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 morganfreeman wrote:
From collector card games to mobas to RTS to TT games, literally everything has ways to interact with your enemy in non-damaging means and control their units

Yes but that is YOU interacting with your opponent, not you rolling a roulette wheel to see whether you get to tap lands for mana this turn or not. Big difference. 40k already has abilities that prevent falling back or stop actions and stuff like that. But that's up YOU to use, not just your soldiers going derp mode and running around like headless chickens.

I understand that people don't like losing control of their units.... But it's really not an argument.

Premise 1: People don't like playing the game when the game takes away control of their units.
Premise 2: People should like playing the game.
Conclusion 1: The game should take away the control of the units of a person.
Premise 3: The game taking away control of a unit is different from the opponent taking away control of a unit.
Conclusion 2: It is okay for the opponent but not the game to take away a player's control of a unit.

At the end of the day people don't like losing any of their models. Or losing games. Or losing anything in general.

Losing models makes the game more interesting and speeds things up, I'm happy for my opponent when they kill some of my stuff.

You can't build a cohesive rules set out of only things people like, because no one steps into a game hoping against hope they'll lose. Yet that has to be present in some form for a game to work.

That's exactly what I hope for when I do beginner games. Even in non-beginner games a 50% win-rate is the best thing I could ask for, there is no point in playing against players if you don't want to lose, just play Tic Tac Toe against yourself. Or play a video game against easy AI.

As Saturmon said, it's better (both thematically and in terms of how useful they are) to have your guys pinned / falling back for a turn than removed from the table cuz they're all dead.

Your units can be pinned or fall back while being under your control.

There will doubtlessly be people who aren't hot on a system where moral matters. People dislike change and someone always hates the new thing even if it's on principle. But given the last decade of 40k has been a much maligned dumpster fire of swinging between unkillable death-stars and shot-off-the-board-turn-one, I'd say it's worth it to try something new.

7th had unkillable death-stars, shot-off-the-board-turn-one, control loss when units were tank-shocked, locked in melee or failed morale all in one neat package, these things are not mutually exclusive. The lethality creep of 9th isn't due to a lack of mechanics, it's just GW writing bad rules. Dark lances and multi-meltas were not too lethal in 8th and the game can allow for weapon abilities that have negative impacts on enemy units without outright destroying them, those effects already exist, although they are often Stratagem-locked for better or worse.

This is where the "suggested rules are pointless, just publish" argument comes in.

When GW released beta rules there was often improvements before final printing, as Wyldhunt has pointed out even if we both want some kind of pinning mechanic the first shot in the dark version of it that anyone comes up with is likely to be complete garbage and have huge negative ramifications for the game and require countless exceptions and yadda yadda to keep the game remotely fun instead of devolving into a gakfest.

actual decisions to make other than how efficiently our units trade.

Do you mean that or do you mean "I want my army men to run around like headless chickens" because of "the immersion"?

No leave melta S alone.
If it turns out T9 is too hard to kill with weapons looking the way they currently do (which I doubt will be the case since T8 is basically useless currently) then buff the damage output so when the wounds do go through they’re more meaningful.

Nothing that’s carried by a single GEQ infantry should be over S8 imho. Leave S9-10 to crew served weapons, 10+ Vehicle borne weapons only.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9? Why should melta and lance weapons have different strength values? Vehicles should be 2+ Sv for the most part and then some vehicles should ignore AP-1 and a tiny amount should ignore AP-1 and AP-2. Let high toughness be the domain of monsters. Now you have easy distinctions between the rules for monsters and vehicles making it easy to design weapons that are good for hunting one or the other.

why would a baneblade or a titan be the same T as a leman Russ? That makes no sense.
We used to essentially have up to T14 for vehicles and that made a lot more sense to me.

Can we also just admit that "assault" troops shouldn't have deadlier shooting than DEDICATED ranged units? That's like saying a Tau Fire Warrior should be better at Melee than a Kroot.

9th Edition is the one that completely borked the Ranged/Assault balance, and now Melee for the first time in a LONG time, is suddenly deadlier in all aspects than sitting back and shooting.

Throw "assault" units in that suddenly are carrying Melta Pistols and Melta bombs, and have 5 attacks at S5 AP2 D2 and now you just simply have a Custodian Terminator, not an Assault Marine SGT.

