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Terrible clunky design. They band aid over obvious design mistakes instead of trying to build consistent, working interactions from the beginning of the edition and keeping them like that.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"my army doesn't get saves so yours shouldn't either" is the absolute pinnacle of ignoring both balance and lore when making rules changes.

No, it's basic game design. If you want to make a stupid mechanic for saves that ignore things that ignore saves then you'd better justify it with something more than "it's not fair that my army has to play like everyone else and doesn't get is full save against every single weapon in the game".


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 Void__Dragon wrote:
Get over yourself. Your army has received nothing but buffs to it since the season started and yes, I'm aware they've still been about the worst army all season despite that. So what? It's certainly still more love than Daemons have received all season, what with being gutted in points when they weren't even strong and being disproportionately punished by the Nephilim update. And yes, I'm aware that Daemons have generally been better than guardsman in season nine. Doesn't matter, stop taking our your frustrations on an army that has nothing to do with you.

Lolwut. "Your army still sucks but you got a bunch of ineffective buffs so you can't complain about a stronger army getting a ridiculous case of rules bloat to buff it." Why should I care how many ineffective buffs my army has if the end result is that it is still terrible?

CadianSgtBob 805956 11397288 wrote:

Lolwut. "Your army still sucks but you got a bunch of ineffective buffs so you can't complain about a stronger army getting a ridiculous case of rules bloat to buff it." Why should I care how many ineffective buffs my army has if the end result is that it is still terrible?

Yes, that is how GW updates some stuff. If a codex is slated for , we have to update it, but we don't have a plan for a new model line, model update etc The the codex can end up as a copy paste, and if the prior one was bad it can stay bad after update.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Lolwut. "Your army still sucks but you got a bunch of ineffective buffs so you can't complain about a stronger army getting a ridiculous case of rules bloat to buff it." Why should I care how many ineffective buffs my army has if the end result is that it is still terrible?

A "stronger" army that was still bad and bluntly is most likely as of now worse than your army in Nephilim now that the new army construction rules have blown out the kneecaps of pretty much every Daemons build that wasn't dogshit.

Did I say you should care about the buffs your army has gotten in a vacuum? No, your army is was still bad and needs more help. And help arrives with every patch, while daemons get worse with every patch. It's pretty clear which army GW cares more about. Your army has been worse all season because guard are a poorly-designed army that is only relevant in a single phase, kind of the same reason Tau were complete crap before their codex.

But why are you whining that Daemons, who have a negative win rate against guard by the way, are getting buffs for their codex? And rules bloat? Their saves can't be modified. Whew lad, such a hard rule to remember, how will we ever deal with the glut of rules this army has?

If you want to be pissed off about how bad your army is then fine, but don't try to act like you're justified in wanting another army (who isn't even good by the way) to be just as bad as your gakky army out of spite. It's petty and frankly very cringe.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Whew lad, such a hard rule to remember, how will we ever deal with the glut of rules this army has?

It's not hard to remember, it's stupid design because it's more rules bloat. We have a perfectly good mechanic in invulnerable saves, GW adds weapons that ignore invulnerable saves, and now we get the rule we all knew was coming once they previewed the railgun rules: a save that ignores things that ignore invulnerable saves. It's a stupid response to a non-issue but apparently some demon players can't cope with the idea that they don't always have a save against every single weapon in the entire game. And I'm sure it won't be long before we see a new weapon that ignores saves that ignore weapons that ignore invulnerable saves, because that's the GW thing to do.

And before you pull too much of the martyrdom act about not getting any buffs in the latest matched play update try to remember that your codex is next in line and that's the only reason GW didn't make any changes.

Not much of rule bloat.

We have units which ignore AP -1
We have units which ignore AP -1 and turn -2 to -1.
We had units which ignored AP -1 and -2.

Doesn't really add much bloat to have units which ignore all AP.

I kind of hope that Daemons get a reason to interact with terrain other than "does it block LoS, movement, or slow me down?". Allowing Daemons to benefit from light/heavy cover would be nice (assuming that AP could still strip the cover bonus)

I know that’s not the indication from the leaks though. However I feel like my Daemons stopped caring about terrain when 8th Ed dropped. I would like better interactions.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"my army doesn't get saves so yours shouldn't either" is the absolute pinnacle of ignoring both balance and lore when making rules changes.

