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The one that broke it iirc were the mulific lords where they got spammed. Also alphabet soup (ateos rau kares) was a absolute go to unit for chaos players. Think he was 600 points for a greater LoC that had a 2d6 laz Cannon staff.

Yep and none of that stuff is viable at this point,

 Galef wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
Erm... He's talking about LCGs (Living Card Games), not CCGs. They're currently the in vogue method for most card games, since they're not randomly distributed.

That's good to know. I pretty much stopped playing CCGs because of how frustrating it was to want X card for your deck and not be able to get it (either because you couldn't find it or it was ludicrously expensive)

Still, random drawing the deck you built is still pretty different than rolling D6s for an army you built that "should" mitigate for better rolls.

-

Well in response to the CCG topic - the random nature of boster packs and such. The best way to make a competitive deck is just to buy the cards you want. Which is what competitive players do. So it might be a core difference about what you do in the hobby - it doesn't really affect the way the game is played. I will just explain my point though.

In a very broad sense LCG play exactly like a table top wargame.

LCG has a card that tells you the stats of a model that you place on the board and it interacts with other models in the game based on RNG. Rolling dice and drawing cards are just RNG.


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 infinite_array wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
There is practically no difference between a LCG and a miniature wargame.

.../s?

I mean, the materials, the rules, the expectation, the interactions, the different kinds of effort put in... I can think of a lot of differences.

Unless you want to get ultra-reductionist, at which point no game played on a flat surface with one or more people is unique. Hey everyone, Age of Sigmar is the exact same as Cards Against Humanity!

 Galef wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

1st, CCGs are random purchases

Erm... He's talking about LCGs (Living Card Games), not CCGs. They're currently the in vogue method for most card games, since they're not randomly distributed.

I was being very reductionist with my statement there. Ofc their are differences but that the core a LCG has cards(data slates) represented by some kind of model (just like 40k) and they interact based on their stats with some kind of RNG (just like in 40k). I don't even consider it an insult. Effort put in is a good point and probably the major difference. However, I hear people complaining about the rules of 8th and then throwing LCG around as an insult. The only big difference I see between the two types of games has to do with modeling and painting and cost (effort put in) and that has nothing to do with the rules of the game.

i think it’s a rather extreme statement to say it’s like an LCG, but from a gameplay perspective I can understand why.

Essentially it boils down to the fact that many/most games are played out in the list building phase, as opposed to each game being a unique experience. I’m not talking about power relevancies or balance here, I’m talking about strategies and tactics.

It feels and looks like every model and unit has a predetermined and obvious place, irrespective of a particular game or opposing list. It’s all about the combos/auras/alpha strikes built into the list, that change little or not at all game to game.

Executing that strategy still requires some skill and practice, granted, but still it seems really boring. The extreme killiness (is this actually a word?) and one dimensional nature of most of the most popular choices brings each game down to one of target priortization, and little else.

It doesn’t matter much what terrain is on the table, what the mission is, or if one player makes some clever moves. It comes down to who kills the most during turn one based on their already formed when the list was made alpha strike combo of doom.

IMHO of course.

It’s defintiely a different kind of game to others, like the more traditional war game feeling of bolt action.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Boss Salvage wrote:
I mean, I feel like all of that applies to 40k, including limits both in the game's architecture (org slots, special character limit, new Tau Commander style limits) and those imposed by events (WHFB 8E was heavily comped at the tournament level, no reason 40k won't occasionally be, and things like Highlanders have totally been event formats in the past). Annnnnd as for super powerful rare things that cost $$$, pretty sure that's where Forge World comes in

- Salvage

FW isn't actually good or OP though so that pretty well falls apart.

.....what.....lol like what? Forge world is not good? Uhhhh there was a reason GW had to nerf the ever loving crap outta fw units in chapter approved. Even still the fire raptor is one of the best things to take as a space marine or chaos space marine. On top of that their super heavy takes are amazing. A falcion is a quick way to blast any LoW unit off the table in a single shooting round

Yeah because so much of it shows up in winning lists or defines formats. There was an exception in Malefic Lords but they did indeed get demolished. The rest of FW that got demolished was I guess just a happenstance of being Forge World models. Forgeworld units certainly don't fit the pay to compete model that the poster is trying to set them up in. Also I'd suggest shifting out of the hyperbole of 'lol like what dude?!?!' and instead I'd post examples of say top table lists at events that have used many FW units as a much better basis for an argument.

Forgeworld's problem in 8th isn't that they're OP, it's that their indexes were so poorly written that their stuff was all over the damn place. Some units straight up didn't work RAW.

ERJAK wrote:
Forgeworld's problem in 8th isn't that they're OP, it's that their indexes were so poorly written that their stuff was all over the damn place. Some units straight up didn't work RAW.