10th Needs to send EVERYONE back to their corners, and make Melee Great again, and Make Ranged Great again, but STOP it with the Hybrid units that do everything great. IT corrupts the damn balance.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Can we also just admit that "assault" troops shouldn't have deadlier shooting than DEDICATED ranged units? That's like saying a Tau Fire Warrior should be better at Melee than a Kroot.

9th Edition is the one that completely borked the Ranged/Assault balance, and now Melee for the first time in a LONG time, is suddenly deadlier in all aspects than sitting back and shooting.

Throw "assault" units in that suddenly are carrying Melta Pistols and Melta bombs, and have 5 attacks at S5 AP2 D2 and now you just simply have a Custodian Terminator, not an Assault Marine SGT.

10th Needs to send EVERYONE back to their corners, and make Melee Great again, and Make Ranged Great again, but STOP it with the Hybrid units that do everything great. IT corrupts the damn balance.

Ummmm......melta bombs aren't new. They've been a way for infantry units to deal with vehicles in melee for decades.

johnpjones1775 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9? Why should melta and lance weapons have different strength values? Vehicles should be 2+ Sv for the most part and then some vehicles should ignore AP-1 and a tiny amount should ignore AP-1 and AP-2. Let high toughness be the domain of monsters. Now you have easy distinctions between the rules for monsters and vehicles making it easy to design weapons that are good for hunting one or the other.

why would a baneblade or a titan be the same T as a leman Russ? That makes no sense.
We used to essentially have up to T14 for vehicles and that made a lot more sense to me.

 vict0988 wrote:
It makes S3-5 with 0 - -2 AP relatively more effective. Meltaguns aren't overstatted right now, multi-meltas are. Multi-meltas are too good against heavy infantry as well as tanks, krak missiles and plasma cannons aren't a problem either.

A Baneblade should be weak to the same kinds of weapons a Leman Russ is, therefore it should have a similar profile. I could see some weapons with low-medium AP having enough armour penetration to be relevant against a Leman Russ but not a Baneblade so the Baneblade could ignore some amount of AP or an extra AP if the Leman Russ already ignored some amount of AP. T14 vehicles did not have an armour save.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Every time the topic of vehicle durability comes up, I feel like the best solution is just to give vehicles a few more Wounds. Leave their Toughness low enough for anti-tank weapons to wound semi-reliably. Just make them big bags of hitpoints that you'll need high Damage weapons to chew through in a reasonable amount of time.

No, regular guns shouldnt be able to hurt armoured vehicles, or big monsters. Only when those are on its last bracket, at that point their armour is broken, they are bleeding, oil and fuel is leaking.

 vict0988 wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
From collector card games to mobas to RTS to TT games, literally everything has ways to interact with your enemy in non-damaging means and control their units

Yes but that is YOU interacting with your opponent, not you rolling a roulette wheel to see whether you get to tap lands for mana this turn or not. Big difference. 40k already has abilities that prevent falling back or stop actions and stuff like that. But that's up YOU to use, not just your soldiers going derp mode and running around like headless chickens.

<snip>

This is the only part that matters, so it's the only part that I'll address.

Will you support various weapons and powers having effects which must be suffered without rolling? Such as Heavy Bolters forcing any unit they wound to be "suppressed", unable to fire anything other than snapshots? Grenades / explosive weapons forcing units to move out of turn (away) and then being unable to move in their turn? Sniper weapons removing the ability for hit units to shoot or move? Because that's what you're arguing for here. Your units will always respond to your "orders", but your enemy has plentiful tools with which to remove your ability to get them to do various things (or anything at all). Meaning that an enemy army could win via mass suppression with virtually no killing, simply pinning the other side in their deployment zone and removing any ability for the opposition to play the game.

I personally wouldn't hate this, but I strongly suspect you would. And if you don't support it, by your own examples, then you're just arguing for the sake of arguing and have nothing productive to actually say.

In 7th edition prior a melta would only glance an AV14 vehicle when outside half range on a 6. It's only when they got into melta range they had a chance to actually penetrate it.

