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bananathug wrote:
It is too easy to get firepower exactly where it is needed turn 1 instead of taking a couple turns to maneuver or be able to force your opponent to split fire or shoot at things you want them to.

*snip*

Also the board is too small for the amount of models on it. 1st turn engagements should be rare and positioning for a turn or two should be the norm but then we'd have to either get huge boards that would be impractical to play on/store or GW would have to sell less models.

I usually play 2k pts* on a 6x4 table. I love my Eldar for their mobility, but apart from a turn 1 rush there's usually not really anywhere to go. I mean sure I take an objective here and flee like a cowa... I mean fall back there, but actual outflanking isn't really a thing when you're fighting with such large forces on what's essentially 3 or 4 football fields(?)


*my opponents like their toys. I'd prefer 1.5, 1.25 or even 1k!

bananathug wrote:
It's not just that things are too powerful it is that they are too powerful and too mobile. If I don't kill morty/magnus turn 1 they are going to be in my face and killing my army on their turn.

There is so much deepstriking/turn 1 charges that the game has really turned into delete them before they delete you.

It is too easy to get firepower exactly where it is needed turn 1 instead of taking a couple turns to maneuver or be able to force your opponent to split fire or shoot at things you want them to.

Agreed. Decreasing damage potential per turn works as long as mobility is reduced as well, because, like you said, you only get 1 player turn of shooting at Mortarion and similar units before they are on top of you. If you can't kill said units in 1 playerturn, but they can still reach you in 1 player turn we still have a big problem.

You guys want damage potential to be reduced?

Ok. Start with your own army. Start with what should be nerfed, and how so, within your army. For instance, drop the strength of all guard shooting by 2.

 Desubot wrote:


BUT i will say are the mega models really a door buster for gw?
they are cool but they only ever sell one of them. (in general) AND they are often a massive chunk of your army meaning less models purchased to fill out the rest of the list. mind you people that buy those are probably the kinda person that already has a decent sized collection in the first place. i dont often see new players just grabbing one of those after their first starter set. (mind you this is entirely anecdotal)

if anything this pushes people to buy more normal dudes which outside of starts are probably going to make gw more cash. (possibly)

Do players normally buy only up to what's on their list?

I mean, I've got a Hydra in the TODO pile, and plans to get a number of FW models, a few more regular GW vehicles, a couple more infantry squads, and at least one Super Heavy - at no point will I ever really field every model I've got even with my current assortment.

To field this question, I don't think damage potential needs to be reduced, but I do think interactivity needs to be increased. In other words, reduce the predominance of alpha-strike = win the game.

As mentioned before, the high damage potential of WM/H is offset by the short ranges. You can set up "piece trades" by putting bait out front, with heavy hitters behind, where the heavies [sometimes literally] are mostly safe from being damaged, until they're able to charge in to do damage of their own.

Since the ranges of attacks in 40k are such that you can't reasonably do this, the alternative is really to limit the amount of damage Player A can do to B, before B can hit A. Alternating activations seems to be a way to do that without breaking the fundamentals of 8th. You can have killy stuff, that trades back and forth. Chess has 100% kill rates, but you don't get to move all of your pieces before your opponent can respond. I think that's a key issue in 8th. There would seem to be a large number of additional bonuses to Alt-Act, but this is one particular area I think it would greatly improve the play of the game.


To the challenge of nerfing one's own army: Longtime Guard player. Increasing the cost of Infantry by at least one point per model would be a good start. Help to limit board control. Apply a penalty of some sort to indirect fire [All non-LOS attacks] of -1 to hit, or a bonus to armour... something. Change "Blast" weapons from d6 shots, to a single to-hit roll that generates d6 hits. Higher risk / reward increases likelihood of a damage "anti-spike" that could be the saving grace of a small squad. Also feels more intuitive to me. A single shot is fired, and if it hits, you see how many are caught in the blast. Maybe it's just me.

For simplification purposes, I'd also like to see "Orders" more-or-less replace Auras in all codices. This diminishes blobbing, and makes balance easier as you can judge how many units can be effected by a given buff. Want more than 1 or 2 units buffed? Buy more Buffers. This is not as much about Guard as it is about other armies, but someone like Harker could give +1 BS to one unit, instead of RR 1's to everything within 6" sort of deal.

Maybe we're looking at this wrong. People just don't like that stuff dies on T1/T2 right? We want positioning to matter more?

What if we halve all ranges?