That's fine, to be clear I'm not defending FW, I just felt it needed to be pointed out that it isn't some magical P2W button.

2nd Edition had cards. Tons of them. more than we do now.

Warhammer 40k was using cards before Magic made it popular to use cards. Literally.

 Backspacehacker wrote:


.....what.....lol like what? Forge world is not good? Uhhhh there was a reason GW had to nerf the ever loving crap outta fw units in chapter approved. Even still the fire raptor is one of the best things to take as a space marine or chaos space marine. On top of that their super heavy takes are amazing. A falcion is a quick way to blast any LoW unit off the table in a single shooting round

Yeah there was a reason. But it was not a balance. It's because resin is labour intensive expensive material to produce. Thus 100£ spend on resin is lot less profitable for GW than 100£ on plastic. GW doesn't want to sell tons of resin models. They are fine selling small numbers for collectors who wouldn't be spamming same plastic models over and over so resin works great for that purpose but for gamers who spam most powerful choice they want to buy plastic as their margin is LOT better for GW.

Vast majority of broken stuff is actually GW models. For FW we have stuff like 300% price hike for models that you didn't even SEE on tournaments let alone dominate. If those models were as broken as GW claimed every single top-10 army in tournaments would have been spamming that like hell...

Chapter approved changes were just pure marketing move. GW didn't even try to pretend anything else.

40K always had cards in the early editions.

In Dark Millenium you had 1 to 3 War Gear Cards per character
Then you had Army Strategy Cards
The Psychic Phase had a deck of cards

Vehicle Upgrades were all Cards

So it is just a return to the golden age of 40k

The fundamental difference that is ignored when people compare 40k to LCGs is the lack of a deck mechanic.

List building is somewhat akin to deck building, in that you're determining the resources you have available to you. However, I can't think of any LCGs where, at the start of the game, you draw your entire deck into your hand and play every single card. The initial game states (deploying your army, versus drawing a limited and random hand of cards) are nothing alike.

That difference flows through into gameplay. In general, your resources in 40k start at maximum and decline over the course of the game. Most LCGs start with both players having minimal resources, and they build up to a 'win condition' state (some manner of unstoppable mechanism for defeating the opponent) over time. Completely opposite directions.

So when people say "40k is just an LCG now", all they're really saying is that they don't understand 40k, or LCGs (generally with a heaped serving of "and I don't like either of them!" on the side).

I never really understood that comparison to be honest.

I can understand it from auticus's point of view, but all of those criticisms are things that are easily addressed depending on large amounts of factors (e.g. table size and terrain)...

.... which are factors that don't exist in a card game.

Just to go down auticus's list of things he finds don't matter in his games:

1) Maneuver - I find board space is actually the largest problem here. 28mm on a 6x4 will tend towards immobility simply because of space. Playing on a 12x8 will dramatically increase the amount of maneuver that things have to do, especially if the terrain is scaled up accordingly with tons of LOS-blockers, etc. A Baneblade having to move around a GW ruin to get LOS (because it is automatically in range on a 6x4) is dramatically different to a Baneblade moving around a 3x2 foot warehouse that completely blocks LOS, while also having to pay attention to ranges, etc.

2) Terrain management: absolutely matters. Taking the 12x8 board with a reasonable amount of terrain on it, you'll end up with varied terrain. If you use GW's advanced terrain rules from the 8th edition rulebook, it's not even hard to illustrate the difference between e.g. a fortified Governor's Palace surrounded by barricades/bastions/ruins, and a forest with large impassable (to large things) ponds and tall hills.

3) Combo-chaining: most of these rely on abilities with ranges. 6" from your SM Captain-turned-Chapter-Master feels a lot tinier on a good sized board than it does on a 6x4.

40k can absolutely be a wargame, but you have to deviate somewhat from the "pickup game 6x4 using Matched Play" standard and actually try to make it a wargame. I understand that this may not be easy or whatever, but it's still, at its core, a wargame, and can be one if people want it to be. They just have to put in the effort with the right kind of terrain and board sizes.

 Tokhuah wrote:
Without a doubt both X-Wing and Shadespire are LCGs with miniatures, right down to the card distribution method.

Not at all. X-Wing is nothing like a CCG, its cards have no gameplay function whatsoever. FFG just cut the rulebook up into sections and sold each piece with a different ship to force you to buy everything if you want to play in FFG's official events. If you aren't attending a FFG event where you are required to bring the cards as a proof of purchase there is little reason to even take the cards out of your box. You can just keep them nearby as a rules reference, like you would do with a 40k rulebook.

