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I see, this is the reason why melee armies are much more present in the top tier tournament lists than before we moved to the small table

What was the melee heavy Edition?
3rd and 5th?

If there would be any evidence that melee armies are doing better now, I would agree

Yet what does a smaller board means:
- less distance to move until close combat
- easier board control
- shorter weapon range needed
- easier Alpha Strike

and for whatever unkown reason, people complain about Alpha Strike, Shooting is too lethal and board control
no one complains about melee being to easy


so picking out the only thing that could be seen as an advantage but actually does not come up in reality, to justify GW saving money no matter what it means for the game, and people follow because "balanced games only on minimum board size" is the most stupid argument I have regarding 40k in years

Someone who can't even punctuate the end of their sentences perhaps shouldn't be complaining about stupid arguments. Just get Grammarly so you don't look so silly while insulting me or my arguments.

Lychguard could be points-effective in previous editions, but the smaller tables helps keep a M5 melee unit more relevant in my opinion, because the proportion of the table they cannot get to each turn is relatively smaller. No rules change can guarantee a unit will be good, even if GW changed Toughness 8 units to become unkillable tomorrow it still wouldn't mean anything if all T8 units were changed to be 2000+ points, so unless you're actually going to do a proper test to see whether it has an impact I suggest you stop being so rude.

I am defending a rules change that I think has more positive impacts on the game than it has negative impacts, why are you bringing money into it or saying that I will justify it no matter what it means for the game? If the change had an overall negative impact in my estimation I would not try to justify it. I don't think "GW makes more money doing it this way" is a reason to defend something, at best it might be a way to analyse a situation to better understand what is going on and what we can expect in the future.

 vict0988 wrote:
Someone who can't even punctuate the end of their sentences perhaps shouldn't be complaining about stupid arguments.

You know what's a stupid argument? That one.

 vict0988 wrote:

Devastators benefit more from Iron Hands Chapter Tactics, while Terminators benefit more from Blood Angels Chapter Tactics,

Not necessarily. Assuming the Sergeant is equipped with a melee weapon and the big guns are stuff wanting to be close (So Grav Cannons and Multi-Melta) it isn't unreasonable to get some value with those Devastators as Blood Angels. As well, Terminators absolutely get value from extra durability.

It's very rare that a Chapter Tactic doesn't benefit a unit in SOME way. Yeah, Assault Terminators and dual Chainsword Vanguard don't get anything with Imperial Fists. However, those cases are few enough in number that the argument to make Chapter Tactics cost points is laughable.

 vict0988 wrote:
The logic of smaller tables benefitting melee is the following:
*Melee units want to charge.
*On a smaller table there is less space to move out of charge range.
*Melee units benefit from playing on a smaller table.

Devastators benefit more from Iron Hands Chapter Tactics, while Terminators benefit more from Blood Angels Chapter Tactics, but the points cost stays the same therefore people will be pushed towards only taking units that synergize with their Chapter Tactic despite fluff saying both chapters use Terminators and Devastators. Chapter Tactics also increase lethality in the game.

Combat Doctrines/Super Doctrines are bad for the game because they add a lot of complexity to the game, making the game harder to get into.

I propose you host an 8 man tournament where half the players play shooting lists and the other half play melee lists and everyone plays against everyone once. Then host a new tournament using the same lists on 72x48 instead of 60x44. See whether there's a difference in performance in the tournament using 60x44 vs 72x48. If you're not willing to do that you cannot conclusively say whether the smaller tables are better for melee, so all we can say is whether we think it's logical or illogical that a smaller table should benefit melee lists or perhaps come up with a few games worth of anecdotal evidence.

Now I've forgotten, why is benefiting melee over shooting better for balance in general? Or did you not mean to drop that facade?

I mean my points were "in general" balance.

Most models were built with a bigger-table era footprint.

Smaller tables have already demonstrated balance issues for large models

Semi-New: Smaller tables have exacerbated the go-no-go-first issue.

Are you sure go-first is a bigger issue in 9th? As far as I understand things it was a far bigger issue in 8th.

