'll tell them, just buy Orks, nothing can beat them. Hope that helps GW sales.

In Sweden it is common to use the "comp-system", i.e. that the tournament organizer will release a list of units that are restricted and not to be used excessively.

For example:
In a warhammer tournament bringing more than two Ratling Guns for your skaven army will seriously hurt your tournamnet score. If a Lizardmen army where to bring a Slann to a tournament they would have serious trouble to win it due to point reductions from the "comp system".

Since GW skips all QA from a tournament perspective maybe it is time to wrap their rules in a tournament version. Comp is one way to solve this.

Dear Open Sketchbook,

Let me ask, if you played chess which would you enjoy more, playing someone at your level, or playing Nigel Short over and over again? Want to shoot some hoops? Rather play against me or an NBA star? Part of gaming to me is feeling competitive, that there is a chance.

I also don't buy your argument about a game with dice. 40k has so much dice rolling that averages will win out, compare to mechwarrior where a single dice roll could decide the game.

I give in, the Ork Codex is NOT broken; the only reason they are winning is because the wreckingcrew team are such skilled players compared to everyone else, and I'll just wait a few years to play until Eldar get Dire Avengers with 48 inch range S 7 Ap 4 troops at 15 points each.....

Why bother waiting for Dire Avenger Lootas when you can just run dual jetlocks?

mikeguth wrote:Part of gaming to me is feeling competitive, that there is a chance.

Yes, but whose job is it to make sure you feel like you have a chance?

Are other players supposed to bring their B game, or are you supposed to improve your A game?

mikeguth wrote:Well, Orks win another Grand Tournament.

I'm not seeing why I should go to a tournament.....

So? Who cares?

Then don't... If you don't have a compelling reason, then don't do it.

Redbeard wrote:I talked to Jervis a bit on Saturday, after the gaming of the day was over.

He told me, unapologetically, that they don't test extreme builds, that they don't care about tournament gamers when they write the rules because we only account for 5% of the gamers out there,

And, I brought up how other game companies (WotC, Eurogames, video-fighting games) have managed to achieve systems that work for both casual players and tournament players, and he replied that they're just not interested.

It's another to be told by the lead developer that, not only do they not believe there is a problem, but that even if there was, they wouldn't want to fix it. They want a game that you play in your basement with a beer or two, not a game that works in a competative environment.

Good for Jervis!

I don't think it's Jervis' responsibility to cater to the tournament 5% at the expense of the casual 95%, and rightfully so. Apocalypse is a perfect example of this, whether people want to admit it or not.

It's fair to note that WotC is a pure rules company, and so are video game companies to a lesser extent. They don't sell their rules separately as an adjunct to their primary profit-driving product. GW's product is miniatures, and rules exist merely as a way to help move miniatures. What you are proposing is in effect for WotC to re-focus heavily on MtG Miniatures (flopped, cancelled) or WotC gaming stores (flopped, closed & sold).

I agree with Jervis that, from his perspective, there isn't a problem, and if there is, it only affects 5% of the total gaming population, a population that cannot ever be satisfied, so isn't worth wasting time over. And even if GW did write air-tight rules, it wouldn't matter, because then the tournament crowd would whine over minutiae in balance.

If 40k isn't suited toward tournament play, meh, so what. GW would do just fine if the tournament players went away tomorrow. The idea that casual players like myself don't generate significant spend is nonsense. I'm into GW for easily thousands. And I know I'm not alone in this regard.

Typeline wrote:I play casually but for the moment the crap rules have driven me into a slight hiatus.

Are you kidding me?

5th Edition has, bar none, the clearest, tightest ruleset that GW has ever produced for 40k. There are very few problems or grey areas. They even gave guidance about cocked dice, for pity's sake.

You may not like that rules changed, or the direction things changed, but that is very different from saying that there are actual problems with the rules. Almost certainly, if you were to enumerate your issues, in all likelihood, the problem would lie with your comprehension and preferences than something inherent to the 5th Edition ruleset.

Swordbreaker wrote:If we are the fringe gamers then why are the absolute biggest highlighted events that Games Workshop runs called "Grand Tournaments"!

It's not the casual gamer who buys large amounts of product. The casual gamer buys his stuff off E-bay and makes his tanks out of foam core and other model kits because he won't pay out his ass for something he only plays "casually".

If they weren't so highlighted, the guys with an irrational need to "win" would have to find some other way to address their inadequacy issues? Male "enhancement" pills, perhaps?

*I* am a casual player. I have something like 20k points worth of 40k spread across several armies/Codices, and quite a fair amount of other stuff. None of this is foamcore or "other model kits".

ShumaGorath wrote:If you pay too much attention to the tournament format you end up with a situation similar to that found in Warmachine/hordes. A balanced game that functions very well in a tournament environment but isn't very fun to play outside of it. Even wizards of the coast has a known set development process where it releases essentially 2 different sets per expansion. Mixing more interesting casual cards with powercards that will exist in the extended tourny formats. It's an intentional imbalance within the design to cater to both segments of its population.

While you may buy more than the casual gamer, the casual gamer outnumbers the traveling tourny goer fifteen to one.

