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"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
AnomanderRake wrote: ...I can't recall them ever nerfing a statline (except by accident when they didn't do any math before writing the 8e Indexes)...
Which goalpost moved?
I guess if you really just define the sum of a unit's rules by their WS, BS, T, whatever, then yep that's rarely a thing that changes that much and more often gets buffed rather than nerfed.
The things that tend to get nerfed are combos, stratagems (if they dont just get totally removed), special rule interactions, auras, soup combos, etc etc etc, while the core stats of units tend more frequently to be increased.
One might call this "A Good Thing". When I look back at 'What made a competitive army crazy' in the past it's stuff like:
-Using a trait, 3 stratagems, and a relic to make a space marine captain oneshot a knight
-Using character rule interactions to make an army untargetable past an army of Culexus Assassins
-Using the old Ynnari rules to make anything from the eldar factions double their firepower
-Using soup to provide an infinite CP battery to a hyper-powerful relic on an undercosted superheavy
-Using unit and strat interactions to make a unit of cultists hyper-powerful
-Using old busted flyer interactions to make a hyper mobile firebase army that can still do ojbectives and screen your stuff away from objectives
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
One of the biggest things that bugs me about 8e/9e is that there are numbers on the statlines that are straight-up wrong because GW didn't bother to do any math in the 8e Indexes, and has been frantically trying to patch them with special rule bloat so they can avoid admitting they screwed up and having to actually go back and do math. The whole "shoots twice" special rule was a half-assed patch to try and address the fact that they didn't understand how they wanted blast weapons to work in the new system and accidentally made them bad against units and good against armour, and tried to fix their performance against units while making them even better against armour instead of actually trying to fix the problem.
You could call the nerfs to stratagem combos a good thing; the problem I have is that the stratagem combos only exist because GW screwed up on the statlines and isn't interested in fixing them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/02 19:38:10
AnomanderRake wrote: ...I can't recall them ever nerfing a statline (except by accident when they didn't do any math before writing the 8e Indexes)...
Which goalpost moved?
I guess if you really just define the sum of a unit's rules by their WS, BS, T, whatever, then yep that's rarely a thing that changes that much and more often gets buffed rather than nerfed.
The things that tend to get nerfed are combos, stratagems (if they dont just get totally removed), special rule interactions, auras, soup combos, etc etc etc, while the core stats of units tend more frequently to be increased.
One might call this "A Good Thing". When I look back at 'What made a competitive army crazy' in the past it's stuff like:
-Using a trait, 3 stratagems, and a relic to make a space marine captain oneshot a knight
-Using character rule interactions to make an army untargetable past an army of Culexus Assassins
-Using the old Ynnari rules to make anything from the eldar factions double their firepower
-Using soup to provide an infinite CP battery to a hyper-powerful relic on an undercosted superheavy
-Using unit and strat interactions to make a unit of cultists hyper-powerful
-Using old busted flyer interactions to make a hyper mobile firebase army that can still do ojbectives and screen your stuff away from objectives
So you agree that they added too many special rules all over the place and its resulting in unintended interactions that's screwing with the game balance?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/02 19:44:27
NinthMusketeer wrote: The increased difficulty of balancing doesn't matter because they aren't properly accounting for even the basic factors to begin with. At this point it is about as likely to help as it is to hurt in any given instance.
Exactly.
It might be hard to achieve perfect balance. It is not hard to do basic things like...calculate the average damage increase of a 1point stratagem compared to other ones. If one Averages 3 mortal wounds and another 6...there is a clear issue. If a stratagem turns a str 3 into the most deadly weapon the in the game...yeah...something is off. Scientism not even required here. GW is failing over and over at very basic things. At this point it cant be considered failing. They are actually succeeding at giving us the unbalanced rules that they want. Only explanation.
As has probably been pointed out in the past, there actually isn't an entirely clear issue.
