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I'd also like to point out, nothing about USRs means you can't print the text on the datasheet.

Magic the Gathering has lots of USRs, and manage to fit reminder text on their tiny cards. I'm sure that when you pay $50 or more for a Codex, GW can print reminder text on the datsheets.

I haven’t played a ton of 9th, but I’ve noticed that these stream lined “decisions” do add a layer that urges the user of all of these tools to act wisely. Getting ahead of oneself early in spending cp’s is something I’ve seen a lot of, especially spending pregame to get gear, warlord traits, and deployment shenanigans; this has also led to me hearing “man I wish I saved that CP...”

Whenever I hear “rhinos suck” followed by “I can only protect one with smokescreen per turn” I’m taken back to rhino rush Blood Angel glory days. Given some of their capabilities, coming from the new supplement I’ve heard through the grapevine, we don’t want more survivable transports. The opponents I play are so worried about scoring objectives T1/2 that my transports largely stay intact, they are busy holding/clearing parts of the board or setting up to do actions, while wiping my ability to do so. This typically leaves my Rhinos and Corvus just getting plinked at.

I guess what I’m saying is that in the older editions, you’d pay 5 points per model for the right to have that melta bomb just in case you got into combat with a dreadnaught that you can’t do anything to, I suppose smoke screen and assault launchers are the same. They had a small cost baked into the model that now comes as an opportunity cost mid game instead. You are also in charge of where/when that gets deployed so you could put your opponent on the back foot by having that option in your toolbox mid game rather than that opportunity coming and going at the list stage where a lot of people would shave those options out anyway to save the 10 points to give their Sergeant a powerfist. I play AoS as well and nominally the CP has been given a 50point cost in that system. In 40K I’d say it’s between 20-70 points maybe even up to worth 100 points if you get the exact right instances setup, but saving a rhino full of a 245 point combat unit with support characters early on is worth a lot. You’ll rarely pay to bring smokescreens to the table in competitive settings anyways because you might run into an army with no ranged support, or it’s all capped at 18-24”. They aren’t even that effective at what they do in the first place.

Apples to oranges, my friend. All those rules are both in the same book AND present on a vast number of units in those book.

Meanwhile, stuff like Zealot only appeared as a warlord trait that you randomly rolled on in one of the two tables.

It's not worth going into details, but not a single thing you wrote is an argument for re-incarnating that horrible abomination that was the USR section of 7th.

In essence, the only good solution would to get rid of books completely. Since that won't happen, the next best thing is keeping books to an absolute minimum.

 Jidmah wrote:
Apples to oranges, my friend. All those rules are both in the same book AND present on a vast number of units in those book.

Meanwhile, stuff like Zealot only appeared as a warlord trait that you randomly rolled on in one of the two tables.

It's not worth going into details, but not a single thing you wrote is an argument for re-incarnating that horrible abomination that was the USR section of 7th.

In essence, the only good solution would to get rid of books completely. Since that won't happen, the next best thing is keeping books to an absolute minimum.

Two things.

1) Any old Chaplain had Zealot, as did various equivalents in other Codecs.

2) GW screwing up the implementation does not mean an idea is bad. I will certainly agree-7th edition USRs were a mess. But USRs weren't the problem, GW was.

 JNAProductions wrote:
1) Any old Chaplain had Zealot, as did various equivalents in other Codecs.

Orks could only have Zealot if you rolled the right number for Thrakka's warlord traits, and I'm fairly sure that not a single army was using the zealot rule as often as any of the army-wide rules of any 8th codex.
There might have been a some formation somewhere which gave Zealot to everyone, but I would have to figure out what the contents of the 40+ space marine rule sources for 7th is before being sure.

2) GW screwing up the implementation does not mean an idea is bad. I will certainly agree-7th edition USRs were a mess. But USRs weren't the problem, GW was.

USR printed in a book months, if not years before the units using them, will be a problem, no matter how perfectly it is executed.

Referencing doesn't work with paper.

 Jidmah wrote:
Apples to oranges, my friend. All those rules are both in the same book

Wrong. A good number of them are from Psychic Awakening: Engine War.

 Jidmah wrote:
AND present on a vast number of units in those book.

True, but I fail to see how this makes the datasheet alone anymore useful. The fact that I have to turn to page 87 or whatever of Codex Chaos Daemons is still a hassle, even if it's not Page 106 of the BRB.

 Jidmah wrote:
Meanwhile, stuff like Zealot only appeared as a warlord trait that you randomly rolled on in one of the two tables.

