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/beginrant

Ok ok, there were a few annoying things like most armies out there were 2 troops, and the rest spent on extra goodies.

And... Umm... escalation blew.

Hummm... I know I think of more but that’s just off the top of my head.


Now let’s take a look at 5th.

LOS in 4th was good... the terrain could look decent, and not impractically cover the table like is what is needed in 5th in order to block LOS. Point and case, a proper forest terrain template in 4th consisted of a few trees. In 5th, the thing should be COVERED in them.

Wound allocation... nothing wrong with it in 4th... but in 5th, if the guy with the missile launcher dies then "nope... I’m not picking that gun up. This bolter is fine by me"... and the door is open for abusing the hell out of it (nob bikers, or even stacking several power weapon hits on ONE guy). Now if they had made it so you had to allocate wound TYPE then this wouldn’t be too bad. But when you can put 3 rends on ONE model and armor saves the rest so the unit will keep on fighting, then there is a problem.

Weapon range and pulling models... seams straight forward right, in 4th if you had range and could see the guy then he could die. Now your plasma pistol can kill the berserker that is on the other side of the table because he has range to the skull champ in front WTF right

Kill points.... honestly this is why I have 2 games with tau under my belt in all of 5th and haven’t bought a single model for them. In 4th, I could mop the floor with people. Now, I can still mop the floor with your army. But you’re going to be an easy 4+ kill points ahead because you downed a tank or 2 and killed the gun drones. Those fast attack skimmers = killpoint factory.

Only troops score... WTF, your telling me that the 3 strong Russ squadron ISENT holding that OBJ???
Now in 4th, there were minor problems with this... but instead of doing the sensible thing and saying "troops score to the man, heavy elite and fast attack score at 50% or above" they nullified the fact that you have a landraider packed full of termies sitting next to a devisator squad, and an assault squad camping an OBJ. You don’t get it because you don’t have 1 TAC marine there.
Not to mention that some armies (MEQS) have harder troops that don’t die if a heavy bolter glances at them (eldar, tau... ECT ECT)


So basically, 5th Ed sucks the big one. /endrant


O... reserves, deepstrike, and infletrate in every mission is nice now.

So you like the pillar of infinitely high terrain? If you do, nothing is stopping you from using terrain like it was in the past.
4+ cover saves are a big boost to squishy infantry armies.

Wound Allocation: Torrent of Fire updated. Nothing DIFFERENT.
It just makes weight of fire more appealing and make more sense than the old Torren of Fire rule that was limited to just one person being picked out in the squad.

I don’t here too much QQing of Nob Bikers, they aren’t so bad after you figure out they have some issues.

As for weapon ranges and pulling models, as much as the example you put down, someone else could easily say someone else just push passed the dude that die upfront…in addition it’s along the lines of making things faster and deadlier for everyone.

Kill points: again, to simplify the game and make on the spot observations of how well each is doing during the game.
Do you really want to get the opponent’s list with all the point values and pull out the calculator mid game to see how much more you need to kill in a close game.

Those fast attack skimmers = killpoint factory.

How are they kill point factories? Whether you have 1 or 5 piranhas it’s still only 2 kill points. I frankly love the 5 piranha squad.

Troops scoring: ‘minor’ problems with min troops/max everything else…really, only minor? For the squishies, that’s why there are transports and cover…and the end game mad dash for objectives.
It makes troops desirable without needing to re-haul everybody’s troop choices… everything besides troops are meant to take ground (the specialists), not hold it.

Don't forget you can only allocate 2 plasma guns wounds on 1 guy if he is unique in the squad and you have enough total wounds to give everone else one too, and if he's unique in a squad 99% of the time you'll probably want to keep him (sgt, spec/hvy weapon) so you'll probably end up taking those hits on the standard guys and lose 1 or 2 of them (depending on cover saves)

I Agree that only being able to hit 1 end of a conga line but being able to kill the other is daft but i prefer that to crafty "I'm only in range of your GK Grand Master with my lascannon so he's the only one who can die" crap

OP, you seem to value realism (or is it verisimilitude?) over playability. I'm the opposite.

I started in 2ed, hated all the complex rules and loved 3ed because of all the streamlining. Wasn't around for much of 4ed, but my understanding is that it swung the pendulum over to realism and complexity.

My simple stance is this: 40k games tend to get BIG. Lots of models, lots of units. With RPGs and a 4-man party I'm all for realism (basically rewrote 3ed DnD to get more interesting combat), but with 100+ orks I want things to happen! Not hours spent on working out cover saves and wounds!

