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Vaktathi wrote:

Joey wrote:

Skriker wrote:
Having worked in testing and QA for the last 15+ years GW"s rules drive me nuts. It is clear that they only do minimal testing and impact on anything they release.

A game system with "minimal testing" would not have remained as insanly popular as 40k. The core rules of 40k are pretty solid on the whole, they could just do with some clarification.

40k gets by on its IP, not the strength of its rules. If you took GW's rules and tried to use them with say, WW2 mini's, the vast majority of people wouldn't be interested, it'd go nowhere. What makes 40k as popular as it is, is the IP, the 40k universe. GW could dump everything about the ruleset and put out a rules system entirely unrelated to the one we have now and it'd likely remain very popular, because of the IP.

So why do I meet up with my friends 3 times a week to battle, when before I could barely be arsed to go round once a week to play cards? And it's mainly with models that aren't even mine.
The 40k rules are great.

We need random initiatives like D&D. Roll 1d6 and add their I value.

Kirasu - then you played one of the more common misconceptions of 4th ed LOS out there, but you still didnt play the actual rules

Cover and Combat - that is when you used Levels. That was it. At any other time you used TLOS. Just because you played it wrongly then doesnt mean that 5th ed TLOS doesnt work just fine - it does. I havent had these arguments detractors seem to have about LOS - it just doesnt happen.

Oh, and yuo DID have kneeling wraithlords in 4th. You did know how old that picture was, dont you?

KPs - the games designers also said it was to help balance out objective missions, where taking more troops was a given IWIN button. VPs do nothing but help encourage MSU spam - given MSU started in 4th ed.

As for the poster that claimed draigowing isnt at a disadvantage in 2/3rd of missions - you've not seen a competent player play against it then.

Joey wrote: [snip]
So why do I meet up with my friends 3 times a week to battle, when before I could barely be arsed to go round once a week to play cards? And it's mainly with models that aren't even mine.
The 40k rules are great.

A better example might be: If someone had a bunch of printed-out cardboard tokens and tried to teach you 40K for the very first time, would you have been as enticed or interested? Would the product be as interesting to you if there was no such thing as black library, and each codex was simply 5 pages of rules without any scrap of fluff?

Joey wrote:So why do I meet up with my friends 3 times a week to battle, when before I could barely be arsed to go round once a week to play cards? And it's mainly with models that aren't even mine.
The 40k rules are great.

I would not even try to guess how your mind works...but I would say it is because you are having fun. Having played plenty of miniatures based games in my lifetime, ranging from the pricey (Warhammer in its various forms) to those on the cheap (Fantasy Rules!), I have the least fun playing GW games anymore because the rules are far from great. I used to think that the GW rules were awesome once too, until through the years I've played plenty of other systems that really *were* good: Written solidly, clearly and very consistent. Of course if you play with the same people as regularly as you do, you have worked out the kinks and are all mostly on the same page with your rules interpretations. I know when we last did a necromunda league there were some rules that were not clear so we voted on how to address them. In that context the GW rules work out OK. They are hardest when playing pick up games, or new opponents who may not have the same opinions as you do as to how a rule works and that detracts heavily from the game for me any more.

Skriker

Joey wrote:
So why do I meet up with my friends 3 times a week to battle, when before I could barely be arsed to go round once a week to play cards? And it's mainly with models that aren't even mine.
The 40k rules are great.

I can't speak for your motivations, only mine and what I've seen elsewhere and the stated motivations and goals of GW's design team. If you like the 40k rules, great! I might propose however you'd likely have never gotten into the game system if it were say, a WW2 game or was in say, a DnD setting like Neverwinter.


The rules work well enough to make it passable and are *very* easy to pick up. Other games have significantly tighter, better balanced, and more functional rules. Heavy Gear, Infinity, Flames of War, etc. What they lack is the very popular Warhammer IP. Hell, Heavy Gear has all sorts of rules for hit modifiers based on speed/cover/arc/crossfire, detection ratings, varying movement modes, units hiding, going hull down, electronic warfare such as ECM to block enemy communications and actions (such as spotting for artillery) and ECCM to break ECM, spotter-shooter indirect fire rules, rules for infantry/tanks/walkers/jetbikes/etc to all operate using the same damage and hit rules, aircraft attack runs, rules for weapons varying from machine guns to railguns to guided missiles, artillery field guns, laser cannon, particle accelerators and more, sand storms and night fighting (along with their effects on detection, EW, etc), varied and random objectives, and manages to fit all the relevant rules within 30something pages.