No, it's basic game design. If you want to make a stupid mechanic for saves that ignore things that ignore saves then you'd better justify it with something more than "it's not fair that my army has to play like everyone else and doesn't get is full save against every single weapon in the game".

I think we should take all the guns away from Imperial Guard. If you want to make a stupid mechanic to allow for shooting attacks, you'd better justify it with something more than "it's not fair my army has to play like daemons and doesn't get to hit the enemy from afar."

It isn't basic game design, because basic game design allows for variety in the way different factions interact with the core rules of the game. In fact, game design would suggest that each army having a single "gimmick" (some singular, unique way they deviate from what everyone else does in a specific way) is the MOST BASIC of game design, after you include factions at all.

But I have a hunch that lecturing you on game design won't work.

GW had absolutly not problems with leaving knights in a situation where they could be shot from behind terrain, while not being able to shot back. And it was linked to core rules GW wrote themselfs, clear ones too. not some obscure multi book interaction.

Spoletta wrote:
Not much of rule bloat.

We have units which ignore AP -1
We have units which ignore AP -1 and turn -2 to -1.
We had units which ignored AP -1 and -2.

Doesn't really add much bloat to have units which ignore all AP.

Yes we do. Custodes roll a ++ that is equal to most other armies +, and if the ++ fails they have a +++ equal to most other Armies ++, in the right sub fac.

Elite Factions now completely invalidate the AP system. It's completely silly to have AP with guns that do what they can do in 9th.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
If its true that daemons get a unmodifiable invuln, i was proven 100% right in my predictions of what was going to happen to the game, not just once, but twice. With the addtion of AoC and now the addtion of an unmodifiable invuln all steaming from the rending AP system.

God damn, it feels good to be right.

Especially considering how rare it's been for you, historically.

Spoletta wrote:
Not much of rule bloat.

We have units which ignore AP -1
We have units which ignore AP -1 and turn -2 to -1.
We had units which ignored AP -1 and -2.

Doesn't really add much bloat to have units which ignore all AP.

It's absolutely rules bloat. We had a perfectly good mechanic for a save that ignores all AP: invulnerable saves. But someone at GW got their demon one-shot by a railgun and now, just as everyone expected, we have a whole new save mechanic to ignore things that ignore invulnerable saves.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But I have a hunch that lecturing you on game design won't work.

You're right, it won't. You clearly don't understand game design if you think that "guard should have no guns" and "demons should use the normal invulnerable save mechanic instead of getting special snowflake rules to ignore railguns" are even close to equivalent so any lecture from you would be a joke.

Frankly speaking, given how GW has written rules for 9th ed so far, it wouldn't surprise me and I wouldn't say it's necessary but a natural evolution of constantly marketing "more AP, better stats, more damage and more damage reduction!" for each subsequent faction in the edition. We're heading into another hard reboot for 10th with how all over the place AP, invulns and damage reduction is everywhere.

Frankly speaking, GW really needs to figure out and stick with some consistency for basic level weaponry, mid-level anti-elite weapons and actualy anti-tank guns into distinct sections for every faction prior to the codex releases. I really hate how GW keeps changing the codex design paradigm mid edition and the first codices get left behind as the test monkeys.

I eagerly await subsequent codices to contain further gems such as:

"This weapon ignores invulnerable saves. Even invulnerable saves that cannot normally be ignored."

"This model's invulnerable save cannot be negated or modified, even by rules that would normally ignore this rule."

"This weapon ignores invulnerable saves. Even invulnerable saves that normally cannot be ignored, including ones that would normally ignore this rule. Also, I call no comebacks this time. I'm looking at you, Jim!"

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"my army doesn't get saves so yours shouldn't either" is the absolute pinnacle of ignoring both balance and lore when making rules changes.

When did Cruddace make an account?

in a world of 31 flavors, cruddance is the ice cream scoop water bucket.

 vipoid wrote:
I eagerly await subsequent codices to contain further gems such as:

"This weapon ignores invulnerable saves. Even invulnerable saves that cannot normally be ignored."

"This model's invulnerable save cannot be negated or modified, even by rules that would normally ignore this rule."

"This weapon ignores invulnerable saves. Even invulnerable saves that normally cannot be ignored, including ones that would normally ignore this rule. Also, I call no comebacks this time. I'm looking at you, Jim!"

