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Going to try to draw an analogy to explain to Traditio exactly why his loadout makes no sense.

Dumping 165pts/model into telescopic-sight inferno-bolt Tzeentch Marines and then barging into Shadow War expecting your one-stop answer to all enemies to annihilate things is roughly the equivalent of trying to drive a main battle tank into an urban warzone with no infantry support. Yes, you have a giant gun. Good for you. You also can't maneuver, find the enemy, or control space in any way, and are going to get casually outflanked and exploded.

You didn't make a rational, fluff-based decision to try and play a Thousand Sons Kill-Team and get punished for not playing Eldar. You assumed that since GW was writing the game all you had to do was spring for the biggest infantry weapon you could lay your hands on, copy-paste it until you hit points cap, and march ahead and steamroll.

Shadow War isn't 40k. I suggest you try going back, reading the rulebook again, and trying to build a Kill-Team to play Shadow War with instead of doing stupid things and blaming it on the game.

 Traditio wrote:
And while we're on the topic. What kind of sadist writes a fething rule that makes me try to judge how much 50% on a humanoid or quasi-humanoid figure is? Oh, there were arguments about this during the games I played. "It's obviously obscured 50% or more." "No, it's not. No, I can't see the legs or the back, but I can see the entire torso!" Again: "He is plainly visible to me! He's barely even obscured." "No, no, you don't understand. He's turned to the side like this. So, from your point of view, he's actually obscured OVER 50%!" I HATE variations of the 50% rule. I hope the 50 percent rule for vehicles dies in 8th edition. Feth you, 50% rule. It's a stupid rule. What am I fething supposed to do, start doing geometrical calculations and measurements? It's a stupid rule for vehicles, and it's even MORE fething stupid for models that aren't in basic, simple geometrical shapes

No, you shrug, say "okay, I'll give it to you this time" or dice off. Its a beer and pretzels game with friendly beer and pretzels resolutions. If you feel the need to argue ad infinitum about whether this vehicle is 49 or 51% covered, maybe find a hobby that does promote clear and tournament designed rules. Or wait til 8th. Either way, unless your opponent is trying to claim 10% is 65% obscured, it should never be an issue and the only time I've ever heard of it being an issue is on this forum. It only ever comes up between die hard and obstinate tourney players or tourney wannabes.

Addendum/clarification: 40k is a ridiculously extreme outlier in terms of the ease with which you can take one guy/unit with a giant gun and have him explode the table (scatterbikes, Riptides, Titans...). The vast majority of wargames don't work that way.

I don't want to be too cliche about this but 40k is sort of the easy mode of wargames. Speeds are incredibly high. Ranges are incredibly long. Positioning is barely relevant. Weapon power is nice and straightforward and linear.

Go find an Infinity player and ask him whether Ramboing a TAG is a good idea. Find a Warmachine player and ask when the last time his Colossal up and casually killed everything was. Ask a Bolt Action player whether he'd play a list of just tanks. Ask a Mordheim player why he doesn't take armour.

So to those coming to Shadow War from 40k, welcome. You've taken your first step into a larger world.

Wont shadowjuarez just be dropped like all other gw boxed games are?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Addendum/clarification: 40k is a ridiculously extreme outlier in terms of the ease with which you can take one guy/unit with a giant gun and have him explode the table (scatterbikes, Riptides, Titans...). The vast majority of wargames don't work that way.

I don't want to be too cliche about this but 40k is sort of the easy mode of wargames. Speeds are incredibly high. Ranges are incredibly long. Positioning is barely relevant. Weapon power is nice and straightforward and linear.

Go find an Infinity player and ask him whether Ramboing a TAG is a good idea. Find a Warmachine player and ask when the last time his Colossal up and casually killed everything was. Ask a Bolt Action player whether he'd play a list of just tanks. Ask a Mordheim player why he doesn't take armour.

So to those coming to Shadow War from 40k, welcome. You've taken your first step into a larger world.

All of which focus more on realistic wargame fighting than the cinematic world of 40k. Apples and Oranges. 40k never tried to be realistic, it tried to give you scope for your armoured spearhead to fight another armoured spearhead and leave the squishies at home, and for your giant robot/monster to go Godzilla and kill whole armies, and for your awesomesauce hero to walk away with another epic victory to add to his saga, like the legendary warriors of old.

