Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Kagetora wrote:

Tyel wrote:


Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.

I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)

I think shortening the game to 5 turns, and at competitive events dropping each game down to 1.5 hours, has been a serious negative overall. I mean...aren't we supposed to be playing a game and actually having some form of fun here?

Right now, it's boiled down to "you get 9 minutes to move everything, make all your decisions, pick up triple-handfuls of dices and try to delete your opponent's units. Make sure after you roll to hit and wound you put them back on their clock for making their saves. Then they'll do the same to you."

Yes, I realize that's not what happens in your buddy's garage over beers, but the "delete unit/trade the next turn" concept is still in full force. Every bit of subtlety has been stripped out of this edition.

As for alternating activations, while I'm a diehard Epic: Armageddon fan, it's not without it's issues as well. If I wanted to win a game of 40k playing with alternating activations, I'd do my best to bring 2x my opponent's number of units, so that when they run out of activations during the turn, I'm only half done (and have only used my chaff units so far), and now I'm just going to have my way with them with the best I brought. It would require a complete re-write/re-structuring of the game.

I don't know what world you're in where comp games are taking 1.5 hours.

 catbarf wrote:

To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.

In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.

The thing is, aside from the loss of wargear and such, one of the things I dislike about Stratagems is that they just don't feel connected to the rest of the game.

It seems like a mechanic that should be naturally tied to HQs/leaders, but instead it operates in a parallel dimension. e.g. one might think that damaging the leadership structure - e.g. killing HQs (or Synapse units in the case of Tyranids), or otherwise isolating units from their leaders might have some impact on the ability of said leaders to effectively command troops. Instead, it makes no difference whatsoever - your entire command roster can be turned into paste, yet you can just carry on issuing stratagems to units like nothing happened.

I think AoS had the right idea by tying command abilities to actual heroes, rather than this weird card game 40k has going.


Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.

 Bosskelot wrote:


I don't know what world you're in where comp games are taking 1.5 hours.

When I was getting the itch to paint again, and started looking into the competitive scene around me (in the US), I saw some tournament rules packets listing out times per round, and the actual game (5 turns) was only allotted 90 minutes. Some of them even have chess clocks on the high-ranking tables for the last couple rounds. To me, who hasn't been to a tournament in a while, that's crazy. Was 2 hours really that much of an ordeal for the short-attention-span children of today? From most of the battle reports I see from such events, a lot of games don't get through 5 turns in that time. It certainly precludes bringing horde armies to an extent, when your clock only gives you an average of 9 minutes to think, move, roll dice, move again, roll more dice, etc. It feels like working at a crappy company that will penalize you for taking a bathroom break.

I see some other events where the limits are longer, but they cram everything into the time, including getting to a table, setting up, going over the oddities of lists and units with your opponent, etc. And then there are a few where the time limit is double what I described, up to 3 hours per round (again, to do everything). That's leisurely, and I'd probably enjoy that. But actually needing a chess clock to time rounds? Putting your opponent on their clock when it's time for them to, say, make armor saves or make a reactive move on your turn? Do people really do that?

The goal of a game should be to make it as fun to play as possible, not just as fast to play as possible. Maybe those events are rare, but when I was doing some searches earlier in the year to see if I was going to drag my Eldar out of storage and use some vacation days, it seemed like there were a lot of them. It's possible I'm mistaken about the commonality of what I'm complaining about, but the thought of needing a chess clock to play Warhammer is nausea-inducing. I mean, back in the day, Sportsmanship Scoring was very far from perfect, but it certainly limited the slow-play tactics some people would want to trot out when they started to lose.

I'd be thrilled to be completely wrong about this, because when I was looking those things up, it was a real turn-off.

ETA: ANNNNDDDD...wait for it...yep. I'm wrong. Going back over some of the events rules packets and discussions, it appears I misinterpreted them, and that EACH PLAYER gets 1.5 hours during the game. To be fair, they were written poorly.

Now I'm reading some horror stories on boards about slow-play opponents taking their 90 minutes just to get through 2 turns, taking forever to deploy, etc. Even one poor bastard who tabled his opponent (who also showed 00:00 on their clock) and STILL lost, because said opponent was able to score Primary from a stickied deployment zone objective AND Secondary for some reason.

Shouldn't running out of time pretty much be an instant loss? That would certainly prevent slow-play BS. Or, maybe not an instant loss, but -20 points for each unplayed turn you still have when your time runs out?

Yes, I just flip-flopped from complaining about not having enough time and being on a clock to complaining about slow-play BS opponents limiting your game and needing harsher penalties. Let it not be said I can't admit when I'm wrong and change my mind.

 vipoid wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.

In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.

The thing is, aside from the loss of wargear and such, one of the things I dislike about Stratagems is that they just don't feel connected to the rest of the game.