I see no issue with T9 when any weapon can still wound them on a 6. There's tons of source of +1 to Wound, reroll to Wound, -1 toughness, etc.

 vict0988 wrote:

7th had unkillable death-stars, shot-off-the-board-turn-one, control loss when units were tank-shocked, locked in melee or failed morale all in one neat package, these things are not mutually exclusive. The lethality creep of 9th isn't due to a lack of mechanics, it's just GW writing bad rules. Dark lances and multi-meltas were not too lethal in 8th and the game can allow for weapon abilities that have negative impacts on enemy units without outright destroying them, those effects already exist, although they are often Stratagem-locked for better or worse.

Yes, but 8th also had standing up from the dead castellan lists and eldar flyers blocking stuff. If anti tank or monster weapons are hyper efficient, and you sit down in front of a leviathan list or DE list or a harlquin list or a ork buggy list etc And you can't cripple them turn 1-2 of the game, you are going to lose. Unless GW makes your army have totaly uninteractive rules, where you can win without a care what the opponet is doing with his army or to your army, because you max primaries and secondaries turn 4, most of the time bar maybe some super counter builds. But those you can just not play, outside of tournaments.

Also the do something extra effects, which aren't directly a kill more rule, often are given to armies who are already hyper efficient at killing. So now they don't just kill your dudes really good, they also deep strik 6-7" away with a large chunk of their army and charge you. Or do stuff like eldar where some armies couldn't hit them, couldn't charge them, and the eldar flyers with thier huge bases were blocking people off even being next to objectives.

 morganfreeman wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
From collector card games to mobas to RTS to TT games, literally everything has ways to interact with your enemy in non-damaging means and control their units

Yes but that is YOU interacting with your opponent, not you rolling a roulette wheel to see whether you get to tap lands for mana this turn or not. Big difference. 40k already has abilities that prevent falling back or stop actions and stuff like that. But that's up YOU to use, not just your soldiers going derp mode and running around like headless chickens.

<snip>

This is the only part that matters, so it's the only part that I'll address.

Will you support various weapons and powers having effects which must be suffered without rolling? Such as Heavy Bolters forcing any unit they wound to be "suppressed", unable to fire anything other than snapshots? Grenades / explosive weapons forcing units to move out of turn (away) and then being unable to move in their turn? Sniper weapons removing the ability for hit units to shoot or move? Because that's what you're arguing for here. Your units will always respond to your "orders", but your enemy has plentiful tools with which to remove your ability to get them to do various things (or anything at all). Meaning that an enemy army could win via mass suppression with virtually no killing, simply pinning the other side in their deployment zone and removing any ability for the opposition to play the game.

I personally wouldn't hate this, but I strongly suspect you would. And if you don't support it, by your own examples, then you're just arguing for the sake of arguing and have nothing productive to actually say.

Maybe not 1 Space Marine heavy bolter shoots = snapshots for a brick of 20 Guardian Defenders, but yes I am arguing for something in that direction. I didn't hate going to ground or jink, which is basically what you're mentioning here, I hated it for Necrons because their vehicles shouldn't be fast enough to jink and their basic troops shouldn't have the survival instincts to go to ground, but for every other army it was fine.

Jarms48 wrote:
In 7th edition prior a melta would only glance an AV14 vehicle when outside half range on a 6. It's only when they got into melta range they had a chance to actually penetrate it.

I see no issue with T9 when any weapon can still wound them on a 6. There's tons of source of +1 to Wound, reroll to Wound, -1 toughness, etc.

To make S8 wound on 6s and S9 on 5s you'd need to be T16. A T16 Land Raider would take 123 krak missile shots to kill or 432 lasgun shots to kill. The Guardsmen feeding the heavy weapon ammunition while firing his lasgun would be as effective as the guy with the actual heavy weapon with a FRF!SRF! order. Meltaguns and krak missiles are not OP, why do vehicles need to be more survivable against them?

Karol wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

7th had unkillable death-stars, shot-off-the-board-turn-one, control loss when units were tank-shocked, locked in melee or failed morale all in one neat package, these things are not mutually exclusive. The lethality creep of 9th isn't due to a lack of mechanics, it's just GW writing bad rules. Dark lances and multi-meltas were not too lethal in 8th and the game can allow for weapon abilities that have negative impacts on enemy units without outright destroying them, those effects already exist, although they are often Stratagem-locked for better or worse.