I don't think smaller tables caused any issue for large models, I think too much terrain being placed in a bad way in tournaments causes some large models to become close to unplayable. There needs to be at least a couple of 6,5" paths through the table, no matter how big your table is you can make the terrain too dense for large models to path through. Most OP shooting in 9th have been rather short-ranged anyway so all that terrain hasn't actually meant that the game wasn't too lethal anyway. Trying to stay outside the threat range of a Skitarii Vanguard brick is also a lot harder than staying outside the threat range of a unit of Lychguard. The smaller tables help short-ranged units, but they especially help melee.

I'm not putting up a facade. I'm just saying it how I think it is. Slow elite melee units were too mechanically disadvantaged in 8th, on a smaller table they have a bigger impact on the game and they can therefore be balanced at a higher points value, in 8th to be competitive a slow melee unit would have had to become very cheap.

@Breton I don't understand your point about models being built different.

You might get some value from the BA buff on your Devastators, but the buff from Iron Hands would almost always be bigger. Blood Angels have used Eradicators and Iron Hands successors have used Vanguard Veterans to great effect, but I personally don't think the rules are worth keeping. It's also a balance puzzle that GW generally don't know how to solve, with lots of Chapters being useless across the game and lots of Chapters contributing to lists being overpowered because one of them had an unforeseen large impact on the power level of a list.

 vict0988 wrote:
so unless you're actually going to do a proper test to see whether it has an impact I suggest you stop being so rude.

Can you point me at the tests that you have done yourself to support your arguments? I'm assuming based on your demand here that you have done the thing you are expecting other people to do so it should be pretty easy for you to show me.

why are you bringing money into it

Because it was purely a money decision. GW cut table sizes to make their mats fit within the standard box and allow a single product to cover 40k and Kill Team. Any supposed game design arguments in favor of the change are nothing more than an after the fact rationalization. Even if it did improve balance it was purely by accident and is a clear example of "wrong process, right result".


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 vict0988 wrote:
There needs to be at least a couple of 6,5" paths through the table

FYI: this is not sufficient. There are models (Baneblades, for example) that are wider than 6.5" and will not fit through those gaps. This is a major problem in 9th and creates a de facto ban on those units.

And yes, you can pack a standard table with terrain and duplicate the problems with a small table but if you have the same percentage of terrain coverage on both tables the larger table will have larger gaps and more space for large models to move.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
Can you point me at the tests that you have done yourself to support your arguments? I'm assuming based on your demand here that you have done the thing you are expecting other people to do so it should be pretty easy for you to show me.

I don't need to, I'm not calling people that disagree with my reasoning idiots. It's perfectly acceptable to hold a belief because of reasoning, you don't need to do a test to believe that it'd be easier to eat french onion soup with a spoon instead of a fork, it makes rational sense that a spoon would be able to hold the soup while the soup would slip between the tongs of a fork. If someone tells you that you're eating french onion soup wrong by using a spoon instead of a fork you can either agree to disagree or you can do a test to see whether it is easier to use a spoon or a fork. I have offered both, I just get offended when someone calls me a white knight or says my argument is the worst one posted to Dakka in years.

...it was purely a money decision. GW cut table sizes to make their mats fit within the standard box and allow a single product to cover 40k and Kill Team. Any supposed game design arguments in favor of the change are nothing more than an after the fact rationalization. Even if it did improve balance it was purely by accident and is a clear example of "wrong process, right result".

GW could decide to lower the pts cost of Triarch Praetorians to sell more Triarch Praetorian boxes and I'd applaud the change because buffing a slightly overcosted unit is good for balance, on the other hand I'll deride GW for lowering the pts cost of Tomb Blades to sell more Tomb Blades boxes because Tomb Blades were not overcosted and therefore buffing them is bad for balance. Why should I be against every change GW makes to make more money on that fact alone? Making balance better is good if it was done with good intentions and it is good if it was done with bad intentions. Making balance worse is bad if it was done with good intentions and awful if it was done with bad intentions. In the case of smaller tables let's agree for the sake of argument that it was done with bad intentions, in my world view that's still okay as long as the impact on the game is good. I understand you think the impact on the game is bad but I'm not going to call you GW haters because you disagree with me when we don't know the facts 100%. If you think doing good things with bad intentions is a net moral bad then that's fine as well, just a difference of opinion, but it has nothing to do with being a hater or being a white knight.