 Deadshot wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Addendum/clarification: 40k is a ridiculously extreme outlier in terms of the ease with which you can take one guy/unit with a giant gun and have him explode the table (scatterbikes, Riptides, Titans...). The vast majority of wargames don't work that way.

I don't want to be too cliche about this but 40k is sort of the easy mode of wargames. Speeds are incredibly high. Ranges are incredibly long. Positioning is barely relevant. Weapon power is nice and straightforward and linear.

Go find an Infinity player and ask him whether Ramboing a TAG is a good idea. Find a Warmachine player and ask when the last time his Colossal up and casually killed everything was. Ask a Bolt Action player whether he'd play a list of just tanks. Ask a Mordheim player why he doesn't take armour.

So to those coming to Shadow War from 40k, welcome. You've taken your first step into a larger world.

All of which focus more on realistic wargame fighting than the cinematic world of 40k. Apples and Oranges. 40k never tried to be realistic, it tried to give you scope for your armoured spearhead to fight another armoured spearhead and leave the squishies at home, and for your giant robot/monster to go Godzilla and kill whole armies, and for your awesomesauce hero to walk away with another epic victory to add to his saga, like the legendary warriors of old.

Exactly. Apples to oranges. Throw out anything you know about apples, we're dealing with oranges now. Try to take an apple tart recipe with delicious flaky pastry and do a straight 1-1 substitution for oranges and you won't get an orange tart, you'll get a godawful mess.

There are many sorts of games in the world. 40k is one. SWA is a very different one. Try to take assumptions about how lists work and what's good/bad from 40k and carry them over to SWA, and you're just going to make a mess of it. Rolling this back to the original post and the question in the topic title Shadow War is a terrible game if you choose to try and play it like you would play 40k. People enjoy it when they try to play the game they're playing, rather than the other game that uses the same models.

This entire thread can be summed up as "OP charged a machine gun nest and expected to live while using one of the best teams and is super grumpy wumpens about it"

zerosignal wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I like someone said it isn't a competitive game because it's random. Anything with dice is random.

I believe they were pointing out it's single dice, low numbers (so high variance).

I find it remarkable that so many people posting in here don't seem to understand basic probability theory.

Isn't that hard to plan for. Craps is done with just a couple of dice but nobody thinks it's not competitive or fun.


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 sfshilo wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
the game is awesome fun..

Just because you are bad at it doesn't mean the game is bad

He has some valid points, he is new to the game, but the rules prevent him from playing an army he likes to play (Thousand sons.)

I am also in the camp of "I don't get it" since the game is taking crap mechanics to a unit(s) scaled game.....

Blood bowl is immensely better....

CSM in general get punked in GWs idea of a skirmish game. (I play death guard.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:I can tell you right now you don't have a very decent loadout. Take the old Ork saying to heart, "Boyz Before Toyz". You want things like Heavy Weapons with their good range and good output, you want to fill out numbers so you can help overrun. You went too much into trusting the infantry weapon.

Eldar are a pain, Tyranids are possibly the strongest in the beginning.

This is part of what I don't like about 40k in general and GW:

My loadout probably wasn't very good, but I'm sure you can understand why I would think it makes sense.

And GW punishes you for doing it.

They punish you for taking options that it should make sense for you to take.

36 inch range bolters with rend - 3 should be amazing in an infantry-based game.

But they're terrible.

Bolters are terrible.

Basically any weapon that fires less than d3 shots per turn is basically useless.

Meanwhile, boltguns and autoguns are exactly the weapons that you would think it would be common sense to put on your basic troops.

But nope!

GW punishes you for doing things that make sense.

Because they don't bother play-testing their games, and they apparently don't bother doing basic math.

But the OP isn't just a rant post:

Have you guys had a similar experience?

Do you actually like this game?

What do you find so fun about it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GodDamUser wrote:
the game is awesome fun..

What's so fun about it?

What in particular do you like about the game?

Just because you are bad at it doesn't mean the game is bad

What faction do you use? And what does your list/load-out look like at 1000 points?

>Doesn't use good loadout
>Doesn't understand why they're punished
I tell you what, nobody should question themselves if their AM platoons don't do well in melee even if they bought a bunch of power weapons. If you make a bunch of bad decisions on loadout you NEED to be punished. You get better from learning. You refuse to learn.

How are thousand sons with inferno bolts a "bad decision" form a fluff standpoint.