The reason 40k is like a CCG is not its distribution method, it's how the game plays. One of the major differences between a CCG and a wargame is that the CCG has no concept of position on the battlefield. Things are either "in play" or "not in play", but once a card is on the table it's in the same location as everything else. There's no checking distance between units/creatures/whatever, there's no movement, etc. For example, to attack in MTG you don't move a creature into range of your opponent, you declare "I'm attacking" and then your opponent can declare that some of their creatures will block. If you want to cast a lightning bolt you don't have a threat range originating from a wizard, you declare "lightning bolt" and then pick a target creature or player anywhere on the table. You don't out-flank a creature to stab it in the back, you cast "stab in the back" that destroys target creature. Etc.

If you look at GW's recent design choices you see them moving very strongly in that direction. Terrain now does little or nothing to slow movement or block LOS (without third-party rules to fix GW's decisions). Movement speeds for many units are fast enough to consistently get turn-1 charges anywhere on the table. Deep striking now has no drawbacks and lets you deploy directly into attack range. Vehicles no longer have firing arcs or armor facings. Etc. It matters less and less where your models are on the table because their threat range has become "pick a target anywhere on the table". For example, as an IG player I can cast "plasma squad" anywhere on the table on turn 1 and unload 8 dice of plasma into something, after which my one-shot weapon is spent and probably never fires again. My Basilisk can hit anywhere on the table without ever bothering to move. My Valkyrie full of Ogryns can deliver a turn 1 charge anywhere on the table, unless my opponent blocks with a screening unit (just like creatures block in MTG). And when positioning or movement do matter the choice is almost always very obvious to everyone involved, making it a pretty limited part of the game. The far more important factor in who wins is list construction and target priority, just like in a CCG.

Now, is the comparison perfect? Of course not. 40k is not literally a CCG in every possible way. But nobody is saying so, and to object that the comparison is not 100% literally accurate is missing the point. It's like the people in 6th and 7th edition arguing that Eldar weren't overpowered, because there was this one unit that was pretty bad.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) Maneuver - I find board space is actually the largest problem here. 28mm on a 6x4 will tend towards immobility simply because of space. Playing on a 12x8 will dramatically increase the amount of maneuver that things have to do, especially if the terrain is scaled up accordingly with tons of LOS-blockers, etc. A Baneblade having to move around a GW ruin to get LOS (because it is automatically in range on a 6x4) is dramatically different to a Baneblade moving around a 3x2 foot warehouse that completely blocks LOS, while also having to pay attention to ranges, etc.

Ok? Hardly anyone plays on anything larger than 6x4, and larger boards are usually impractical even if you wanted to build one. There's no sense in talking about how the game works fine in a situation that effectively doesn't exist.

2) Terrain management: absolutely matters. Taking the 12x8 board with a reasonable amount of terrain on it, you'll end up with varied terrain. If you use GW's advanced terrain rules from the 8th edition rulebook, it's not even hard to illustrate the difference between e.g. a fortified Governor's Palace surrounded by barricades/bastions/ruins, and a forest with large impassable (to large things) ponds and tall hills.

Except it really isn't easy to illustrate that difference in functional terms. Aesthetically, sure, you can theme your table however you like, but the vast majority of terrain blocks neither LOS nor movement and offers the same +1 save bonus (under ridiculously restrictive circumstances) that every other piece of terrain has. To make terrain interesting and relevant you pretty much have to dump the standard rules and bring your own terrain and LOS rules.


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 Backspacehacker wrote:
A falcion is a quick way to blast any LoW unit off the table in a single shooting round

So is a Shadowsword, which costs significantly less (even before the absurd nerf) and is a GW codex unit. It's insane to suggest that the post-nerf Falchion is equivalent in power to the pair of Shadowswords you could buy instead.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) Maneuver - I find board space is actually the largest problem here. 28mm on a 6x4 will tend towards immobility simply because of space. Playing on a 12x8 will dramatically increase the amount of maneuver that things have to do, especially if the terrain is scaled up accordingly with tons of LOS-blockers, etc. A Baneblade having to move around a GW ruin to get LOS (because it is automatically in range on a 6x4) is dramatically different to a Baneblade moving around a 3x2 foot warehouse that completely blocks LOS, while also having to pay attention to ranges, etc.

Ok? Hardly anyone plays on anything larger than 6x4, and larger boards are usually impractical even if you wanted to build one. There's no sense in talking about how the game works fine in a situation that effectively doesn't exist

You know you can make it exist, right? I know hardly anyone plays that way, but it's a catch-22: "The game is bad because of the way people play it, but we can't make it good because that's not how people play it."