Kveldulv wrote:I want things to happen! Not hours spent on working out cover saves and wounds!

Amen to that, I'd rather have an exciting match with loads happening than spend hours of my free time working out how i should place a squad to deny crafty sniping

Envy89 wrote:LOS in 4th was good... the terrain could look decent, and not impractically cover the table like is what is needed in 5th in order to block LOS. Point and case, a proper forest terrain template in 4th consisted of a few trees. In 5th, the thing should be COVERED in them.

LOS in 4th was a confusing mess. We had endless debates around here from people who misunderstood them, and thought that the Size categories were supposed to apply to everything.

The end result was that a lot of gaming venues wound up using Area Terrain pretty much exclusively, which (personally) is a shame, as it's much less 'cinematic' than the normal 'bend over and have a look' method.

Weapon range and pulling models... seams straight forward right, in 4th if you had range and could see the guy then he could die. Now your plasma pistol can kill the berserker that is on the other side of the table because he has range to the skull champ in front WTF right

This was a change intended to move the game more into a unit-level game. Something that affects the unit affects the unit as a whole, representing the fact that the unit is a fluid entity, not actually a mob of models in static positions.

Personally, I love this change. It speeds things up no end.

Kill points....

Yup, Kill Points were one of the huge failures of 5th edition. Of course, there's nothing forcing you to use them... Just as most players (at least from my experience) ignored the Missions in 4th.

Only troops score... WTF, your telling me that the 3 strong Russ squadron ISENT holding that OBJ???

Remember complaining at the start of the thread that people took armies with the minimum Troops choices and maxed out on the 'good' stuff?

insaniak wrote:

Only troops score... WTF, your telling me that the 3 strong Russ squadron ISENT holding that OBJ???

Remember complaining at the start of the thread that people took armies with the minimum Troops choices and maxed out on the 'good' stuff?

Can't have it both ways, agree on kill points and missions too, I far prefer to set a single objective or narrative for a game (I dont do anything more than store compo's no tournie's) especially if it leads to something cool like grey hunters and a wolf lord and rune priest holding a single fortification against endless orks

DEATH89 wrote:Can't have it both ways,

To be fair, there are other potential fixes than just counting only Troops as scoring.

Modifying the Force Org chart so that a set number of Troops were needed to 'unlock' Elite choices, granting Troops bonuses for objectives, giving different unit types different objectives, points breaks on multiple Troops selections, scaled Kill Points (Troops worth 1 point, HS and FA worth 2 points, Elite and HQ worth 3 points) ... that's just straight of the top of my head. All would have gone some way towards encouraging people to use more Troops.

Yeah i see what you mean, but i like the way it works. The way i see it it's like the old armored company rules (tanks need infantry support to protect from ambushes etc) i know its not particularly stuff that will come into a 40k battle but thats just the way i see it, wouldn't mind if it meant that only infantry (maybe walkers) could hold and all others (skimmers/tanks/artillery/characters) could only contest.

But hey, I could just be applying to much real world to the grimdark

insaniak wrote:it's much less 'cinematic' than the normal 'bend over and have a look' method.

My immature brain got a kick out of this. Thanks!

I hated 4th.

I sold all of my stuff, partially because of it.

The vehicle rules blew chunks. Assault rules were ok..but 5th is better.

I like the new wound allocation rules, I think it's a misnomer to call it abuse.

GG

Haaaaaaaated 4th ed.

Missions were crap.

Vehicles were way too fragile and transports were death traps.

Ranges were fiddly, I much preferred the streamlined version we have now. Sure bendy bullets seem silly but it just makes everything quicker and more intuitive.

I agree that the new wound allocation rules have issues.

TLOS has always been in 40k even in 4th it's just that not all players understood the rules. I do miss the old area terrain abstractions but frankly the new improved cover fulfils much the same role without trees making you invincible.

Target priority was an arse.

no one, and i mean no one ever used alpha or gamma, every missions was beta all the time.

4th was a big step up from 3rd (also known as rush at each other as fast as we can and then be in combat for the next 4 turns 40k) but wasn't every fun IMHO. 5th is a sterling effort and if they just tidy up wound allocation and killpoints (which I don't mind but others despise) it would be perfect.

There were some fiddy bits in 4th edition that I didnt' like, but the game was far from unplayable.

5th edition tried to fix some the 4th edition issues, but ultimately ended up with other fiddly issues. Personally, I detest how forest/trees are handled, cover saves seem awfully abundant and KPs are wretched.