Yes, but 8th also had standing up from the dead castellan lists and eldar flyers blocking stuff. If anti tank or monster weapons are hyper efficient, and you sit down in front of a leviathan list or DE list or a harlquin list or a ork buggy list etc And you can't cripple them turn 1-2 of the game, you are going to lose. Unless GW makes your army have totaly uninteractive rules, where you can win without a care what the opponet is doing with his army or to your army, because you max primaries and secondaries turn 4, most of the time bar maybe some super counter builds. But those you can just not play, outside of tournaments.

If you could give the Ork buggies -1 to hit with abilities or Stratagems and slow them down to prevent them from getting into melee then they'd do almost no damage, I think one weapon on one of the buggies gets +1 to hit. The Harlequin gun boat needs to be nerfed, same as multi-meltas.

Also the do something extra effects, which aren't directly a kill more rule, often are given to armies who are already hyper efficient at killing. So now they don't just kill your dudes really good, they also deep strik 6-7" away with a large chunk of their army and charge you. Or do stuff like eldar where some armies couldn't hit them, couldn't charge them, and the eldar flyers with thier huge bases were blocking people off even being next to objectives.

Better that than even more lethality, a unit that is tough, killy and has abilities that debelitate enemy units can be balanced pretty easily by just increasing the pts cost. The version of the 9th ed Drukhari codex where dark lances were undercosted because of a debuff ability instead of the damage hike would probably be more fun to lose against because you'd get to keep your units on the table for more than 2 turns even if all your key units were unable to output their full damage due to debuffs.

Kind of depends on how crippling these debuffs are. "You hit on 6s when previously you hit on 3s" is kind of a hard nerf. See old pinning and not being able to shoot or move if you failed the test etc.

If you can't really "play" and then get to just die next turn, I'm not sure its any more fun than dying that turn. In some ways its just wasting more of your time. At least in the former case the whole internet can go "GW, this is stupid, nerf pls."

Really though, I think you could create a psychology focused game - probably more focused at the skirmish level, so Necromunda, Kill Team etc. Have cumulating negatives build up as units take fire, combine with some sort of randomised alternate activations to give people choices. But I think that's hard to plug into 40k as exists today.

The problem with old 40k was that things like pinning were unusual - and then most armies had high LD. So the times you failed didn't feel like a standard game mechanic, or indicate your opponent was a master strategist. Rather you were being screwed over by dice and probability. Same as in say WHFB when a unit with LD 9 and a BSB hit that 2% chance to fail a rerolled panic test and then proceeds to sprint off the table.

Can we just give every Lasgun "ignores Invuln and LoS" and double tap this failure of an edition?

Tyel wrote:
Kind of depends on how crippling these debuffs are. "You hit on 6s when previously you hit on 3s" is kind of a hard nerf. See old pinning and not being able to shoot or move if you failed the test etc.

If you can't really "play" and then get to just die next turn, I'm not sure its any more fun than dying that turn. In some ways its just wasting more of your time. At least in the former case the whole internet can go "GW, this is stupid, nerf pls."

Really though, I think you could create a psychology focused game - probably more focused at the skirmish level, so Necromunda, Kill Team etc. Have cumulating negatives build up as units take fire, combine with some sort of randomised alternate activations to give people choices. But I think that's hard to plug into 40k as exists today.

The problem with old 40k was that things like pinning were unusual - and then most armies had high LD. So the times you failed didn't feel like a standard game mechanic, or indicate your opponent was a master strategist. Rather you were being screwed over by dice and probability. Same as in say WHFB when a unit with LD 9 and a BSB hit that 2% chance to fail a rerolled panic test and then proceeds to sprint off the table.

I'm sorry, I'm finding it hard to understand how having a unit "debuffed" for a turn, with either the possibility to get out of that state or having it happen automatically, is either the "same" or "worse" than just having it removed.

And as for your final paragraph: That's why you make weapons/effects that cause things like Pinning more prevalent in the game, and make things that resist those effects like Fearless/super high leadership less prevalent. Then you dial back the overall lethality of the game. Then everyone's units can actually stay on the table a little longer and actually get used, and we can have a little more tactical depth than choosing target priority and which buff stack to apply to which unit.

 vict0988 wrote:

Better that than even more lethality, a unit that is tough, killy and has abilities that debelitate enemy units can be balanced pretty easily by just increasing the pts cost. The version of the 9th ed Drukhari codex where dark lances were undercosted because of a debuff ability instead of the damage hike would probably be more fun to lose against because you'd get to keep your units on the table for more than 2 turns even if all your key units were unable to output their full damage due to debuffs.

