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They Eldar USED to rule the galaxy until they mucked it all up with too many orgies and drugs and lost most of their really good tech in the birth of Slaanesh. Seriously, that's been their fluff since like 3rd.

The Wave Serpent has been the go to transport for Eldar for a few editions now. Not to mention is the one with the larger transport capacity making the Falcon really pointless if you're taking a unit of say, 10 Dire Avengers.

And I really don't care if people get butthurt if it gets nerfed. If they aren't going to restrict the Wave Serpent (and let's face it, they won't be) then it NEEDS to be toned down. Right now it's more ridiculious that the Heldrake used to be in terms of what it can do in terms of damage and how hard it is to kill.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
They Eldar USED to rule the galaxy until they mucked it all up with too many orgies and drugs and lost most of their really good tech in the birth of Slaanesh. Seriously, that's been their fluff since like 3rd.

The Wave Serpent has been the go to transport for Eldar for a few editions now. Not to mention is the one with the larger transport capacity making the Falcon really pointless if you're taking a unit of say, 10 Dire Avengers.

And I really don't care if people get butthurt if it gets nerfed. If they aren't going to restrict the Wave Serpent (and let's face it, they won't be) then it NEEDS to be toned down. Right now it's more ridiculious that the Heldrake used to be in terms of what it can do in terms of damage and how hard it is to kill.

Ok, if that's the way you feel about it, that's fine but don't expect everyone to agree with what you personally think needs nerfed. I learned a long time ago that requesting things to get nerfed just pisses off the dev team and they do things like purposely mess with the player base. The latest instance was the Helldrake having its mouth mounted flamer turned into a 360 degree weapon just to spite the whiners.

So I totally expect the Serpent to get more powerful now. cool.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
They Eldar USED to rule the galaxy until they mucked it all up with too many orgies and drugs and lost most of their really good tech in the birth of Slaanesh. Seriously, that's been their fluff since like 3rd.

The Wave Serpent has been the go to transport for Eldar for a few editions now. Not to mention is the one with the larger transport capacity making the Falcon really pointless if you're taking a unit of say, 10 Dire Avengers.

And I really don't care if people get butthurt if it gets nerfed. If they aren't going to restrict the Wave Serpent (and let's face it, they won't be) then it NEEDS to be toned down. Right now it's more ridiculious that the Heldrake used to be in terms of what it can do in terms of damage and how hard it is to kill.

Ok, if that's the way you feel about it, that's fine but don't expect everyone to agree with what you personally think needs nerfed. I learned a long time ago that requesting things to get nerfed just pisses off the dev team and they do things like purposely mess with the player base. The latest instance was the Helldrake having its mouth mounted flamer turned into a 360 degree weapon just to spite the whiners.

So I totally expect the Serpent to get more powerful now. cool.

So, cool story bro. Because I don't recall anyone asking the Heldrake to get nerfed BEFORE it fired like a turret. Infact when the new CSM codex came out people were calling the Heldrake "useless".

So yeah, your claim isn't holding water.

EDIT: Also have you considered that it's about presentation. You never tell someone "this is broken, fix it" you explain the problem (namely that it's promoting armies where people just spam 5 man Dire Avenger squads to bring more Wave Serpents because of their superiority over other options in the army), offer a possible solution but ultimately leave it up to the individual. It gets people to pay more attention to your arguement, understand why you're offering a change and then let them feel ultimately in control of either implimenting that change, finding an alternate change or outright ignoring it. But the first two are far more likely if you present it well, be polite about it and don't try and browbeat people into submission about how you don't agree with them.

Even if you want to argue that it's working as intended and as the fluff from Epic suggests, it's creating a problem on the table. It's not leading to "fun" games, it's leading to horribly lopsided ones dominated by bringing as many of a single model as you can to win.

Regardless of everything else, for the sake of balance it NEEDS to be fixed in one manner or another. You can agree with my idea or not, but it needs a nerf of some kind to get things on an even keel.

Man, this letter's going to be awesome.

Can you tell them to lower prices? They've already heard that so much, don't bother actually.

Good luck with your letter.

And post a copy of the letter you sent somewhere after you send it, I want to read it. Like your blog-place.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Might wanna reread the Psychic rules for blessings, you already can't stack the same blessing, only different blessings that have similar effects.