Let's take the whole 'x strat does Y mortal wounds while Y strat does Z mortal wounds, CLEARLY AND OBVIOUSLY OP!!!" - it never seems to actually examine the circumstances of how and why the number of mortal wounds from the strat are achieved.
How many points of models/upgrades/whatever do you have to put on a unit in order to make the stratagem work?
Is the action that generates the mortal wounds putting the unit in a situation it wants to be in, or a situation it doesn't want to be in? A stratagem that generates mortal wounds for a close combat unit that requires that close combat unit to charge is obviously going to be inherently more useful than a stratagem that generates mortal wounds for a shooting unit that requires that shooting unit to charge.
You actually make the argument less compelling the more you simplify the situation and make it seem like 'a no brainer'.
By default, most stratagems that generate mortal wounds basically on-demand tend to have a value of 2MW for 1CP on average. Since it's a super recent codex, let's use the Drukhari "Haywire Grenade" stratagem as a template for that baseline - it's slightly limited (only works on vehicles) but achieving it is very easy (basically any INFANTRY unit in the codex needs to be within grenade range, and the codex is full of fast open topped transports.)
Similar point of comparison, the stratagem "Hellfire Round" or "Hellfire Bolt" or whatever the D3 from a heavy bolter is called in the marine 'dex. Achieving it is low cost (include 1 Infantry-borne 15pt weapon upgrade anywhere in your list and be within 36" range) and on average it gives slightly lower than 2mw, but in its somewhat more limited form, it gives 2mw on average (2/3 chance to cause 3MW = 2mw on average vs monsters)
The outlier we are discussing here, I presume, is the new version of the Wrath of Mars stratagem, which is 1CP for any unit under 10PL, which includes basically any of the unit combinations that can with average rolls get it to its cap of 6mw - 10 sicarian infiltrators, 10 skystalkers, 20 skitarii of either type, etc.
Given that in order to generate 3mw from this stratagem, you need to put down 27 shots on average, the amount of investment to get up to the cap is fairly substantial, but it seems like the PL cap for the stratagem to go from 1cp to 2cp is what's off.
Changing the cap from 10PL to 8PL would allow a min-size squad of Kataphron Destroyers with Grav and Phosphor, which generate a little under 2MW with the strat. 15 skitarii vanguard might still potentially be a problem as those could generate 5mw from the stratagem, so you could either bump up that unit's Power Level rating in particular, or lower the cap down to 6 and just accept that it won't be good with Kataphrons.
the_scotsman wrote: ...yeah GW certainly never nerfs things that appear frequently in competitive play, Certainly not within the last, I guess 15-20 minutes?
GW does hike the prices on things that see too much tournament play, yes, and occasionally rewords a stratagem. They buff things way more than they nerf them, however, and I can't recall them ever nerfing a statline (except by accident when they didn't do any math before writing the 8e Indexes), so the overall trend is power creep piled upon power creep.
Kastelan Robots went from shooting twice to +1 BS, Repulsors went from shooting twice to +1 to hit, the skitarii doggos went from 3W to 2W, the skitarii bird dudes lost their MW grenade thingies.
I have almost no doubt that if you were to take a competitive imperial soup list from the Castellan meta of 8th, and play a game where that list follows all the rules that would have applied at the time vs a current tournament competitive list from the new admech 'dex, the Castellan list would rock the Admech list's socks right off.
In fact, I'd be really curious to see how that would play out, maybe I'll try running that on TTS or something, see how much power creep there actually has or hasn't been.
@ Scottsman
Seems to me you are too focused on the averages and not enough on the fact that 1cp strats that are limited to 3 max mortals compared to one maxed at 6. Even if they averaged the same number of mortals the max 6 is better because...despite what people like to claim - above average rolls are actually quite common. Though - just a 10 man ranger squad will do more mortals than a 20 man warrior blob on average with 1 cp stratagem AND the admech stratagem can be used on 20 man blobs for 2 cp and do double the damage...which just makes it flat better - with 0 discussion necessary further. It is a better stratagem - it is not necessary for 1 to have restrictions and not the other. This is the definition of OP. They are not even trying to balance the game - they are trying to unbalance it.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
So you agree that they added too many special rules all over the place and its resulting in unintended interactions that's screwing with the game balance?
