How widespread are "no re-rolls allowed vs. this unit" rules?

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**catbarf**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
Sunny Side Up wrote:
To be fair, DG -1 damage is just as toxic, negating plenty of units like Repentia or entire army rules like White Scars

I agree. Between -1D and Stench Vats, DG basically shuts down my entire BA army. And their Contagions effectively give them +1 to wound all the time in combat too, just for added salt in the wound!

almost like DG is an anti-melee army

That's really poor design, if it is actually the intent. Having an entire faction just automatically hard-counter your army archetype essentially means losing before you even start the game, and there's nothing you can do about it short of bringing another army.

**tneva82**

EviscerationPlague wrote:
That's the fault of less natural ways to obtain a +1 to hit, not the fault of stacking negative modifiers. We already got the 6 always hits, so it wasn't even necessary to do a cap.

Also fliers in 6th/7th were only able to be hit on 6s and weren't a problem.

Hitting on 6's is pretty much unhittable especially when you usually hit on 3's or 4's.

Again. It's been shown before that it just doesn't work. It breaks the game. Unless you give everybody equal access to +1's to hit. But then we are back to - stacking is useless because everybody hits on regular anyway. So goob job? Introduce negative stack and then introduce for free equal amount of +'s so net result is same as now. Just more bloat...

Good job! Noob game designer strikes again

And fliers were bad. Spell that made unit hit on 6's at most was bad. Everytime there's been ability to go from 3+ to 6+ or even 4+ to 6+ game has broken down.

Unless you go for something like d12 where effect isn't as huge it's going to break the game. But noob game designers always forgets the simple evidence that has been got in the past and think they got good unique idea. But that's why they are noobs

Automatically Appended Next Post:

catbarf wrote:
VladimirHerzog wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
Sunny Side Up wrote:
To be fair, DG -1 damage is just as toxic, negating plenty of units like Repentia or entire army rules like White Scars

I agree. Between -1D and Stench Vats, DG basically shuts down my entire BA army. And their Contagions effectively give them +1 to wound all the time in combat too, just for added salt in the wound!

almost like DG is an anti-melee army

That's really poor design, if it is actually the intent. Having an entire faction just automatically hard-counter your army archetype essentially means losing before you even start the game, and there's nothing you can do about it short of bringing another army.

And GW is happy for you to buy another army. More ££££ for the GW.

**Sunny Side Up**

VladimirHerzog wrote:

almost like DG is an anti-melee army

Sure.

Which was the point, right?

If army X countering the rules of army Y is bad game design, Death Guard (along with probably Deathwing) is the original design-failure of 9th that never should've existed in that form.

If it's acceptable army design, fine, but than there shouldn't be complaints about some armies completely bypassing Death Guard army-rules and hard-countering them with Mortals, ignoring plague-weapon re-rolls, perhaps even ignoring -1 damage, etc.., either. It'd be part of the larger design concept for the game.

**Slipspace**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
Sunny Side Up wrote:
To be fair, DG -1 damage is just as toxic, negating plenty of units like Repentia or entire army rules like White Scars

I agree. Between -1D and Stench Vats, DG basically shuts down my entire BA army. And their Contagions effectively give them +1 to wound all the time in combat too, just for added salt in the wound!

almost like DG is an anti-melee army

It's one thing being good against certain army archetypes. It's entirely another when the result of their design is "play a different army".

It's not even like DG are a particularly good army. Their design is just horrible if you happen to be playing against them with one of a small number of armies.

**Sunny Side Up**

Still, if such a thing as "anti-melee"-army is a concept that ought to be in the game (irrespective of the quality or strength of the implementation), then there's nothing wrong with having an "anti-tough-armies"-army and a "anti-re-rolls"-army, etc..

Because melee-armies exist. If DG is allowed to invalidate, dunno, White Scars Melee, then Votann is allowed to invalidate DG.