 Peregrine wrote:

2) Terrain management: absolutely matters. Taking the 12x8 board with a reasonable amount of terrain on it, you'll end up with varied terrain. If you use GW's advanced terrain rules from the 8th edition rulebook, it's not even hard to illustrate the difference between e.g. a fortified Governor's Palace surrounded by barricades/bastions/ruins, and a forest with large impassable (to large things) ponds and tall hills.

Except it really isn't easy to illustrate that difference in functional terms. Aesthetically, sure, you can theme your table however you like, but the vast majority of terrain blocks neither LOS nor movement and offers the same +1 save bonus (under ridiculously restrictive circumstances) that every other piece of terrain has. To make terrain interesting and relevant you pretty much have to dump the standard rules and bring your own terrain and LOS rules.

Well, except that ruins/barricades hide tanks way better than woods do, but are also impassable to tanks, unlike woods. So right there, the effectiveness of a tank company changes based on the terrain (since we've agreed that positioning now matters, being restricted to city streets is a big hit to mobility vs. moving through woods). As for it not blocking LOS... then make terrain that blocks LOS. This is not a rules issue. It's not like the rules say "Terrain shall never block LOS."

Like literally, the difference between "my baneblade can sit anywhere that's not a pond and hit anything in range (except perhaps behind that big hill...)" and "my baneblade can only travel down narrow roads, and with luck at a crossroads can cover four directions, but only out to three feet before those roads turn again" is all in the terrain.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You know you can make it exist, right?

Not really. Anything above 6x4 runs into space limits, and significantly over 6x4 it becomes very difficult to reach into the middle of the table. Non-standard table sizes are not a solution.

I know hardly anyone plays that way, but it's a catch-22: "The game is bad because of the way people play it, but we can't make it good because that's not how people play it."

Remember, 6x4 is what GW recommends. It's entirely fair to point out that the game as GW published it is bad, even if you can make your own 40k-inspired game that works better. When discussing what the actual 40k rules are it's important to consider the standard rules, not some obscure house-ruled variant that your group invented to fix everything.

Well, except that ruins/barricades hide tanks way better than woods do, but are also impassable to tanks, unlike woods.

They really don't. Ruins/barricades don't hide anything most of the time because of how LOS works. If I can see 1mm of the tip of one antenna on your tank poking out from behind the terrain feature I can shoot it as if the terrain wasn't there at all. Meanwhile woods block movement just as much as ruins, as they don't grant vehicles any special exception to the general rule of not being allowed to move through terrain features. The difference between woods and ruins is almost entirely aesthetic.

As for it not blocking LOS... then make terrain that blocks LOS. This is not a rules issue. It's not like the rules say "Terrain shall never block LOS."

The problem is that unless you make your terrain in the form of solid boxes it doesn't block LOS. 8th edition's LOS rules are so absurdly generous that it becomes nearly impossible to block LOS completely for anything but small infantry units. The common terrain, including the terrain that GW sells and recommends for standard games, does effectively nothing to block LOS.

(Now, you can fix this with house rules, of course, but that's not the standard 40k rules as GW published them.)

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Well, except that ruins/barricades hide tanks way better than woods do, but are also impassable to tanks, unlike woods. So right there, the effectiveness of a tank company changes based on the terrain (since we've agreed that positioning now matters, being restricted to city streets is a big hit to mobility vs. moving through woods). As for it not blocking LOS... then make terrain that blocks LOS. This is not a rules issue. It's not like the rules say "Terrain shall never block LOS."

Like literally, the difference between "my baneblade can sit anywhere that's not a pond and hit anything in range (except perhaps behind that big hill...)" and "my baneblade can only travel down narrow roads, and with luck at a crossroads can cover four directions, but only out to three feet before those roads turn again" is all in the terrain.

Ruins and Barricades are not impassible to vehicles. Just have to end your turn on the ground level of a ruin (if you lack fly or aren't infantry) and barricades do nothing to / for vehicles (maybe your thinking tank traps which only slow them when advancing or charging). The problem with 8th's terrain rules is that you have to be completely inside the terrain and if not infantry you need to also be 50% obscured to get any benefit from cover (+1 to your save which can still be mitigated by AP). Requiring a vehicle to be completely inside the woods and 50% obscured is basically impossible because no sane person makes woods dense enough to hide models that much and still be able to physically fit models inside of it. Most people treat woods as an abstraction (an area or base with a few removable trees makes for a playable woods in past editions) but GW lets you fire lascannons out of your tanks exhaust pipe but requires actual tree coverage to get a cover save for a rhino parked in the woods.