I don't know how much you played against eldar in 8th ed, but having their flyers at -1/-3 to hit all the time was not fun. Especialy when some armies had absolutly zero ways to take down 4-5 eldar flyers, heck even 1-2 of them. And the cost doesn't matter when the units are more or less unkillable and stopping your from taking objectives. Also it is a big expectation from GW to think they will ever tone an eldar codex down, because they have not done so in the entire history of w40k.
The problem with debuff eldar style stuff is not that they are thing, and that somehow could be more debuff and less pure damage at the same time. The problem is that with how GW points and makes eldar tough, any debuff mechanic means you always lose. And after a few games against such armies, it doesn't matter how the debuff happens or if someone likes it or not. And again, it is a big thing to expect GW to tone down those armies, when they never did so.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I'm sorry, I'm finding it hard to understand how having a unit "debuffed" for a turn, with either the possibility to get out of that state or having it happen automatically, is either the "same" or "worse" than just having it removed.

Because the debuffed unit still takes up the same effort to resolve. A dead unit is gone and you don't have to worry about it anymore. A crippled unit is still on the table and you still have to move its models, roll dice for its attacks and saves, include it in your planning, etc, even though it isn't doing anything useful. If you're going to cripple a unit to the point where you're rolling 50 dice to resolve its attacks and doing little or no damage just kill it off and move on with the game. Slap fights between useless units aren't fun.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I'm sorry, I'm finding it hard to understand how having a unit "debuffed" for a turn, with either the possibility to get out of that state or having it happen automatically, is either the "same" or "worse" than just having it removed.

Because the debuffed unit still takes up the same effort to resolve. A dead unit is gone and you don't have to worry about it anymore. A crippled unit is still on the table and you still have to move its models, roll dice for its attacks and saves, include it in your planning, etc, even though it isn't doing anything useful. If you're going to cripple a unit to the point where you're rolling 50 dice to resolve its attacks and doing little or no damage just kill it off and move on with the game. Slap fights between useless units aren't fun.

For one turn. And if you're rolling "50 dice" to resolve attacks, then that's where rolling back the overall lethality of the game comes in (which is the part of my post that you left out).

And aren't you the same person that said this?:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Tyel wrote:
It's just not fun to do no damage

"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

Pick a lane. Do you want less lethality? Or what we have now, where even the "morale" phase is just another "more stuff dies" phase?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
For one turn. And if you're rolling "50 dice" to resolve attacks, then that's where rolling back the overall lethality of the game comes in (which is the part of my post that you left out).

50 dice isn't exactly hard to get. A basic marine squad rolls 20 dice within 12". Let's say they have a single buff to re-roll to hit, a pretty modest level of buffs. If the unit is debuffed to require 6s to hit you roll 20 dice initially, re-roll 14 of them, and end up with a total of ~6 hits. You roll to wound against an enemy marine unit and get ~3 wounds. They roll saves and take a single wound on a W2 model. So you've now rolled 20 + 14 + 6 + 3 = 43 dice total to kill half a model. And single tactical squad, even firing at full effect with a re-roll, is hardly an example of extreme lethality.

Pick a lane. Do you want less lethality?

There is an immense difference between setting the standard performance of a unit to a point where doing no damage is a possibility and having to slog through resolving actions for crippled units that you know will perform way below their normal value. In fact, if the base lethality of the game is reduced your debuff scenario gets even worse because if normal units regularly do little or no damage you're almost guaranteed to do nothing with crippled units. But you still have to resolve the actions of those crippled units

Or what we have now, where even the "morale" phase is just another "more stuff dies" phase?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

At the danger of being simplistic.

Everything dies world: I kill your army.

Everything gets pinned world: I kill half your army. But I also pin the other half, so it can't shoot or charge. Basically it skips a go and my army will be at 100% effectiveness next turn.
Next turn - I've taken no losses, so I promptly kill the other half of your army.