It seems like a mechanic that should be naturally tied to HQs/leaders, but instead it operates in a parallel dimension. e.g. one might think that damaging the leadership structure - e.g. killing HQs (or Synapse units in the case of Tyranids), or otherwise isolating units from their leaders might have some impact on the ability of said leaders to effectively command troops. Instead, it makes no difference whatsoever - your entire command roster can be turned into paste, yet you can just carry on issuing stratagems to units like nothing happened.

I think AoS had the right idea by tying command abilities to actual heroes, rather than this weird card game 40k has going.

While it's not my *main* gripe about stratagems, I do feel this. If we were to go the route of replacing strats with something akin to doctrines, you could maybe do something like, "Only units with 9 inches of units with the Commander keyword may benefit from doctrines." So then it becomes more important to have some sort of character or vox unit or attached warlock in the general area of each major chunk of your army and creates counterplay by letting players essentially debuff their opponents by removing the leadership in an area of the table.

And then obviously you can play around with mechanics for where Command is coming from. Ex: synapse creatures, models with vox units, attached warlocks, a type of drone on certain tau units, some of the blander, less interesting transports, etc. Maybe marines get to be extra special coordinated boys by letting them count as being within command range so long as their sergeant is alive. So it's hard to keep marines from being coordinated, but now there's an incentive to not kill the sergeant first in squads like devastators. Just spitballing.

While I'm getting to the point of acknowledging it probably won't happen, I'd like to see better use of keywords when it comes to weapons - things like BOLT, LAS, SHURIKEN, etc.

There have been several examples of rules over the years that try and target this sort of subset, and end up having to list the affected weapons instead - always hilarious if looking at the BOLT weapons in the SM list, for example.

Personally, I'd add a specific column to the weapon table for these, but that's just me.

I think the question comes down to whether it's worth the extra ink/page realestate to add a "weapon keywords" column for the sake of the number of rules that interact with it.

Right now I think there are two(?) rules that work on "pulse" weapons for tau: pulse accelerator drones and the cadre fire blade. So while it's awkward to spell out what weapons are impacted in those two abilities, it might arguably be more awkward to have a column on every weapon list of every datasheet just for the sake of those two abilities. Obviously you could have *more* abilities take advantage of the new column to help justify it, but you'd have to reach that critical threshold, you know?

There's also probably a non-zero amount of concern over giving a weapon a keyword because it makes sense, but not actually wanting that weapon to benefit from certain buffs. So off the top of my head, maybe you bring back the old Raptors chapter tactic that lets units count their bolters as pseudo sniper rifles if they hold still. So maybe you do something like

If a unit with this rule does not move in your Movement phase, treat any bolt weapons as having the Precision rule until the end of the turn.

So you do that thinking you're giving people a cool new way to use boltguns, but then you realize that the heavy bolter as has the Bolt keyword (because of course it does), but now you're sniping characters with a sustained hits D2 S5 machinegun instead of a heavy bolter.

So not a bad idea, but I sort of get why GW's designers might prefer to stick to awkward-but-explicit wording.

I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.

You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault.

What, like forcing a Battleshock test against the unit you want to charge so they can't use a strat to overwatch you or use the strat theat lets you run when someone charges you? (Many factions have a detachment that includes one of these, though being strats, they all have different names)

Cuz that's also kinda how it already works. And of course, the thing that provokes the Battleshock test might be regular attrition, a unit rule, or a strat, and the Battleshock test might also be modified by a unit rule or a strat... Which again is a narrative thing.

I apologize if this looks like cherry-picking, because I don't think it's productive to turn this into a huge line-by-line re-quote, but I want to point out that Battleshock tests occur in the Command Phase. I can wipe out half of a unit in my shooting phase, but it isn't going to take that test until my opponent's turn. I won't be able to exploit a failed test until my next turn, so the idea of damaging a unit to force a morale test so it's vulnerable to an immediate charge does not exist in the current game structure.

And sure, Overwatch is a universal stratagem that everyone can use. Once per turn. For one unit. At the cost of a command point. It isn't a core part of the game, it's a minor add-on that is relevant for some units and completely worthless for others. All those other interactions that improve its efficacy or reduce its cost come down to listbuilding, and frankly I don't award a lot of points to mechanics whose depth comes down to 'pick the right units before the game starts' and has nothing to do with decisions made on the table.

I don't think all current strats are flavorless and dull. I just don't find them especially compelling as a substitute for the core mechanics they have displaced, particularly when the implementation seems so scattershot in its conceptual identity, so disconnected from board state, and so heavily tied to listbuilding rather than intelligent use of a limited resource in response to emergent gameplay. The comparisons to playing a secondary card game to influence the actual wargame feel apt.

 vipoid wrote:
Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.

I really just meant that the core concept of accruing points to spend on abilities to boost your troops isn't inherently a bad idea. What it lacks is a framing mechanism to intuitively explain why your units are performing better beyond 'the rules said so'. Where do the points come from? Who is spending them? What do these abilities represent? For instance, in Warmachine your warcasters accumulate Focus points that they spend to cast spells or boost the abilities of warjacks under their command. It's pretty clear that those points represent the magical influence of your leaders.

