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 LunarSol wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I think "with your opponents permission" is a good way to say this is more about customisation than hard crunch balancing. if you want to make a monster and upset people to the point they won't play, that's on you. They aren't going to chuck out multiple balance patches to "fix" any problems that come up.

The trouble with this is that you end up with the 'Forgeworld Problem', where people will just say no outright because they've heard it contains some broken builds, even if you had no intention of using such (or even no ability to use such).

I think this is the primary reason why I'm a big fan of cosmetic customization over custom rules. Ultimately no matter how hard you try, you're not going to make a system that rewards "making a good character" in a conflict based system. I just think supplying the tools for cosmetic customization leads to people actually making what the character they want when they don't have to decide how much power they're willing to sacrifice to get there.

We've gone through that and hit that point now in most extremes, what with "accursed weapons" and whatnot. It was and is received as having stolen options though.

 Nevelon wrote:
Do we know if this is going to be added to the web, like datasheets ans detachments, or be book-only rules?

Hopefully this is a test to see if will be included in codexes. But at this point, that ship has probably sailed. I suspect the first 11th books are already locked and at the printer.

AoS has their Anvil of Apotheosis stuff to make custom heroes for Path to Glory, their crusade equivalent. It would not be out of the realm of possibility to get that level of build-a-hero for 40k.

I don't think we KNOW much of anything at this point but this sounds like the hook for the new Campaign - meaning it's this campaign's version of the Specialist Dets and new datasheets from Vigilus. I imagine its going to be like Psychic Awakenings.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:
Except, by the letter of the rules, Legend units do not need opponent's permission.

Tournaments might be another matter entirely, but they're perfectly find in standard Matched Play.

It goes both ways: Everything technically needs your opponent's permission as anyone can refuse any game. What people are picking up on is the "strength" behind the support given by GW. Which is not much.

Just saw some of the leaks for eldar/dark eldar customization. I'm very whelmed. Being able to make a character who hangs out with rangers or runs around lone op is cool, as is the wraith option, but it mostly feels like they just reinvented the autarch/farseer. The Abilities section feels like it should have been filled to the brim with cool options. What's there is neat, but I don't rally feel inspired, you know?

Dudeface wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I think "with your opponents permission" is a good way to say this is more about customisation than hard crunch balancing. if you want to make a monster and upset people to the point they won't play, that's on you. They aren't going to chuck out multiple balance patches to "fix" any problems that come up.

The trouble with this is that you end up with the 'Forgeworld Problem', where people will just say no outright because they've heard it contains some broken builds, even if you had no intention of using such (or even no ability to use such).

I think this is the primary reason why I'm a big fan of cosmetic customization over custom rules. Ultimately no matter how hard you try, you're not going to make a system that rewards "making a good character" in a conflict based system. I just think supplying the tools for cosmetic customization leads to people actually making what the character they want when they don't have to decide how much power they're willing to sacrifice to get there.

We've gone through that and hit that point now in most extremes, what with "accursed weapons" and whatnot. It was and is received as having stolen options though.

I think it's possible though, you just have to have some options to choose from that themselves can be represented by a range of cosmetics.

Using bland language for illustrative purposes only:

Heavy melee weapon
Light Melee weapon
Medium melee weapon

Each of which can be multiple cosmetics and they are balanced against one another statwise. This is basically what 3rd/4th ed did, before the 5th ed bloat. There were really only 2 aspects of 3rd i never liked, AP and movement. I felt they hit a pretty good sweet spot of weapon variety vs constraint and practicality.

Collapsing them into a singe profile is bad, having a dozen options that have a hierarchy of value and result in few actually chosen is bad, but having a set of useful alternatives that reflect that dozen in 3 or 4 is ok.

 LunarSol wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I think "with your opponents permission" is a good way to say this is more about customisation than hard crunch balancing. if you want to make a monster and upset people to the point they won't play, that's on you. They aren't going to chuck out multiple balance patches to "fix" any problems that come up.

The trouble with this is that you end up with the 'Forgeworld Problem', where people will just say no outright because they've heard it contains some broken builds, even if you had no intention of using such (or even no ability to use such).

I think this is the primary reason why I'm a big fan of cosmetic customization over custom rules. Ultimately no matter how hard you try, you're not going to make a system that rewards "making a good character" in a conflict based system. I just think supplying the tools for cosmetic customization leads to people actually making what the character they want when they don't have to decide how much power they're willing to sacrifice to get there.

The problem with that is similar to the 'Forgeworld Problem' you described earlier. You could make an exact copy of any of the bespokes, just making cosmetic changes and they would resist - especially if they can't make the connection to the original character you copied because the cosmetic changes were too effective.