I am not sure if that is always the case, there are stratagems that plain represent gear options. And sometimes it gets really wierd. 1ksons get inferno bolts on their dudes. GK have blessed ammo on their dudes, but only in lore. In game terms they have it on one unit per turn, if they have the CP to pay for it. That is a substential game difference. Same with DE and their archons huskblade/dijn blade. Something that should be an Xpts weapon is turned in to a stratagem giving relics.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
AnomanderRake wrote: ...stratagem combos only exist because GW screwed up on the statlines...
Stratagems also help to bring narrative into the game and if well-balanced could help balance out the snowballing effect of losing units. Since you don't lose CP because of your opponent's actions your CP will always provide you however much benefit they provide. A unit cannot provide a benefit if it is shot off the table T1. Stuff like shoot twice for the Exocrine exists because GW wanted to make mission packs, they probably thought they had to get rules in there, so they "fixed" bad units since they had to print rules anyway.
Nurglitch wrote: All GW can do is either increase a unit's deadliness or its survivability, and that's basically all a unit can do.
Mobility and utility.
May you elaborate and explain how these don't just dovetail with the deadliness or survivability elements?
Increasing a unit's mobility could let it get unto an objective and score VP that you would otherwise have been unable to score, it could also help complete a charge and tie up a unit and prevent it from shooting at a second unit of yours. In terms of utility you could have a redeploy Stratagem allowing you to change your strategy and focus on a different part of the board than your initial deployment would have allowed.
I think you risk sounding too reductionistic if you try to reduce these things I've brought up as deadliness or survivability, in the same vein I could say that every game is a question of probability management, now Go and Tic Tac Toe are suddenly the same and we cannot have a meaningful discussion. I'll admit I'm a huge fan of Stratagems, just not as they are laid out right now.
I am working on a new mission set and updating my Stratagem/Chapter Tactics rework for 9th, but without a set of points to go along with them they are kind of useless, without playtesting points are kind of useless and I doubt I will ever get to playtest so it's hard to prioritize it over doing the CSM Crusade update I am homebrewing and other silly stuff. I think the hobby would benefit greatly if FLG produced their own Chapter Approved to overhaul the game. Evil man Reecio has admitted that he thinks the bloat is over the top, even a super simple DA Terminator spam army becomes complicated because of the layers and layers of rules.
Tycho wrote: ...changing mobility isn't likely to solve a lot...
I totally agree and I didn't mean to say that it would, just that Stratagems and unit design cannot be shoved into these two boxes. 95% of the time when 40k has a problem it is damage or durability related.
AnomanderRake wrote: ...stratagem combos only exist because GW screwed up on the statlines...
Stratagems also help to bring narrative into the game and if well-balanced could help balance out the snowballing effect of losing units. Since you don't lose CP because of your opponent's actions your CP will always provide you however much benefit they provide. A unit cannot provide a benefit if it is shot off the table T1. Stuff like shoot twice for the Exocrine exists because GW wanted to make mission packs, they probably thought they had to get rules in there, so they "fixed" bad units since they had to print rules anyway...
Shoot twice exists because GW wasn't paying attention when writing the new rules for things that used to be blast weapons, and accidentally made all d6-shot artillery bad at killing infantry and decent at killing armour. Instead of fixing the blast weapons properly they threw a special rule in and ran away. The damage creep of 9th is largely because GW noticed that they'd made blast artillery better AT than dedicated AT by accident, and couldn't be bothered to address it; the "reduce incoming damage by 1" special rules, similarly, are half-assed attempts to patch the fact that they got the damage/wounds values of the whole game badly wrong and spamming D2/Dd3 is better AT than taking dedicated AT weapons.