So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops

You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.

You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.

I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.

+1 to catbarf, who takes time when I can't, and writes better when I can

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Regardless, I would like to hear your ideas regarding stratagems. You talked about spending a limited resource to help units perform better - could you elaborate on this? I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind, and how it would differ from the various buff stratagems that already exist.

I really just meant that the core concept of accruing points to spend on abilities to boost your troops isn't inherently a bad idea. What it lacks is a framing mechanism to intuitively explain why your units are performing better beyond 'the rules said so'. Where do the points come from? Who is spending them? What do these abilities represent? For instance, in Warmachine your warcasters accumulate Focus points that they spend to cast spells or boost the abilities of warjacks under their command. It's pretty clear that those points represent the magical influence of your leaders.

So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops

You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.

You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.

I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.

Thanks for replying.

What you're proposing does sound like a more reasonable system, and one that would help with many of my current gripes regarding Stratagems.

I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.

I think tying stratagems to characters would help them feel more involved (as they're active abilities, not just auras), while also removing many of the issues caused by auras in 8th/9th.

 vipoid wrote:
I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.

I forgot to mention that it seems to me like there's a major missed opportunity for characters to provide character-specific stratagems. You could have Chaplains buff the troops around them, Captains buff themselves to do beatstick things, Librarians create aura effects, et cetera. That way not only would stratagems be tied to leaders, but also your choice of leaders would determine what abilities are at your disposal and provide roles for your characters beyond raw damage output.

 Quixote wrote:
I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.

You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.

Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Quixote wrote:
I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.

You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.

Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.

I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,

"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."

Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

catbarf wrote:
So just spitballing here, I'd rather see a system where stratagems are explicitly command abilities representing the influence of your higher headquarters and characters on the field. That would scope stratagems to:
-Pre-game logistical or strategic decisions
-Mid-game tactical ploys
-Characters leading nearby troops

You would then execute these abilities by selecting specific leaders to execute abilities in proximity to them, rather than abstractly as a gestalt function of your entire army. Things that ought to be done at a per-unit level (eg overwatch) would be represented as core rules, reserving these stratagems for representations of your army's overall command-and-control capabilities. Choosing an officer to perform a Fire On My Target stratagem that gives a nearby unit +1 to hit against a single unit feels more like a command function than a single unit burning a CP to get +1 to hit, even if they are largely the same in practice.

You could even go a step further and have the accrual of command points be tied to actions on the field, like seizing objectives or winning combats, so that your leaders are encouraged to lead in some fashion rather than sit behind cover waiting for their mana to recharge.

I'm not looking to lay out a single coherent proposal here. Just saying, there are ways to do this that don't provoke the same criticisms and feel more integrated into gameplay.

Hm. Come to think of it, I feel like the Librarius(?) and Seer Council detachments are kind of interesting current examples of what this might look like. The librarian detachment basically just gives all your librarians a bunch of additional psychic powers to cast. So it *feels* like your psykers are the ones performing those effects, and it makes those psykers more useful/flexible/important in your army. This isn't some abstract notion of weird wargear or a commander yelling "shoot more betterer" to a squad; it's a specific guy telekinetically shoving stuff around or raising magical flames or whatever. (I haven't looked at the detachment recently and don't remember the actual specific psychic effects.)

The seer council detachment similarly requires you have targets be within range of psykers to pull things off, and the effects are fluffed as being tied to a psyker. The uppy downy strat isn't some abstract notion of a jump pack maneuver that can't be repeated for some reason. It's a space wizard putting up an illussion to hide you as you discretely reposition, or it's a psyker magically bolstering your attacks, or the psyker is straight up throwing magic lightning at you to hurt you.

catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I think changing the focus to Characters (or Synapse creatures or such, depending on the army) would also help with a couple of other issues the game seems to have been struggling with of late. One being that non-casters often don't have a lot to do. 8th/9th gave them auras and 10th gave them unit-buffs. However, these generally meant non-casters still didn't have much to do except just exist.

I forgot to mention that it seems to me like there's a major missed opportunity for characters to provide character-specific stratagems. You could have Chaplains buff the troops around them, Captains buff themselves to do beatstick things, Librarians create aura effects, et cetera. That way not only would stratagems be tied to leaders, but also your choice of leaders would determine what abilities are at your disposal and provide roles for your characters beyond raw damage output.

Fully agree here. I'd take it a step further and say that maybe detachments could unlock additional/alternate abilities for some characters. We sort of kind of have enhancements doing this right now, but it could be neat to make it a more widespread concept that isn't dependent on you spending points to upgrade a unit. Maybe my archon could lose one of her current abilities while in a Sky Splinter Assault detachment (the transport-focused detachment) and replace it with an ability that functions while she rides around in her favorite venom.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Quixote wrote:
I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.

You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.

Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.

I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,

"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."

Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.

