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Sgt. Cortez wrote:


That simply is an opinion and needs citation.
My opinion is that 8th has an objectively greater tactical depth than 6th and 7th. I can't say for 5th as I didn't play that.

Hmm which has more depth: the 10 page pamphlet of 8th edition or the ~75 pages of previous editions...

Everything had been completely dumbed down since I started playing in 4th. Terrain, vehicle, charatcer and morale rules for example are virtually nonexistant compared earlier editions. The is not an opinion, that is fact.

You could have quite easily have tweaked the old system to use a better spread while still retaining the differentiation.

E.g. making 2x WS be 2s to hit and dropping the 5s point to 2x rather than 2x+1 would have made the 2-5 range pretty common (there were enough WS 6 characters around) which frankly is at least as much of the range as is being used now. Other than tanks what actually hits on a 6+ in melee? Or even a 5+?

You could still give all vehicles a WS as happens now, and it would make high skill actually meaningful. A guardsman should not be hitting a Grot on the same roll as for a primarch!

nemesis464 wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


That simply is an opinion and needs citation.
My opinion is that 8th has an objectively greater tactical depth than 6th and 7th. I can't say for 5th as I didn't play that.

Hmm which has more depth: the 10 page pamphlet of 8th edition or the ~75 pages of previous editions...

Everything had been completely dumbed down since I started playing in 4th. Terrain, vehicle, charatcer and morale rules for example are virtually nonexistant compared earlier editions. The is not an opinion, that is fact.

You are confusing complexity for depth. Chess has more tactical depth than 40k and it's rules fit on 2 pages including the rules for every "unit".

Previous editions of 40k were certainly more complex. But that complexity does not mean it added any depth.

nemesis464 wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


That simply is an opinion and needs citation.
My opinion is that 8th has an objectively greater tactical depth than 6th and 7th. I can't say for 5th as I didn't play that.

Hmm which has more depth: the 10 page pamphlet of 8th edition or the ~75 pages of previous editions...

Everything had been completely dumbed down since I started playing in 4th. Terrain rules for example are virtually nonexistant compared earlier editions.

I agree on terrain rules, they're pretty lackluster in 8th and rather punishing for melee armies.
Everything else, though?
All pages about tanks in the 6th and 7th rulebook were moot due to Hull points. Hull points meant that tanks died faster than a space Marine. I don't know how many pages that is, but it's a lot.
Then you have unit classifications. They've all been made irrelevant (and more diverse at the same time) with the introduction of the movement value.
Psychic rules? Hilarious garbage in 6th and 7th edition, runs smoothly in 8th with actual decisions.
Pages upon pages of USR weren't useless and I'd like to have some of them back, but there also was a lot of unnecessary crap in there like Zealot or soulblaze. And most USRs are still there - simply on the unit datasheets.
The whole AP system from 3rd to 7 sucked and made every AP value but 1 and 2 irrelevant (there were hardly weapons with AP3). In 8th every weapon has its uses and the damage value brought in another factor to think about.
Stratagems introduced actual player choices (not saying there are no unbalanced stratagems, but I like the basic system).
CC in 6th to 7th had no tactical value at all as you couldn't do anything once you reached CC but roll dice until one side was dead. Now it's the phase where you have to think most, what models to pull, how far do you consolidate and so on.
Morale... well, the old morale system was more interesting for sure, but at the same time it was just as irrelevant as the current one as 90% of the units in the game ignored morale outright (30K made morale actually matter and I think it's one of the best aspects of 30K).
Initiative was similarly irrelevant as the WS table. It being moved to the movement value and special rules of some units is okay in my book. Also chargers attacking first makes more sense to me than a charging ork mob getting cut to the last man before being able to strike.

So in the end, what do I miss from prior editions?
Nothing but the flamer template.

 Lance845 wrote:


You are confusing complexity for depth. Chess has more tactical depth than 40k and it's rules fit on 2 pages including the rules for every "unit".

Previous editions of 40k were certainly more complex. But that complexity does not mean it added any depth.

Ok, so do you think the terrain, character, and vehicle rules of 8th ed have a greater or lesser tactical depth that previous editions.

I'd be amazed if anyone can give me a convincing argument for any of those 3.

Honestly, some of you prefer the 8th approach.

I prefer templates + WS charts + vehicle armor and similar things.

For me that's the difference between a wargame and a board game.

A board game typically is not trying to simulate reality, it just uses it as a background, with rules that may make an interesting gaming session.

A wargame attempts to simulate some "reality".

I like wargames and don't overly enjoy board games; hence why coming from a decades long break from 40k I find myself drawn to 20k and not 8th or, from I have seen, 9th edition rules.

Is it the perfect simulation? No, it is not. Is it more of a simulation that hitting everything on 4+? Heck yeah.


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Sgt. Cortez wrote:

So in the end, what do I miss from prior editions?
Nothing but the flamer template.

I disagree with the majority of what you said. Which means it is a great thing that they have two separate games, but sure as heck there is no one game that we are both going to like, based on what you said.

Terrain. No. You have to look outside of 40k for good terrain rule. The apoc box has great ones. But terrain in 7th was also complex bull gak.