Exactly so. WotC deliberately includes cards that are totally unplayable from a standard Touranment perspective, and the Tournament players are OK with this. They either try to "break" them if the effect is strong, or they just ignore them and move on. In 40k, however, players seem to demand that all units be equally playable, despite GW only including some units for thematic reasons.

Per Jervis, it's closer to 20:1. Personally, I doubt very much the OP as bought more than me.

open_sketchbook wrote:I consider myself pretty hardcore as a warhammer player.
I don't really consider tournaments a part of my hobby, nor do the vast majority of my friends.

I really, really enjoy myself. So do the people I play with, so do the people watching the game.

Get frustrated? Maybe you're just in the wrong damn hobby.

QFT!

proximity wrote:I wouldnt quite take Jervis' words at face value, he's pushing a new angle - and exaggurating for effect. Also keep in mind he probably gets asked the exact same questions at every event he goes to, and is, i imagine, really quite tired and grumpy with answering them !

I don't think Jervis needs to exaggerate very much. But all in all, Jervis was pretty polite in telling the tournament crowd to pound sand...

________

Grindah wrote:In Sweden it is common to use the "comp-system", i.e. that the tournament organizer will release a list of units that are restricted and not to be used excessively.

Since GW skips all QA from a tournament perspective maybe it is time to wrap their rules in a tournament version. Comp is one way to solve this.

Comp has its own problems. In Sweden, you're depending on the TO to have a perfect understanding of the metagame, and the metagame resulting from his restrictions. Not very likely.

Usually Comp simply means a different set of winners. In general, it's just as well to have the players score comp, or ban whatever combinations made top 10% in the last tournament.

mikeguth wrote:
I give in, the Ork Codex is NOT broken; the only reason they are winning is because the wreckingcrew team are such skilled players compared to everyone else, and I'll just wait a few years to play until Eldar get Dire Avengers with 48 inch range S 7 Ap 4 troops at 15 points each.....

Nice sarcasm.

Part of being a Top level competetive player is recognising strong builds and using them. Of course Orks are a strong codex, and of course we ("we" meaning the WC) arent the ONLY ones using this codex with great results. So there definatly IS skill involved. Resigning any GT wins we have to a broken codex is hardly giving those who carried their armies to the top of the pile their just dues. These wins arent eeking out wins against any old player, these are massacres against even experienced players...some of which are playing Orks themselves.

Just so you know we've also got some really good standing this year with Marines, Eldar (second place gladiator, Adepticon), and various Nurgle builds (marines and daemon).

...but yea, the Ork codex is REALLY good....but hardly as game breaking as the ridiculous Marine codex looks to be, handing out 3+ invulnerable saves like candy, sternguard and 40 pt Razorbacks. Keep watching the orks...and get blindsided by the marine 'dex.

Honestly, to me the problem isn't so much Loota's, its the cover saves. An ork army with a KFF granting a 5+ cover save to 60 grots in front and a 120 boyz +extras behind with 4+ cover saves is going to be able to take any amount of firepower (short of 3 hellhounds and a ton of indirect fire blast weapons) that an army can throw at it as it crosses the board, while that same 4+ cover save isn't doing much for many other armies out there.

Another slowed symptom of Allessio's involvement in this game and not realizing the impact his ill-thought out decision have.


Also, I honestly don't know if Jervis really understands what is meant by tournament players. If its just those that go to GT's then he's probably right, but if its those players that attempt to play by that ruleset, they are probably in the majority. Most pickup games (at least at the stores I've played at) are done at the points level of whatever the local tournaments are (and those are often whatever the GT's are) and generally stick to whatever missions and rules are in place at the tournaments, and most players use what is allowed at the tournaments to gauge what armies they will or will not play.

Furthermore, I find his disdain for testing the "extreme" builds (which more often than not turn out to be not so "extreme", I've seen plenty of Holofield skimmer spam lists, double lash lists, etc) rather telling of a poor development team and managerial style, as well as their poor efforts at FAQ's *extremely* frustrating as much of their FAQ content is often worthless (either restates what is already in the book, doesn't answer the question, isn't written clearly, or answers something that nobody cared about) and there is so much left that should be addressed.

5th Edition has, bar none, the clearest, tightest ruleset that GW has ever produced for 40k. There are very few problems or grey areas. They even gave guidance about cocked dice, for pity's sake.

You may not like that rules changed, or the direction things changed, but that is very different from saying that there are actual problems with the rules.

Just because the rules are written clearly doesn't mean they don't have problems, rules that are nonsensical (oh, with area terrain, you get a cover save if you are behind the forest and between the two trees on it, but if you are just behind the area terrain and not between the two trees then you don't get a cover save, etc) or which were unnecessary or simply too heavy handed (e.g. cover saves as above, defensive weapons nerf, etc) those are definitely problems with the rules. Problems with bad writing is the editors fault.

5th ed may have a clearer ruleset (I'm not necessarily convinced of that either) but as far as quality of the ruleset (not in terms of clarity/ease of reading, but in balance and function) goes, its a giant sidestep rather than any great leap forward.

even with "WC" taking the hardest list evar. It looks like Mike and his chaos could take the circuit again.
the orks are going to get owned by the new marines.

*cackles with glee*


Can't wait to see the apologist brigade explain this one away.

BYE