Most 40k boards I've seen are usually a city block with some bombed out ruins with streets and makeshift barracades, ruins, craters, etc litering the streets. For non urban boards it a mix of some ruins, rocks, woods, craters, maybe some hills, etc. Not once in my 4 years of 40k have I've seen a labyrinth of solid walls blocking line of sight because its both unnatural (with either a man made urban environment or naturally occurring setting) and very few people have that many solid wall structures to fill up a board. The only thing close to that would be a zone mortalis board which has its own set of rules (at least it did back in 7th) and is not conducive to using vehicles or large MCs. The normal terrain GW sells is full of holes and openings so you don't get true LoS blocking and if your declaring those ruin walls LoS blocking then your basically house ruling at this point.

I think that a lot depends on which factions you play with and against.

With my tyranids there is no doubt that the movement phase is still the most important one and the one that takes me longer to correctly define. I win and lose in the movement phase or due to a wrong deployment, every game.
Terrain matters a lot more than it did in 7th, where everything ignored LOS and cover. At least now cover is a massive buff for important models, while still being easy to gain (toe in cover and a couple of models in front of it is usually enough).

There are wargames where positioning and battlefield count more? Yes, there are, AoS being an example.
Is it something that started this edition? No, 7th and 6th had it much worse than this, the game was literally played during list building. The game ended when you were shown your opponent's list, the rest was just hoping in dumb luck.

It's like those people that say that plasma overheating more during night makes 8th dumb, until they remember than in previous editions shooting with 2 plasma weapons at the same time removed the risk of overheat...

As soon as a new edition comes out, players start looking at past editions with rose colored lens. Well i remember perfectly well the horrors of 6th and 7th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vankraken wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Well, except that ruins/barricades hide tanks way better than woods do, but are also impassable to tanks, unlike woods. So right there, the effectiveness of a tank company changes based on the terrain (since we've agreed that positioning now matters, being restricted to city streets is a big hit to mobility vs. moving through woods). As for it not blocking LOS... then make terrain that blocks LOS. This is not a rules issue. It's not like the rules say "Terrain shall never block LOS."

Like literally, the difference between "my baneblade can sit anywhere that's not a pond and hit anything in range (except perhaps behind that big hill...)" and "my baneblade can only travel down narrow roads, and with luck at a crossroads can cover four directions, but only out to three feet before those roads turn again" is all in the terrain.

Ruins and Barricades are not impassible to vehicles. Just have to end your turn on the ground level of a ruin (if you lack fly or aren't infantry) and barricades do nothing to / for vehicles (maybe your thinking tank traps which only slow them when advancing or charging). The problem with 8th's terrain rules is that you have to be completely inside the terrain and if not infantry you need to also be 50% obscured to get any benefit from cover (+1 to your save which can still be mitigated by AP). Requiring a vehicle to be completely inside the woods and 50% obscured is basically impossible because no sane person makes woods dense enough to hide models that much and still be able to physically fit models inside of it. Most people treat woods as an abstraction (an area or base with a few removable trees makes for a playable woods in past editions) but GW lets you fire lascannons out of your tanks exhaust pipe but requires actual tree coverage to get a cover save for a rhino parked in the woods.

Most 40k boards I've seen are usually a city block with some bombed out ruins with streets and makeshift barracades, ruins, craters, etc litering the streets. For non urban boards it a mix of some ruins, rocks, woods, craters, maybe some hills, etc. Not once in my 4 years of 40k have I've seen a labyrinth of solid walls blocking line of sight because its both unnatural (with either a man made urban environment or naturally occurring setting) and very few people have that many solid wall structures to fill up a board. The only thing close to that would be a zone mortalis board which has its own set of rules (at least it did back in 7th) and is not conducive to using vehicles or large MCs. The normal terrain GW sells is full of holes and openings so you don't get true LoS blocking and if your declaring those ruin walls LoS blocking then your basically house ruling at this point.

Lol no. That's not how terrain works in 8th.

Non infantry models need to just be within terrain, even a mm of it is enough, and then be obscured by the firer by at least 50%. Note that being obscured does not mean obscured by terrain, but by anything between you and the attacker, even enemy models.
Non infantry models have it real easy when it comes to claim cover.

 Peregrine wrote:
One of the major differences between a CCG and a wargame is that the CCG has no concept of position on the battlefield. Things are either "in play" or "not in play", but once a card is on the table it's in the same location as everything else.

Wow. Is M:tG the only CCG you've ever played? Plenty of CCGs/LCGs use positioning mechanics, with different zones, ranges, etc. The use of "positioning" as a gameplay mechanic does not distinguish wargames from card games... at all.

 kadeton wrote:
Wow. Is M:tG the only CCG you've ever played? Plenty of CCGs/LCGs use positioning mechanics, with different zones, ranges, etc. The use of "positioning" as a gameplay mechanic does not distinguish wargames from card games... at all.