So you end up in the same space but with more steps.

Now I guess you can change these percentages - and argue a system where I say kill a quarter of your army, and disable another quarter, is better than just killing half your army. But I'm not sure it would play out that way.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
For one turn. And if you're rolling "50 dice" to resolve attacks, then that's where rolling back the overall lethality of the game comes in (which is the part of my post that you left out).

50 dice isn't exactly hard to get. A basic marine squad rolls 20 dice within 12". Let's say they have a single buff to re-roll to hit, a pretty modest level of buffs. If the unit is debuffed to require 6s to hit you roll 20 dice initially, re-roll 14 of them, and end up with a total of ~6 hits. You roll to wound against an enemy marine unit and get ~3 wounds. They roll saves and take a single wound on a W2 model. So you've now rolled 20 + 14 + 6 + 3 = 43 dice total to kill half a model. And single tactical squad, even firing at full effect with a re-roll, is hardly an example of extreme lethality.

Pick a lane. Do you want less lethality?

There is an immense difference between setting the standard performance of a unit to a point where doing no damage is a possibility and having to slog through resolving actions for crippled units that you know will perform way below their normal value. In fact, if the base lethality of the game is reduced your debuff scenario gets even worse because if normal units regularly do little or no damage you're almost guaranteed to do nothing with crippled units. But you still have to resolve the actions of those crippled units

Or what we have now, where even the "morale" phase is just another "more stuff dies" phase?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Removing easy access to rerolls would be one of the first places to start with reducing lethality, which would cut your dice in half. And you don't "have" to shoot with a unit if you think it's pointless. That's your call. And if you just reduce lethality without introducing other ways to deal with the models on the table, then it's just going to be a lot of those "slap fights" that you were complaining about earlier.

Cute little wiki link too, BTW. Do you have any actual alternative ideas? Or are you just arguing for arguments sake?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
At the danger of being simplistic.

Everything dies world: I kill your army.

Everything gets pinned world: I kill half your army. But I also pin the other half, so it can't shoot or charge. Basically it skips a go and my army will be at 100% effectiveness next turn.
Next turn - I've taken no losses, so I promptly kill the other half of your army.

So you end up in the same space but with more steps.

Now I guess you can change these percentages - and argue a system where I say kill a quarter of your army, and disable another quarter, is better than just killing half your army. But I'm not sure it would play out that way.

You do realize that there is a current Games Workshop game that actually uses these morale mechanics, and works, right? This isn't hypothetical.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You do realize that there is a current Games Workshop game that actually uses these morale mechanics, and works, right? This isn't hypothetical.

Is there? I admit to having not really kept up with dreadnought wars.

Right. You've got nothing, and are just arguing for the sake of it, as usual. Thought so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You do realize that there is a current Games Workshop game that actually uses these morale mechanics, and works, right? This isn't hypothetical.

Is there? I admit to having not really kept up with dreadnought wars.

Yes. Guess you're too busy keeping up with "Buff Stacking Wars"?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Yes. Guess you're too busy keeping up with "Buff Stacking Wars"?

Look, I'm sorry, that was an attempt at a low blow.
If you love those rules - you do you. But I don't. And I'm not convinced bringing them back to 40k would be an improvement.

A completely new game, sort of closer to Bolt Action (not saying its the best go to - but still) could be interesting. But none of the 3rd-7th incarnations interest me.

Karol wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Better that than even more lethality, a unit that is tough, killy and has abilities that debelitate enemy units can be balanced pretty easily by just increasing the pts cost. The version of the 9th ed Drukhari codex where dark lances were undercosted because of a debuff ability instead of the damage hike would probably be more fun to lose against because you'd get to keep your units on the table for more than 2 turns even if all your key units were unable to output their full damage due to debuffs.

I don't know how much you played against eldar in 8th ed, but having their flyers at -1/-3 to hit all the time was not fun.

Enough to remember they could get -4. I don't remember hating them as much as Knights. You also have to remember I played the army competing for worst in 8th, I had a lot of hard matchups. Another thing is I had access to this mysterious art form known as casual wargaming where people didn't bring 5 Alaitoc flyers. You know looking at that old Alaitoc rule does make me shiver, so maybe I have some repressed bad experiences with them.