FYI: this is not sufficient. There are models (Baneblades, for example) that are wider than 6.5" and will not fit through those gaps. This is a major problem in 9th and creates a de facto ban on those units.

And yes, you can pack a standard table with terrain and duplicate the problems with a small table but if you have the same percentage of terrain coverage on both tables the larger table will have larger gaps and more space for large models to move.

Just scaling up everything would cause problems with sight lines that are too generous as well wouldn't it? What if you just designed the terrain layout for the table size you're playing at instead of imagining terrain stretching to fit the dimensions of the table? When I set up terrain I make sure a single Tesseract Vault can move across the table at least, manoeuvring models this large being an issue and moving multiple of them being impossible is fair as long as everyone knows that while making lists I think. There are tournaments where there are no 6" gaps in terrain, that has nothing to do with the table being too small, the event organizers decided they needed this much terrain density because the game is too lethal.

 vict0988 wrote:
I don't need to, I'm not calling people that disagree with my reasoning idiots.

You seem to be implying that people who disagree with your reasoning are calling you an idiot, since that is what would be required to justify your double standard for proof. Could you link to an example of this happening? I've glanced over the last few posts and I haven't seen it happen, but I'm sure you're an honest person who wouldn't imply things like that if they weren't true.

Why should I be against every change GW makes to make more money on that fact alone?

Ever hear the phrase "wrong process, right result"? I mean, of course you did because I just used it in my previous post, but do you understand it? It's a vital concept in both engineering and game design. If your process is bad it doesn't matter if you, by sheer blind luck, manage to get a desirable result. You should be against GW making decisions like cutting the table size for 40k because decisions made by that process are far more likely to produce bad results than good results.

Just scaling up everything would cause problems with sight lines that are too generous as well wouldn't it?

No. A straight scaling up of everything that maintains the relative proportions of the geometry does not change the percent of table space that does or does not have line of sight. If, say, a ruin protects 75% of the area behind it on a tiny table it will protect the same 75% of the area behind it on a larger table. The only difference is that the absolute value of the area covered will be larger.

Or, to make this clear, imagine we do the reverse and shrink the models instead of restoring the table to its normal size. Let's say we even do it to a more extreme level and play with the old Epic models on a 9th edition tournament table. Do you think that having smaller models means that sight lines will now be too generous?

What if you just designed the terrain layout for the table size you're playing at instead of imagining terrain stretching to fit the dimensions of the table?

Because you can't do that. The issue is that if you have large enough gaps for the Baneblade to move properly you don't have enough square inches of protected space to keep your army alive against an alpha strike. When GW cut the table sizes they created a situation where keeping the same number of square inches of protected space requires having a higher percentage of the table be covered with LOS blocking terrain, leaving smaller gaps for movement.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
I don't need to, I'm not calling people that disagree with my reasoning idiots.

You seem to be implying that people who disagree with your reasoning are calling you an idiot, since that is what would be required to justify your double standard for proof. Could you link to an example of this happening? I've glanced over the last few posts and I haven't seen it happen, but I'm sure you're an honest person who wouldn't imply things like that if they weren't true.

 kodos wrote:
it just has to be a problem because otherwise the argument that the change in table size is an advantage for the player and a real benefit for balance does not hold

if there is no problem in reality, the new size solves nothing but only has disadvantages the white knights try to defend

hence some artificial problems are created to have a base for the argument

Kodos doesn't like the conclusion I came to so I must be a white knight is the same as if I said everyone who doesn't come to the same conclusion about smaller tables being good for the game are idiots.

Why should I be against every change GW makes to make more money on that fact alone?

Ever hear the phrase "wrong process, right result"? I mean, of course you did because I just used it in my previous post, but do you understand it? It's a vital concept in both engineering and game design. If your process is bad it doesn't matter if you, by sheer blind luck, manage to get a desirable result. You should be against GW making decisions like cutting the table size for 40k because decisions made by that process are far more likely to produce bad results than good results.