Even when CCGs have different zones it's a heavily abstracted "zone" that exists for rules purposes but isn't related to where the cards are on the table. It isn't the same kind of simulationist approach that wargames have, where a model's position on the table is its actual location. Perhaps you could do something like this with a CCG, but the genre-defining game doesn't do it at all and none of the games I've ever seen have any meaningful wargame-style movement or positioning mechanics.

Spoletta wrote:
I think that a lot depends on which factions you play with and against.

With my tyranids there is no doubt that the movement phase is still the most important one and the one that takes me longer to correctly define. I win and lose in the movement phase or due to a wrong deployment, every game.
Terrain matters a lot more than it did in 7th, where everything ignored LOS and cover. At least now cover is a massive buff for important models, while still being easy to gain (toe in cover and a couple of models in front of it is usually enough).

There are wargames where positioning and battlefield count more? Yes, there are, AoS being an example.
Is it something that started this edition? No, 7th and 6th had it much worse than this, the game was literally played during list building. The game ended when you were shown your opponent's list, the rest was just hoping in dumb luck.

It's like those people that say that plasma overheating more during night makes 8th dumb, until they remember than in previous editions shooting with 2 plasma weapons at the same time removed the risk of overheat...

As soon as a new edition comes out, players start looking at past editions with rose colored lens. Well i remember perfectly well the horrors of 6th and 7th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vankraken wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Well, except that ruins/barricades hide tanks way better than woods do, but are also impassable to tanks, unlike woods. So right there, the effectiveness of a tank company changes based on the terrain (since we've agreed that positioning now matters, being restricted to city streets is a big hit to mobility vs. moving through woods). As for it not blocking LOS... then make terrain that blocks LOS. This is not a rules issue. It's not like the rules say "Terrain shall never block LOS."

Like literally, the difference between "my baneblade can sit anywhere that's not a pond and hit anything in range (except perhaps behind that big hill...)" and "my baneblade can only travel down narrow roads, and with luck at a crossroads can cover four directions, but only out to three feet before those roads turn again" is all in the terrain.

Ruins and Barricades are not impassible to vehicles. Just have to end your turn on the ground level of a ruin (if you lack fly or aren't infantry) and barricades do nothing to / for vehicles (maybe your thinking tank traps which only slow them when advancing or charging). The problem with 8th's terrain rules is that you have to be completely inside the terrain and if not infantry you need to also be 50% obscured to get any benefit from cover (+1 to your save which can still be mitigated by AP). Requiring a vehicle to be completely inside the woods and 50% obscured is basically impossible because no sane person makes woods dense enough to hide models that much and still be able to physically fit models inside of it. Most people treat woods as an abstraction (an area or base with a few removable trees makes for a playable woods in past editions) but GW lets you fire lascannons out of your tanks exhaust pipe but requires actual tree coverage to get a cover save for a rhino parked in the woods.

Most 40k boards I've seen are usually a city block with some bombed out ruins with streets and makeshift barracades, ruins, craters, etc litering the streets. For non urban boards it a mix of some ruins, rocks, woods, craters, maybe some hills, etc. Not once in my 4 years of 40k have I've seen a labyrinth of solid walls blocking line of sight because its both unnatural (with either a man made urban environment or naturally occurring setting) and very few people have that many solid wall structures to fill up a board. The only thing close to that would be a zone mortalis board which has its own set of rules (at least it did back in 7th) and is not conducive to using vehicles or large MCs. The normal terrain GW sells is full of holes and openings so you don't get true LoS blocking and if your declaring those ruin walls LoS blocking then your basically house ruling at this point.

Lol no. That's not how terrain works in 8th.

Non infantry models need to just be within terrain, even a mm of it is enough, and then be obscured by the firer by at least 50%. Note that being obscured does not mean obscured by terrain, but by anything between you and the attacker, even enemy models.
Non infantry models have it real easy when it comes to claim cover.

Your definition of easy is very different from mine because 50% obscured is still quite the feat to achieve as it means you basically need more of the model hidden than seen which often times getting a view of TLOS can be quite tricky so your view ends up coming from a slightly elevated point which can make in between obstruction seem less obscuring. Also a lot of the cover that was taken in 7th was from things being inbetween points A and B which now doesn't really matter now because you need to be in area terrain to get any benefit (if your out in the open but you have ruins, a forest, a mob of boyz, and some wreckage between you and that lascannon team then your tanking lascannons to the face without cover because you wheren't standing in terrain despite having a whole host of stuff in the way). Even with infantry you need every model within area terrain to get any cover so if your guys are entering terrain but some of the guys in back didn't quite make it then you don't get cover because despite being on the other side of the terrain from the shooter you still need to be inside the terrain to get any benefit.