No, I'm talking about units like supressors, cethonian berserks or earthshakers which apply a shaken or suppressed debuff to units they attack. The mechanics are there, they are just seldomly used.

Attacks causing battleshock suck for so many reasons, but I went into detail on that somewhere at the beginning of the thread.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Quixote wrote:
I'd like to see the return of PINNING weapons.

You can essentially make the target take a Battle Shock test.

Well, pinning weapons do exist in 10th, there are 1 or 2 in most codices. In general, they work quite well, and I do agree that there should be more of them.

I tend to half-forget about the "take a battleshock test after being shot" rules. They don't last long enough to keep people from scoring primary on the following turn, and they aren't reliable enough to gamble on them, for instance, turning off a fights first strat. They're nice when they happen to go off in a situation where they matter, but I never get excited about them when I see them listed. If anything, I'm like,

"Darn. GW could have put something useful in this rule slot instead."

Small caveat here for my drukhari because pain tokens are nice.

No, I'm talking about units like supressors, cethonian berserks or earthshakers which apply a shaken or suppressed debuff to units they attack. The mechanics are there, they are just seldomly used.

Attacks causing battleshock suck for so many reasons, but I went into detail on that somewhere at the beginning of the thread.

Gotcha. Quixote seemed to be using "pinning" to refer to weapons that cause battleshock tests, so I thought you were referring to the same thing.

Agreed that the weapons that impose movement penalties are neat. I feel like eldar can *almost* build a gimmicky list around. I could see a guard detachment that leans into that sort of thing in a similar way to how DG can reach out and AFFLICT you with plague marines.

It isn't even limited to affliction. Pretty much every shooting unit in the codex applies another debuff, like remove cover, reduce armor give re-rolls, spread spores for MW, etc...

Can't wait to play them.

 Jidmah wrote:
It isn't even limited to affliction. Pretty much every shooting unit in the codex applies another debuff, like remove cover, reduce armor give re-rolls, spread spores for MW, etc...

Can't wait to play them.

The ones I'm surprised never make it into any battle report lists are Barbgaunts. 55 points for 5 models with T4/4+ save/2 wounds and d6 24" S5 Blast/Heavy shots each. Infantry getting hit by them suffer -2" to Move, -2" to Advance rolls, AND -2" to Charge rolls. That's a pretty good Pinning effect.

It seems like these would just be a no-brainer option to take. Against any actual Infantry units they're throwing out 5D6+5 or +10 shots (plus potentially Sustained 1 in Invasion Fleet) that can hit on a 3+ if you sit still, S5, and apply a total of up to -6" to the enemy's move (if they can, for example, Advance and Charge). Even against armies that don't have much Infantry or are Monster/Vehicle heavy, you can still play them in Invasion Fleet and get Lethal Hits with 5D6 shots to make the opponent start rolling saves.

I watch/read a lot of battle reports, and they just never seem to make anyone's list. I picked up 10 of them, and I'm sure going to try them out.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.

A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.

I hope you enjoy it, IMO the best tactical ruleset GW ever produced. Never had a bad game. Even thought about trying to play it using 40k minis to replace stands at one point.



EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.

Making those mechanics one offs doesn't stop them adding bloat to the system and you could argue are even more complex than just making them core rules - you have to learn the activation conditions and play the resource management game for strategems in addition to knowing how tank shock works.

My question about strategems is, what do they do for the game that having them as either core special rules for certain units, or just basic mechanics ala tank shock wouldn't do? Because it seems to be game for game sake, adding a resource management mini game to give you combo moves. But you could still do this with them as core rules, so the only thing I can see they add is ... artificially enforced scarcity? Giving the perception of coolness and specialness?

I agree that the current rules set has a forced resource management game installed.

But if we are forced to have one, I'd prefer one that rewards tactical game play.

Have objectives grant CP. Your soldiers are rewarded by holding objectives or completing actions during the game.

Thoughts?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I agree that the current rules set has a forced resource management game installed.

But if we are forced to have one, I'd prefer one that rewards tactical game play.

Have objectives grant CP. Your soldiers are rewarded by holding objectives or completing actions during the game.

Thoughts?

Very easy to make a death spiral.

I hold more objectives than you->I get more CP than you->I can better hold the objectives that are needed to get even more CP and win the game.

Which isn't inherently bad, but given how long a game of 40k can take, I'd be against that.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I agree that the current rules set has a forced resource management game installed.

But if we are forced to have one, I'd prefer one that rewards tactical game play.

Have objectives grant CP. Your soldiers are rewarded by holding objectives or completing actions during the game.

Thoughts?

Very easy to make a death spiral.

I hold more objectives than you->I get more CP than you->I can better hold the objectives that are needed to get even more CP and win the game.

Which isn't inherently bad, but given how long a game of 40k can take, I'd be against that.

There has to be a more interactive fix than the "you gain one cp at the start of your turn."

Maybe you gain a bonus for completing actions that can be completed in your deployment zone?