This is how we got 5th ed and 7th ed, GW ignoring the fluff and trying to sell models by buffing non-sense and nerfing stuff that should be the "stock" option for an army. See heldrakes for CSM, Jetbikes for eldar, Riptides for tau, grav guns and bikes for marines, flying monsters with dakka guns for nids, etc...

"Just take X" in a game that should be easily balanced is not an excuse for poor game design.

It's a bad decision to throw all your eggs in one basket in the game. It's also not like either upgrade is bad, but taking both at the same time creates an expensive model. That's the OP's own fault. If they want to have a single Rubric or two that's fine, but don't go overboard.

Well it has been part of gamer-culture at least concerning GW games to overload the basket in pretty much any competitive environment. Thats how winning was done.

Games that punish you for overloading the basket can be new and frightening things for people not used to it.

I think the game is an absolute blast. I have several kill teams. My favorite is a space marine carcharodon scout squad (sgt with bp/cs, two with snipers, the rest with bolters... all have camo cloaks). They are quick, fairly cheap, and can hold their own against most armies ( I try to upgrade the specialist to have a heavy bolter after a few games). Bolters aren't junk and have killed many things.

My chaos army is alpha legion (sgt bp/cs, bp/cs, three with bolters, and the rest cultist spam).

This game is about numbers. Load up on fancy gear like tyranids or grey knights and you will fail in the long run during campaigns. You need bodies to take wounds, you can upgrade them to have fancy bolter rounds, etc as a campaign progresses.

You can still be fluffy (alpha legion with cultists, etc), but you have to build a balanced force. All out fluff only works if your opponent builds the same type of lists!!!

To the OP... I'd say to give the game another chance, but don't treat it like 40k Skirmish.

Build a balanced list. You want a leader, a handful of Dudes and a bunch of Noobs. Maybe a Heavy, maybe not. Avoid fancy looking upgrades until later in a campaign.

This is probably a decent enough starting list for CSM. It's 1000 points exactly and has plenty of room to grow as you progress through a campaign.

CSM Lord w/Bolt Pistol and Chainsword (275)
Dude w/Bolt Pistol and Chainsword (170)
Dude w/Bolt Pistol and Chainsword (170)
Heavy Dude w/Plasmagun and Clip Harness (220)
Cultist w/Autopistol (60)
Cultist w/Autopistol (60)
Cultist (45)

The Bolt Pistols are typically fine. If you're sticking to cover and staying out of line of sight, you should hopefully only have one or two rounds of shooting before you wade in with Chainswords. If you have to send someone out into the open, send a Cultist. They're not great, but they can still pin someone with an Autopistol.

 Luciferian wrote:
SW:A is Necromunda with 40k models, so direct your complaints to Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers circa 1995.

To be fair, there's probably nothing wrong with the fundamental rules, but rather the way GW is attempting to use them. A basic "garbage" expendable Guardsmen in 40k is a well equipped combatant in in Necromunda. When you start scaling that to include supersoldiers and the like which were never intended to be portrayed by such a rules system, issues emerge.

That said, it also sounds like the opponent in this instance went straight for the most broken stufd available also

I so want to try this. But I want to use the single model teams to see if I can win with just a Solitaire!

building a couple of these warbands and gonna see how hard it will be to bring my eschers and orloks into it.

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, there's probably nothing wrong with the fundamental rules, but rather the way GW is attempting to use them. A basic "garbage" expendable Guardsmen in 40k is a well equipped combatant in in Necromunda. When you start scaling that to include supersoldiers and the like which were never intended to be portrayed by such a rules system, issues emerge.

That said, it also sounds like the opponent in this instance went straight for the most broken stufd available also

Very true.

thekingofkings wrote:building a couple of these warbands and gonna see how hard it will be to bring my eschers and orloks into it.

From what I understand, you should be able to play your old gangers according to their Necromunda rules, perhaps with minor adjustments.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
I don't understand the 50% issues. Measure the height of the model, divide it by two, measure the height of the terrain. Is it less or more than half the model height?

That's utterly ridiculous.

Have you seen a tyranid warrior?

Long, skiny legs. Bulky torso. Big head.

The only way that a height measurement to determine 50% obscurity works is if there is an even distribution of mass on the top and bottom halves of the model.

This cannot be assumed.

Furthermore, what if a model is "peeking out behind a wall," so to speak, so that, for example, the right side of the body is obscured, but the left side is not?