 Peregrine wrote:
Even when CCGs have different zones it's a heavily abstracted "zone" that exists for rules purposes but isn't related to where the cards are on the table. It isn't the same kind of simulationist approach that wargames have, where a model's position on the table is its actual location. Perhaps you could do something like this with a CCG, but the genre-defining game doesn't do it at all and none of the games I've ever seen have any meaningful wargame-style movement or positioning mechanics.

Okay. But now you're just shifting goalposts - you've gone from "no positioning mechanics" to "no simulationist positioning mechanics", which is quite a different statement.

It also negates your central thesis: 40k very much does have simulationist positioning mechanics, "where a model's position on the table is its actual location", so I guess it can't be a CCG after all?

You could definitely argue that 40k's positioning mechanics are less important to the outcome of a game than in some other wargames, due to long weapon ranges, simplified cover, TLOS, no facing, etc. But to argue that they don't exist, or even that they don't meaningfully contribute to the outcome, is nonsense... and any other similarities between 40k and CCGs are superficial at best, given the fundamental differences.

 kadeton wrote:
Okay. But now you're just shifting goalposts - you've gone from "no positioning mechanics" to "no simulationist positioning mechanics", which is quite a different statement.

It's not really that different, you're just trying to broaden "positioning mechanics" way more than it should be. A game where you have cards in zone 1 and cards in zone 2 and the two zones can't interact technically has "positioning" in that you decide where to place cards, but it doesn't have the same kind of "moving models on the table" mechanics that wargames have. You aren't moving 1" left to get around terrain. You aren't drawing LOS from card to card to see if you can attack. Etc. Most of the time you could pick the cards up off the table and just remember which zone each card is assigned to without losing any game state information.

It also negates your central thesis: 40k very much does have simulationist positioning mechanics, "where a model's position on the table is its actual location", so I guess it can't be a CCG after all?

It doesn't negate it at all, because the entire point is that GW is moving away from those mechanics mattering. Yes, a model's position on the table is technically still its actual location, but that position is becoming less and less relevant. I could move the model 12" to the side and it would have little meaningful impact on how the game plays out, so can you honestly say that the positioning mechanic really exists?

You could definitely argue that 40k's positioning mechanics are less important to the outcome of a game than in some other wargames, due to long weapon ranges, simplified cover, TLOS, no facing, etc. But to argue that they don't exist, or even that they don't meaningfully contribute to the outcome, is nonsense... and any other similarities between 40k and CCGs are superficial at best, given the fundamental differences.

Like other people you're making the mistake of assuming that if 40k has this kind of mechanic at all, no matter how dumbed-down and irrelevant it may be, it isn't literally a CCG therefore the comparison fails. It's like arguing that 6th/7th edition Eldar weren't overpowered because it wasn't literally a 100% overpowered codex, there was that one unit that wasn't very good. 40k may not literally be a CCG, but it's sure as hell moving in a CCG-like direction in a very bad way.

How can it not be easy, a predator is 50% covered by 3 of 4 tactical marines, you can also do it with a couple of primaris (assuming that the enemy is shooting at you without any hindrance from the rest of his army).
Also, it's false that a squad has to be totally within a terrain piece to gain cover. In your example, the ones that are not in cover die first (correctly) and then the other ones have the benefits of cover.

Sure, being in an elevated position means that you will negate cover on most vehicles, but you know, positioning matters in this game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 kadeton wrote:
Wow. Is M:tG the only CCG you've ever played? Plenty of CCGs/LCGs use positioning mechanics, with different zones, ranges, etc. The use of "positioning" as a gameplay mechanic does not distinguish wargames from card games... at all.

Even when CCGs have different zones it's a heavily abstracted "zone" that exists for rules purposes but isn't related to where the cards are on the table. It isn't the same kind of simulationist approach that wargames have, where a model's position on the table is its actual location. Perhaps you could do something like this with a CCG, but the genre-defining game doesn't do it at all and none of the games I've ever seen have any meaningful wargame-style movement or positioning mechanics.

Mage Wars. The Original one. Significant movememt, line of sight and range mechanics.

Of course warhammer is not a CCG. But this statement is not supposed to be taken literally.

It's pointing out that one of the main traits of CCG is that you generally can't win an opponent if he has a better deck. Sure, you can try to use some combos to boost your army or counters to weaken your opponent's army...but you still get beaten regardless. So, deckbuilding is unproportionally more important than actually playing the game.

Same goes for 40k. Sure, you can try to use tactics with your sub-par army vs your opponent's top tier army but the tactical part of the game has gotten oversimplified, limited and will likely not affect the game outcome anywayz. So, deckbuilding listbuilding is also unproportionally more important than actually playing the game.

stormcraft wrote:
Mage Wars. The Original one. Significant movememt, line of sight and range mechanics.