Maybe you can gain a second CP at the end of your turn on a d6 roll of 6+. Plus 1 to your roll for each action completed or objective controlled?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I agree that the current rules set has a forced resource management game installed.

But if we are forced to have one, I'd prefer one that rewards tactical game play.

Have objectives grant CP. Your soldiers are rewarded by holding objectives or completing actions during the game.

Thoughts?

Very easy to make a death spiral.

I hold more objectives than you->I get more CP than you->I can better hold the objectives that are needed to get even more CP and win the game.

Which isn't inherently bad, but given how long a game of 40k can take, I'd be against that.

There has to be a more interactive fix than the "you gain one cp at the start of your turn."

Does there have to be? Or rather, is making CP farming more interactive an inherently good direction to take the game? Could design efforts get better bang for their buck by taking a different approach? I've preferred the suggestions I've seen (and made) in this thread over adding more CP farming. Replacing strats with character abilities or some sort of doctrine-esque mechanic, or simply with more extensive detachment rules designed to evoke a theme all seem preferable to me.

Maybe you gain a bonus for completing actions that can be completed in your deployment zone?

Maybe you can gain a second CP at the end of your turn on a d6 roll of 6+. Plus 1 to your roll for each action completed or objective controlled?

The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with. And also I'm not sure that having a squad of guardsmen or ranger or whatever hiding in my backfield all game doing... something... intuitively connects to the idea of my commanders giving orders. My autarch is right there on the battlefield. What are the rangers hiding in the ruin to his left doing that makes him better at giving orders?

I'd also add that tying CP to holding objectives means that beefy armies are going to run away with CP compared to my eldar who generally aren't great at standing in the death circles while they wait to have their W1 T3 profiles used for target practice.

Double-also, a steady amount of CP per round arguably does an okay job of representing a commander taking in information and issuing orders. The breakdown is more with what those orders (the strats) are and what they effect. Why is doing a barrel roll a thing my eldar have to wait for the autarch to tell them to do? And why is it impossible for two units to barrel roll in the same turn? That sort of thing.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with.

That's true but not necessarily a problem. The rules are after all presumably going to favour some form of army structure over others.

For example a core rule of "If at the start of your command phase you have more Battleline Units holding objectives than your opponent you get +1 CP" sort of encourages taking Battleline units.
I guess that's bias against "here's my 6 C'Tan and some characters list". But I don't know if that's a bad thing.

It would provoke the usual hostility that certain factions don't like their Battleline units - and more detachments could do with making certain units Battleline.
But I wouldn't hate it. You could even have this while keeping a limit on only being able to take 3 copies of a given datasheet if you were worried it might break.

As I said at the start of the edition, aesthetically I really disliked what I called "AoS lists" that looked something like:

Big Monster
Tank
Tank
Tank
Buffbot 1
Scoring Character
Deep Strike Scoring Unit 1
Deepstrike Scoring unit 2
Brick

(Think Avatar, Fire Prisms, Farseer and Winged-Autarch, Wraithguard brick and some Hawks or something to score.)

Effectively there's no "meat". Its very hard to believe this force would ever exist as a real fighting formation. (And yes, 8 years or so ago people claimed until blue in their face their Knight+loyal 32+3 BA captains was fluffy, but lets be honest, it just wasn't.)

Its perfectly legitimate to say "its a game, it doesn't matter". But equally I can want the rules to make armies look more like how I imagine armies should look. And not "superfriends+tanks".
But clearly its subjective.

 Hellebore wrote:

EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.

I kinda hinted around about this in a post to CB ealier in the thread. I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic- especially the two you mention here- Grenade and Tank Shock, but also Overwatch, Insane Bravery, and Heroic Intervention. They appear in the BRB, the free PDF, and all of the books that have included Core rules.

Just because you don't like the way the mechanic functions, that does not mean it isn't a part of the core rules.

Now, I DO know what you mean- you mean a rule that doesn't require a limited resource to use. But that definition does not match the term "Core rule"- which just means any rule from the core set (as opposed to a rule from a dex or other supplement).

 Hellebore wrote:

My question about strategems is, what do they do for the game that having them as either core special rules for certain units, or just basic mechanics ala tank shock wouldn't do? Because it seems to be game for game sake, adding a resource management mini game to give you combo moves. But you could still do this with them as core rules, so the only thing I can see they add is ... artificially enforced scarcity? Giving the perception of coolness and specialness?

Strategems have limitations on their use. Some will say this good, others say it's bad, and still others will say it depends on the strat. And again, I'm ambivalent; I don't mind most strats- the equipment ones bug me, but I'm generally cool with the others. I think GW though there was a problem if every unit in your army got to overwatch against every unit in your opponent's army, so they limited it by making it a strat. And for all the time I've seen people whine about time wasting rolls to fish for sixes, I'm surprised anyone WANTS their entire army to overwatch every unit in their opponent's army. I think when we're talking about strats (which people seem to universally hate) they THINK they want that... But if they ever actually played it to see how it felt, they'd be grateful for the limitation... But then that's just one strat, and some of the others are different, and might make better common use rules (my substitute for core).