We already talked about that. Casting ten times the same benediction on a unit is not a combo. Casting ten complementary benedictions on a unit is. Unit should be able to get one, and only one benediction on them at the same time.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I need to explain things clearly in a letter and I'm not going to guess what you mean by "IC combo"

Many IC joining a unit to give it a bunch of special rules that works very well together. Get less special rules that transfers over to the unit, and maybe let one one IC give his rules (say, the one with the higher Ld for instance).

 ClockworkZion wrote:
or "horrible broken combo".

Rerollable 2++, for instance.

It's an interesting idea, and I wish you luck with it, but the one thing I don't think has been mentioned here is that, no matter what GW do or don't do with the rules, the issues will be the same. They didn't know things like screamerstar or serpent spam were going to happen when they wrote the codex, as they expect people to play the kind of fluffy, take-what's-cool lists. Ultimately, it's the players that find these combos and exploit them, and there's not a lot GW can do about it; the people that want to break the game will.

So I'd put the focus on what you'd want to see added (like chaos cult termies/legion tactics ect) rather than toning down stuff. I think that's far more likely to be considered than a suggestion that they somehow weaken certain models/combos. I imagine their attitude to the latter would simply be 'don't play it then'.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
The Wave Serpent is just fine the way it is right now. Phil Kelly said he wanted it to be similar to the one in Epic Space Marine and it is. The problem with the Wave Serpent now isn't what it can do, instead, it is the fact that for some reason GW made the Wave Serpent the main transport vehicle of the Eldar instead of the Falcon. The Falcon was the main transport in Epic and that should have carried over to 40k. Wave Serpents were somewhat limited in availability and were mainly used only to transport the super specialized Howling Banshees and Harlequins into battle.

What I want out of 40k is for GW to make the things from Epic Space Marine in 40k scale and make them work very similar to Epic. The Wave Serpent does that nicely. Trying to get them to nerf it down will just make the Eldar community very angry as Eldar are supposed to have that sort of power level. They did rule the galaxy for quite a few million years after all.

If they instead, went to making the Falcon the dedicated transport again and made the Wave Serpent a specialized transport like in Epic then that would limit the power level of serpent spam.

If you get fluff accurate Eldar I get fluff accurate Tyranids.

So I have more models on the field than you have points to spend.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Last winter I sent a letter into Phil Kelly detailing some (okay, not "some", it was 20 pages long) things I felt needed to be addressed for Sisters. While I'm working on doing another submission, it won't be for Sisters (I can only beat a dead horse so much) and am approaching this with a more broad scope this time because I feel it might be the best way to tell the dev team what we really want and why as I don't think they know what we're looking for or how our game differs from the way they play. I can't promise results, just that I'm making the attempt anyways.

I'm trying to hit are the rules issues, units people want to see and things people want to see improved or debuffed. Because I don't play everything I'm looking to hear what people have to say, and please give me some evidence to work with as to craft a convincing argument I can't really say things like "it feels underpowered". We don't have to go full mathhammer, but something to back up the problems would be great.

So to start off here's what I've got in mind thus far:

Chaos Marine Cult Terminators (I think they know this one, but it can't hurt to reinforce it)
Chaos Marine Cult Calvary (Berzerkers on Juggernaughts, that sort of thing)
CSM Legion tactics
Shadows in the Warp having an impact on Psykers outside of Perils (it's supposed to make it harder to use psychic powers, not just increase your chance of perils. Possible solutions include: -1 to die rolls for attempting to manifest powers for Psykers in the SitW bubble, or not counting the Mastery Level of any Psyker inside the SitW bubble)
Khorne having some actual psychic defense (he hates sorcery and the like being used for combat, and it should really be reflected on some level, such as Adamantium Will on models with his mark)
Serpent Shield nerf (I'm looking at 24" Range and One Use Only to balance the thing out)
Close combat feeling so futile (I don't really have any solutions for this right now, but I do want to explain the feeling to them at least)

So anyone else have something they want to toss in?

I wouldn't write such a long letter, better to keep it nice and concise. It should be a short letter addressing their design philosophy. If they are willing to change things, then they can easily approach the community to find specifics.

GorillaWarfare wrote:

I wouldn't write such a long letter, better to keep it nice and concise. It should be a short letter addressing their design philosophy. If they are willing to change things, then they can easily approach the community to find specifics.

This.

And let them know how much antagonizing FLGSs in North America is killing them.

What I'd most like to hear from the designers is their thoughts on some of the most ridiculous combos. Specifically Screamerstars, grimoired Fateweaver, and Seer Councils.