If DG ought to keep their army-traits like Plague Weapons against Votann, then White Scars VanVets or some such ought to be allowed to use their +1 damage on Lighting Claws against Plague Marines, etc..

We were talking about design-principles and whether having a X cancels Y should exist or not (irrespective of game balance, which is another issue).

**tneva82**

Slipspace wrote:

It's one thing being good against certain army archetypes. It's entirely another when the result of their design is "play a different army".

It's not even like DG are a particularly good army. Their design is just horrible if you happen to be playing against them with one of a small number of armies.

I have BA and SoB armies and basically I need to go for shooty avoidance game. If I happen to bring melee centric SoB I'm kind of screwed. If I bring BA I better hope I can shoot and weather storm until T3 when I get at least full buffs. And still generally prefer dreadnoughts(funnily enough thanks to -1 dam'ing them back...)

At least my khorne seems to be able to fight DG somewhat after 1st attempt.

**Eldarsif**

The new DG rule was an attempt from GW at removing all the extra dice rolls. I just wonder how else they could have changed this. Perhaps an army-wide 5++(except for cultists and poxwalkers)? Personally I'd rather have less rolls than more.

To be honest they could have played around with the wound attribute of DG instead of attempting to mirror it from the classic Astartes.

**vict0988**

-Guardsman- wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they're a pretty recent addition, correct? I first encountered this rule against Chaos Knights (can't re-roll hits, wounds or damage against a certain model; I think it's a warlord trait). And I just learned that the Leagues of Votann land fortress has a rule where you can't re-roll wounds and damage against it. Are there others? Is this part of a trend in newer codexes?

Not a fan, to be honest. Being denied any re-rolls just "feels bad" to me.

Denying re-rolls isn't any different than denying S4 being better than S3 because you are attacking a T8 unit. In theory, it could work really well if re-rolls were based on a similar fluff reason and denying re-rolls was based on fluff that countered the other fluff. Let's say melta weapons get to re-roll to wound, Necron vehicles deny re-rolls to wound because of living metal (which ignored melta in 3rd), that could be cool for example. However when you can get re-rolls to wound from inspiring speeches, tactical precision, psychic powers it doesn't really makes sense it just becomes a silly my dad vs your dad thing which really could just be represented through more S/T W/D.

**Sgt. Cortez**

Reading that thread I must think about Nightlords players whose morale rules never ever mattered in any edition

So some snowflake rules are countered by other snowflake rules. That's 40K in a nutshell.

Personally I think it's fine, just needs some clarification via USRs.

**EviscerationPlague**

Wyldhunt wrote:
EviscerationPlague wrote:

That's the fault of less natural ways to obtain a +1 to hit, not the fault of stacking negative modifiers. We already got the 6 always hits, so it wasn't even necessary to do a cap.

Also fliers in 6th/7th were only able to be hit on 6s and weren't a problem.

I'm going to be a pain in the butt and nitpick this.

As I recall, fliers were absolutely an issue in 6th/7th. Partly because many factions didn't have decent anti-air options. Partly because many of those anti-air options were only really useful if you happened to face fliers; so you had to gamble on how many points to invest on weaponry that might not have a target. And fishing for 6s to hit ("snap shooting" as 7th called it) resulted in a lot of dice rolling and frustration for not a lot of impact. I feel like you've actually given a really good example of how frustrating only hitting on 6+ can be. Even if you can't make a target literally unhittable via to-hit penalties this edition, armies that consistently make you only hit on 6s would probably be a pain to play against.

Also, while part of me likes the idea of balancing out stackable to-hit penalties with stackable to-hit bonuses, you risk creating the opposite problem. If everyone can reliably get a +2 to-hit and to-hit penalties remain only about as common as they are now, then there will be plenty of times you'd be seeing guardsmen hitting on 2+, Orks hitting on a 3+, and so forth. Which seems like it would have some undesirable consequences.