The big thing is that most people have never heard of Heavy Gear and it's setting, while fun and interesting, is a relatively generic "Space Colonies with Fighting Robots" setting that lacks the depth and breadth of 40k's universe where it's literally everything from Cthulu mythos to Dune to Starship Troopers to Judge Dredd to Star Wars to Terminator to Aliens to all sorts of socio-political-religious-historical overtones and everything in between wrapped up into one and turned up to 11.


40k can be highly popular simply due to it's IP and existing market standing even with mediocre or even poor rules, just as many movies can make tons of money and still be bad movies sustained on special effects or a particular actor's/actresses's presence.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
KPs - the games designers also said it was to help balance out objective missions, where taking more troops was a given IWIN button. VPs do nothing but help encourage MSU spam - given MSU started in 4th ed.

Where was this that they said that? I don't recall that, though I could be wrong. MSU exploded to be much more prominent in 5E than it was in previous editions, so if that was the intent, it didn't work, and its about the only mechanic meant to "balance" on that sort of meta-level the game has or has ever had to my knowledge. If it is a balance mechanism, it's a poor one, if it meant to do that job, then it needed to be in the missions where the problem was present, not on its own. The issues with VP's were problems of execution but much better reflected the realities of the game, not the underlying concept, KP's are a poor mechanic as a concept that really doesn't reflect the mission intent or the real outcome.

Wound allocation's too finicky. I don't care about diversified multiwound units being abusive or other shenanigans so much as that it slows down the simple process of rolling saves and makes you allocate wounds to individual little groups that have to be rolled one group at a time.

The 40K rules are great?

So much has already been covered, but I still remember the first reading of the "parapets and battlements" rule...
To shoot at the unit on a roof, you have to attack the building itself while said unit shoots at you. Pure genius.

labmouse42 wrote:Yes, that was in the days of rogue trader and at the start of 2nd edition.

Again, Marines didn't all have jump packs in 2nd edition. Not even right at the start. You could take an army entirely of jump packers (assault marines with characters given jump packs from wargear), but it wasn't the default.

Vaktathi - right around launch.

It doesnt need to balance within the mission, because they balance across the missions - the aim being 1/3rd of the missions you play are KP, randomly decided - similarly this is why you have D3+2 objectives, to give a rnage of 3 -5 where 3 benfits certain armies, 5 benefits others. Another reason why tournaments need to be careful - fixing multiobjectives to e.g. 5 comps away from certain armies, and again running 1 KP in 5 means you dont need to worry about KPs at all, essentially - it just isnt significant enough.

VPs actively encourage MSU, because they are far more efficient at points denial than large units. Always were, always through 4th ed and into 5th. They have so many inherenct advantages that something to blunt them, even a little, is needed

VPs do not blunt the advantage MSU has in objective missions, it in fact worsens it. Draigowing wouldnt have a prayer if it werent for those missions.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Vaktathi - right around launch.

Hrm, I don't recall that, though I may have missed it.

It doesnt need to balance within the mission, because they balance across the missions - the aim being 1/3rd of the missions you play are KP, randomly decided - similarly this is why you have D3+2 objectives, to give a rnage of 3 -5 where 3 benfits certain armies, 5 benefits others. Another reason why tournaments need to be careful - fixing multiobjectives to e.g. 5 comps away from certain armies, and again running 1 KP in 5 means you dont need to worry about KPs at all, essentially - it just isnt significant enough.

The problem with this is that you basically get balance only as an average, but only in a very binomial sense, what you get is the potential big/lose big scenarios instead.

The issue is that, reading the description of the mission, what most people envisage as an "annihilation" type mission, etc, KP's can actively deliver victory to the opponent that should by all rights lose. That's poor design and a poor mechanic. If one side needs a crutch like that, it needs to be redesigned, and KP's are just that, a crutch. By their nature, some armies are designed to simply have more or less units than opponents, and KP's are an active drag in such situations, MSU or not.