Fire raptors and sicarians back to pre-ca point levels

You can get rid of Guilliman if you want because he is a pox on the codex but then we'd have to reduce the points of everything in the dex by 10ish%

Marine shooting is also too spikey. Replace all d6 weapons with straight 3s, all d6 shot weapons with flat 3s, d3 and 2d3s can stay as is.

No las-cannons on razorbacks.

Plasma s6/s7 (except the heavy plasmas they can stay s7/s8).

Captains and LTs get orders not auras (2 units, 12" range leave the auras for named characters)

Flamers range 12", d3 shots per 5 models in target unit but +1 ap (armor save gets better by 1 but 1s always fail)

Captian slamginuis needs a nerf but I'm not sure how to do it because his power comes from stacking so many strats.

Assassins need a good long hard look. Eversors should probably cost 110 points each the rest are probably okay. Not sure if callidus should do d3 mortal wounds, probably 1 or 2.

Give more units PoTMS (dreads and preds, not transports)

Umm that's about it because as everyone knows marines suck

Audustum wrote:
Maybe we're looking at this wrong. People just don't like that stuff dies on T1/T2 right? We want positioning to matter more?

What if we halve all ranges?

Nah. Better terrain rules and more terrain in general. Go back to forests blocking LOS beyond them, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bananathug wrote:

No las-cannons on razorbacks.

Crazy talk!

Yes. And no. Things available in vast quantity do too much damage. One-shot things do too little damage.

 greatbigtree wrote:

Change "Blast" weapons from d6 shots, to a single to-hit roll that generates d6 hits. Higher risk / reward increases likelihood of a damage "anti-spike" that could be the saving grace of a small squad. Also feels more intuitive to me. A single shot is fired, and if it hits, you see how many are caught in the blast. Maybe it's just me.l.

You realize this wouldn't be nerf per se but just make game more random? Average damage output stays same. You just have bigger swings making it more of a luck thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Audustum wrote:
Maybe we're looking at this wrong. People just don't like that stuff dies on T1/T2 right? We want positioning to matter more?

What if we halve all ranges?

Problem with that comes with suspension of disbelief. Weapon ranges are already ridiculously short. For ranges to make any sense they would have to be unlimited.

Better terrain rules that helps cutting down ranges works better for believable.

BTW presumably you would also be halving movement ranges? As otherwise h2h would become too good. As it is most units would have longer CC threat range than rifle shoots giving shooting unit basically overwatch only. At least now you might get round of shooting...

Also you would need then to increase turn count to give foot slogging usability. Oh and stuff that has REALLY long range like basilisk, manticore, battle cannon would go up in value as they basically ignore range halving so just gets twice as long to shoot before enemy infantry gets close. Deep strike also would get huge boost.

One thing I'll say is that 40k seems to have far too many layers of defence and offence.

So each unit has a toughness and a save, the former is targeted by a weapon's Strength, the latter reduced by its AP. Okay, fine

Ah, but then a lot of units have an invulnerable save - which is a super special save that ignores the AP of the weapon. Wait, so it just ignores AP outright? And it's unaffected by the model's armour save, by cover or by the AP of the weapon shooting it? Nope. Okay, so apparently invulnerable saves live in their own world that's completely unrelated to the existing game mechanics. Great.

No, don't worry, because there's also this special type of damage called a Mortal Wound, which ignores toughness, armour saves, invulnerable saves. Oh, so we've now got a type of damage that ignores the entirety of the actual damage rules, up to and including the seemingly misnamed invulnerable saves.

Wait, don't worry! You see, there's also an extra layer of protection. It has about twenty different names, but everyone just calls it Feel No Pain (FNP for short). FNP is an extra save that is taken after your other saves, and is taken against individual wounds - even Mortal Wounds! So, we've now got a different save that can be taken in addition to a model's normal save, and which isn't affected by any of the model's characteristics, nor any of the weapon's characteristics.

Is this really a sensible way of doing things? We have exceptions to the normal rules, then we have exceptions to the rules that are also the exceptions to those exceptions, and then we have yet more exceptions that are also exceptions to the exceptions of the first exceptions.

I voted "too killy", but for a different reason...

When I spend 100 hours painting a unit, and it gets erased as soon as it hits the table, I'm not happy. I stopped playing my Orks because I wanted the models that I painted with great care to stay more than a few minutes on the tabletop.

The amount of 'anti big stuff' people bring is a result of the meta and GW's choices.