What about going back to stackable to-hit mods, but instead of adding a lot of to-hit bonuses (and rerolls), we just emphasize counterplay options that negate to-hit penalties? So a fast, stealthy unit belonging to the "uses camouflage" subfaction has a -3 to being hit. My attacking units are within 18" (ignore 1), are cross-firing/flanking the target (ignore another 1), and I pointed the spotlight from my transport at them (ignore a third 1), so it's a wash, and I hit on my normal BS. If the target unit was only a -1 to being hit, then I'd still only hit on my normal BS because the spotlight, crossfire, etc. aren't bonuses but instead just ways of ignoring to-hit penalties.

Sorry I forgot to reply to this fully. On top of what I already said:
1. I will 100% say GW's introduction of fliers was poorly done due to lack of initial AA. So at the beginning of the edition it was a bad idea, but this is the rare case of GW actually fulfilling "wait and see", which I never give them (as you're aware, I'm a full time GW rules writer hater).
2. I'm also for easier to hit bonuses and penalties. The latter creates a less lethal game compared to the current state where a unit with a heavy weapon can move, target a Raven Guard unit in cover and only suffer that -1 to hit.
3. No I don't care if 6s to hit is frustrating. The Culexus isn't an issue last I checked and he's got it all the time. More negative modifiers also encourages/gives niche to flamer weapons and, if reworked, blast weapons.
4. I also don't care if Orks found a way to stack hitting bonuses. Quite frankly I hate these legacy stats. Why shouldn't Sternguard have BS2+ and Vanguard WS2+? Why shouldn't Nobz get BS4+ since they've been shooting the gak longer? Hell, why can't Meganobz get a BS3+ with all their technology?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
EviscerationPlague wrote:
That's the fault of less natural ways to obtain a +1 to hit, not the fault of stacking negative modifiers. We already got the 6 always hits, so it wasn't even necessary to do a cap.

Also fliers in 6th/7th were only able to be hit on 6s and weren't a problem.

Hitting on 6's is pretty much unhittable especially when you usually hit on 3's or 4's.

Again. It's been shown before that it just doesn't work. It breaks the game. Unless you give everybody equal access to +1's to hit. But then we are back to - stacking is useless because everybody hits on regular anyway. So goob job? Introduce negative stack and then introduce for free equal amount of +'s so net result is same as now. Just more bloat...

Good job! Noob game designer strikes again

And fliers were bad. Spell that made unit hit on 6's at most was bad. Everytime there's been ability to go from 3+ to 6+ or even 4+ to 6+ game has broken down.

Unless you go for something like d12 where effect isn't as huge it's going to break the game. But noob game designers always forgets the simple evidence that has been got in the past and think they got good unique idea. But that's why they are noobs

It's bad design because you say it is, not because it actually is. Your source is Trust Me, Bro.

It's significantly better than GW doing what they've always done, which is:
1. Regular BS
2. Reroll all your shots
3. You only hit on 6s
If anything, they were going with the not-bad design route. That doesn't mean they succeeded though, and is on the same mind as how GW sucked at USR so why bother implementing it?

**Castozor**

Eldarsif wrote:
The new DG rule was an attempt from GW at removing all the extra dice rolls. I just wonder how else they could have changed this. Perhaps an army-wide 5++(except for cultists and poxwalkers)? Personally I'd rather have less rolls than more.

To be honest they could have played around with the wound attribute of DG instead of attempting to mirror it from the classic Astartes.

I sincerely doubt reducing rolls was the justification as not too long afterwards we got DE, and one of their 3 factions all have FnP on their models as well as army wide Invuls (aka saves they always get to take regardless of AP), not too mention IH got to keep their FnP and they were released before DG. DG are also not a dice roll heavy faction, FnP makes their gameplay slower for sure, but they are probably in the bottom 50% of slow playing armies even with a FnP, poxwalker horde armies notwithstanding.