In the Annihilation mission description, it states that the goal is to destroy the enemy and make them incapable of further resistance. The problem is that with KP's, the side that does this can actually lose. That doesn't happen with VP's. VP's are a *far* more accurate representation of the results of such a battle than KP's are. Does MSU do a bit better in such situations? Sometimes, but that's the risk of bringing big valuable things to battle, they are very powerful but their destruction also hurts, VP's portray that accurately. Big valuable things also tend to be hard to kill and thus hard to get. Remember those expensive Falcon transports that would never die in 4E? VP's also could be adjusted much more to compensate for issues, such as counting at half strength or only if completely destroyed, etc.

as for objective games, in Capture and Control missions, unit count matters almost not at all, except if playing some sort of extreme niche list like Draigowing where you've got 2 troops in 2 transports and 1 IC, even most fairly "elite" armies will have double digits of KP's at tournament levels, and that's more than enough for Capture and Control or Seize Ground 3 objective missions. Really, it's only with 5 objective missions that most "elite" forces see any sort of real stress against an outnumbering opponent

VPs actively encourage MSU, because they are far more efficient at points denial than large units. Always were, always through 4th ed and into 5th. They have so many inherenct advantages that something to blunt them, even a little, is needed

KP's are probably the most hamfisted awkward way of doing that though, and result in a lot more issues than MSU causes. MSU is really a codex design issue, KP's are a core rules issue. If, for instance, they stopped allowing SM armies to field nothing but 5/6 man squads, which are able to be almost as effective and kitted as fully sized squads, for troops, even if it's just the minimum required 2 troops, then something might change. IG is a bit different but by its very nature it is and always has been an MSU army, nobody complained about that in 3E, 4E or early 5E until they got decent transports in an edition where tracked transports aren't deathtraps, and one will notice MSU footguard isn't exactly dominating anything even with KP counts of nearly 30 and double digits of scoring units at 2000pts.

The armies where we typically see MSU prevalent is in one of two situations:

1: When units can be taken where they're almost as effective in an absolute sense, and much more effective in a cost sense since they don't have to pay for extra dudes, when minimum sized compared with a full sized squad (e.g. where they have all or almost all the same wargear availability, or units like Fire Dragons that simply don't need to be full sized to kill tanks, or purifiers that just need to get one dude into an Ork horde to kill half of them)

2: The units are poor performers but must be taken for some reason, units like Fire Warriors or Dire Avengers where they basically are mandatory scoring upgrades for transports because they aren't tremendously effective battle units.

The other big one is IG, but there everything basically is and always has been MSU, there aren't really options to take minimum sized units in many cases and they still end up being quite cheap and plentiful because individually they suck.

VPs do not blunt the advantage MSU has in objective missions, it in fact worsens it. Draigowing wouldnt have a prayer if it werent for those missions.

Draigowing is also an extremely specialized niche build that the core rules never really anticipated and the game has never really seen, a build that emerged 3 years after the core rules were released, even Deathwing armies usually have 8-15 KP's at tournament points levels. It's also an army of super tough dudes with a bajillion special rules where it can do just fine as long as its not having to fight 5 objectives. Given that situation, it's really not something that should factor in given its mega-niche and unanticipated nature that throws *everything* off if you try to actively balance around it.

And always remember, for objectives, you only need one more objective than your opponent, you don't need to hold everything. If you only have one to their zero, you win.

Deleted for inaccuracy

labmouse42 wrote:

insaniak wrote:

labmouse42 wrote:Yes, that was in the days of rogue trader and at the start of 2nd edition.

Again, Marines didn't all have jump packs in 2nd edition. Not even right at the start. You could take an army entirely of jump packers (assault marines with characters given jump packs from wargear), but it wasn't the default.

Did you click on that 'spoiler' in my last post?

I suggest opening it and looking again at the tac marines. That book was published in 1988. It was the end of rogue trader era. Jump packs. 2 points per model.

Of course, arguing about rules 20 years old seems rather moot.

... He said "you could take an army entirely of jump packers" so ...

It wasn't the default. You could, but it was a choice.

All space marines had jump packs and could jump 24". Yea, those big things on their backs were jump packs.