5th ed just went back to the "rush at each other and get into CC 40k"... only, its no longer 1 long drawn out combat.

when it comes to force org, what i would have loved to see was something more akin to WFB. IE in X points you are required to field at least Y troops and have not more then Zero to C heavy, fast and eliets.

and the LOS issue on area terrein is a very easy fix... sizes, nuff said.
then your forest template dosnet actualy need to be as covered in trees as a forest.

though one thing that allways got me in 4th was that you could see through 6 inches of forest, but only when your in it... maybe allow for just seeing though a set ammount of terrein?

any hay, if you set yourself up in a position where all they got range and LOS to is your fist or champ... then they should be the only ones that should be able to die. not the scout in the back of the 20 man BT blob squad, which also has cover save because most of the conga line is behind the forest.... everything that i have range to is in the open, but since more the 50% of the unit is behind cover they get a cover save. that is a BS sammich diped in BS with a jumbo cup of BS to go.

as for wound allocation, i hit a SM scout squad with a 10 strong battle sister squad... they were in cover and had something boosted them to a 2+ cover save.
the heavy flamer wounded 4 (5 in the squad), the boltguns were meh. yet somehow he had the sarge, and 2 of the scouts still standing... took all flamer hits on the heavy bolter, and made his saves on most everything else.... this makes any sort of sence how again?

and in all honestly, i would just go back to playing 4th. but our group loves the tourneys so its not an option.

4th edition was still lacking due to being based on the 3rd edition rules, as is 5th.

Daba wrote:4th edition was still lacking due to being based on the 3rd edition rules, as is 5th.

What should it be based on? 2ed rules? Would you like a vortex grenade with that?

Until every army has really solid troops units that can actually kill things, making the game too reliant on troops is unbalancing.

In 4th ed, troops were completely unnecessary, you took them because you had to.

In 5th ed, balancing "sucky" troops units (like my Eldar have...) with other units that can actually do significant damage for their points is a lot more interesting list-building mechanic.

Kveldulv wrote:
What should it be based on? 2ed rules? Would you like a vortex grenade with that?

It would be a start at least.

The only think bothering me in 5ed is just kill points, no need for anyone to get flustered, I just don't like the system.

didn't play 4th, don't particularly care for 5th very much either. I'm ok with 40k and painting models, but every time i play I want to never play again.

Why? I place guys behind a wall. "Oh there's a small hole there and I can see one Plague Marines hand through it. 24 Ranger shots on that squad."

Howlingmoon wrote:I place guys behind a wall. "Oh there's a small hole there and I can see one Plague Marines hand through it. 24 Ranger shots on that squad."

That might be due more to the fact that your group is full of jerks rather than necessarily a flaw in the rules. Certain people are always going to take advantage of the system to benefit themselves. If it wasn't TLOS, they'd find something else...

I like 5th edition better.
I can't imagine playing without running, and cc is now way more brutal and swift.

Howlingmoon wrote:didn't play 4th, don't particularly care for 5th very much either. I'm ok with 40k and painting models, but every time i play I want to never play again.

Why? I place guys behind a wall. "Oh there's a small hole there and I can see one Plague Marines hand through it. 24 Ranger shots on that squad."

If you'd bother to learn the rules you could have simply avoided that hole. Complaining that other players are "using the rules to their advantage" is ridiculous, because all tactics are based on rules knowledge.

Obviously, everyone enjoys the game differently. Some people like playing the game to its fullest, using the rules to outsmart and out-think their opponents, others view it simply more as a vehicle for a narrative. <inference>Howlingmoon doesn't seem like he enjoys the more rules-heavy side of the game, and it just seems to me that the people he plays with don't quite reflect his desires.</inference> That's all I was suggesting. I apologize if I came off as a member of the casual gaming mafia. I misspoke.

Envy89 wrote:/beginrant

Ok ok, there were a few annoying things like most armies out there were 2 troops, and the rest spent on extra goodies.

And... Umm... escalation blew.

Hummm... I know I think of more but that’s just off the top of my head.

Now let’s take a look at 5th.

When they moved from 3rd to 4th ed I joked that the only way to get people liking 4th was to invent 5th ed. See, people used to hate 3rd ed, and love 2nd ed. Before that they just plain hated 2nd ed (there weren’t enough Rogue Trader players around to convince people how awesome things used to be).

Point is, everyone complains about the current edition until the next one comes along. The reality is that second ed was a complete mess (the scale of 40K games quickly outgrew the assumed scale of the books and new units were built around what seemed cool and not what fit the strategic environment). Third ed was half a system at best, with little to encourage a balance of capabilities, resulting in one dimensional armies built around standing still and shooting or advancing up the board as quickly as possible to punch things. Fourth ed introduced an emphasis on mobility and close range shooting. Fifth ed hasn’t changed the basic design, just changed things to remove some of the clunkier and abusable parts of the 4th.