I remember someone saying that GW rules writing is similar to how kids make up rules on the playground when they're playing.

"I use magic bolt!"

"I use anti-magic shield!"

"Well, I use an anti-magic shield bolt!"

Ad infinitum.

I'm fine with the game differentiating between
1) "Your save cannot be lowered below this value" back-up-invulnerable save like terminators and many characters have and
2) "Your save is not affected by armor penetration" instead-of-armor-invulnerable save you usually have a glass-cannony model that either is good at dodging or not following the laws of physics for some reason

As usual, the implementation isn't exactly great, shifting the design paradigm in the last quarter of an edition, after already spreading invul and anti-invul rules everywhere and then burying that mechanic into the rules of an army where no one else can use it isn't exactly the way I would have done it.

In a vacuum, it's better for daemons to have these rules than not have it, especially the split between melee and ranged is a great idea.


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 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"my army doesn't get saves so yours shouldn't either" is the absolute pinnacle of ignoring both balance and lore when making rules changes.

When did Cruddace make an account?

in a world of 31 flavors, cruddance is the ice cream scoop water bucket.

On an unrelated note... at what age to people usually retire in UK?

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Your army has been worse all season because guard are a poorly-designed army that is only relevant in a single phase, kind of the same reason Tau were complete crap before their codex.

Gotta disagree on one point, Imperial guard were a wonderfully designed army. Horde shooty infantry with heavy vehicles for a gunline army. Their biggest problem is that Tau came along and stole their biggest faction defining characteristic. They have good movement/shooting but not great assault and sub-optimal psychic powers. But they have their own gimmick in "Orders" for which Tau took that as well (Ethereal).

So now they are in search of their new defining characteristic since Tau stole most of it to make their army.

Tyel wrote:
I think its part of this wider debate of whether you view balance through the lens of a tournament - and so lists have to cope with all these various potential elements - or through 1v1s.

Clearly you can't have railguns, stratagem'd fire prisms, tooled up Chaos characters with the Tzeentch daemon weapon etc eating greater daemons for breakfast. But equally how do you balance it on the reverse when these abilities do nothing?

The supposed daemon save simply makes it so that over stacking in Hammerheads et al would be risky. That's all that there needs to be to it.




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CadianSgtBob wrote:

It's absolutely rules bloat. We had a perfectly good mechanic for a save that ignores all AP: invulnerable saves. But someone at GW got their demon one-shot by a railgun and now, just as everyone expected, we have a whole new save mechanic to ignore things that ignore invulnerable saves.

Then design a single shot anti-tank weapon that doesn't fall on it's face when facing an invulnerable.

A HH has 25% failure to hit, 16% failure to wound, and then 75% failure to bypass a 4++ with a CP reroll. Those odds create a situation where a HH could do absolutely nothing for an entire game - on average.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I think its part of this wider debate of whether you view balance through the lens of a tournament - and so lists have to cope with all these various potential elements - or through 1v1s.

Clearly you can't have railguns, stratagem'd fire prisms, tooled up Chaos characters with the Tzeentch daemon weapon etc eating greater daemons for breakfast. But equally how do you balance it on the reverse when these abilities do nothing?

The supposed daemon save simply makes it so that over stacking in Hammerheads et al would be risky. That's all that there needs to be to it.




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CadianSgtBob wrote:

It's absolutely rules bloat. We had a perfectly good mechanic for a save that ignores all AP: invulnerable saves. But someone at GW got their demon one-shot by a railgun and now, just as everyone expected, we have a whole new save mechanic to ignore things that ignore invulnerable saves.

Then design a single shot anti-tank weapon that doesn't fall on it's face when facing an invulnerable.

A HH has 25% failure to hit, 16% failure to wound, and then 75% failure to bypass a 4++ with a CP reroll. Those odds create a situation where a HH could do absolutely nothing for an entire game - on average.

This is why I think that 40k needs to do away with high damage single shot weapons. The nature of invul saves makes them completely worthless OR they in a single roll can define a game. They should migrate these weapons to high strength with a low rate of fire but lower damage to make up for it. For example, a HH Railgun could be something like Heavy 3 S16 D3+2 or something. If all shots get through, you get big damage, but in general you are going to get maybe one hit through to do some decent damage.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

It's absolutely rules bloat. We had a perfectly good mechanic for a save that ignores all AP: invulnerable saves. But someone at GW got their demon one-shot by a railgun and now, just as everyone expected, we have a whole new save mechanic to ignore things that ignore invulnerable saves.