Characters. Yes. It's not tactics to pile every ic into one deathstar unit to steam roll things. That's a STRATEGY. But it's not tactics.and as far as a strategy it's bland and uninspired.

As mentioned above. Vehicles just meant getting hit by an anti tank and blowing up faster then a tax marine. Or worse rolling on a random table and having to do book keeping to keep track of which guns don't work anymore.

Or how about firing arks? Cause it's fething great having to use a necrons doomsday ark like a fething pirate ship and broad siding things to shoot your guns while negating the ability to use the other 2 guns. You MISS that? That was better to you?

 Lance845 wrote:
...As mentioned above. Vehicles just meant getting hit by an anti tank and blowing up faster then a tax marine. Or worse rolling on a random table and having to do book keeping to keep track of which guns don't work anymore.

Or how about firing arks? Cause it's fething great having to use a necrons doomsday ark like a fething pirate ship and broad siding things to shoot your guns while negating the ability to use the other 2 guns. You MISS that? That was better to you?

Some of that is a consequence of how the Codexes were written; 30k's got less high-S spam and generally higher AV, so vehicles tend to live longer. As to bookkeeping which guns don't work anymore I don't think that's much harder than needing to work out which vehicles are bracketed and which stats that changes to what.

As to firing arcs I've argued about this long and hard in Proposed Rules over the years; I miss them, but I agree that the fire arcs on a lot of 7e vehicles were counterintuitive, bizarre, and overly limiting. I don't want all the ambiguous "determine the fire arc by how far you can swivel the weapon, except sometimes you also get a 90-degree arc from your fixed gun!" stuff back but I also want flyers to stop shooting people out their butt and people to stop poking a corner of their vehicle out of cover and shooting all their guns from it.

 Lance845 wrote:
Characters. Yes. It's not tactics to pile every ic into one deathstar unit to steam roll things. That's a STRATEGY. But it's not tactics.and as far as a strategy it's bland and uninspired.

You've picked 1 single aspect of the character rules and used that as your argument.

By that logic all 8th ed characters do is run off by themselves to just act as bland un-targettable single units, or sit with a blob in the army spewing our their relevent aura.

I do not think any reasonable person will defend all 7th or current HH rules.

At the same time, one simply cannot deny that 8th streamlined the game a lot.

Some of us like vehicles with armor, we like units meleeing against the opponents skill (sure, the tables could be tweaked), we like morale being more impactful, and falling back being subject to a real possibility of being wiped.

What you find tedious, I think adds to the feeling there is some actual representation of what a fight might look like going on on the board.

Being that they are separate systems (the point of OP seems to be true), why on earth do we need to fight each other over it?

You do not like pre 8th edition style of rules? Go play 9th edition. People who enjoy a different approach and different aesthetics can go for Old World and 30k.

Must you convince us that we are having fun wrong? Because let me tell you, you are wasting your time. I have been having time like this for a long time.

Grey40k wrote:
I do not think any reasonable person will defend all 7th or current HH rules...

Oh, definitely. I'll defend most current HH rules but the psychic scaling and random power generation are dumb.

In the OP you asked if you were missing something about the direction GW is heading.

The direction they are heading is that 30k is going to end up with a closer to 9th or whatever 2nd Ed eventually. It would be crazy to think it's going to happen otherwise.

 Lance845 wrote:
In the OP you asked if you were missing something about the direction GW is heading.

The direction they are heading is that 30k is going to end up with a closer to 9th or whatever 2nd Ed eventually. It would be crazy to think it's going to happen otherwise.

I would typically think the same. However, seeing Old World (return of square bases so ranks and formations) and Horus Heresy (old school warhammer) both being supported lends me to think they will push for this dual system.

Simpler skirmish board games games VS more "realistic" wargames.

I think we could do without your last sentence.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 cygnnus wrote:
I wouldn’t say it’s that accidental/inadvertent, although Bloat for the Bloat God is a heck of a catchy line... It’s far more driven by a business model that requires a steady stream of new rules for people to “have to” buy if they want to play against other people. It’s been a pretty darned successful model for the shareholders, but it also invariably causes bloat.

Valete,

JohnS

You don't HAVE to buy anything. If other people want to use the rules THEY have to bring a book that supports it. No one is holding a gun to YOUR head and making YOU buy anything other than the codex and BRB.

Wow... Hyperbole much?

I thought putting “have to” in quotes made it fairly clear that, no, I do not believe that players HAVE to buy anything and that I certainly understand that no one is holding a gun to MY head and make ME buy anything. If you have a gaming group that agrees to it, you can play with a completely free, completely home-brewed, set of rules. Or you can play the original Rogue Trader rules. Or whatever you want. But incentivizing players to buy (and re-buy) multiple books, codices, etc.. absolutely is GW”s business model. And an invariable side effect of that is rules bloat (and codex creep, FWIW, but that’s a separate topic).

I don’t think even the staunchest GW white knight could argue with that point, could they? And just to be clear, that is not, in itself, a criticism. It’s an observation based on GW’s behavior over the past, oh, couple of decades... As I noted, it’s proven to be a pretty successful business model for GW. Again, not a criticism just another observation.

Valete,

JohnS