Nurglitch wrote: All GW can do is either increase a unit's deadliness or its survivability, and that's basically all a unit can do.
Mobility and utility.
May you elaborate and explain how these don't just dovetail with the deadliness or survivability elements?
Increasing a unit's mobility could let it get unto an objective and score VP that you would otherwise have been unable to score, it could also help complete a charge and tie up a unit and prevent it from shooting at a second unit of yours. In terms of utility you could have a redeploy Stratagem allowing you to change your strategy and focus on a different part of the board than your initial deployment would have allowed.
I think you risk sounding too reductionistic if you try to reduce these things I've brought up as deadliness or survivability, in the same vein I could say that every game is a question of probability management, now Go and Tic Tac Toe are suddenly the same and we cannot have a meaningful discussion. I'll admit I'm a huge fan of Stratagems, just not as they are laid out right now.
I am working on a new mission set and updating my Stratagem/Chapter Tactics rework for 9th, but without a set of points to go along with them they are kind of useless, without playtesting points are kind of useless and I doubt I will ever get to playtest so it's hard to prioritize it over doing the CSM Crusade update I am homebrewing and other silly stuff. I think the hobby would benefit greatly if FLG produced their own Chapter Approved to overhaul the game. Evil man Reecio has admitted that he thinks the bloat is over the top, even a super simple DA Terminator spam army becomes complicated because of the layers and layers of rules.
It seems more realistic to reduce it to the ability to take or to hold objectives then. I'm trying to represent every possible permutation they're going to err on one side or the other, so that all else being equal some armies will have an advantage in the shoving match over objectives.
You're not likely to have every single one of these go off at the same time, but it is something that if you could pull this off, you can one-hit anything in the game barring a warwound titan.
The problem is, just going on the unit's stats it isn't, in itself, broken. It's when you combo everything together that it gets out of hand.
Yes, and it is extremely funny that some people think that 8th and 9th got rid of the problems 7th had.
40k has always been a mess, GW have never been interested in making the game consistent, structured, minimal (as opposed to bloated) and balanced.
Also, the thing is that you cannot blame the players for seeking those crazy combos. They are playing the game correctly, finding optimal strategies and lists, combining the most efficient things. It is what players do in every game - they look for the most efficient ways to play. Forcing an ethic on them that would go something like 'don't be that guy, come on, you're not here to win games' is ridiculous (I have known cases where people actually proposed that). That's why I agree that this is a flaw of the game.
As for what we can do, I am at a loss. Making up our own rules requires a lot of effort and it would make newcomers confused.
40k is really going down hill. It was bad and now it is getting worse (T5 orks anyone?).
Not as funny as people who think 8th or 9th's problems are even a 10th of what 7th's were. If you were here for that and honestly believe THIS is somehow 'getting worse' than 7th, the problem is with you getting whiny-er not the game.
40K isn't a wargame anymore. The entire game is designed around rules interactions rather than battlefield prowess. Of course balance isn't a priority. The game is the meta.
cjmate8 wrote: WH40k is becoming increasingly difficult to balance. Recently, a lot of armies are getting stacking buffs, and I feel like this makes it more difficult to balance the game because the value of a unit ranges widely depending on the buffs available. This has always kind'of been in the game, but it's getting increasingly "more". I say more because I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing, it just is.
Here's an example: Repentia
Repentia are not, in themselves, broken; in fact, they're super mediocre with their base statline; however, you can make them broken:
1. Bloody Rose Benefits (+1 attack, -1ap)
2. Bloody Rose stratagem (+1 to wound)
3. The passion (Exploding 6s on unmodified wound rolls)
4. Missionary (+1 attack)
5. Desperate for Redemption (Fight twice)
6. Triumph of St. Katherine (+1 to hit)
7. Palatine/Superior (Re-roll wound rolls of 1)
You're not likely to have every single one of these go off at the same time, but it is something that if you could pull this off, you can one-hit anything in the game barring a warwound titan.