For a while in 5-7th GW pushed for 'Big Models'. Every army got something big and killy. Its where we got Riptides, Wraithknights, Knights, Magnus, Girlyman, Mortarion ect.

A bunch of these models did really good at the start of 8th. Magnus, Girlyman, Mortarion mostly.
This created a form of litmus test in the global meta. To do well in a tournament you need to be able to beat a Magnus/Mortarion list. Or the Gman motorpool ect.

So armies are loaded with 'anti big stuff' weapons because if you take 3 turns to kill 1 'big thing' your going to lose to game.

As codexes come out and points are adjusted the meta will shift again. If you go to a major tournament tomorrow and you want to win you need to be able to beat the Eldar netlist of Reapers and Spears.

"Does everything do too much damage?"

No, but there are some broken combos that can evaporate armored stuff too easily. Cut the most efficient re-rolls and strategems for the shooting phase and games will last more than 2-3 turns.

Ordana wrote:
The amount of 'anti big stuff' people bring is a result of the meta and GW's choices.

For a while in 5-7th GW pushed for 'Big Models'. Every army got something big and killy. Its where we got Riptides, Wraithknights, Knights, Magnus, Girlyman, Mortarion ect.

A bunch of these models did really good at the start of 8th. Magnus, Girlyman, Mortarion mostly.
This created a form of litmus test in the global meta. To do well in a tournament you need to be able to beat a Magnus/Mortarion list. Or the Gman motorpool ect.

So armies are loaded with 'anti big stuff' weapons because if you take 3 turns to kill 1 'big thing' your going to lose to game.

As codexes come out and points are adjusted the meta will shift again. If you go to a major tournament tomorrow and you want to win you need to be able to beat the Eldar netlist of Reapers and Spears.

Very much this.

Dark reapers end up being a very low cost way to bring solid damage without the baggage of being a vehicle. Throw in shining spears for great anti infantry and it exposes lists who brought too many big guns (on top of being highly effective).

One of the things I really liked about 8th edition is that the game is faster. One of the reasons, however, is that the damage output is so high.

Personally the only thing I might change in regards to kilability are vehicles/larger units. Maybe boost their HP a bit to see what happens, but leaving everything else as is.

Regarding horde armies they have always suffered from having to be removed posthaste. If anything I feel like they are in a better place now as most of them can now at least get a basic save(as long as the AP is -) compared to previous editions. It's not like high-wound weapons spill over on horde armies.

I think it also has to do with humans' tendency to remember negative experiences very well in combination with the huge randomness that D6 damage gives. If you instantly lose your shiny big model because your opponent makes some lucky rolls for D6 weapon damage, you're going to remember that very well and as a result might think that anti-tank is too powerful while on average it might not be, it's just too random. Several months ago I played a game where I 100-0 a Redemptor dread in a single lascannon volley from my Land Raider. 3 wounds, he didn't manage to save one of them and then I rolled a 4, 5 and 6 for damage without rerolls. A redemptor has 14 wounds, so instakill. That single lucky shot won me the game because we played 1k points and the dread alone was worth 200+ or more than a 5th of his army. Second turn, I shot all the guns on the same LR at a group of Hellblasters and managed to take out exactly 1 model. From hero to zero in 1 turn, which sucks. I really think that D6 damage values should simply be removed and replaced by a flat 3 or 4 (depending on weapon) or else D3+2, which would keep some randomness but would get rid of the extreme edge cases. It might be worse for realism (after all a lascannon hit could both just scratch off a tail light of a tank (1 damage) or blow up it's fuel tank (6 damage)) but it would definitely be better for game health.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Regarding horde armies they have always suffered from having to be removed posthaste. If anything I feel like they are in a better place now as most of them can now at least get a basic save(as long as the AP is -) compared to previous editions. It's not like high-wound weapons spill over on horde armies.

I think the other thing with hordes was that they used to suffer from weapons being incidentally effective against them.

For example, a player might take a S8 AP3 large blast weapon to kill marines. Or a S6 AP3 torrent flamer to kill Jinking bikes. But those things would also blow a huge hole in an Ork or Guardsman unit.

In essence, there was almost never a need to take dedicated anti-horde weapons, because so many flamers and large blasts were excellent at killing hordes in addition to more elite targets.

 Marmatag wrote:
Maybe because I play Tyranids I just don't see the problem. It's still difficult to remove T8 targets in this game, much more so than T7.