Did they really intend for a 2+ rerollable to be readily available like this? If so, why? Is an unkillable unit fun? If not, what's going on here? Are their brains not aware of what their fingers are typing? Do they not playtest at all? Are they just really, really bad at probabilities? Do they just not expect people to use these options, and if so, why are they even there?

Maybe, you know, phrase it less condescendingly, but I'd really like to know the thought process behind this.

Since you know more than me, not sure if this will be of any use.

How are you going to contact them? By email? If by email I think it's fruitless, you will not get an answer back from what I read. If you mail them with a self stamped addressed envelope you may get a response back from them. Use Mail. You know the one with the stamp. I say that because a lot of people think of Mail as e-mail not the one post office. Just want to clarify.

It seems GW responds to written letters instead of e-mails. So if you want a great chance at a response, write them a letter and Mail it to GW with a SASE and wait a few weeks or months for your reply.

Good luck.

 Kain wrote:

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
The Wave Serpent is just fine the way it is right now. Phil Kelly said he wanted it to be similar to the one in Epic Space Marine and it is. The problem with the Wave Serpent now isn't what it can do, instead, it is the fact that for some reason GW made the Wave Serpent the main transport vehicle of the Eldar instead of the Falcon. The Falcon was the main transport in Epic and that should have carried over to 40k. Wave Serpents were somewhat limited in availability and were mainly used only to transport the super specialized Howling Banshees and Harlequins into battle.

What I want out of 40k is for GW to make the things from Epic Space Marine in 40k scale and make them work very similar to Epic. The Wave Serpent does that nicely. Trying to get them to nerf it down will just make the Eldar community very angry as Eldar are supposed to have that sort of power level. They did rule the galaxy for quite a few million years after all.

If they instead, went to making the Falcon the dedicated transport again and made the Wave Serpent a specialized transport like in Epic then that would limit the power level of serpent spam.

If you get fluff accurate Eldar I get fluff accurate Tyranids.

So I have more models on the field than you have points to spend.

And I'm cool with that. Tyranids should be a beast that is almost unstoppable...almost. good thing we have unbound now huh?

I think 20 pages is too much. I would try 3-4 max. That would have a better chance of being read. Less is more.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
What I want out of 40k is for GW to make the things from Epic Space Marine in 40k scale and make them work very similar to Epic. The Wave Serpent does that nicely. Trying to get them to nerf it down will just make the Eldar community very angry as Eldar are supposed to have that sort of power level. They did rule the galaxy for quite a few million years after all.

The Necrons consent to your proposal that game power reflect fluff power, and politely ask the space elves to form an orderly queue, ready for execution.

I'm sorry if some of this has been mentioned, but I've decided to skip reading.....we'll say less then unhelpful posts. Also, I've not actually read though the 7th ed rules so if I'm wrong in my understanding about something Please correct me.

Demonology: There is actually a reasonable fix for this. At the end of the turn the demons are summon. Roll d6, on a 5+ they return to the warp. The next turn its on a 3+, then next turn its automatic. Also Summon Creatures shouldn't be counted toward your psychic dice pool.

And PLEASE: Stop turning Warhammer 40K into 28mm EPIC. While its awesome to see Warlord titans on the table, the size of a small child. We already have the apoc rules for when we want to play these Massive super heavy units, and its cool to be able to run some of the smaller superheavies in normal games, not everyone has the money for them.

Combat Patrol needs Official support for people that want to play smaller skirmish games.

There are some ways to make assault better:

Remove random charge distance
Require passing a leadership test before being able to fire Overwatch.

Ultimately though, What Warhammer 40k needs is a ruleset that's designed for the competitive scene. With balanced codexes to go with it. You can then come out with a "Light" rule set for the casual players.

Some of the more codex specific things I'd like to see changed (again, beating a dead horse)

Dark Angels:
Drop the points cost of the DA Jet Fighter by 20 points
Add Access to the Hunter/Stalker ((I know. shush about unbound or allies)

IG:
Hurry up and release the Catchatan supplement you know your going to release. But while your at it, come out with supplements for some of the other regiments. (( This is the only time I'll say codex supplements are a good thing))

Chaos Space Marine:
I'll leave the needs of this to you Zion, You seem to know what it needs better then I do.. BUT other units need to be made better, so Helldrake spam goes away.

Tau:
Make the Ion Accelerator a more expensive Upgrade, so Riptide Spam is less attractive. (( If it was a 20 or 35 point upgrade, instead of a 5 point upgrade We'll either see more HBC, or fewer Riptides))

Pathfinders are scouts. Take the Ion Rifles and Rail Rifles away, and put them into a "fire support team" unit, similar to devastators, or Eldar Rangers, even if you don't want to give the Tau Sargent the option to take them as an upgrade.