And yet people still act like the last edition was wonderful and the new edition horrible.

LOS in 4th was good... the terrain could look decent, and not impractically cover the table like is what is needed in 5th in order to block LOS. Point and case, a proper forest terrain template in 4th consisted of a few trees. In 5th, the thing should be COVERED in them.

If you want to hide a tank or a full squad from the enemy, don’t put it behind a crop of trees. Put it behind a building. The problem might be that you want , or that you want more terrain to hide your Crisis Battlesuits.

Wound allocation... nothing wrong with it in 4th... but in 5th, if the guy with the missile launcher dies then "nope... I’m not picking that gun up. This bolter is fine by me"... and the door is open for abusing the hell out of it (nob bikers, or even stacking several power weapon hits on ONE guy). Now if they had made it so you had to allocate wound TYPE then this wouldn’t be too bad. But when you can put 3 rends on ONE model and armor saves the rest so the unit will keep on fighting, then there is a problem.

It was far sillier that grunts always died before anyone else. The loss of a heavy weapon in the new system is also easy to explain, a soldier might be too busy worring about other things, the weapon might have been destroyed, the guy might not be trained in the weapon, might be busy worrying about other issues, or didn’t want to venture over to a position the enemy already made a kill shot on to pick up the gun.

Weapon range and pulling models... seams straight forward right, in 4th if you had range and could see the guy then he could die. Now your plasma pistol can kill the berserker that is on the other side of the table because he has range to the skull champ in front WTF right

The current rule isn’t ideal, but the old system encouraged people to take skimmers and the like that would line up shots so they could only see key enemy models. There was a tactica written in which landraiders were used to block LOS for terminators with so they could manoeuvre to see only key enemy models. It was bad. Sure, the current system will sometimes cause screwy results, but those results can be avoided by the victim – so they’re quite rare. On the other hand, in the old system screwy results could be created by the attacker, so they were common and armies were often built to take advantage of them.

Kill points.... honestly this is why I have 2 games with tau under my belt in all of 5th and haven’t bought a single model for them. In 4th, I could mop the floor with people. Now, I can still mop the floor with your army. But you’re going to be an easy 4+ kill points ahead because you downed a tank or 2 and killed the gun drones. Those fast attack skimmers = killpoint factory.

Kill points have two advantages. The big advantage is that everyone knows the score, because you know you’ve killed three units and the other guy has killed four of yours. In VPs you needed to know not just the values of all of your units, you had to have a decent understanding of the points values of his list as well. To make a decent tactical decision you need basic information at hand, and that means knowing the score.

The other advantage is that kill points act as a decent balance against unit spam. Even see a game where all three fast attack slots were taken up by single raveners? Not knowing if you’ll be playing an objectives mission or a kill points mission balances unit spam - the advantages in objectives missions balanced against the disadvantages of kill points.

It is true that drones coming off of downed Tau skimmers are screwy – they should be worth zero kill points. But a minor bug that can be house-ruled is hardly a reason to ignore the considerable strengths.

Only troops score... WTF, your telling me that the 3 strong Russ squadron ISENT holding that OBJ???
Now in 4th, there were minor problems with this... but instead of doing the sensible thing and saying "troops score to the man, heavy elite and fast attack score at 50% or above" they nullified the fact that you have a landraider packed full of termies sitting next to a devisator squad, and an assault squad camping an OBJ. You don’t get it because you don’t have 1 TAC marine there.
Not to mention that some armies (MEQS) have harder troops that don’t die if a heavy bolter glances at them (eldar, tau... ECT ECT)

There are rationalisations for making only troops score, but they’re just that – rationalisations. The truth is that making only troops score builds a deeper tactical environment. Now you have to balance the killing power of your specialisations against the objective taking ability of your troops. Having units with distinct advantages makes for a stronger game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

insaniak wrote:

DEATH89 wrote:Can't have it both ways,

To be fair, there are other potential fixes than just counting only Troops as scoring.

Modifying the Force Org chart so that a set number of Troops were needed to 'unlock' Elite choices, granting Troops bonuses for objectives, giving different unit types different objectives, points breaks on multiple Troops selections, scaled Kill Points (Troops worth 1 point, HS and FA worth 2 points, Elite and HQ worth 3 points) ... that's just straight of the top of my head. All would have gone some way towards encouraging people to use more Troops.