The problem is, just going on the unit's stats it isn't, in itself, broken. It's when you combo everything together that it gets out of hand.
And there's other stuff in the game that does this: Ork Boyz
1. Ghazghkull (+1 attack)
2. Choppa (+1 attack)
3 20+ unit (+1 attack)
4. Goffs (Re-rolling hit rolls of 1 + 6s generate extra attacks)
5. Waagh Banner/Lukky Stikk (+1 to hit)
6. Get Stukk in Ladz (Fight twice)
7. Skarboyz (+1 strength)
8. Overwhelming Green Tide (Bring the unit make at full size)
This isn't particularly broken because choppas don't have ap, but if they had ap, a unit of 30 doing this would one-hit a knight without the fight twice stratagem. Without any of these buffs, though, the unit is mediocre.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the solution isn't simply to increase the points of the unit, because what's making the unit good isn't the unit itself in many cases, but the thing buffing it. This makes it difficult to gauge the value of a unit on paper because there's so many external modifiers making the unit work. It also becomes an issue that the same buffs might break something else. Any Sister of Battle unit that gets released in the future has the potential to use most of the stuff that buffs Repentia, like the new Celestian Sacrosents. Same thing with Orkz. Any Ork infantry in the future can use waagh banner, ghazghkull and clan traits, so that has to be kept in mind when balancing those units.
I don't think this is bad for the game, but I do think it makes balancing an issue; and I feel like the game is adding a lot more of these things because most armies are getting a combat doctrine-like ability
One thing I want to see across both major GW systems is total abolishment of dice rerolls. They slow down the game, make the game horribly unfun and generally muddle everything. Look at the new Admech. Having your foot sloggers get hit on a 2+ AND reroll 1's might as well just replace the hit with "This weapon always hits its target" and move on. I think getting rid of rerolls entirely is the way to move forward.
ERJAK wrote: ...Not as funny as people who think 8th or 9th's problems are even a 10th of what 7th's were. If you were here for that and honestly believe THIS is somehow 'getting worse' than 7th, the problem is with you getting whiny-er not the game.
I forgot to include that on my list of "useless platitudes the 40k community likes to spout". "But it's better than 7th!" isn't a justification for anything, even in the rare cases where it's true.
AnomanderRake wrote: Shoot twice exists because GW wasn't paying attention when writing the new rules for things that used to be blast weapons...
Shoot twice was created for CSM to give Slaanesh marked units something special, Khorne are the choppy ones so they get fight twice, Tzeentch is the tricky one so they get an extra psychic power, Nurgle is the tough one so they get healing, Slaanesh got shooting, most likely because of Noise Marines.
It seems more realistic to reduce it to the ability to take or to hold objectives then. I'm trying to represent every possible permutation they're going to err on one side or the other, so that all else being equal some armies will have an advantage in the shoving match over objectives.
Wouldn't it be silly to boil down a soccer player to how much they help their team score more goals? It's true, yes, but there is also dribbling, passing, throw-ins, penalty kicks, speed, endurance, there is a difference between an excellent dribbler and an excellent penalty kicker, same as there is a difference between a unit that shoots twice, one that gets transhuman, one that shoots and then moves, a unit that shuts off enemy auras, a unit that advances twice without shooting or fighting, even if they all help you score VP.
Sledgehammer wrote: 40K isn't a wargame anymore. The entire game is designed around rules interactions rather than battlefield prowess. Of course balance isn't a priority. The game is the meta.
It was never a simulation, otherwise, Space Marines would be outnumbered hundreds to one.
AnomanderRake wrote: Shoot twice exists because GW wasn't paying attention when writing the new rules for things that used to be blast weapons...
Shoot twice was created for CSM to give Slaanesh marked units something special, Khorne are the choppy ones so they get fight twice, Tzeentch is the tricky one so they get an extra psychic power, Nurgle is the tough one so they get healing, Slaanesh got shooting, most likely because of Noise Marines...