Okay: I'm running out of Unique things to say. So I'm going to end it hear.

I'd wait until the dust is settled from 7th before writing the letter. If we have learned anything from 6th, it's that nothing is as it apears at first.

Still, I'd just like to point out some of there common design flaws:
- Too many of their close combat units are an utter failure. Khorne berzerkers, banshees, praetorians, you name it. If they design a close combat unit, they also need to design a way for them to get into combat - and if you don't, getting half or more of them shot to death while crossing the board needs to be factored into their cost. On top of that they seem to have issues getting the right combination of attack, weapon skill, AP and strength. WS4, S4, A1 with pistol and chainsword is not an assault unit. That's a bored space marine who forgot his bolter at home.
- Random effects need to be costed for their average result, not the best result. Currently, if you have something with Strength 2D6, they cost it like a S10 weapon, rather than lie a S7 weapon.
- They really should get someone who knows statistics well. Someone who explains them that having low chance, high reward/penalty rules mess up games in an unfun way (for example SAG, daemonic instabilty, deep strike mishaps). On the other hand, high chance, medium reward/penalty play great and actually are fun (loota shots, Get's Hot, dangerous terrain).
- A jump pack doesn't make a model a lot better like a bike does, so it shouldn't be costed that way. Adding a jump pack to a regular rank and file soldier should not exceed three or four points.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Might wanna reread the Psychic rules for blessings, you already can't stack the same blessing, only different blessings that have similar effects.

We already talked about that. Casting ten times the same benediction on a unit is not a combo. Casting ten complementary benedictions on a unit is. Unit should be able to get one, and only one benediction on them at the same time.

There aren't that many powers that have similiar effects though. You're asking them to take away something they intentionally put into the rules but then left very few actual powers in the rules that do the same thing. Heck with them nuking codex powers there are even less now then there were before.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I need to explain things clearly in a letter and I'm not going to guess what you mean by "IC combo"

Many IC joining a unit to give it a bunch of special rules that works very well together. Get less special rules that transfers over to the unit, and maybe let one one IC give his rules (say, the one with the higher Ld for instance).

You're going to have to give me an example here because there aren't many rules that specifically carry over from one to the other that I can think of.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
or "horrible broken combo".

Rerollable 2++, for instance.

Already got that one, you got anything else?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lobukia wrote:

GorillaWarfare wrote:

I wouldn't write such a long letter, better to keep it nice and concise. It should be a short letter addressing their design philosophy. If they are willing to change things, then they can easily approach the community to find specifics.

This.

And let them know how much antagonizing FLGSs in North America is killing them.

I'm writing the devs, that's more of a thing to write Kirby about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:
Since you know more than me, not sure if this will be of any use.

How are you going to contact them? By email? If by email I think it's fruitless, you will not get an answer back from what I read. If you mail them with a self stamped addressed envelope you may get a response back from them. Use Mail. You know the one with the stamp. I say that because a lot of people think of Mail as e-mail not the one post office. Just want to clarify.

It seems GW responds to written letters instead of e-mails. So if you want a great chance at a response, write them a letter and Mail it to GW with a SASE and wait a few weeks or months for your reply.

Good luck.

As I've mentioned I have done this before. And yes, it'll be sent via the post.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wait until the dust is settled from 7th before writing the letter. If we have learned anything from 6th, it's that nothing is as it apears at first.

7th isn't so drastically different from 6th to keep from seeing where the problems still lie. Sure they fixed a few things (Heldrakes are not the spammable monsters the were before for instance) but as you point out in your post there are things we can clearly see that are still issues. And it's not like I can't do another one of these a year from now if I feel the need.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Scythican wrote:
I think 20 pages is too much. I would try 3-4 max. That would have a better chance of being read. Less is more.

Oh I don't intend to do 20 pages this time. That's just what it took to cover basically re-writing the entire Sisters codex.

Still, you might have stuff to write about which the community isn't yet aware of.

I don't have "Escalation" yet, but to my understanding Orks only get Stompas. If super heavies are going to be included in standard games, I think orks should have rules to play looted super heavies as something other than a "looted wagon". For a looted Baneblade to have the same specks as a looted Leman Russ seems silly to me. Of course, this may all be a moot point in a couple weeks, no?

Lynkon

Stop Kelly writing units for codices, they're internally and externally unbalanced, let him write the fluff but his units are horrendous.