**EviscerationPlague**

Castozor wrote:
Eldarsif wrote:
The new DG rule was an attempt from GW at removing all the extra dice rolls. I just wonder how else they could have changed this. Perhaps an army-wide 5++(except for cultists and poxwalkers)? Personally I'd rather have less rolls than more.

To be honest they could have played around with the wound attribute of DG instead of attempting to mirror it from the classic Astartes.

I sincerely doubt reducing rolls was the justification

I legit think they're just trying new mechanics for representing toughness, which to be fair isn't always a bad thing.

**Eldarsif**

Castozor wrote:
Eldarsif wrote:
The new DG rule was an attempt from GW at removing all the extra dice rolls. I just wonder how else they could have changed this. Perhaps an army-wide 5++(except for cultists and poxwalkers)? Personally I'd rather have less rolls than more.

To be honest they could have played around with the wound attribute of DG instead of attempting to mirror it from the classic Astartes.

I sincerely doubt reducing rolls was the justification as not too long afterwards we got DE, and one of their 3 factions all have FnP on their models as well as army wide Invuls (aka saves they always get to take regardless of AP), not too mention IH got to keep their FnP and they were released before DG. DG are also not a dice roll heavy faction, FnP makes their gameplay slower for sure, but they are probably in the bottom 50% of slow playing armies even with a FnP, poxwalker horde armies notwithstanding.

I sincerely believe there was a period where GW wanted to reduce the amount of rolls. Now whether that holds true still remains to be seen.

However, We saw rerolls lessen somewhat in 9th comparatively with previous editions(limiting to Core and whatnot). Then, because I play AoS, there was a huge shift from rerolls to +1 modifiers. With many of the newer books rerolls are actually rare if anything. So I'd argue that there was a concerted decision to reduce the amount of rolls, but not everyone in the studio may not have gotten that memo.

For example, Maggotkin of Nurgle has full on FnP(or Ward as they call it) much like old Death Guard had.

Sadly GW isn't really open about what their design goals are so nobody knows what the overall trend is technically.

**tneva82**

Eldarsif wrote:

For example, Maggotkin of Nurgle has full on FnP(or Ward as they call it) much like old Death Guard had.

Sadly GW isn't really open about what their design goals are so nobody knows what the overall trend is technically.

Mind you as in AOS the damage spreads the FNP is much less of a issue timing wise than 40k where if 10 guys with 2 wounds get 10 wounds by dam2 weapon....You need to roll 10 times 2 dice. AOS it's just 20 dice and then count how many goes through.

Same for 1W guys getting hit by dam2 weapons...At least here you can quicken it a bit by rerolling succesfull rolls from first batch of 10 damage.

**Wyldhunt**

I get the impression that there was a bit of a push to reduce rerolls in 9th, and I suspect that's part of what made them change Disgustingly Resilient. I also think that they really, really want the various "durable" armies to feel tough in different ways to avoid giving the impression that they're too similar to one another. There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

**Castozor**

Again I don't think reducing rolls was the main driver for changing DR. It would be a rather fleeting design choice if IH kept theirs, DG got it removed and then only slightly later DE got to keep it again. Although admittedly GW is nothing if not indecisive/prone to changes half-way trough a codex cycle.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

I legit think they're just trying new mechanics for representing toughness, which to be fair isn't always a bad thing.

This seems far more likely to me, and indeed not bad, even if I don't agree with their eventual decision. Since -1 Dmg army wide is a rather toxic trait if you ask me, as well as borderline useless if you play in a closed meta like I do. What's a SM Bladeguard? Dunno, never saw a squad after my first game against them early in 9th.

**catbarf**

Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.

**alextroy**

catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.

I must disagree. The different defensive profiles of plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons means all three are durable units that require completely different methods to destroy. That's not different for no reason.

**ccs**

alextroy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.
I must disagree. The different defensive profiles of plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons means all three are durable units that require completely different methods to destroy. That's not different for no reason.