Sorry. "Shoot twice if you don't move too fast the special rule that got stuck onto loads of tanks that were very bad in the Indexes" exists because GW wasn't paying attention when writing the new rules for things that used to be blast weapons.
vict0988 wrote: It was never a simulation, otherwise, Space Marines would be outnumbered hundreds to one.
Very true. It's more designed as a tool for story telling, though many seem to prefer the competitive side (and I don't mind that side all that much honestly) but to me the game doesn't really get fun through trying to out play the other person but through the moments you can tell stories about after the game is finished.
Still remember a friend of mine years ago who managed to finish off a Warhound Titan with a heavy bolter. Heck, I still remember my first game playing against an Eldar Avatar, hitting it with a melta and asking my my opponent what I needed to roll to wound it and being told "7". A dick move to not tell me that when he knew I was running Sisters and didn't have much to hurt it with, but funny even years later.
ERJAK wrote: ...Not as funny as people who think 8th or 9th's problems are even a 10th of what 7th's were. If you were here for that and honestly believe THIS is somehow 'getting worse' than 7th, the problem is with you getting whiny-er not the game.
I forgot to include that on my list of "useless platitudes the 40k community likes to spout". "But it's better than 7th!" isn't a justification for anything, even in the rare cases where it's true.
Just want to add that 7th was a bloated mess by the end of the edition due to GW's runaway power creep but at least the game had some depth of mechanics and attempted to create some interesting mechanics through it's formations. GW was (and still is) out of it's league in terms of ability to attempt to balance the game but at least they sorta scraped together something that was entertaining despite the horrible balance. 8th and 9th still has excessive power creep going on and poor balance despite having a fraction of the game complexity and is frankly far more boring to play.
6th and 7th balance issue could be mitigated by talking with your opponent to come up with a roughly fair matchup. Can't fix 8th or 9th from being as shallow as a fountain without writing a new edition yourself.
Sorry but I just hate it when 7th gets ragged on as justification for how newer 40k is somehow better when it's still a sub par mess of a game but with even fewer redeeming qualities.
"Hold my shoota, I'm goin in"
Armies (7th edition points)
7000+ Points Death Skullz
4000 Points
+ + 3000 Points "The Fiery Heart of the Emperor"
3500 Points "Void Kraken" Space Marines
3000 Points "Bard's Booze Cruise"
Amen to that.
7th had issues like allies, insane formation bonuses, uncapped modifiers (invisible deathstars) and most importantly it had no regular FAQs, Erratas or point updates.
The game had better rules though, way more interesting than the shallow game of 8th and 9th.
Isn't this just a rehash of the canned strategy debate? Should you have to take character A with unit B using Relic C using strategem D to do massive damage? Or should you just be able to take Character A and unit B in isolation and they have no rules synergy between each other at all? (Also ban stratagems because apparently 4 years in they are still too complicated or something.)
In practice I'm not sure its an issue of "balance", unless the combo is out of whack with other combos employed across the game. The fact running unsupported Repentia in the wrong chapter is "bad" isn't necesarilly a balance problem. Reductio ad absurdium perhaps - but I think the logic for it being bad ultimately leads to "I should be able to bring 2k points of anything and have a 50% chance to win versus 2k points of anything" - and that can't happen unless there are no real choices.
I see 7th edition is far enough in the rearview mirror that people are unironically nostalgic about formations now
You know, formations. The thing they made that gave your army a bunch of extra rules (hell, a bunch of extra points if you were lucky) if you ran a specific set of units and oh look GW is selling a bundle that has the formation's units in it now isn't that nice of them to make it so convenient for us to purchase product.
Tyel wrote: The fact running unsupported Repentia in the wrong chapter is "bad" isn't necesarilly a balance problem. Reductio ad absurdium perhaps - but I think the logic for it being bad ultimately leads to "I should be able to bring 2k points of anything and have a 50% chance to win versus 2k points of anything" - and that can't happen unless there are no real choices.