I didn't say the process was right, but just because the process is wrong does not mean the result is wrong. The process of modern medicine is better than that of traditional medicine, but where traditional medicine has found good answers to problems we should use modern medicine to verify and implement those solutions. Everything indicates that GW's processes are terrible, it's no big surprise most of their results are terrible, but when a result is good it should still be kept regardless of whether the process of getting to it was right. On the other hand if GW's game designers sat down when designing 9th and said "slow elite melee units really struggle to have an impact and gunlines are unfun to play against how do we fix this?" Then GW does 56 playtests and from those playtests they find that 60x44 is more fun than 72x48 and they change the minimum table size. We could still have a result where after thousands of games after release it turns out the change is bad, despite GW's process being way better than "feth the game, smaller minimum table size = more profit" the result could still be bad.

Just scaling up everything would cause problems with sight lines that are too generous as well wouldn't it?

No. A straight scaling up of everything that maintains the relative proportions of the geometry does not change the percent of table space that does or does not have line of sight. If, say, a ruin protects 75% of the area behind it on a tiny table it will protect the same 75% of the area behind it on a larger table. The only difference is that the absolute value of the area covered will be larger.

Or, to make this clear, imagine we do the reverse and shrink the models instead of restoring the table to its normal size. Let's say we even do it to a more extreme level and play with the old Epic models on a 9th edition tournament table. Do you think that having smaller models means that sight lines will now be too generous?

I think it would, the Epic models would be stuck in the open between pieces of terrain for 1-2 turns right?

What if you just designed the terrain layout for the table size you're playing at instead of imagining terrain stretching to fit the dimensions of the table?

Because you can't do that. The issue is that if you have large enough gaps for the Baneblade to move properly you don't have enough square inches of protected space to keep your army alive against an alpha strike. When GW cut the table sizes they created a situation where keeping the same number of square inches of protected space requires having a higher percentage of the table be covered with LOS blocking terrain, leaving smaller gaps for movement.

well, I did not meant you in person, this was a general statement about people defending everything GW is doing as "benefit for the players"

if you you took this personally and now try to convince others that you are not a white knight by trying to find something to proof that there is an actual benefit to the game by playing larger armies on smaller boards.....

I haven't still seen anything that make me think that decreasing the board size does anything good except saving money for GW by not having several different tile sizes to produce, as well as giving the TOs the possibility to have more players at events

if you like the new board size because you benefit from playing that way, this is ok no problem there

but there is no general benefit for balance or "all" players because the negative impact to the game is still dominating


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:
To me that's an issue of lethality.

and smaller boards with less possibility to be out of range have nothing to do with it I guess

 vict0988 wrote:


I'm not putting up a facade. I'm just saying it how I think it is. Slow elite melee units were too mechanically disadvantaged in 8th, on a smaller table they have a bigger impact on the game and they can therefore be balanced at a higher points value, in 8th to be competitive a slow melee unit would have had to become very cheap.

You came awful close to claiming people who wanted the larger board were TFG because you believe it was to give an edge to their army - while at the same time trying to advocate for smaller boards to boost melee under the guise of "balance".

@Breton I don't understand your point about models being built different.

You might get some value from the BA buff on your Devastators, but the buff from Iron Hands would almost always be bigger. Blood Angels have used Eradicators and Iron Hands successors have used Vanguard Veterans to great effect, but I personally don't think the rules are worth keeping. It's also a balance puzzle that GW generally don't know how to solve, with lots of Chapters being useless across the game and lots of Chapters contributing to lists being overpowered because one of them had an unforeseen large impact on the power level of a list.

On a basic setup with a 6x4 board your deployment area will be 864 square inches, after the recommended 25% terrain it will be roughly 648 square inches. On a 60x44 board your deployment area will be 600 square inches reduced to 450 square inches. You also have a maximum depth of 10 inches. Which means you only have approximately 0.5 inches of clearance for some sort of LOS blocking terrain in front of your 71.25 square inch Astra Militarum Super Heavy Tank if it faces forward, or 2.5 inches if you place it sideways. These models were not sized and built with 10 inch deep deployment zones in mind. They came out when you had 12 inch deep 800/600+ Square Inch deployment zones. And that's before we get into things like Thunderhawks or other Forgeworld gigantic models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

To me that's an issue of lethality.