The biggest problem with D6 systems is that the only truly viable section of the dice curve is 3/4/5. The difference between 5 and 6 is way too large of a jump for a single stat point difference.

alexxk wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
You're just artificially inflating game length by making things take longer to kill. There is no problem with being able to kill something in 1 turn.

Obviously a couple armies damage is a bit too high in the shooting phase. Eldar with Reapers, for example. Or, Imperial Guard, with their artillery, another example.

Just tone down the egregious offenders.

As someone whose army has never been viable in my entire tenure of 40k until 8th edition, it's refreshing to not put my models down, look at my opponent's list, and sigh, knowing i could do nothing against it. Just having a chance to win, even if it's small, is so much better than how things were.

The points of some bigger units should probably come down, excluding Baneblades, these should go up in price. Imperial Knights could easily shave off 100 points. Or, make them T10 2+.

Also, I didn't vote. What is it with Dakka Dakka and dumb poll questions?

But now with killiness being this good games are decided on basically first turn or two there isn't any real reason to take out models. Just roll dice and use pen or dice as wound counters as that's what models are reduced to

I have found that it is generally in my advantage to go second. But, I play competitive ITC.

And T8 doesn't mean much when an increadibly cheap manticore wounds it on 3s and does solid damage, as well as cutting a vehicle to its invuln, if it even has one.

Could you tell me how you feel going second is an advantage? I am a relative new player and I had a similar feeling, but only if there is eough terrain, so I can hide atleast my squishy units. If my wave serpent and flyers are out in the open and beeing shot at is fine, as long as my important stuff stays same. When I go second then, I see most of the enemys stuff and can counterstrike.

Whats your view on the topic? Thank you!

Primarily the advantage of going second is that you also get to go last (i.e., the last turn before the game ends is your turn). this allows you to know for sure on your last turn that your opponent will not have a chance to counter what you do, and is very nice for end of game missions that say "whoever's holding the relic at the end wins" or "whoever has more objectives at the end wins".

If you go second, your opponent just gets to say "ok, I need to get as many objectives as I can" while you on the other hand get to identify exactly how many objectives you need to win.

Is it worth doing this at a timed event since you don't know who is going to have the last turn?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Is it worth doing this at a timed event since you don't know who is going to have the last turn?

Yes because even in a timed event you always play the same number of turns as your opponent.

Really? I've always heard that when time is called that's the game regardless of where it is. It's dice down, count up your points and clean up.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Really? I've always heard that when time is called that's the game regardless of where it is. It's dice down, count up your points and clean up.

Players need to communicate and not start a new turn unless there is time to finish. Going over is not a problem if you're wrapping up.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Really? I've always heard that when time is called that's the game regardless of where it is. It's dice down, count up your points and clean up.

If you get to that point you already past multiple points where you should have looked at the time and not gone for another turn.

To answer the thread question: No.

It's not like past editions where we could one-shot most models with 'instant death' or 'explodes'.

tneva82 wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:

Change "Blast" weapons from d6 shots, to a single to-hit roll that generates d6 hits. Higher risk / reward increases likelihood of a damage "anti-spike" that could be the saving grace of a small squad. Also feels more intuitive to me. A single shot is fired, and if it hits, you see how many are caught in the blast. Maybe it's just me.

You realize this wouldn't be nerf per se but just make game more random? Average damage output stays same. You just have bigger swings making it more of a luck thing.

Ah, you didn't read the fine print!

Average damage output only remains the same if a unit is large enough to allow the up-spikes to deal full damage. If I shoot a Manticore at a 3 model unit, and miss, 0 Hits. But if I hit with my one to-hit roll, and then roll 7 hits, I can only kill those 3 models. The probability of "something small" surviving that attack goes to approximately 50% [odds of missing with one shot] vs 25% [for example] of 3 models surviving 7 to-hit rolls.

And yes, it does become more swingy, which was exactly my point. Overkilling something does not result in a higher average damage, you can only kill so much. But missing entirely allows those units to live. This has a negative-net impact on how much damage "Blast" weapons can do. Not much, but it is some.

No, we just need more effective anti-horde weapons. Make blast weapons great again! And flamers and heavy bolters too!
I general, it is good for things to die quickly, because that leads to faster games. Games of 40k already take a very long time, no need to increase that even further.

Or for horde models to cost more.

Horde models already die incredibly fast. The only issue is when they're shielding a gunline.

Tyranids and Orks aren't exactly crushing everyone and they're the canonical horde armies.

The problem isn't hordes. It's ONE army that can be both Gunline AND horde, and do both better than anyone else.