Then design a single shot anti-tank weapon that doesn't fall on it's face when facing an invulnerable.

A HH has 25% failure to hit, 16% failure to wound, and then 75% failure to bypass a 4++ with a CP reroll. Those odds create a situation where a HH could do absolutely nothing for an entire game - on average.

Easy! Change the would chart so that S above a certain threshold auto-wounds. Then remove CPs from the game. Then don't give out so many damn invuln saves.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Then design a single shot anti-tank weapon that doesn't fall on it's face when facing an invulnerable.

A HH has 25% failure to hit, 16% failure to wound, and then 75% failure to bypass a 4++ with a CP reroll. Those odds create a situation where a HH could do absolutely nothing for an entire game - on average.

Or just accept that the one-shot tank killer is also going to be good at one-shot killing giant demon monsters. We don't need a special snowflake "NO NO NO YOUR RAILGUN CANT KILL MY DEMON ITS TOO COOL FOR THAT" rule like 10 year olds arguing about whose superhero is stronger.

PS: if single-shot weapons are so ineffective against invulnerable saves that they need to ignore them why doesn't this apply here? Why are invulnerable saves a crippling problem but better-than-invulnerable saves aren't?


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Arbiter_Shade wrote:
This is why I think that 40k needs to do away with high damage single shot weapons. The nature of invul saves makes them completely worthless OR they in a single roll can define a game. They should migrate these weapons to high strength with a low rate of fire but lower damage to make up for it. For example, a HH Railgun could be something like Heavy 3 S16 D3+2 or something. If all shots get through, you get big damage, but in general you are going to get maybe one hit through to do some decent damage.

That's a major loss of design space that also requires sacrificing a lot of fluff accuracy. No.

The problem some people may have it is that for some reason GW got the idea to make one shot anti tank weapons "good" by the time they got to tau. People who got their books prior to that. Would rather see, as GW won't fix their weapons, the fix to the one shot weapons next edition, when everyone, including them, is going to get new books. Same way GK and CSM didn't like having 1W, but costing like or more then 2W meq etc.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Or just accept that the one-shot tank killer is also going to be good at one-shot killing giant demon monsters. We don't need a special snowflake "NO NO NO YOUR RAILGUN CANT KILL MY DEMON ITS TOO COOL FOR THAT" rule like 10 year olds arguing about whose superhero is stronger.

PS: if single-shot weapons are so ineffective against invulnerable saves that they need to ignore them why doesn't this apply here? Why are invulnerable saves a crippling problem but better-than-invulnerable saves aren't?

In a similar fashion a weapon that does 1 damage will have a really hard time killing a model with 3 wounds. Or an AP1 weapon shooting terminators. There are all sorts of breakpoints and rules to change how one considers their army's output.

For a time D2 was kind of useless when most armies hitting tables had significant amounts of -1D. Now they're useful, but you have to accept that sometimes they won't have good targets.

Phase limited damage doesn't feel like a good fit for multiple greater daemons and daemons are primarily a CQC army, so they need something that lets them balance out their army -- just as T'au has really good shooting so might Daemons have really good saves.

JakeSiren wrote:
I kind of hope that Daemons get a reason to interact with terrain other than "does it block LoS, movement, or slow me down?". Allowing Daemons to benefit from light/heavy cover would be nice (assuming that AP could still strip the cover bonus)

I know that’s not the indication from the leaks though. However I feel like my Daemons stopped caring about terrain when 8th Ed dropped. I would like better interactions.

Uhm if ap removes the cover bonus then cover has no real benefit as ap-1 is default.

Either daemon save is unmodifiable to all including positives or the cover isn't going away by ap. Or the cover buff is buff in theory only.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
In a similar fashion a weapon that does 1 damage will have a really hard time killing a model with 3 wounds. Or an AP1 weapon shooting terminators. There are all sorts of breakpoints and rules to change how one considers their army's output.

For a time D2 was kind of useless when most armies hitting tables had significant amounts of -1D. Now they're useful, but you have to accept that sometimes they won't have good targets.