Wrong. Chaplains had Zealot. Additionally, Adepta Sororitas had zealot on a lot of units. So did the Chaos apostles. And Astra Militarum priests. And many Renegades and Heretics units depending on what banner they took. I knew exactly what Zealot did because I used it often, and so did many of my opponents. It granted Fearless and Hatred.

 Jidmah wrote:
It's not worth going into details, but not a single thing you wrote is an argument for re-incarnating that horrible abomination that was the USR section of 7th.

In essence, the only good solution would to get rid of books completely. Since that won't happen, the next best thing is keeping books to an absolute minimum.

No, the best solution isn't to give up. The best solution is indeed to move towards an all-digital model, and as consumers we should be pushing GW to do that. Not just be like "well, they probably won't so why bother." Try making the world a better place instead of succumbing to whatever other people/corporations have in store for you!

"Rule of One" and nonscalability are sloppy design that incentivize running Stratagem-dependent units as large buffblobs over something resembling maneuver and an army. People who say "nonscaling" is not an issue clearly do not remember the derp that was the 5th ed Sisters of Battle army that gave the entire army D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the scale.

Now, regarding the "add a Keyword", that is amusing but it almost feels like a halfway addition. I've argued since 8th created "scunthorpe profiles" that weapons themselves should have Keywords, to avoid ambiguity over which weapons/abilities interact with what. ("Salamanders are resilient to Skorchas, but not to Baleflamers.")

So...GW half-implemented that idea I guess?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
snip

So, just so I get your argument right... you would prefer to have rules in a different place than all the rest of your rules, so that you have to carry around, check FAQs for and put on your table while gaming? Why?

No, the best solution isn't to give up. The best solution is indeed to move towards an all-digital model, and as consumers we should be pushing GW to do that. Not just be like "well, they probably won't so why bother." Try making the world a better place instead of succumbing to whatever other people/corporations have in store for you!

I'm a realist. GW is not my friend, but a business. Quick googling tells me that turning a PDF of a codex into a hard-cover book is roughly 5€ per book, including shipping, so they are probably making over 30 bucks per book printed. Printing books is printing money for them, moving to digital is losing that money.
From the state of their app, a proper digital solution that can be monetized is still two or more years away, and in addition there are quite a few people who still want books for some reason.
And that is assuming that they already have digital solutions for their internal work that aren't Microsoft Excel.

So books aren't going anywhere before something like 11th edition. So I'm arguing based on that reality, not on what could have been if GW wasn't 15 years behind the rest of the gaming industry.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
snip

So, just so I get your argument right... you would prefer to have rules in a different place than all the rest of your rules, so that you have to carry around, check FAQs for and put on your table while gaming? Why?

No, the best solution isn't to give up. The best solution is indeed to move towards an all-digital model, and as consumers we should be pushing GW to do that. Not just be like "well, they probably won't so why bother." Try making the world a better place instead of succumbing to whatever other people/corporations have in store for you!

I'm a realist. GW is not my friend, but a business. Quick googling tells me that turning a PDF of a codex into a hard-cover book is roughly 5€ per book, including shipping, so they are probably making over 30 bucks per book printed. Printing books is printing money for them, moving to digital is losing that money.
From the state of their app, a proper digital solution that can be monetized is still two or more years away, and in addition there are quite a few people who still want books for some reason.
And that is assuming that they already have digital solutions for their internal work that aren't Microsoft Excel.

So books aren't going anywhere before something like 11th edition. So I'm arguing based on that reality, not on what could have been if GW wasn't 15 years behind the rest of the gaming industry.

My argument is that a digital solution is better - and that GW is perfectly capable of carrying one out right this moment. Azyr, their AOS app, has everything I would ever need for a game and a functioning army builder.

GW is mishandling 40k, but not because of incompetence. Because of the customers they know they can milk - after all, you said it yourself. Books are profitable. That means the customers have to not simply accept their fate.

And the fact that it feels like with AoS they care about the rules at first print. I haven't heard of as many imbalances barring few exceptions compared to 40k. They know they can target the same white knights who have been saying "it isn't a competitive game and I've literally never played anything else!!!!!1!" for years. AoS they literally had to step up everything they were doing because that first iteration they tried to sell was, for a lack of a better word, very stupid.