The only way to really determine whether or not a model is actually 50% obscured or more with any real accuracy, at least in border line cases, is to directly measure the surface area of the model facing, then measure the surface area which is not obscured, and then calculate accordingly.

This is an unreasonable expectation for a game like Shadow Wars.

What they should have done is simply made cover of any sort a -1 to hit, and allowed hiding if the model is able to claim cover at all.

Simple. Elegant. Perfectly clear. No arguments.


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 niv-mizzet wrote:
I'm a fan of the game, but it is NOT meant to be competitive.

This is such a cop-out.

Of course Shadow Wars is meant to be competitive. A game of shadow wars involves two opposed players trying to satisfy mutually exclusive win conditions. There is a clear winner and a clear loser in each game.

That is the very DEFINITION of competitive.

Saying that "it's not meant to be competitive" is essentially an ADMISSION that the game is terrible.

What that says is that GW was too lazy and didn't care enough to give us a decent game.

As is usual with GW.

Even with well built teams there is still a lot of random chance.

That's not my complaint. Yes, of course there's going to be random chance. No, of course you won't have enough models to ensure "statistical averages" in most shooting phases.

My complaint is that the rules are terrible and difficult to apply, the actual game play is frustrating (consistently having my 3+ downgraded to a 5+ or a 6+; being pinned by S3 shooting, etc.) and there is wild imbalance between different factions and weapons.

Shuriken catapults get d3 shots as opposed to the boltgun's 1.

And need I repeat: floating heavy weapons platforms that can move and fire at full BS, that can magically teleport, that cannot be targeted, that can obscure LoS AND does not draw line of sight from the model that's actually using it?

Somebody justify that.

Somebody please try to tell me how that is not completely overpowered in a game like Shadow Wars.

Ahhh, my bad. I didn't realize the utterly ridiculous levels of overthinking you were doing. Continue to hate things without my interference.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Ahhh, my bad. I didn't realize the utterly ridiculous levels of overthinking you were doing. Continue to hate things without my interference.

It's not "overthinking."

This is a very practical matter.

I'm targeting a tyranid's warrior with my boltgun. I cannot see his legs below the knees. I cannot see the spines on his back. I cannot see his arms.

However, I still have a GIGANTIC target with his torso and his head.

Is that 50% or not?

 Luciferian wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, there's probably nothing wrong with the fundamental rules, but rather the way GW is attempting to use them. A basic "garbage" expendable Guardsmen in 40k is a well equipped combatant in in Necromunda. When you start scaling that to include supersoldiers and the like which were never intended to be portrayed by such a rules system, issues emerge.

That said, it also sounds like the opponent in this instance went straight for the most broken stufd available also

Very true.

thekingofkings wrote:building a couple of these warbands and gonna see how hard it will be to bring my eschers and orloks into it.

From what I understand, you should be able to play your old gangers according to their Necromunda rules, perhaps with minor adjustments.

yeah, hoping so, and that they are still in playable shape (sat in a basement for a looooong time)

 thekingofkings wrote:


yeah, hoping so, and that they are still in playable shape (sat in a basement for a looooong time)

Nothing a little elbow grease can't fix

I've literally never had an argument over cover. This seems very foreign to me. In an event where there's a disagreement I just let my opponent call it. Maybe the group i'm a part of is just a little more laid back than usual.

 Marmatag wrote:
I've literally never had an argument over cover. This seems very foreign to me. In an event where there's a disagreement I just let my opponent call it. Maybe the group i'm a part of is just a little more laid back than usual.

Nah, I think certain people are just less laid back than usual

 Traditio wrote:
...And need I repeat: floating heavy weapons platforms that can move and fire at full BS, that can magically teleport, that cannot be targeted, that can obscure LoS AND does not draw line of sight from the model that's actually using it?

Somebody justify that.

Somebody please try to tell me how that is not completely overpowered in a game like Shadow Wars...

It dies if you can kill a single-Wound T3 model with a 5+ armour save.

You're the one insisting on designing a team that can't do anything to it beyond stand in front of it and get shot.

 Traditio wrote:
Of course Shadow Wars is meant to be competitive. A game of shadow wars involves two opposed players trying to satisfy mutually exclusive win conditions. There is a clear winner and a clear loser in each game.

That is the very DEFINITION of competitive.

