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1) they have been individually trained for different roles. One half has been relentlessly drilled for chimera assaults, and the time they spent on doing that, the others spent on the firing range, doing fire drills.

This kind of difference could be found within my group of 8 people when I was in the army. You could just as well ask why your veterans are better than your conscripts. Nothing here is weird.

2) however you want.

 Purifier wrote:
1) they have been individually trained for different roles. One half has been relentlessly drilled for chimera assaults, and the time they spent on doing that, the others spent on the firing range, doing fire drills.

This kind of difference could be found within my group of 8 people when I was in the army. You could just as well ask why your veterans are better than your conscripts. Nothing here is weird.

2) however you want.

But what if I wanted my steel legion to all have trained as mechanized infantry? I should be able to control that as the company commander, yes?

You don't realize why it might be immersion breaking for me, Mr. Steel Legion Company Commander, to suddenly realize half his company are completely incapable of performing the basic maneuver that my entire planet is known for?

Then give them all the same regiment. No, you're being way too greedy and nothing would ever completely satisfy you except writing your own codex. So do that. Homebrew it. It would be horrible if your every little desire and that of all the other people with your immersion requirements were given free leeway in how GW writes codexes.

 Purifier wrote:
Then give them all the same regiment. No, you're being way too greedy and nothing would ever completely satisfy you except writing your own codex. So do that. Homebrew it. It would be horrible if your every little desire and that of all the other people with your immersion requirements were given free leeway in how GW writes codexes.

The 3.5 codex (and associated armoured company army list) actually would make building that army (or a similar one) possible through the use of doctrines.

And I'm not sure what you want. You said "show me why it is bad the way it is." and I did. And then you were like "but GW shouldn't do that" and I'm like *shrug* I guess? But the thread is about a time when they did, and it was glorious.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I think a Kharadron system isn't incompatible with Stratagems. Quite the opposite, you could have a list of Stratagems that you can choose to make your "deck" of stratagems for the battle, for example. And have still specific stratagems tied to the "fixed" load-outs of Tactics+Stratagems for the fluff chapters/forgeworlds/legions,etc...

This is more constructive for example. While not everyone would approve of "40k MTG", you could do something like assign "point costs" to certain stratagems if you wanted to go down that route.

I think stratagems already pay with their CP costs, so probably a limit in the number of Stratagems you can pick max would be better, the best ones cost more CP to use, the weaker ones, less.

Ok, so first, no I didn't. Second of all, I explained why your example was completely reasonable and your only comeback was "it breaks my immersion" which you could have said about absolutely anything. There are hundreds of things in this game that are more legitimate immersion breaks than that your army hasn't had one single exercise done for every person in the army.

So if something so ridiculously small breaks your immersion, then there is really no telling what else does, and if we have to take that into account in rules writing, then we have to do that with everyone else's ideas of how armies work, wrong as they may be, too.

And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

I still have my old 4e Space Marine codex, every once in a while I pull the hardback black book from its cover. (I bought the Collectors edition when it came out) I look through the Chapter Traits list, reading the different options I had to build a Chapter of my own and sigh as I look upon every Marine book that came after it.

Long ago I had a notebook, this notebook had all of the traits, good and bad that the Chapter had, the thing that made them different (and not so different, looking at you two Plasma Guns in a Squad Trait) from all the other Chapters. I had a few of the Battles this Chapter had been apart of in its history, battles vs the Tau, the Orks and the Tyranids. Battles fought along side their unlikely but stead fast Allies the Dark Angels, so distrusting of those not of their lineage. As well as the Grey Knights.

The Captain I fielded the most had his own name, though it is now lost to time, and likewise was getting his own rules based on how things had gone. He had a Lightning Claw, a Combi-Plas and the Adamatine Mantle (because instant Death sucked). Slowly but surely the heroes of the Chapter were getting their names. The Chapter though well that was another story, it seemed like their name changed every so often, it was difficult to pin one down that I liked.

Their colors were simple, Grey and Crimson. I no longer recall their sigil, might have been that of the Word Bearers at somepoint.

So when you ask do I miss the DIY Army Traits of yore, yes, yes I do.

Luckily I have Deathwatch for if I ever want to create a Chapter again, and I have on occasion created on for the fun of it, but never modeled, never battled with. Just concepts that like the Forgotten Chapter will join the legion of Unknown Space Marines floating about somewhere in the back of my mind.

 Purifier wrote:

And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

I don't think anyone is advocating duplicating the old system exactly, merely the spirit of it.

In any case, you really haven't been able to articulate why more customisability would be bad.

Some things were admittedly mutually exclusive. No Carapace Jungle Fighters (plus their saves got reduced to 6+) or Iron Disciplined Chem-Inhaler addicts. That and *most* came with attached point costs.

Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize Drop Troops and Close Order Drill went hand-in-hand because they were both free, and Deep Strike meant your unit was in b2b contact anyway...

 Crimson wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

I don't think anyone is advocating duplicating the old system exactly, merely the spirit of it.

In any case, you really haven't been able to articulate why more customisability would be bad.

Well, I think he said that it'd be harder to balance. But again, given how borked the balance already is, might as well make it more fun.

I love the idea of being able to swap lasguns for chainswords, especially for 2pts. Anything that gets me that gets my vote.

 Purifier wrote:
And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

Yes? I mean, that's all we really want here is to be able to pick a unique combination of stuff.

I want to be a drop-troop regiment that deploys cybernetically augmented warriors who specialize in jungle fighting, and this was absolutely possible in the old system. Now, you get to pick one of those three (if even all 3 are represented) things to be your Regiment.

That's just less fun, not sure what else needs to be said. Picking a few things from a pool of 30 in combination is both more fluffy and allows for more unique armies than picking one thing from a pool of like, 7. That's just... true.

 Crimson wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

I don't think anyone is advocating duplicating the old system exactly, merely the spirit of it.

In any case, you really haven't been able to articulate why more customisability would be bad.

Unnecessarily complicates a system before it has had a chance to see any semblance of balance. If you want to balance something, don't keep heaping on things that rattle around. If by some miracle all the codexes are released and the first chapter approved does a great job of balancing it, then by all means, start looking into expanding choices, so long as it doesn't overly complicate... That thing we wanted to get away from.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

Yes? I mean, that's all we really want here is to be able to pick a unique combination of stuff.

I want to be a drop-troop regiment that deploys cybernetically augmented warriors who specialize in jungle fighting, and this was absolutely possible in the old system. Now, you get to pick one of those three (if even all 3 are represented) things to be your Regiment.

That's just less fun, not sure what else needs to be said. Picking a few things from a pool of 30 in combination is both more fluffy and allows for more unique armies than picking one thing from a pool of like, 7. That's just... true.

Then let's do a hundred different! No, a thousand! Wait, ten thousand! Because more is better and there is nothing negative in piling it on, right?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Yes? I mean, that's all we really want here is to be able to pick a unique combination of stuff.

I want to be a drop-troop regiment that deploys cybernetically augmented warriors who specialize in jungle fighting, and this was absolutely possible in the old system. Now, you get to pick one of those three (if even all 3 are represented) things to be your Regiment.

That's just less fun, not sure what else needs to be said. Picking a few things from a pool of 30 in combination is both more fluffy and allows for more unique armies than picking one thing from a pool of like, 7. That's just... true.

Yep, this.

 Purifier wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

I don't think anyone is advocating duplicating the old system exactly, merely the spirit of it.

In any case, you really haven't been able to articulate why more customisability would be bad.

Unnecessarily complicates a system before it has had a chance to see any semblance of balance. If you want to balance something, don't keep heaping on things that rattle around. If by some miracle all the codexes are released and the first chapter approved does a great job of balancing it, then by all means, start looking into expanding choices, so long as it doesn't overly complicate... That thing we wanted to get away from.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

Yes? I mean, that's all we really want here is to be able to pick a unique combination of stuff.

I want to be a drop-troop regiment that deploys cybernetically augmented warriors who specialize in jungle fighting, and this was absolutely possible in the old system. Now, you get to pick one of those three (if even all 3 are represented) things to be your Regiment.

That's just less fun, not sure what else needs to be said. Picking a few things from a pool of 30 in combination is both more fluffy and allows for more unique armies than picking one thing from a pool of like, 7. That's just... true.

Then let's do a hundred different! No, a thousand! Wait, ten thousand! Because more is better and there is nothing negative in piling it on, right?

Good exaggeration. More is better, to a certain extent. Obviously when you have 1,000,000 options, it's not good for the system, because at that point, everything will probably have the same options.

But currently, customization is pretty dang low. Raising it a decent amount would be more fun-and ultimately, this is a game. Games are meant to be fun.

 Purifier wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
And I'm not saying the old system was bad, but it sure wasn't the kind of rose tinted that you guys are remembering it as. It was a rather flat "pick a few things."

Yes? I mean, that's all we really want here is to be able to pick a unique combination of stuff.

I want to be a drop-troop regiment that deploys cybernetically augmented warriors who specialize in jungle fighting, and this was absolutely possible in the old system. Now, you get to pick one of those three (if even all 3 are represented) things to be your Regiment.

That's just less fun, not sure what else needs to be said. Picking a few things from a pool of 30 in combination is both more fluffy and allows for more unique armies than picking one thing from a pool of like, 7. That's just... true.

Then let's do a hundred different! No, a thousand! Wait, ten thousand! Because more is better and there is nothing negative in piling it on, right?