I’m trying to read in between the lines how it got from keyword and scalability discussions to GW is a business taking my money, the age old USR/bloat whinge, and a weird take on how nobody got zealot before unless they rolled the right Warlord trait, but maybe they could plug it as a Stratagem now which I think is an argument for the CP system while the post was originally against it?

I do see the fault in the one use system, and they do make allowances for them in certain acquisition stratagems so it’s not a big leap for them to tuck that into things like the Smokescreen version down the line. If you’re playing an upscaled game, which are typically outside of the vagaries of competitive rules lawyering, you could come up with reasonable lists pregame as to which strats could be used more than once. At the 2k level most people I see play I’m just not really seeing the detraction of the new method, and I prefer where the choice is as I feel like list building is complicated enough and I’ve been playing this game for decades.

I'm not really seeing how moving smokelaunchers to a strat instead of a datasheet ability makes listbuilding easier but you do you. As I see it choice is actually taken away from me, since I can only do it once a turn so potential strategic use has just been cut out of the game rather than added in my opinion.
As for reasonable list, maybe but not were I play. People here prefer to stick to RAW as much as possible and there is little I can do about that. If I start arguing that no really it is sensible to use smokelaunchers twice above 2k games I'm just getting a lot of players who now want exeptions for some of their strats too which might or might not be resonable.

It's not like there aren't already stratagems who get extra uses depending on whether you play incursion or onslaught...

 Jidmah wrote:
It's not like there aren't already stratagems who get extra uses depending on whether you play incursion or onslaught...

This I did not know, care to list some examples?

 Castozor wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
It's not like there aren't already stratagems who get extra uses depending on whether you play incursion or onslaught...

This I did not know, care to list some examples?

Main ones I can remember are requisition strategems (IE additional relics or heroes of the chapter in the SM codex - you can pay for 1/2/3 additional relics or WLTs in incursion/strikeforce/onslaught level games respectively) which is a good rule, and shows that GW knows there needs to be some scalability. At the same time those type of rules still feel out of place both mechanically and narratively for wargear options like smoke launchers.

Relic/Hero of the Chapter for example.

So it's not like there is no way to scale stratagems, GW just didn't see the need to scale smoke launchers - possibly to not make it a no-brainer decision to just smoke everything your opponent is targeting with big guns.

Relics makes sense I suppose, but the old war gear smoke launchers already had the trade of not being able to shoot in the same turn as well as being a once per game thing. I'm just not a fan of taking wargear options and turning them into strats. If GW feels smoke launchers are/were a no brainer make them cost points instead. This way we kept the old flexibility of using them whenever you wanted without being a no brainer.

They changed smoke launchers because in the previous incarnation no one was using them as intended.

Smoke launchers only got used when you either couldn't shoot, you had no real shooting weapons or you had a way to shoot and smoke through an order/stratagem.

The concept of foregoing offensive to put on a defensive buff, simply didn't work..

Since it was working just as a gamey gimmick, they finally turned it officially into one by making it a stratagem.

I think the idea that somebody is missing out of anything in regards to smoke launchers being a one use stratagem that they can’t use on the Land Raider nobody takes or the Rhino that show up so frequently to be a bit unfounded but I guess that’s my opinion. If it’s about options and not having them, it looks like strats are getting a bit limited like rerolls. Honour the Chapter is only for Assault Intercessors now even as an example off the top of my head. From the sounds of it the blood angels old mechanics still exist but they come from different resources making some of the choices, at list building and throughout the game, more fluid and actually based on knowledge of the game and trying to apply specific resources at specific times. I like it.

Spoletta wrote:
They changed smoke launchers because in the previous incarnation no one was using them as intended.

Smoke launchers only got used when you either couldn't shoot, you had no real shooting weapons or you had a way to shoot and smoke through an order/stratagem.

The concept of foregoing offensive to put on a defensive buff, simply didn't work..

Since it was working just as a gamey gimmick, they finally turned it officially into one by making it a stratagem.

The obvious solution to this is to not front-load offense so badly that trading it away for defense appears obviously foolhardy even to the newest player.

But making it a stratagem is hamfisted and silly, the GW way!

Spoletta wrote:
They changed smoke launchers because in the previous incarnation no one was using them as intended.

Smoke launchers only got used when you either couldn't shoot, you had no real shooting weapons or you had a way to shoot and smoke through an order/stratagem.

The concept of foregoing offensive to put on a defensive buff, simply didn't work..

Since it was working just as a gamey gimmick, they finally turned it officially into one by making it a stratagem.

How was that not as intended, though?