Let Ward write the stats for the units, all the Wardexes were (at time of release) balanced with each-other.

Orks get full access to all super-heavies made by forgeworld, including the skullhamma battlefortress which is nothing less than a looted baneblade.

The stompa also is a walker chassis that can pretty much be filled with whatever you need, including about everything any baneblade variant could do. So not a lot lost here.

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks get full access to all super-heavies made by forgeworld, including the skullhamma battlefortress which is nothing less than a looted baneblade.

The stompa also is a walker chassis that can pretty much be filled with whatever you need, including about everything any baneblade variant could do. So not a lot lost here.

Well that's good news. I happen to have a Baneblade I'm orking-up. I've never seen any of the forge world books, but do you happen to know if there is a place with consolidated spec sheets and points, or do I have to buy all the books to determine what battlefortress I'm building with it? (I happen to have a large deffrolla on the front of the baneblade, so I would ASSSSSSSUME the deathrolla battlefortress would be the way to go, but I like to have options).

Try this document published by forgeworld:
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/L/lordsofwar.pdf

According to that, the most recent rules are found in Imperial Armour: Apocalypse. Make sure to get the most recent printing (2013/2014).

ClockworkZion, apologies man. Looking back, my comments were not necessary, hope your day is rad

The rule Czar at GW isn't Phill Kelly its Jervis Jhonson. Phill Kelly seems alright to me. Its when you read about Jervis Jhonson and his design philosophy that you see the guiding hand of the current state of GW games.


Fire JJ. Phill can finally do the job he wants to do.

Examples of SR spam is a bit restricted but an example I know of is the infamous DA Azrael in a horde of guardsman. They suddenly gain a 4++ save and they shall know no fear.

On a humerous side note, I almost wish that I could see this SoB post

After receiving the epistle of clockwork zion to the geedubs, I cant help but feel this is what they will do with it in about 2 seconds flat.



And that is sad because so much of this work up we all know really needs to be done.

Hope they see the light Clockworkzion.

If I'm reading the general gist of most people's complaints correctly, which isn't always easy when you have layers of outrage, indignation, hyperbole and ranting to remove to get to the heart of the complaint (not saying all do this, but some definitely do) then something to prevent recursive daemon summoning and something to prevent 2++ rerolling or to bypass it somehow would remove the majority of gameplay issues now the FAQs have been produced and updated. (Assuming things like SW losing their powers will self correct with a new book, but that's not really an issue with the game, that's players unhappy with the way their army has been altered)

I'd also like Eldar and Tau to be looked at. Waveserpents still need adjusting down in power or up in points, I personally favour reducing the range of the Shield as the easiest way of doing that, Battle Focus should be Snap Shots, not at full BS and Bladestorm needs toning down, perhaps retaining the wounds in 6s regardless, but lose the AP2? Wraithknights could use a small increase in points.

Tau need less IMO, but I'm not as experienced playing against them, and my one local opponent deliberately runs unorthodox lists that don't capitalise on all their advantages, so can't comment as much. Perhaps something to mitigate the way so many units can overwatch at high BS? A LD test for the unit not being charged? Markerlight tokens cannot be used? Not sure.

 azreal13 wrote:
If I'm reading the general gist of most people's complaints correctly, which isn't always easy when you have layers of outrage, indignation, hyperbole and ranting to remove to get to the heart of the complaint (not saying all do this, but some definitely do) then something to prevent recursive daemon summoning and something to prevent 2++ rerolling or to bypass it somehow would remove the majority of gameplay issues now the FAQs have been produced and updated. (Assuming things like SW losing their powers will self correct with a new book, but that's not really an issue with the game, that's players unhappy with the way their army has been altered)

I'd also like Eldar and Tau to be looked at. Waveserpents still need adjusting down in power or up in points, I personally favour reducing the range of the Shield as the easiest way of doing that, Battle Focus should be Snap Shots, not at full BS and Bladestorm needs toning down, perhaps retaining the wounds in 6s regardless, but lose the AP2? Wraithknights could use a small increase in points.

Tau need less IMO, but I'm not as experienced playing against them, and my one local opponent deliberately runs unorthodox lists that don't capitalise on all their advantages, so can't comment as much. Perhaps something to mitigate the way so many units can overwatch at high BS? A LD test for the unit not being charged? Markerlight tokens cannot be used? Not sure.

Somebody once brought up an interesting request. Swap Falcons with Wavesperents. Does anybody have an opinion on that?