All space marines had the option for jet packs, but they weren't standard issue.

labmouse42 wrote:Did you click on that 'spoiler' in my last post?

I suggest opening it and looking again at the tac marines. That book was published in 1988. It was the end of rogue trader era. Jump packs. 2 points per model.

Which has nothign to do with the start of 2nd edition, as you claimed...

Raxmei wrote:Wound allocation's too finicky. I don't care about diversified multiwound units being abusive or other shenanigans so much as that it slows down the simple process of rolling saves and makes you allocate wounds to individual little groups that have to be rolled one group at a time.

Agree. As ork player almost never leaving home without nobz, both rolling their saves and keeping track of their wounds is a pain in the rear armor, especially if I forgot to bring a pen. I don't have an easy fix though, if you drop wound allocation altogether, specialist models become invincible again, any other sort of random allocation isn't any faster than it is now. With the leaked rule "patching up" rule, at least tracking wounds is going to get easier.

Deleted for inaccuracy

Of course. As well we know, when a new edition comes old edition codex's become illegal to play with.

That actually worked that way with the rogue trader and 2nd edition dex's, which were primarily all the units were contained in one book updated along with the codex.

Jidmah wrote:
I don't have an easy fix though, if you drop wound allocation altogether, specialist models become invincible again.

The problem is that, quite often, in situations where under the previous rules you may have killed the specialists or an entire unit but now they get to live because you've been able to game the wound allocation to put more wounds/auto-failed saves on the unit putzes. Quite often the specialists still get to live, only under difference circumstances than they would have under the old rules, and it's not uncommon to encounter situations where *more* shooting results in *fewer* casualties

Vaktathi wrote:and it's not uncommon to encounter situations where *more* shooting results in *fewer* casualties

This isn't completely unrealistic.

10 people trying to coordinate shooting is much harder than 2 people trying to coordinate shooting.

rigeld2 wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:and it's not uncommon to encounter situations where *more* shooting results in *fewer* casualties

This isn't completely unrealistic.

10 people trying to coordinate shooting is much harder than 2 people trying to coordinate shooting.

But it isn't a problem of coordination - the rolls to hit and wound have already been made. A failure to coordinate volleys would most likely be a failed Ballistic Skill test or something.

Not a "Plasma gun takes 6 lasgun hits, everyone else vaporises from plasma" type of problem. (admittedly an overstatement but still)

rigeld2 wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:and it's not uncommon to encounter situations where *more* shooting results in *fewer* casualties

This isn't completely unrealistic.

10 people trying to coordinate shooting is much harder than 2 people trying to coordinate shooting.

It's silly from a game perspective though, especially when it's from something like a tank (e.g. Leman Russ with a Battlecannon and heavy bolters, if the battlecannon shot would have killed 9 guys out of a 10man squad, adding in the heavy bolters may just have saved 1 or 2 more because somehow some of the dudes were hit by the battlecannon more than once ). Primarily this occurs with weapons of different AP value where one can allocate armor save ignoring hits to the putzes and all the allowable saves on special guys. The game shouldn't disincentivize more shooting, otherwise why are you paying the points for the additional weapons and actions?

Unit1126PLL wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:and it's not uncommon to encounter situations where *more* shooting results in *fewer* casualties

This isn't completely unrealistic.

10 people trying to coordinate shooting is much harder than 2 people trying to coordinate shooting.

But it isn't a problem of coordination - the rolls to hit and wound have already been made. A failure to coordinate volleys would most likely be a failed Ballistic Skill test or something.

Not a "Plasma gun takes 6 lasgun hits, everyone else vaporises from plasma" type of problem. (admittedly an overstatement but still)

No, a failure to coordinate *targets* would result in the same target getting hit by different people.

*WARNING, REAL LIFE EXAMPLE WHICH MAY NOT COMPLETELY APPLY*
Infantry squad has a SAW and a grenadier (soldier with an M203 grenade launcher).
Squad comes under fire from an enemy machine gun nest and infantry squad
They SAW gunner and the grenadier coordinate and the grenadier takes out the nest and the SAW gunner fires on the squad.
Add in the rest of the "good guys" firing, the coordination becomes more difficult (more noise, more people involved) and both special weapons people may fire on either the squad or on the enemy machine gunner.