Right, so long as it all fits in one book. I have a hunch you'll run out of regiment ideas before you reach a hundred possible choices though. Perhaps you could open a mail-in thingy for the rules team to be given ideas about new regimental doctrines?

 Purifier wrote:

Unnecessarily complicates a system before it has had a chance to see any semblance of balance. If you want to balance something, don't keep heaping on things that rattle around. If by some miracle all the codexes are released and the first chapter approved does a great job of balancing it, then by all means, start looking into expanding choices, so long as it doesn't overly complicate... That thing we wanted to get away from.

There are maybe like three chapters worth using (and one of these is mainly due a broken character.) I have hard time seeing that more customisability would lead to worse balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Purifier wrote:

Then let's do a hundred different! No, a thousand! Wait, ten thousand! Because more is better and there is nothing negative in piling it on, right?

If you can come up with ten thousand unique and thematic rules, sure! You probably can't though...

I do miss the level of customization that the older codexes gave but in the end there are still ways to do what you want. I am working on a custom Tsons / Khorne army based off the idea of the khorne units are more for honor and fighting when outnumbered than pure slaughter and the Tsons are more about being battle mages with a want to get into combat instead of standing back and keeping a distance, using tactics to help turn the tide of battle not underhanded sneaky tricks. By using 3 different detachments, each one dedicated to a different "legion" I am able to field a more adaptive and unique force while still following a specific path.

Plus I am working on my deamon prince for this force to be Nagash from fantasy, love that model and if anyone could become the next chaos lord with the ability to use whatever powers he wants to go for the kill against the other forces of chaos it would be him. (And I love the model lol).

Point is I understand that we lost a lot with the current system but it's still able to make quite a unique core force with different allowances to give you what you want, especially with the huge amount of stratagems granting different bonuses.

Look at what we can do now, not what we used to be able to do. One hand gives, one hand takes. It's the nature of the beast.

Maybe what they don't get is that the Traits system was put in for people to better "Forge their own Narrative" so to speak. Are some people happy to "Forge the Narrative" with the "Vanilla" Chapters and Regiments available to them? Of course, the cannon Chapters and Regiments will always be cool. But this was so you could come up with your own unique group with out having to home-brew the Chapter or Regimental rules, they were there! Right there in the book!

They weren't ment for you to decide what you want your Army to do everytime you made a list, they were supposed to be set. If you're playing Unit1126PLL's Chem-Addict Drop Troopers, you play them with those doctrines everytime, you could alter the choices you made in the list of course, but your armies rules were set.

Sadly, thats not what everyone did, some people did change what the point of the army was and it was detrimental to having the choice.

Another thing apparently GW didn't like was people choosing to have draw backs be things like, for example Flesh Over Steel, which limited the number of tanks people could take. Because those people were choosing that because they didnt have or didnt want to buy tanks.

Which of course is a stupid reason to get mad at people for taking a drawback like that. If I wanted my Chapter to use more than one Tank in the Army, why would I take that as a drawback. Of course I am going to theme around what I want and dont want to have or buy.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Maybe what they don't get is that the Traits system was put in for people to better "Forge their own Narrative" so to speak. Are some people happy to "Forge the Narrative" with the "Vanilla" Chapters and Regiments available to them? Of course, the cannon Chapters and Regiments will always be cool. But this was so you could come up with your own unique group with out having to home-brew the Chapter or Regimental rules, they were there! Right there in the book!

They weren't ment for you to decide what you want your Army to do everytime you made a list, they were supposed to be set. If you're playing Unit1126PLL's Chem-Addict Drop Troopers, you play them with those doctrines everytime, you could alter the choices you made in the list of course, but your armies rules were set.

Sadly, thats not what everyone did, some people did change what the point of the army was and it was detrimental to having the choice.

Sure, some people did that. But then, nothing is stopping you from swapping you chapter tactics between games in the current system either.

Another thing apparently GW didn't like was people choosing to have draw backs be things like, for example Flesh Over Steel, which limited the number of tanks people could take. Because those people were choosing that because they didnt have or didnt want to buy tanks.

Which of course is a stupid reason to get mad at people for taking a drawback like that. If I wanted my Chapter to use more than one Tank in the Army, why would I take that as a drawback. Of course I am going to theme around what I want and dont want to have or buy.

Yeah, the drawbacks didn't really work.

 Crimson wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Maybe what they don't get is that the Traits system was put in for people to better "Forge their own Narrative" so to speak. Are some people happy to "Forge the Narrative" with the "Vanilla" Chapters and Regiments available to them? Of course, the cannon Chapters and Regiments will always be cool. But this was so you could come up with your own unique group with out having to home-brew the Chapter or Regimental rules, they were there! Right there in the book!