Especialy when some armies had absolutly zero ways to take down 4-5 eldar flyers, heck even 1-2 of them. And the cost doesn't matter when the units are more or less unkillable and stopping your from taking objectives.

A lot more armies can deal with 2 flyers than 5 and the blocks you can perform will be a lot less perfect. Use a lot of ruins so infantry can move around and then it's not so bad.

And again, it is a big thing to expect GW to tone down those armies, when they never did so.

Eldar got nerfed tonnes of times in 8th.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I'm sorry, I'm finding it hard to understand how having a unit "debuffed" for a turn, with either the possibility to get out of that state or having it happen automatically, is either the "same" or "worse" than just having it removed.

Because the debuffed unit still takes up the same effort to resolve. A dead unit is gone and you don't have to worry about it anymore. A crippled unit is still on the table and you still have to move its models, roll dice for its attacks and saves, include it in your planning, etc, even though it isn't doing anything useful. If you're going to cripple a unit to the point where you're rolling 50 dice to resolve its attacks and doing little or no damage just kill it off and move on with the game. Slap fights between useless units aren't fun.

That doesn't track. A debuffed unit might still be able to perform actions, and may still require resources from the opponent to deal with. A dead unit is just dead.

If it's "the same effort to resolve" you're concerned about, it seems like there are ways to address that. Such as reduce the number of dice the unit can use.

Going back to the original topic (as it seems there have been some side discussions here and there, which is great in its own right), while I completely agree that T8 vehicles are "useless" because of the sheer amount of S8 that pretty much every faction has access to, I just feel like T9 is different because of the lack of S9 or S10+ weapons out there for certain factions. Even with +1 to wound abilities, lowering toughness, auto-wounding with certain hits, etc. it just feels like the game may be slowly moving toward moments of "guess I am just ignoring that Baneblade since I have a bunch of S5-8 weapons (inefficient anti-tank) and nothing in my army that is S9+."

Of course not every anti-tank weapon should be ultra efficient at dealing with tanks, and there is a reason S5 is still a "sweet spot" but as some have brought up already in this thread, it at least feels like melta in half range should be able to do something to get through armor/toughness more easily instead of (or in addition to) dealing extra damage. Not every army has access to S9+ weaponry ubiquitously like lascannons, and even certain melee options only go up to S8. I doubt we are going to see masses of T9 models on the table anytime soon, but this just seems to be a time where certain factions will have an incredibly tough matchup when trying to deal with any kind of massed T9 if the majority of their options involve weapons with a strength of 8. I personally think Meltaguns and Multimeltas should stay at S8 but gain some kind of new melta rule that helps them deal with high toughness targets when they are within half range.

GFdoubles wrote:
Going back to the original topic (as it seems there have been some side discussions here and there, which is great in its own right), while I completely agree that T8 vehicles are "useless" because of the sheer amount of S8 that pretty much every faction has access to, I just feel like T9 is different because of the lack of S9 or S10+ weapons out there for certain factions. Even with +1 to wound abilities, lowering toughness, auto-wounding with certain hits, etc. it just feels like the game may be slowly moving toward moments of "guess I am just ignoring that Baneblade since I have a bunch of S5-8 weapons (inefficient anti-tank) and nothing in my army that is S9+."

Of course not every anti-tank weapon should be ultra efficient at dealing with tanks, and there is a reason S5 is still a "sweet spot" but as some have brought up already in this thread, it at least feels like melta in half range should be able to do something to get through armor/toughness more easily instead of (or in addition to) dealing extra damage. Not every army has access to S9+ weaponry ubiquitously like lascannons, and even certain melee options only go up to S8. I doubt we are going to see masses of T9 models on the table anytime soon, but this just seems to be a time where certain factions will have an incredibly tough matchup when trying to deal with any kind of massed T9 if the majority of their options involve weapons with a strength of 8. I personally think Meltaguns and Multimeltas should stay at S8 but gain some kind of new melta rule that helps them deal with high toughness targets when they are within half range.

T8 is not useless, because S7 still exists and even against S8 it still provides a benefit over T7, not to mention the huge benefit against the amazing number of S4 attacks in the game. It might not be valuable in the current meta, but Necrons changing from S9 to S7 because of a couple of pts-changes is all it would take to change that, nerf Doomscythe and gauss destructors, buff Annihilation Barges and enmitic exterminators.