Since 40k doesn't allow you to pick your target (which is a good thing) rolling to hit is a measure of if you can hit the squad, not (imo) a measure of if you can coordinate fire.
That's done by you choosing not to fire some weapons.

Perhaps wound allocation with an order of operations based on the wound type (ID, No Save and Normal)?

Force as many models as possible to take the ID or No Save wounds first, then spread the normal stuff around more or less equally.

Jefffar wrote:Perhaps wound allocation with an order of operations based on the wound type (ID, No Save and Normal)?

Force as many models as possible to take the ID or No Save wounds first, then spread the normal stuff around more or less equally.

Either way it becomes unrealistic. Who is to say both plasma gunners didn't target the same enemy trooper. As it is now wound allocation benefits the defender. Swinging it the other way wouldn't make the game any better or more realistic, just different in that it would be geared more toward the attacker.

Being that alpha strikes already ruin a lot of games where they start I don't think wound shenaningans are neccessarily a bad thing. They really only come into play with big units getting hit with a lot of firepower. Something we see a lot of in an alpha strike. Later in the game its less of an issue as squads are too small or attackers don't have as many guns blazing.

As above. You swing the game even more into being the shoot-fest it is now.

Esepcially if you drop cover to 5+

If the rumors are true, it's already going to be more of a shoot fest - what with assault armies losing up to 3 inches of movement when you blast the front rank away.

But that's for another thread

rigeld2 wrote:If the rumors are true, it's already going to be more of a shoot fest - what with assault armies losing up to 3 inches of movement when you blast the front rank away.

But that's for another thread

Meh, you can't take that one rules rumor and place it into the 5th edition ruleset.

For example :
What if all models get a movement rate increase of 6" per turn? Then even with the 3" loss from losing the front rank, assault armies are faster

Seriously, I would wait until we read all of the 6th edition rules before we start claiming the death of assault armies.

labmouse42 wrote:Of course. As well we know, when a new edition comes old edition codex's become illegal to play with.

Um, that's exactly what happened with the change from RT to 2nd, as 2nd edition was a completely different game. The same thing happened when 3rd ed came in. It's only the editions since then that have kept the previous edition's codexes playable.

I guess we played in different gaming groups. In the 1990-1991 people at my FLGS (Little Wars in Baton Rogue, LA) allowed the use of the units I linked earlier.

Why wouldn't they? It was a legal option.


As far as I'm aware, there wasn't much of a tournament scene for Rogue Trader. It wasn't really a tournament sort of game... That kicked off with 2nd edition.

I think blasts and templates should roll and allocate.individually to the exact models hit, essentially allowing you to snipe.

Deadshot wrote:I think blasts and templates should roll and allocate.individually to the exact models hit, essentially allowing you to snipe.

Heh, it's funny that you say that because the 4th ed rulebook used exactly those words except with negative modifiers to explain why you don't hit the actual markers under the template.

I would agree, though, that small blast weapons and especially flamers could use a serious boost. It's not just that templates are more difficult to use, but are MUCH more contingent on what your opponent does. If you win the roll for first turn, there isn't a lot your opponent can do to stop you from getting at least one solid round of shooting in with all those lascannons you brought. In the case of flamers, your opponent often has at least a couple of turns to anticipate and react accordingly, plus the increased options for opponent's player skill to basically nullify your firepower (like through displacement, for example).

Jidmah wrote:How is the quality of rules writing connected to popularity at all?

Because if it were an awful game, nobody would play it.

40k would be like historical miniatures like (apart from flames of war) are today. Great minis to convert and paint, interesting backstory, and people to talk about the subject matter with, but very few games would actually be played. Meanwhile, you can take a game that has minis that you do nothing hobby related with, and has no backstory, but that people still play all the time (chess).

40k's rules are actually pretty good in general. It's easy to look at just one or two lemons and dismiss the system as a whole, but that's unfair. In general, they strike a good balance between options and simplicity, and allow for big games to be played relatively quickly.

Having a game with 200 minis duking it out over 3 hours is cool. Having 12 minis duking it out over 4 hours, while constantly having to reference player stats and the rulebook (like malifaux), is less so.

Yes, size does count, but GW never would have gotten to where it is now without having rules that were considered at least decent for their time.