How many times per turn do you WANT your opponent to use Heroic Intervention or Insane Bravery?

And obviously, strats themselves in 10th exist more to make detachments matter. If you take away strats, how do detachments add flavour to the game? Detachments, I'm sure we can agree, are a good idea, as they facilitate multiple builds and themes for a single army... But they really couldn't exist without strats to provide most of the flavour they bring to the game.

And from a design perspective, I think rules designers just looked at the effects that Core strats create and said "Hey, we need to limit these rules so that people don't overuse them, and we've already got these things called strats that define our detachments and come with the built in limitation of a resource system, so instead of coming up with a secondary method to limit these common actions, why don't we just call them strats? That way all of the limitations on their use are already handled."

Tyel wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The thing about tying it to actions like that is that you're instantly favoring armies that have a bunch of cheap chaff to do actions with.

That's true but not necessarily a problem. The rules are after all presumably going to favour some form of army structure over others.

For example a core rule of "If at the start of your command phase you have more Battleline Units holding objectives than your opponent you get +1 CP" sort of encourages taking Battleline units.
I guess that's bias against "here's my 6 C'Tan and some characters list". But I don't know if that's a bad thing.

It would provoke the usual hostility that certain factions don't like their Battleline units - and more detachments could do with making certain units Battleline.
But I wouldn't hate it. You could even have this while keeping a limit on only being able to take 3 copies of a given datasheet if you were worried it might break.

As I said at the start of the edition, aesthetically I really disliked what I called "AoS lists" that looked something like:

Big Monster
Tank
Tank
Tank
Buffbot 1
Scoring Character
Deep Strike Scoring Unit 1
Deepstrike Scoring unit 2
Brick

(Think Avatar, Fire Prisms, Farseer and Winged-Autarch, Wraithguard brick and some Hawks or something to score.)

Effectively there's no "meat". Its very hard to believe this force would ever exist as a real fighting formation. (And yes, 8 years or so ago people claimed until blue in their face their Knight+loyal 32+3 BA captains was fluffy, but lets be honest, it just wasn't.)

Its perfectly legitimate to say "its a game, it doesn't matter". But equally I can want the rules to make armies look more like how I imagine armies should look. And not "superfriends+tanks".
But clearly its subjective.

Just to say, I'm very much in the same boat of disliking "armies" that are just a bunch of characters, monsters and/or vehicles, with maybe a couple of token infantry units.

I'd agree with you that it's not aesthetically pleasing, even if they are painted well. For all WHFB's faults (and it had many faults), at least the armies generally looked like actual armies. You might have a dragon or a big demon or such, but you would still have ranks of infantry, cavalry etc. making up the bulk of your forces. Nowadays, you can just take six dragons or demons or whatever, with the infantry that should be the core of the army being nothing more than a tiny afterthought (if taken at all).

And sadly it seems 40k is very much going in the same direction.

I think this is an issue not just because of aesthetics but also mechanically. Grounding armies in infantry, while sometimes annoying, also means that standard/small-arms weapons are actually relevant.

Otherwise, it would seem to create a feedback loop where people not using infantry means other infantry is less useful as their standard weapons have fewer/no viable targets. Thus, people take fewer infantry, which means standard infantry weapons are even less useful etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

EDIT: I think one of the design reasons for Strategems is to aid in the perception of a small core ruleset, when they started pushing the free pdf. Rather than having core grenade/tank shock/etc rules, they're now one off special moves. They've really obfuscated the size of the 40k rules by doing this and it's a little dishonest.

I kinda hinted around about this in a post to CB ealier in the thread. I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic- especially the two you mention here- Grenade and Tank Shock, but also Overwatch, Insane Bravery, and Heroic Intervention. They appear in the BRB, the free PDF, and all of the books that have included Core rules.

I don't know if I'm one of the people you're referring to, but what I mean is that, while technically core rules, Stratagems are in no way core to the overall game.

I believe I've talked about this in detail already, but to reiterate: there is a fundamental disconnect between the actual core rules and the rules for stratagems.

You could remove the entire stratagem section from the core rules and cut stratagems off every detachment, and the game would still be perfectly playable. Really, the only difference is that people might finally wake up to how shallow the rules actually are, now that they no longer have that gimmick to give the illusion of depth.

Compare that to removing Focus or Fury from Warmachine/Hordes. This isn't just an extra - it's the basis of how Warcasters and Warlocks cast spells, it's also how Warjacks and Warbeasts use and enhance their abilities. If you cut it out, you'd have to completely re-write the game.

Meanwhile, Stratagems just aren't built into the rules the same way. Far from being core to the unit rules, they operate almost entirely independently from the units and from the state of the battlefield. They feel more like DLC for a video game.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game. Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to not be helpless against certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place.
Removing them would have a huge impact on the game, the are by no means a tacked-on DLC. Removing terrain rules from the game would not have less of an impact.