There's a greater consideration than simply wanting people to take troops. If units lack special abilities, such as being the only units capable of holding objectives, then the only measure of a unit's ability is how much you expect it to kill given its points cost. There are issues in balancing AT vs MEQ vs GEQ but for the most part you'll simply be picking the most lethal stuff for your points cost. This actually makes points balance impossible and encourages extreme armies, whatever is the most deadly unit for its points value should be taken as often as possible, and all others should be rejected.

While making troops the only units that can hold objectives is a little goofy, it makes for a far more interesting list building. Now you have to balance your ability to kill the enemy against having enough units that can take objectives and win you the game.

insaniak wrote:

DEATH89 wrote:Can't have it both ways,

To be fair, there are other potential fixes than just counting only Troops as scoring.

Modifying the Force Org chart so that a set number of Troops were needed to 'unlock' Elite choices, granting Troops bonuses for objectives, giving different unit types different objectives, points breaks on multiple Troops selections, scaled Kill Points (Troops worth 1 point, HS and FA worth 2 points, Elite and HQ worth 3 points) ... that's just straight of the top of my head. All would have gone some way towards encouraging people to use more Troops.

It would have been very easy to make a rule that for every non-Troop unit you want to take (except the obligatory HQ) you need to take a Troop unit first.

Of course it has the same problem of penalising armies with weak Troops but that's a codex design problem not a core rule problem.

I don't know the details of the current 40K rules, but "nothing being wrong with them" was never stopped GW making an unnecessary re-release. I recall when 5th Edition Warhammer was released it was only a very minor tweak of the 4th Edition rules. The army books were compatible with both. They even said in White Dwarf at the time that it was only a minor work over because they felt that it couldn't be significantly improved upon and they held the whole "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude. Well apart from the fact that it didn't stop them making a hugely publicised re-release anyway they've managed to "update" it twice since then and apparently there's a 8th edition on the horizon.

Sanctjud wrote:So you like the pillar of infinitely high terrain? If you do, nothing is stopping you from using terrain like it was in the past.
4+ cover saves are a big boost to squishy infantry armies.

Wound Allocation: Torrent of Fire updated. Nothing DIFFERENT.
It just makes weight of fire more appealing and make more sense than the old Torren of Fire rule that was limited to just one person being picked out in the squad.

I don’t here too much QQing of Nob Bikers, they aren’t so bad after you figure out they have some issues.

As for weapon ranges and pulling models, as much as the example you put down, someone else could easily say someone else just push passed the dude that die upfront…in addition it’s along the lines of making things faster and deadlier for everyone.

Kill points: again, to simplify the game and make on the spot observations of how well each is doing during the game.
Do you really want to get the opponent’s list with all the point values and pull out the calculator mid game to see how much more you need to kill in a close game.

Those fast attack skimmers = killpoint factory.

How are they kill point factories? Whether you have 1 or 5 piranhas it’s still only 2 kill points. I frankly love the 5 piranha squad.

Troops scoring: ‘minor’ problems with min troops/max everything else…really, only minor? For the squishies, that’s why there are transports and cover…and the end game mad dash for objectives.
It makes troops desirable without needing to re-haul everybody’s troop choices… everything besides troops are meant to take ground (the specialists), not hold it.

At 'Ard Boyz last year Gun Drones only counted for Kill points if they were from the FA slot. If they came off a vehicle they didn't count. if only they'd update the FAQ

Yea... but it doesn't really matter a whole lot Acardia.
The fact remains:
Piranhas give up at most 2 kill points whether 1 or 5 of them in a single squad.

If we are talking about Pathfinders and the Devilfish, yes, that's 3 Kill Points.
You can reduce that to 2 Kill Points with some points.
Pathfinders are almost a must to have, while the Devilfish is mandatory, you make the most of it by walking some Fire Warriors into it on turn 1.

What else is worth more than 1 KP in the FA slots? I don't know.

So...I don't understand what Envy89 means by that line. There is no 'kill point factory' in the fast attack slots.

Now if he meant the army in general, and was only talking about a single type of Tau list...I'd agree, but that's not the only way to run Tau.

I like most of the changes in 5th. No character sniping is huge for me, and running I think makes things much more dynamic.

The new wound allocation hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be. TLOS was a serious step backwards, so much I didn’t play for like 6 months. Hopefully whenever another edition comes this will go back to a tweaked level system.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

DEATH89 wrote: I Agree that only being able to hit 1 end of a conga line but being able to kill the other is daft but i prefer that to crafty "I'm only in range of your GK Grand Master with my lascannon so he's the only one who can die" crap

Envy89 is a member of my gaming group and this is all he did in 4th, that's why he is so upset that it's gone.