Ok, sure, that's one game. It's possible to have mechanics like that in a CCG, but most don't.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's not really that different, you're just trying to broaden "positioning mechanics" way more than it should be. A game where you have cards in zone 1 and cards in zone 2 and the two zones can't interact technically has "positioning" in that you decide where to place cards, but it doesn't have the same kind of "moving models on the table" mechanics that wargames have. You aren't moving 1" left to get around terrain. You aren't drawing LOS from card to card to see if you can attack. Etc. Most of the time you could pick the cards up off the table and just remember which zone each card is assigned to without losing any game state information.

Again, you're talking about simulationist positioning as if that is the only thing that matters. Any game in which the position of game pieces relative to each other is significant and can be changed has positioning elements. The ways in which position is significant and can change are fundamentally different between wargames and card games.

 Peregrine wrote:
It doesn't negate it at all, because the entire point is that GW is moving away from those mechanics mattering. Yes, a model's position on the table is technically still its actual location, but that position is becoming less and less relevant. I could move the model 12" to the side and it would have little meaningful impact on how the game plays out, so can you honestly say that the positioning mechanic really exists?

Yes, clearly. If the model is moved 12", now it's out of LoS. It's no longer in cover. It's out of range. It can't make the charge. It can't score the objective. It's now vulnerable to Smite. It's lost its Character protection. Its aura's out of range.

All of the above could be equally true if you only moved the model 1" instead of 12. It won't be true for all units all of the time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. You don't get to ignore it just because you don't like the specific abstraction that the rules use.

 Peregrine wrote:
Like other people you're making the mistake of assuming that if 40k has this kind of mechanic at all, no matter how dumbed-down and irrelevant it may be, it isn't literally a CCG therefore the comparison fails. It's like arguing that 6th/7th edition Eldar weren't overpowered because it wasn't literally a 100% overpowered codex, there was that one unit that wasn't very good. 40k may not literally be a CCG, but it's sure as hell moving in a CCG-like direction in a very bad way.

No, it's like arguing that a dog isn't a frog, even though they both have four legs and share two letters. You're making so many stupid conflations that it's hard to untangle them all, but here's the main one:

"The positioning mechanics are becoming dumbed-down and irrelevant, so it's moving in a CCG-like direction"

No. At most, it's moving in a dumb wargame direction, and it was already the dumbest wargame on the market. The positioning mechanics in wargames and card games are fundamentally different forms of abstraction - there's no "direction" to get from one to the other.

From what I can tell, this seems to be the only way in which 40k is "CCG-like", which ignores every other way in which they are fundamentally dissimilar.

We get it, you don't like the abstraction of positioning that 8th ed uses. But again, saying that it's a CCG doesn't tell us anything other than you don't understand 40k, or CCGs.

 Desubot wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
FW isn't actually good or OP though so that pretty well falls apart.

I guess I'm mostly referencing 6-7E, though our last local tournament had a lot of Fire Raptors. I mean like as many as there were players (and there were 20-30 players)

- Salvage

Fire Raptors are one of the few exceptions but even then they aren't meta warping.

Elysians were for a bit

Were they? How? I missed that. It would have been nice to be That Guy just once.

 koooaei wrote:
Of course warhammer is not a CCG. But this statement is not supposed to be taken literally.

It's pointing out that one of the main traits of CCG is that you generally can't win an opponent if he has a better deck. Sure, you can try to use some combos to boost your army or counters to weaken your opponent's army...but you still get beaten regardless. So, deckbuilding is unproportionally more important than actually playing the game.

Same goes for 40k. Sure, you can try to use tactics with your sub-par army vs your opponent's top tier army but the tactical part of the game has gotten oversimplified, limited and will likely not affect the game outcome anywayz. So, deckbuilding listbuilding is also unproportionally more important than actually playing the game.

Having a better list that will beat worse lists is a feature of games, not a bug. 'Field everything and you still have a chance of winning' means that nothing matter and the rules are made up, like Calvinball.

quentra wrote:
Having a better list that will beat worse lists is a feature of games, not a bug. 'Field everything and you still have a chance of winning' means that nothing matter and the rules are made up, like Calvinball.

Categorical error.

quentra wrote:

Having a better list that will beat worse lists is a feature of games, not a bug. 'Field everything and you still have a chance of winning' means that nothing matter and the rules are made up, like Calvinball.

I'm not talking about 'field everything'. I'm talking about people's desire for tactics to matter. That is currently not satisfied at all with how little tactics mean compared to listbuilding. And that's why people call 8-th edition CCG.