I understand that many of you have strong feelings about stratagems and would prefer a game without. That's why I stopped responding to most, as you can't argue about taste. But if you claim that stratagems are objectively bad for the game (a "tumor"), useless or don't add anything to the game, you are just plain wrong.

 Jidmah wrote:
The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game. Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to counter certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place.
Removing them would have a huge impact on the game, the are by no means a tacked-on DLC.

I understand that many of you have strong feelings about stratagems and would prefer a game without, but if you claim that stratagems are objectively bad for the game (a "tumor"), useless or don't add anything to the game, you are just plain wrong.

They certainly add something to the game, it's just something that would be better expressed in a less tacked-on kind of way.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think we need new words for what you guys mean when you say "Core Mechanic" because strategems ARE a Core mechanic-
...
Now, I DO know what you mean- you mean a rule that doesn't require a limited resource to use.

Tbf, if we all knew what he meant, then he was communicating effectively. And as vipoid pointed out, strats are "less core" than most of the other rules in the main rules document. I don't disagree that a change of language might help though. Suggestions?

Strategems have limitations on their use. Some will say this good, others say it's bad, and still others will say it depends on the strat. And again, I'm ambivalent; I don't mind most strats- the equipment ones bug me, but I'm generally cool with the others. I think GW though there was a problem if every unit in your army got to overwatch against every unit in your opponent's army, so they limited it by making it a strat. And for all the time I've seen people whine about time wasting rolls to fish for sixes, I'm surprised anyone WANTS their entire army to overwatch every unit in their opponent's army. I think when we're talking about strats (which people seem to universally hate) they THINK they want that... But if they ever actually played it to see how it felt, they'd be grateful for the limitation... But then that's just one strat, and some of the others are different, and might make better common use rules (my substitute for core).

Respectfully, I feel like you're misrepresenting what people opposed to strats want. I haven't seen anyone saying they want unlimited use of Overwatch in its current form or that they want every unit with the Grenades keyword to be spamming mortal wounds every turn. Rather, we've been saying that the general notions of these things are desirable but that we simply think the execution of how they're included in the game could be improved.

So instead of overwatch as a stratagem, maybe it becomes a special unit ability or an action units can take ala Boarding Actions (making it a trade-off between good shooting now versus worse shooting on your opponent's turn), or maybe it becomes a special rule on certain weapons... Lots of possibilities. Lots of ways to include some form of "overwatch" without it just being unlimited uses of the stratagem.

How many times per turn do you WANT your opponent to use Heroic Intervention or Insane Bravery?

I feel like those two in particular could reasonably be removed entirely or else become abilities tied to specific units. Insane Bravery is more or less what the Chaplain does now. Heroic Intervention seems like something an Autarch might hand out with his "choose from this list" special abilities.

And obviously, strats themselves in 10th exist more to make detachments matter. If you take away strats, how do detachments add flavour to the game? Detachments, I'm sure we can agree, are a good idea, as they facilitate multiple builds and themes for a single army... But they really couldn't exist without strats to provide most of the flavour they bring to the game.

Not to repeat myself overly frequently, but I've suggested earlier in this thread that you replace strats with more extensive detachment rules. So instead of a physical page of strats in the Windriders detachment, we instead grant Fly units in that detachment the option to Jink. Maybe we let autarchs swap out one of their usual rules for a detachment-specific one. Or if we're moving stratagems to character abilities, maybe the Windrider detachment unlocks additional Heroic Commands or whatever they're called in AoS.

Again, lots of options. I'm sure you didn't mean to, but you've kind of framed it as this binary where we either keep strats, or else we can't possibly have fluffy army rules and a functional game at all.

And from a design perspective, I think rules designers just looked at the effects that Core strats create and said "Hey, we need to limit these rules so that people don't overuse them, and we've already got these things called strats that define our detachments and come with the built in limitation of a resource system, so instead of coming up with a secondary method to limit these common actions, why don't we just call them strats? That way all of the limitations on their use are already handled."

See, that might make sense except that most strats existed in non-strat form before 8th edition. They didn't invent the concept of grenades for the first time in 8th edition and then look around for a way to limit them; they decided that stratagems were a fun concept and then looked for core mechanics they could turn into strats to help justify stratagems' existence and give people something to spend CP on while they wait for their codices to drop.

In 7th, grenades were just weapons. You either paid points to take them if you didn't have them, or their value was (supposedly) factored into the cost of the models that had them by default. Tank shocking was a thing all vehicles could do and were presumably priced around. Switching tank shock to a strat just meant they got to delete a couple of clunky paragraphs from the rest of the core rules in favor of a streamlined mechanic. Overwatch was the free fishing for 6s thing that we all hated, so they made it a strat to keep the general mechanic for those who wanted it, but spared everyone the tedium of the 6 fishing.