I don't know about 3 completely different methods....
In practice just simply shooting them alot, with as much str & AP as I can muster deals with any of them.
Sometimes some CC as needed.

**Gadzilla666**

catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.

The exact same mechanics, but with a different name + different "lore blurb" is also pretty popular with the current crop of 40k writers. Probably mostly because they'd rather just make things as confusing as possible, rather than using the dreaded and verboten "USR" archeotech.

**alextroy**

ccs wrote:
alextroy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.
I must disagree. The different defensive profiles of plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons means all three are durable units that require completely different methods to destroy. That's not different for no reason.

I don't know about 3 completely different methods....
In practice just simply shooting them alot, with as much str & AP as I can muster deals with any of them.
Sometimes some CC as needed.

Shooting anything enough time with strong enough weapons will always get the job done. But a Heavy Bolter does a lot better against Rubric Marines than Plague Marines. Conversely, an Assault Cannon is way better against Plague Marines than Rubric Marines.

**vict0988**

ccs wrote:
alextroy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.
I must disagree. The different defensive profiles of plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons means all three are durable units that require completely different methods to destroy. That's not different for no reason.

I don't know about 3 completely different methods....
In practice just simply shooting them alot, with as much str & AP as I can muster deals with any of them.
Sometimes some CC as needed.

That's ignoring pts-efficiency. Shooting lascannons into Guardsmen is silly, shooting heavy bolters into Leman Russes is silly.

The differences in what units are weak against should be based on fluff, if the fluff says Plague Marines are most susceptible to poison weapons, Rubrics are most susceptible to anti-MEQ and Necron Warriors are most susceptible to massed boltgun fire then GW should work to find profiles that represent that. Fluff should be inspired by previous fluff and the model used for the datasheet. I think most often GW just assigns rules willy-nilly and I definitely think copy-pasting is a problem, they have a format they are following and let themselves be inspired by their previous work, so if Custodes need Combat Doctrines because it says so on the to-do list for making a 9th edition codex (ugh), then the designers looks through the Necron Codex, copy pastes it without even really considering how appropriate it would be for the faction.

Absent any fluff I don't know if difference for the sake of difference is actually good, does anybody want Blood Angels and Dark Angels to have different unique defensive mechanics and to go down to T3?, It would just be a headache and giving a no re-rolls ability to a unit in current 40k seems to be like that.

**catbarf**

alextroy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote:
There have definitely been times when plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons have wished they had one anothers' defensive rules and seemingly had a different form of defense for the sake of it.

'Different mechanics to represent the same thing for the sake of being different' is a pretty good description of GW's design ethos in 9th. The whole game is like that and I don't particularly see GW moving away from it in recent books.
I must disagree. The different defensive profiles of plague marines, rubric marines, and necrons means all three are durable units that require completely different methods to destroy. That's not different for no reason.

I don't particularly feel like the way they have modeled durability for those three examples differentiates them in a way that aligns to the fluff. I've never read fiction suggesting that heavy bolters are especially ineffective at blowing apart the rotting flesh of Plague Marines, but massed lasgun fire is a reasonably efficient way to take them down.

Plus there are other levers to represent durability within the constraints that GW has already set, and no rhyme or reason for when one should be used over another. Why army-wide D-1 rather than giving them more wounds? When is 'being really tough' represented by extra wounds versus extra toughness? What is getting a bonus to your save against D1 supposed to represent- if a shot is weak and unable to pierce armor, shouldn't that just be represented by it being AP0? And good luck coming up with a consistent in-universe way to explain 'no re-rolls' when re-rolls are provided by anything from tactical command guidance to marksmanship training to specialized ammunition.

There are mechanical implications to how they've chosen to differently represent durability, and they have significantly different effects on gameplay, but those differences seem arbitrary (or chosen strictly for mechanical effect) rather than directly tied to the verisimilitude of the setting. It's abstract and inconsistent.