Much like smaller boards are an issue of balance, and larger boards are an issue of modeling to advantage so to speak?

You don't even have to use stuff like super heavies, which over are really big models. The faction terrain or stuff like the primaris bunker are impossible to set up, most of the time.

This question boils down to do better rules sell more models? I think the answer is yes especially short term. Games workshop is a multi million dollar corporation if it sells more they will do it. If you don't think they are then you must think overpowered rules don't sell more models.

The mistakes are when they don't get it wright this is the only part that is effected by hanlans razor.

Is it malicious to only care about profit? I think so corporations don't care about people they care about profits.

Boosykes wrote:
This question boils down to do better rules sell more models? I think the answer is yes especially short term. Games workshop is a multi million dollar corporation if it sells more they will do it. If you don't think they are then you must think overpowered rules don't sell more models.

The mistakes are when they don't get it wright this is the only part that is effected by hanlans razor.

Is it malicious to only care about profit? I think so corporations don't care about people they care about profits.

Well thats mostly true but at the same time they will only push that drive for profit as far as they think the consumer will tolerate. This is very much a luxury purchase and even taking things like sunk cost fallacy into account people can and do just walk away.

I dont think they have an internal rule for this though id imagine it happens to some extent, my suspicion is they have over excited devs who occasionally go to far on the cool factor.

Boosykes wrote:
This question boils down to do better rules sell more models? I think the answer is yes especially short term. Games workshop is a multi million dollar corporation if it sells more they will do it. If you don't think they are then you must think overpowered rules don't sell more models.

The mistakes are when they don't get it wright this is the only part that is effected by hanlans razor.

Is it malicious to only care about profit? I think so corporations don't care about people they care about profits.

Better rules DO sell models.

Let's take a look at Inceptors for a moment though. They were dropped to 40 for both options, which made bolters utterly terrible by comparison. People absolutely went out and bought Inceptors as a result. The unit itself wasn't going to be widely problematic, but for mid-range and lower tables it would be oppressive.

Then less than a week later Inceptors are back to 60.

It can't be true that GW was attempting to sell out, because they still had stock when the change was made. Why would they then price them at a cost that almost no one took them even when they had AOC? Did they suddenly not want to sell them at all? Did they want to encourage people to return their unopened boxes? I bet there are tons out there as few people would be getting them painted in the literal days that the change occurred.

What is it that you think people will take away from that exchange? Would they become more cautious about what they buy knowing that it could change at any moment? What behavior does changing points every 6 months produce? Does it encourage picking winners or does it encourage having a wide selection of models to use?

The only outcome one can derive is that people making the points and the suits are not linked and that people setting points make mistakes.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Boosykes wrote:
This question boils down to do better rules sell more models? I think the answer is yes especially short term. Games workshop is a multi million dollar corporation if it sells more they will do it. If you don't think they are then you must think overpowered rules don't sell more models.

The mistakes are when they don't get it wright this is the only part that is effected by hanlans razor.

Is it malicious to only care about profit? I think so corporations don't care about people they care about profits.

Better rules DO sell models.

Let's take a look at Inceptors for a moment though. They were dropped to 40 for both options, which made bolters utterly terrible by comparison. People absolutely went out and bought Inceptors as a result. The unit itself wasn't going to be widely problematic, but for mid-range and lower tables it would be oppressive.

Then less than a week later Inceptors are back to 60.

It can't be true that GW was attempting to sell out, because they still had stock when the change was made. Why would they then price them at a cost that almost no one took them even when they had AOC? Did they suddenly not want to sell them at all? Did they want to encourage people to return their unopened boxes? I bet there are tons out there as few people would be getting them painted in the literal days that the change occurred.

What is it that you think people will take away from that exchange? Would they become more cautious about what they buy knowing that it could change at any moment? What behavior does changing points every 6 months produce? Does it encourage picking winners or does it encourage having a wide selection of models to use?

The only outcome one can derive is that people making the points and the suits are not linked and that people setting points make mistakes.

Yup. The people that wrote the points goofed up. And the constant changes for "Tournament Edition, 40k" are an absolute problem. May the "tournament meta" burn.

VIVA HERESY!