Lets make a captain with Artificier Armor, and an amazingly sharp and heavily weighted Relic Blade. Lets give it, oh I don't know 5A, S10 AP-2 and D3. And lets pair it with an acid sprayer pistol Range 12", D6+3A S4 -1 D1 Torrent, Ignores Cover, Pistol. Models in the unit Captain Harvey Dent leads get to reroll the wound roll in melee. And opposing models in engagement range have half their OC. And you make a super cool coversion using the relic blade from the old Assault Marine squad, and some painstakingly coverted Power armor bits and the sweetest lift and drop of a plaguespewer guantlet for the acid splasher. People - especially the ones who don't recognized Adrax's rules - are not going to go for it. Many the ones who DO recognize Adrax are still going to resist becasue Thunderhammers are different than Relic Blades and even a bespoke Relic Blade shouldn't be equivalent to a Thunderhammer. Even if you do explain its weighted in a such a way as to slow it down but make the hit that much harder. The first ones are worried about DIY MARY SUE. The second ones are stuck on WYSIWYG.

Cool to see this is a thing. Anything to move away from the cookie cutter garbage.

That said.

I don't think we'll see the death of No Model, No Rules in our lifetimes. However, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the death of fixed generic character loadouts.

That's probably the NMNR bit that tweaks people the most; that terminators cannot have an axe, or jump pack characters a mace. That and it is going to become mandatory as the range continues its forever growth. SM have as many HQ options as the rest of the codex don't they, between the 30+ lieutenant options?

Also this still wouldn't fall afoul of NMNR. All they'd have to do is release another "Leader" kit like they did way back when. One body, a couple of torso armor options, and a variety of hands. Then they could remove a huge amount of the codex entry boat (especially from marines), while winning favor with many of the other armies (Archons having basically no options is criminal), and still over-charging massively for one dude.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Just saw some of the leaks for eldar/dark eldar customization. I'm very whelmed.

Do you happen to have a link?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Just saw some of the leaks for eldar/dark eldar customization. I'm very whelmed. Being able to make a character who hangs out with rangers or runs around lone op is cool, as is the wraith option, but it mostly feels like they just reinvented the autarch/farseer. The Abilities section feels like it should have been filled to the brim with cool options. What's there is neat, but I don't rally feel inspired, you know?

Its not just the Aeldari.

They've (GW) released two articles with sample datasheets - sometimes the same one(s) - but we've seen several now.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/zivixehm/bring-your-own-warlords-to-life-with-custom-character-rules-in-the-maelstrom-crucible-of-champions/

and

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/hjiieqr9/the-warhammer-community-team-put-the-maelstroms-custom-character-rules-to-the-test/

The Ork Mek Boss is a great concept. Not much for delivery. Its a Part Big Mek in Mega Armor, Part Big Mek, and Part some new Datasheet called a Hordeboss. His statline is "weaker". He's only got one bespoke - instead of the 2-3 you would expect - probably originating from the as yet unseen Hordeboss baseline datasheet. The gun is generic standard. The melee weapon is not available, but also not Super Master Crafted (which would have taken up one of the "Bespoke" slots - just swapped for faster but less killy - think Relic Blade instead of Power Fist. He's probably a few points undercosted because he's barely more than the Mek, with the Big Mek Unit-Wide partial invuln. It doesn't really deliver the Weirdboy or Big Mek version of Ghaz like it should. It probably won't even deliver Boss Gulgortz.

The Chaos Sorcerous Champion also doesn't really deliver. I think he's being passed off as a Cultist Sorcerer, and (if I'm deconstructing correctly) based on a Sorcererous Chamption (which must be some slightly bit different than the Chaos Sorcerer datasheet but how, who knows?) And this Sorcererous Champion is probably a Legionary character not a Cultist Character. So we've got a cultist with T4 LD6+ and a 3+ armor save for unexplained reasons. They could fluff it as gifts of the dark gods, but they didn't. And the character leads LEGION squads, not cultist squads even though the Legionaries look down on (almost) everyone who isn't from the LEGION. So they end up with a fairly decent custom character who doesn't have fluff matching the datasheet. And without the original datasheet and the steps they took to get there all I really can infer is they still don't understand the bigger problem is not having more Cultist datasheets instead of not being able to customize them. They didn't use the Cultist Firebrand datasheet as a base - either because it wasn't allowed or it didn't get them where they were going and its the ONLY cultist character datasheet. I suppose technicaly there's a Traitor Enforcer unit, but that's even further off the end result than the Sorcerous Champion.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 morganfreeman wrote:
Cool to see this is a thing. Anything to move away from the cookie cutter garbage.

That said.

I don't think we'll see the death of No Model, No Rules in our lifetimes. However, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the death of fixed generic character loadouts.