Phase limited damage doesn't feel like a good fit for multiple greater daemons and daemons are primarily a CQC army, so they need something that lets them balance out their army -- just as T'au has really good shooting so might Daemons have really good saves.

That doesn't say anything to defend the need for demons to have a special snowflake rule to deal with a handful of specific weapons instead of just giving them a normal invulnerable save.

For those talking of a D12 system, could just do as it was in 2nd edition with terminators, save on 2xD6's and add them together, with the caveat that a 1 always fails, so gets removed from the save pool. The issue comes with time to do individual saves for multi shot weapons, but you could just have paired dice in different colours.

Also, invulnerable saves should always be un modifiable, but ways less of them in the game, around 1 per faction. More invulnerable saves should be converted to AP modifiers (Reduces AP by 1, Reduces AP by 2 etc)..

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think Sgt Bob's point is that if almost every unit has -1AP then, by default any 5+ save is in effect a +6.

I understand his point just fine. I just find it ridiculous.

Ergo you could just take the -1 ap off every single model and give every 5+ save a 6+ and have the same results.

Or you could bump the -1 ap to -2 ap and give every 5+ save a 4+ and have the same results.
Or...or...or...

Again its building into the escalation of arms that the game has. It makes things like ap -1 so common that its no longer a granular element, but a default value. At which point you've basically lost 1 point of AP and saves. It reduces the granular nature of the games save and ap breakup

Oh please. It's not just the "escalation of arms". It's also the slavish devotion to keeping things "as they were".

With Guardians being a 4+, Fire Warriors being a 4+, Skitarii being a 4+, etc--there's zero reason for Flak Armored Guardsmen to not be a 4+ with Carapace Armor being the "3+" in-faction.

Because, frigging spoiler alert, there's zero reason why we can't have that be a thing. Hell, Scions are even issued their own unique version of "Carapace Armour" that could be used to justify them getting a 3+ while Grenadiers/Kasrkins/Carapace Armored equivalent Guardsmen get a 4+ or whatever.

Fire Warriors and Skitarii have been at a 4+ since their inception and have always been better equipped than standard Infantry. Utterly hilarious to think Infantry deserve to be upgraded to a 4+ to be comparable to them, but you have zero concept of balance anyway LOL


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CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
In a similar fashion a weapon that does 1 damage will have a really hard time killing a model with 3 wounds. Or an AP1 weapon shooting terminators. There are all sorts of breakpoints and rules to change how one considers their army's output.

For a time D2 was kind of useless when most armies hitting tables had significant amounts of -1D. Now they're useful, but you have to accept that sometimes they won't have good targets.

Phase limited damage doesn't feel like a good fit for multiple greater daemons and daemons are primarily a CQC army, so they need something that lets them balance out their army -- just as T'au has really good shooting so might Daemons have really good saves.

That doesn't say anything to defend the need for demons to have a special snowflake rule to deal with a handful of specific weapons instead of just giving them a normal invulnerable save.

Well if GW didn't give Tau access to four Hammerheads in an army that one shot all Greater Daemons it wouldn't be necessary. But here we are, GW thinking they're brilliant.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Fire Warriors and Skitarii have been at a 4+ since their inception and have always been better equipped than standard Infantry. Utterly hilarious to think Infantry deserve to be upgraded to a 4+ to be comparable to them, but you have zero concept of balance anyway LOL

And no sense of fluff either, given the obvious difference in armor weight and coverage between the two. Guardsmen have armor much closer to what Tau pathfinders are wearing and surprise, both of them have a 5+ save.

Well if GW didn't give Tau access to four Hammerheads in an army that one shot all Greater Daemons it wouldn't be necessary. But here we are, GW thinking they're brilliant.

Then my LRBTs need a 2++++ as well, it's not fair that they can be one-shot. Or demons can deal with having their tanks one-shotted by Hammerheads just like every other faction.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
For those talking of a D12 system, could just do as it was in 2nd edition with terminators, save on 2xD6's and add them together, with the caveat that a 1 always fails, so gets removed from the save pool. The issue comes with time to do individual saves for multi shot weapons, but you could just have paired dice in different colours.

Also, invulnerable saves should always be un modifiable, but ways less of them in the game, around 1 per faction. More invulnerable saves should be converted to AP modifiers (Reduces AP by 1, Reduces AP by 2 etc)..

Ugh no. Rolling 10 d12 is different than rolling 10 times 2d6.