I distinguish between "competition" and "conflict." I'm not sure if we (you and I specifically, Traditio) have ever had the occasion to discuss this but I tend to look at games on a spectrum between, on the one end, those meant to test the relative skill of players and, on the other end, those meant to generate a narrative. Are we playing to see who is better or are we playing to see what happens? Shadow War is pretty far down the "see what happens" end of that spectrum. There are opposed teams and victory conditions because those elements create the conflict that comprise the narrative - they are not necessarily evidence that the game is meant to test which player has more mastery over a fair and balanced ruleset. To your main point, SWA is certainly not a fair and balanced ruleset.

AnomanderRake wrote:It dies if you can kill a single-Wound T3 model with a 5+ armour save.

You're the one insisting on designing a team that can't do anything to it beyond stand in front of it and get shot.

Good luck!

Between the fact that it can literally be anywhere within 2 inches of the person who's manning it AND the fact that guardians have battle focus, good luck hitting that model, much less killing him.

Especially with a weapon that only fires one shot per turn.

 Traditio wrote:

AnomanderRake wrote:It dies if you can kill a single-Wound T3 model with a 5+ armour save.

You're the one insisting on designing a team that can't do anything to it beyond stand in front of it and get shot.

Good luck!

Between the fact that it can literally be anywhere within 2 inches of the person who's manning it AND the fact that guardians have battle focus, good luck hitting that model, much less killing him.

Especially with a weapon that only fires one shot per turn.

Bet you wish you weren't spending a hundred and sixty points on each one-shot weapon now, don't you?

AnomanderRake wrote:Bet you wish you weren't spending a hundred and sixty points on each one-shot weapon now, don't you?

180 points (120 + 35 + 25).

Just the marine with boltgun and no other gear would be 155.

But you're basically just corroborating my point:

There is a massive power disparity for different weapons, even accounting for points costs differences.

Power armored marines with bolt guns are completely useless in this game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AnomanderRake wrote:Bet you wish you weren't spending a hundred and sixty points on each one-shot weapon now, don't you?

I also wish to point out that this is a non-answer to what I'm arguing.

You're trying, I assume, to claim that the HWP is not OP.

You support this by saying that it's "just" a T3 model with a 5+ save on the other side.

My answer is that the statistics of the gunner aren't what make the equipment OP. What makes the equipment OP is the equipment, and even more so when combined with battle focus..

The statistics of the gunner are irrelevant if he can literally sit in a barrel and then close off the end of the barrel with the HWP.

Trad, part of your problem is that you're focusing too much on the individual game and not the campaign, which is how the game is meant to be played. You can put together an amazing team and do everything right and lose a game. If you do that for the length of a campaign, you are most likely winning. That's why you still get the same amount of build points even in losses, because you're supposed to take losses.

You could actually consider the results of entire campaign to be legitimately competitive, and I wouldn't mind playing in a SW campaign tourney for example, but the individual games are not.

Seriously, especially the first few games are just the starting point. You aren't really into the meat of the game until you have multiple guys with special skills equipped accordingly to take advantage of them, like a melee guy that can triple move for running and claim hidden status at the end of a run, or close range dudes with dual pistols tryin' to be a wannabe cypher with some hard to hit skills and such.

Don't try more games.
Try a campaign.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

Don't try more games.
Try a campaign.

That is true the basic fight mission really favours the one play style of max duders and Overwatch.. The other missions and random conditions add a lot to the game

There are several scenarios in which you can win without firing a shot and technically losing the round (running early)

I would have started with a named guy, and put together a chaos warband in according to being a ... chaos Space marine. YOU as a champion, gather up a close combat guy, a heavy, and a couple of cultists, as you cut your way through the resistance, as you capture meat and sacrifice them to the blood god, as you wear their skins as a trophy... but that's just me.

As Ulrick, the Carnal, I am obliged to slaughter, rape and pillage my way across the under-hive, as I take skulls and have my way with anyone I come across...

close combat some of them, autoguns for the rest to start, then have the close combat and heavy as change up. clip them in a high position, and commence the slaughter.

I see how you went wrong, and I suggest that you go back and rework your warband for more bodies, and less tricky. close combat weapons, autoguns, a few bolters/ heavy bolter, and stick to simple. go in for the kill, and roll the opponent, as you bounce from one target to the next.

You tried being cute, it didn't work. now go in and go harder on the attack. The game favors attacker, not sitting back waiting to get owned.

Start slow, add in as you cut your teeth, and add in stuff like the spawn, and other nutty stuff.