That's probably the NMNR bit that tweaks people the most; that terminators cannot have an axe, or jump pack characters a mace. That and it is going to become mandatory as the range continues its forever growth. SM have as many HQ options as the rest of the codex don't they, between the 30+ lieutenant options?

They can have an axe. It just needs to have the same stats as a power fist. Very few people will even bat an eye if you make a Blood Angels Terminator Squad with every Terminator wielding an Axe Mortalis bit in their non-shooting hand. They'll probably be too busy trying to calculate how many Dante kits you bought to get that many axes. They will likely double check to make sure your "Axes of Baal" on your "special" Blood Angels Terminators are still 3A S8 -2 D2 and then they won't care. If you're more talented than I am, GW might even put your unit in a White Dwarf because it uses all GW parts. I think the NMNR thing is going to ameliorate to some sort of GW formula to make the models out of assorted kits instead of making a specific kit for everything. And I just realized I should have used Iron Hands. Terminators with a big studded stick instead of power fists. Made up to look like disciples of Cannok Var without the techmarine bits and VR helmet. So pretend I did that. GW isn't going to (negatively) care about cosmetic changes. Especially not thematic cosmetic changes. And really not about thematic cosmetic changes that result in more sales for them to get the bits.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Just saw some of the leaks for eldar/dark eldar customization. I'm very whelmed. Being able to make a character who hangs out with rangers or runs around lone op is cool, as is the wraith option, but it mostly feels like they just reinvented the autarch/farseer. The Abilities section feels like it should have been filled to the brim with cool options. What's there is neat, but I don't rally feel inspired, you know?

I assumed as much. They don't consider warlocks and exarchs characters so they wouldn't give them a look in.

Having looked at it, I can make a striking scorpion exarch with the existing autarch easier than this list, because they don't have the mandiblasters available. Just the two mask wargear items alone would have been useful.


I just want to make a menshad korum exarch, loner that stalks the battlefield targeting enemy commanders. If they could take exarch powers that would also be great. The arks of omen exarch powers and stat upgrades they granted was the first time in decades I could actually take a somewhat presentable senior exarch.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Just saw some of the leaks for eldar/dark eldar customization. I'm very whelmed. Being able to make a character who hangs out with rangers or runs around lone op is cool, as is the wraith option, but it mostly feels like they just reinvented the autarch/farseer. The Abilities section feels like it should have been filled to the brim with cool options. What's there is neat, but I don't rally feel inspired, you know?

I assumed as much. They don't consider warlocks and exarchs characters so they wouldn't give them a look in.

Having looked at it, I can make a striking scorpion exarch with the existing autarch easier than this list, because they don't have the mandiblasters available. Just the two mask wargear items alone would have been useful.


I just want to make a menshad korum exarch, loner that stalks the battlefield targeting enemy commanders. If they could take exarch powers that would also be great. The arks of omen exarch powers and stat upgrades they granted was the first time in decades I could actually take a somewhat presentable senior exarch.

There's a datasheet for Warlocks as independent characters? Did you mean something else?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hopefully this isn’t some end of edition flash in the pan tease. .

All previous experience would suggest that it most likely is.

 insaniak wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hopefully this isn’t some end of edition flash in the pan tease. .

All previous experience would suggest that it most likely is.

The arks of omen stuff gave us some actual interesting Exarch options not seen since 2nd ed and it promptly got mercilessly stripped down to the absolute dogshite options (or lack thereof) we have now. I'd give up these crucible options for the ability to take a W3 Exarch with new powers. Anything that gives the oldest and most powerful warriors on the craftworld the due they've been missing.

So, the leaks are out there.

And I notice two things about the Daemons section...

1) They don't have Invulns? That feels like an oversight.
2) I CAN GIVE NURGLINGS OC1!

 JNAProductions wrote:
So, the leaks are out there.

And I notice two things about the Daemons section...

1) They don't have Invulns? That feels like an oversight.
2) I CAN GIVE NURGLINGS OC1!

The options do seem to follow the general 40k favoritism curve. Marines get insane amounts of options and it drops down from there. Poor guard only have 3 abilities and two are just sustained hits, and they've made the bone ead T3 W3....

Yep, whole bunch of marine options (including Dreadnoughts!) but everyone else is quite restricted. There are a couple of interesting options there (character wraithlords, rebel grots, tri-lobe vectors) but nothing that leaps out as "ooh that's really neat, I should try that" and some of the options are unnecessarily restrictive (why shouldn't a rebel grot have a jump pack?)

I'll play around with them, maybe even model some stuff but there's no way in hell these are sticking around long term

The two biggest flaws of these rules seems to be giving units cheap access to leader rules they can't access with generic options and unchecked access to ranged weapons or 3 damage melee weapons.

Why would I ever play a wartrike again when I can have a hordeboss with SAG, KFF and 'uge choppa?