Being able to run literally anything is far cry than running more than variations of 1-3 lists which is what happens when things get out of whack, there is a huge middle ground here. Being unable to run units in specific chapters is a terrible problem because in the fluff those chapters use those units, even if they are most proficient in other areas. Like Blood Angels Devastator Squads and Imperial Fists Assault Squads. What you are doing smells a lot like wiping GW's backside because they are too lazy to do it themselves. Yes, every SM Chapter should be able to run Devastator Squads and Assault Squads, the Codex Astartes demands they exist, but I am supposed to believe they never partake in an important battle?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/03 09:00:08
Vankraken wrote: 6th and 7th balance issue could be mitigated by talking with your opponent to come up with a roughly fair matchup.
Nonsense. In 6th and 7th the only way for a low tier codex to defeat a high tier codex was by giving massive point advantages.
Sorry but I just hate it when 7th gets ragged on as justification for how newer 40k is somehow better when it's still a sub par mess of a game but with even fewer redeeming qualities.
7th might be your favorite edition, but was objectively a horrible game. The lack of proper FAQs, having to play money for single datasheets, rules being spread to dozens of sources, free buffs for favored armies with zero support for others, completely untested books with dysfunctional rules, invincible/invisible deathstars, a horribly bloated psychic system that completely fell apart to psychic armies, a smattering of USR that all did similar things and the whole IC/confer mess.
Oh, and before you start to tell me how your group fixed all that - that's no different from "writing an new edition yourself".
I'll take the 30k people's word for saying that the 7th edition core rules were a solid foundation that you apparently can build a good game on (30k would be dead otherwise). But 7th edition definitely was nothing short of a giant mountain of gak on that solid foundation.
Late 8th and 9th might have problems, but outside the stupid release cycle issues, most of those do not affect your regular garage hammer games - unlike 7th whose issue ruined the game for everyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Aenar wrote: Amen to that.
7th had issues like allies, insane formation bonuses, uncapped modifiers (invisible deathstars) and most importantly it had no regular FAQs, Erratas or point updates.
The game had better rules though, way more interesting than the shallow game of 8th and 9th.
7th edition isn't just the BRB though. It's the BRB plus all codices plus all supplement plus all other rule sources GW pulled out of their arse at that time.
The BRB didn't make me quit 40k. The codices, supplements and formations did.
And there was nothing interesting in getting tabled T1 or the enemy army simply losing 0 models because invisible.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/03 09:02:26
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
I liked 7th edition to be honest, outside competitive gaming, but other than power creep and rules/codex bloat I'm glad that several core mechanics like AV for vehicles, damage table on vehicles, inability to fall back in combat, blasts/templates, invisibility, low S weapons with high rate of fire that glanced vehicles on 6 regardless of their AV values, initiative, re-rollable invulns, AP that was all or nothing, deathstars, alliances with no drawback etc... are now gone and don't exist anymore.
Aenar wrote: Amen to that.
7th had issues like allies, insane formation bonuses, uncapped modifiers (invisible deathstars) and most importantly it had no regular FAQs, Erratas or point updates.
The game had better rules though, way more interesting than the shallow game of 8th and 9th.
I don't get this sentiment. 7th had more rules. Not better. There were so many rules, tomes of them. And half of them almost never even came up.
I remember when three different units, from three different armies, had three different rules, all of which shared the name "Crack Shot." Oh boy was that fun! I remember hours upon hours of arguments about template position, arguments over the damage table, what counted as "in cover." I'll take the simplicity of AoS and 8th edition 40K any day over the nightmare mess that was 6th and 7th editions.
7000+ Points Death Skullz
4000 Points
+ 
+ 3000 Points "The Fiery Heart of the Emperor"
3000 Points "Bard's Booze Cruise" 