They weren't ment for you to decide what you want your Army to do everytime you made a list, they were supposed to be set. If you're playing Unit1126PLL's Chem-Addict Drop Troopers, you play them with those doctrines everytime, you could alter the choices you made in the list of course, but your armies rules were set.

Sadly, thats not what everyone did, some people did change what the point of the army was and it was detrimental to having the choice.

Sure, some people did that. But then, nothing is stopping you from swapping you chapter tactics between games in the current system either.

Which is why when I was told that I didnt think it held any water.

Yeah, the drawbacks didn't really work.

They did and didn't, they did from the point of view that some people when they had a theme would stick to it, had I of wanted Tanks, I would have started a second army to be a Chapter that used alot of tanks. They didn't more or less because of course people are gonna take ones that affect them the least. Plus by people deciding "Im not gonna have X in my army", GW loses sales on X.

I think 'drawbacks' are best handled by just lacking bonuses. If you choose a melee oriented traits, your shooty guys will be worse than those of your opponent who choose shooty traits instead of melee ones. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

Honestly I'm not sure why they removed Doctrines. There's nothing that says "big galaxy with infinite variety" than having a huge number of choices.

40k right now feels like a fantasy universe. "... and lo, but did four human nations rise from the ashes of the fallen Empire. Cadia, great-but-broken, Mordia, land of night, Armageddon, of the ash wastes, Valhalla, northern land of ice, Vostroya, the traitors-in-penance!"

"But what about the guys who live on an ocean world and are skilled at using their Chimeras as assault boats?"

"BE SILENT MORTAL, for I tell the tale of Warhammer, in which there are only FOUR human lands..."

You could look at those drawbacks as not a big deal if you didn't use the anyways, like the no tanks drawback, and your opponent could look at it as not fair because you were not going to take tanks anyways, but that was the point. As a drawback it forces you into a special play style that if you excel at or enjoy it worked. If you didn't like that we'll don't take that drawback, point is something was getting removed to give you your bonus.

It's like if people complained because terminators doubled in price on a codex release because they needed to be worse and you didn't care because your space marine chapter didn't use terms. Yeah, it's not an option for you, but the point is it would never be an option

Drawbacks have to affect you directly in the game. List-building "drawbacks" are no real "drawbacks".

 Galas wrote:
Drawbacks have to affect you directly in the game. List-building "drawbacks" are no real "drawbacks".

But what if the bonus is only a list-building bonus? Like, having an extra fast attack slot with the drawback of losing a heavy support slot seems normal...

"But you weren't going to use that heavy support slot anyways!"

"Well, yes... that's the point ... it allows me to play an army that supports my playstyle, and actively harms my ability to play outside that playstyle."

IDK what the problem is.

Yes! This is what I've been saying.

The return of Doctrines is all I would ask. Of course, now they should account for more than just infantry models.

Of course, I'm not really expecting this in an edition where you can't even choose to give some HQ-dude or an unit leader a Signum or an Auspex. Or Bionics. Or Meltabombs. Or Medalion Crimson. Or Macharian Cross. Or a Trademark Item.

"Oh no, my armored company cannot take Ratlings? Woe is meeee."

I played a lot of GURPS back in the day. A common drawback was Weirdness Magnet because it really ended up not being a drawback. This was a system where if you weren't careful GMing, you could get a one-armed midget super-sniper of doom, or could build a power that could selectively destroy anything within functionally infinity gigaparsecs.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Drawbacks have to affect you directly in the game. List-building "drawbacks" are no real "drawbacks".

But what if the bonus is only a list-building bonus? Like, having an extra fast attack slot with the drawback of losing a heavy support slot seems normal...

"But you weren't going to use that heavy support slot anyways!"

"Well, yes... that's the point ... it allows me to play an army that supports my playstyle, and actively harms my ability to play outside that playstyle."

IDK what the problem is.

Just as I don't believe list-building drawbacks are drawbacks, list-building benefits aren't good in my book. But this is just me, the same way I despise the term of "tax". "Oh, is totally good that they allow you to take this broken unit because to take it, you need to take two of this totally useless unit". NO, thats a flawed concept that accept that we need to have bad units and good units. Make all units balanced, and remove the concept of "tax" from the game.

To me the FOC of 8th are good enough, they allow total freedom. Having your tanks fire more accurately at the drawback of making them less durable because they lose armour to allow for a better precision? Those are the kind of bonus vs drawbacks I believe are actually tactical and good.

 Galas wrote:
Drawbacks have to affect you directly in the game. List-building "drawbacks" are no real "drawbacks".

Not being able to field enough armor to deal with the amount of armor you can see in a list today is a drawback.

Mind you the way my Chapter had been wouldn't really work today, because Infiltrate isnt a thing and why put two Plasma Guns in a Squad when you can just take Hellblasters.