The main reason why I put "useless" in quotes as I did was because it is really only that way in the current meta. I agree completely that T8 has plenty of uses in 40k on the table, despite not being completely optimized for most lists right now. Wounding T8 on 4s with melta is not nearly as much of an issue as wounding T9 on 5s with, even with +1 to wound shenanigans.

I am still of the opinion that the melta rule needs to be at least an automatic "wounding on 4+ against vehicles" rule whenever it is within half range, along with the extra damage. Dedicated anti-tank firepower should be able to go through any vehicle with a reasonable chance of success, especially for the factions that rely on S8 almost ubiquitously because of the lack of S9 they have access to.

GFdoubles wrote:
I am still of the opinion that the melta rule needs to be at least an automatic "wounding on 4+ against vehicles" rule whenever it is within half range, along with the extra damage. Dedicated anti-tank firepower should be able to go through any vehicle with a reasonable chance of success, especially for the factions that rely on S8 almost ubiquitously because of the lack of S9 they have access to.

Who cares whether there is one model in the opponent's army that is T9 because of a WL trait or relic? Do you really need to change the rules of all melta weapons for that edge case? Making any vehicle T9 on the datasheet just creates more issues than it solves, a few vehicles having T9 through a non-mandatory option is just an interesting note and tech-piece against armies that rely on S8. D6+2 Damage is already a lot, I'm certainly glad that my Necron twin-multi-melta didn't get twice as many shots, it'd be insane.

Heck with the way GW are throwing, Hitpoints, Save mods and hit mods about I would not be supprised if before long we was rolling D10 for everything.

 vict0988 wrote:

GFdoubles wrote:
I am still of the opinion that the melta rule needs to be at least an automatic "wounding on 4+ against vehicles" rule whenever it is within half range, along with the extra damage. Dedicated anti-tank firepower should be able to go through any vehicle with a reasonable chance of success, especially for the factions that rely on S8 almost ubiquitously because of the lack of S9 they have access to.

Who cares whether there is one model in the opponent's army that is T9 because of a WL trait or relic? Do you really need to change the rules of all melta weapons for that edge case? Making any vehicle T9 on the datasheet just creates more issues than it solves, a few vehicles having T9 through a non-mandatory option is just an interesting note and tech-piece against armies that rely on S8. D6+2 Damage is already a lot, I'm certainly glad that my Necron twin-multi-melta didn't get twice as many shots, it'd be insane.

All I am saying is in the context of a T9 and eventually T10 heavy game there are several factions that do not even have anything above S9 in their army beyond one shot weapons like Hunter Killers. As long as GW eventually give every faction a "Railgun" equivalent (in terms of strength, NOT the ignore invuln mechanic) then the factions that do rely on S8 are going to perpetually be unable to even play the killing game against 3 Rogal Dorns or 2 Baneblades or Mastodons or whatever else eventually ends up on the table. They will play the mission sure, but for more casual players that isn't always the want.

I know we are not there yet. We are not going to see a crazy shift to T9 or T10 clogging up the board anytime soon, and we are in no way near a vehicle heavy meta even with more T9 options, but with the way things are trending I do see a game environment soon where T8+ vehicles is the norm and not the exception. We already know how underwhelming T7 non-Redemptor dreadnought vehicles (Rhino and Rhino equivalents especially) have been this edition, so the world of T8 and T9 being all over the table is not TOO far off.

Again, I just think of Dark Eldar, Sisters, even Custodes or Orks, that all either have a limited amount of S9 weaponry or a single option or two for S10+ that is the only way they can reliably wound T9 vehicles without stacking buffs or using one shot per battle weapons like Hunter Killers. Of course between melee and other tricks such as mortal wounds these factions have other ways to deal with that toughness on the table, but in a possible T8+ meta there is no doubt that certain factions are going to be far more disadvantaged than others despite supposedly having "reliable anti-tank weaponry." I am fine with meltas not receiving any changes as long as every faction in the game gets a gun or a melee option that can hit at S10 all game long. The majority of armies have those options, but there are a handful that do not. I am all for playing the mission and all that but at least give every faction a chance to wound T9 on 3s lol.