Would this be fixed by banning LOW models from anything under a certain table size, or matched play entirely?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Would this be fixed by banning LOW models from anything under a certain table size, or matched play entirely?

Nah. LoW.and armies like Knights are a consistent bugbear, but generally ok when balance is considered. I'm sure that detractors will soon follow however, and be consumed in the eventual evaluations.

answering initial question:

are they overpowering new stuff to drive sales.

for me, yes, they have done for years, they are just not very good at doing it well.

some stuff is too good, some stuff is rubbish, for the same reason that after 9 editions 40k isn't a perfect set of rules for a perfectly fast, fun and balanced game - GW are not very good at writing rules for the quite nice models they put out

on the plus side them being bad at it means not everything new is overpowered, plus if they were better at that it would likely be worse for players

so many GW incompetence is a good thing for once?

either way its not going to change, if they tried to perfectly balance new stuff they would still muck it up and I doubt anyone would notice the difference

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Would this be fixed by banning LOW models from anything under a certain table size, or matched play entirely?

LOW are not a problem by default of the mission design.

It's almost a guaranteed loss at higher tables to take big models - especially multiple big knights. War dogs are crucial.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Would this be fixed by banning LOW models from anything under a certain table size, or matched play entirely?

LOW are not a problem by default of the mission design.

It's almost a guaranteed loss at higher tables to take big models - especially multiple big knights. War dogs are crucial.

People still have this absolutely insane idea that there's some 'unique' or 'special' about lords of war that some how makes them something 'other' than a 'normal' unit.

Guess what nerds, the difference between a Stompa and a Leman Russ is 1. Number of wounds and 2. You might actually WANT a Leman Russ.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Boosykes wrote:
This question boils down to do better rules sell more models? I think the answer is yes especially short term. Games workshop is a multi million dollar corporation if it sells more they will do it. If you don't think they are then you must think overpowered rules don't sell more models.

The mistakes are when they don't get it wright this is the only part that is effected by hanlans razor.

Is it malicious to only care about profit? I think so corporations don't care about people they care about profits.

Better rules DO sell models.

Let's take a look at Inceptors for a moment though. They were dropped to 40 for both options, which made bolters utterly terrible by comparison. People absolutely went out and bought Inceptors as a result. The unit itself wasn't going to be widely problematic, but for mid-range and lower tables it would be oppressive.

Then less than a week later Inceptors are back to 60.

It can't be true that GW was attempting to sell out, because they still had stock when the change was made. Why would they then price them at a cost that almost no one took them even when they had AOC? Did they suddenly not want to sell them at all? Did they want to encourage people to return their unopened boxes? I bet there are tons out there as few people would be getting them painted in the literal days that the change occurred.

What is it that you think people will take away from that exchange? Would they become more cautious about what they buy knowing that it could change at any moment? What behavior does changing points every 6 months produce? Does it encourage picking winners or does it encourage having a wide selection of models to use?

The only outcome one can derive is that people making the points and the suits are not linked and that people setting points make mistakes.

Yup. The people that wrote the points goofed up. And the constant changes for "Tournament Edition, 40k" are an absolute problem. May the "tournament meta" burn.

VIVA HERESY!

The only 2 major differences between Heresy and 40k are 1. They only have to balance 1 army and 2. The playerbase isn't big enough to have enough events for anyone to care about winning at it.

ERJAK wrote:
People still have this absolutely insane idea that there's some 'unique' or 'special' about lords of war that some how makes them something 'other' than a 'normal' unit.

This sentence is a topic worth discussing all by its own. How something extraordinary, that used to be reserved for bigger events with multiple people duking it out over the whole weekend, is now "just another unit".

a_typical_hero wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
People still have this absolutely insane idea that there's some 'unique' or 'special' about lords of war that some how makes them something 'other' than a 'normal' unit.

This sentence is a topic worth discussing all by its own. How something extraordinary, that used to be reserved for bigger events with multiple people duking it out over the whole weekend, is now "just another unit".

yeah, that was like 15 years ago, they've become "playable" in regular 40k for a while now, and people still think theyre scary.

news flash, 99% of LoW suck major ass and act as glorified, overfragile, overexpensive models.