 Jidmah wrote:
The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return

Nuance though. We're allowed to think strats could be handled better (possibly by removing the stratagem mechanic entirely) and also miss being able to customize our psykers.

They certainly add something to the game, it's just something that would be better expressed in a less tacked-on kind of way.

This. No one is saying that we want to rip out stratagems and make zero other changes to the game. We're mostly saying we want the mechanics currently accessed via stratagems to instead be accessed through some other means.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Just to say, I'm very much in the same boat of disliking "armies" that are just a bunch of characters, monsters and/or vehicles, with maybe a couple of token infantry units.

I get the sentiment. But that said, I don't think it's about wanting to force people to spam "troops." It's about wanting armies to look/feel thematic. A white scars army that's all bikes and vehicles "feels like an army" even if there are zero tactical marines or intercessors in it.

What makes an army "feel like an army" is kind of nebulous. For me, I think it mostly comes down to the army either
A.) Looking like it could all move coherently from one place to another. So bikes and tanks can all roll around together, but transportless centurions waddling next to predators while outriders zoom past both of them feels off.

or B.) Having multiple units that look and feel similar. Again, white scars bike armies "feel like armies" because you look at them and see a bunch of bikes next to eachother. The units kind of belong together. An Iyanden wraith host feels like an army with all of its robo-zombies stomping around near eachother, and the occassional squad of swooping hawks or vypers feel like auxiliary forces that have linked up with the main force of the army.

Forcing me to spam guardians would force me to satisfy condition B. I think that's why some people like the idea of forcing people to spam troops.

 Jidmah wrote:
The same was true about psychic powers (as demonstrated by 10th) and yet we still somehow all want parts of those non-core rules to return

Well, there are a couple of things to consider here.

Firstly, while you could argue that psychic powers aren't core to the game, they are core to the lore. And the lore is one of the big draws of 40k.

Thus, you can argue (not necessarily incorrectly) until you're blue in the face that psychic powers aren't really needed as core rules. But it won't get around the fundamental issue that reducing psychic powers to guns and unit-buffs (the latter being indistinguishable from non-psyker character buffs) doesn't feel right to many people.

The other aspect is that a lot of people dislike the removal of options. Being able to choose psychic powers presented a way for someone to differentiate their psychic characters (if using more than one), rather than every psyker basically being a clone unless they're riding a different vehicle.

Not core to the game. But many older players might consider that sort of thing core to the 'Your Dudes' philosophy that once existed.

Stratagems don't have the same ties to the lore, being extremely vague and nebulous in what they actually represent.

Moreover, while having a choice of psychic powers added to the 'Your Dudes' philosophy, Stratagems actively take away from it by absorbing wargear choices that would otherwise allow for greater customisation of units/characters.

 Jidmah wrote:

If you actually play 10th regularly, you will find that counter-offensive, overwatch. rapid ingress and the defensive stratagems are an absolutely essential part of the current game.

(Emphasis mine.)

I wonder if, perhaps, you are misunderstanding my point?

You say that they are essential to the current game. However, I am not talking merely about 10th edition but the game as a whole. Remember, this is the 10th edition of the game, and Stratagems have only existed for the last 3 editions.

Moreover, I believe some of those stratagems you're referring to were introduced in 10th edition.

Thus, it's hard to see how these rules can be absolutely core to the game when we had at least 7 prior editions that didn't need them.

 Jidmah wrote:
Tank shock, grenades and epic challenge also serve a purpose in providing armies tools that allow them to not be helpless against certain things which are hard to counter otherwise - within limits, at a cost. Heck even damage stratagems serve a purpose to reward taking the right decisions and having the right unit in the right place.

I find this particularly puzzling. Why do we need stratagems to facilitate Tank Shock? We already had rules for that in prior editions, before Stratagems even existed.

Likewise, Grenade rules have long predated Stratagems. They were, far more sensibly, wargear items that units could purchase.

I was going to try this with a lot of quotes, but I'll shorten it up. I think folks are using CORE to describe rules they like, and saying that strats aren't CORE because they don't like strats. If overwatch was CORE when it wasn't a strat, what makes it less CORE now that it is?



It is your right to not like strats... and again, I don't like all of them. But this core/ not core thing is pure bs. The system feels added on because it's relatively new- it was added to the game. But it IS an integral concept- it can interact with rules from every other phase of the game, and it can affect literally any action that can be taken in the game.

If that ISN'T CORE, neither is any other mechanic in the game. Remember, whether or not strats are good is another thing. Whether you like them is another thing. I was posting specifically about the semantics of the word CORE.

Does GW describe the PDF as CORE rules?
Yes they do.

Are strats in that PDF? Yes they are.

Therefore, objectively, semantically, strats are core.

It's fine not to like them and talk about how they have been better represented in the past, and might be better represented in the future. You'll even find me agreeing with much of what you say when you have that discussion. Just drop the damn Core/ Not Core thing.