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 NL_Cirrus wrote:
I am not sure how anybody thinks you could ever get less then two models on a direct hit with a large blast.

Regardless of base size unit coherency is 2in and a large blast has a radius of 2.5in. The only restriction that I am aware of is the center of the blast must be over a model or the base of a model in the target unit. So just place the large blast on the edge of the base and you cannot get less than 2 hits.

Did anyone say less than two hits on a unit composed of multiple models?

morgoth wrote:

It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.

It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.

So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.

'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.

Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.

And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.



Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.

Waaaghpower wrote:

morgoth wrote:

It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.

It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.

So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.

'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.

Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.

And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.



Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.

I see what you mean, but I honestly don't think those corner cases where the old blast was better compensate all those where the new blast is better.

Your point on these 25mm bases is interesting, I've always assimilated them to 1" erroneously and I guess I must not have been the only one.

That gives us an average of 2 hits vs 2.4 for the new blasts, not bad.

Overall we're still stuck with the following:

Single targets: new blast is 3.5x better
multiple targets, spaced properly, any base size except 25mm, 1.5x better
multiple targets, spaced properly, 25mm bases, 1.1x better
multiple targets clumped together, 1.5x worse or something (because missing a juicy clump costs a ton of efficiency)

It may be just my experience, but whenever I have a lot of blasts, it seems to be impossible to find clumped targets.

I personally find the new blasts more reliable and more powerful as well as more flexible (abilty to deal with heavy targets).

Waaaghpower wrote:

Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump,

1. means risking death or glory
2. often disqualifies the shot entirely since you can't place a template over your own unit

Waaaghpower wrote:

hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable,

1. Assumes you survive the contents shooting you, which given deepstrikers of any significance are SM, generally with either grav or melta, is highly optimistic. That the LRBT costs on par with 2 tac squads with free drop pods and meltas in a gladius is not to be discounted easily either.

Waaaghpower wrote:

popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle;

1. Is not something the Isotropic Competent player will allow to happen, since an explodes result for a chimera (for example) gives him an approximately 19" oval to spread his troops around
2. assumes you even have line of sight if he hides behind a wreck

Waaaghpower wrote:

There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you?

1. In the case of a tank, assumes you survived; and didn't get one of the 5/6 results that prevent you from firing a blast weapon and/or moving away far enough not to get hit by a template weapon from your own side.
2. in the case of a sweep, then yes, that's actually true.

Now it can be done, and scoring a perfect result from a wyvern after bunching up something is a joy to behold... but the amount of investment to make it happen, often at the expense of other opportunities, and the shear number of things that can go *wrong* hints the greater regularity afforded by the non-template approach is more valuable.

Waaaghpower wrote:

morgoth wrote:

It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.

It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.

So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.

'Vastly better' is one extra hit, at the cost of any semblance of reliability? I don't track.

Also, even with perfect spacing, a 25mm base is less than 1" wide, so a 5" blast should always get three hits on a direct shot unless someone is cheating.

And, most importantly, you keep ignoring the biggest point of my argument: Unless you play on a barren, empty board with no terrain, don't use Deep Strikers, and don't ever see transports or vehicles on the board, there are always many ways to get units to cluster together. Ramming units to force them to group up into a clump, hitting Deep Strikers while they're vulnerable, popping transports so that the units inside have to come out in a bundle; There are tons of ways to hit more than three units at a time. If they just assaulted you? Well, they're gonna be stacked on each other unless they rolled really well for consolidation, so it's the perfect time to strike back.



Jeez, these tournaments you go to sure sound like they lack any sort of nuance. That, or you're stretching the reality of the situation into pretzels so your opinion will look less noticeably contrived.

Yeah, and if you did force your opponent to put their troops in to thinly spread lines to avoid getting blasted you've actually done quite well because a unit is much less mobile, harder to control LoS and more likely to have part of the unit out of range when spread out like that, especially a large unit.

Admittedly I haven't played a lot of games in recent years, but my observation was people only bothered to thinly spread their most elite units, you could usually find a squad of something with a 3+ or 4+ save that wasn't spread in a line to try and get a handful of battle cannon hits on.

To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.

Waaaghpower wrote:
To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.

You are right, they are not good. They are even worse than they where as an average of 4 hits on well spaced infantry has gone down to an average of one and a quarter.

morgoth wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
Randomized number of shots SUCKS.

It probably does, but here it's replacing a weapon which generally dealt either one or two hits maximum, not counting extremely lucky scatters or non-spacing-their-units-correctly opponents.

I think that's still going to be much better.
Also, you should play against the Exorcist, it's friggin scary and efficient when you're on the other side of the table.
Besides, you've got three of them to have some statistical certainty.

One or two hits maximum? Unless everyone at your LGS is putting models in conga lines on 30mm bases... How?

I'm not talking LGS, I'm talking tournaments, and I never had even the opportunity to hit more than 3 targets with a blast unless I was playing rather bad opponents.

First off, which is it: 3 hits, or 1-2 hits maximum? You've said both. Getting a potential three hits, averaging 2, and rarely missing entirely, is better than what a D6 roll on a 4+ to hit will average you.

It's 3 hits if you score a hit with someone who didn't space out perfectly but close, 2 hits if they did.
That's on 25mm bases, you get fethed on every single other size of base, big time.
Then you get the scatter, which really does nothing 1/3rd of the time, and generally does the same thing as hitting 1/3rd of the time, So that's about 1.3 hits on average if counting the necessity to hit your target.
If you consider most everything in this game, which is BS4, d6 shots is 3.5 shots, which is 2.4 hits or something.

It's 2.4 times the damage against a single target, and more damage against multiple targets, unless of course you were counting on your opponent to maximize your hits all the time.
In my opinion, that counts as clearly better.
Plus it removes the "you have to space your models and waste 5 minutes per movement phase" problem.

So, if you want, you can continue to argue that maybe it was better against bad players and 25mm bases, but clearly against big targets, good players and larger base sizes, the new blast is vastly better.

If you were smart, or just used common sense tbf, you would place it on a model with a model either side of it (unless of course you are talking about 2 model units?), then IF the opponent was playing a conga line up the board, you would hit at the absolute bare minimum 3 models with a hit. If the opponent wasn't playing conga line but was still placing models ALL at 2" coherency you would still hit 4-5 models if it was a central model in the unit. This is because you have a 2.5" radius and the coherency rules are 2" away. That's pure and simple maths.

Unless you always targetted an 'edge' model for some reason? That would explain what you are saying.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.

You are right, they are not good. They are even worse than they where as an average of 4 hits on well spaced infantry has gone down to an average of one and a quarter.

I have yet to see legitimate evidence of numbers that low, unless your opponent it outright cheating, or has so few models that blasts wouldn't threaten them anyways.

And even still, those numbers don't justify the new rules, because the new 'blast' rules are just as crappy and even more unreliable.

More unreliable than even the old Large Blast? Hardly.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
More unreliable than even the old Large Blast? Hardly.

How so? Even the crappiest of marksmen could hit a single model on a 25mm base half the time with a Large Blast, if they're on their own. Make the base bigger or put them in a squad, and it's almost impossible to miss. It wasn't powerful, but it WAS reliable.
Now, you could get 6 shots and pretty much wipe out any big target or quite a few models, or you could get 1 shot and bounce off your target. Even if the average number of hits put out is higher (which it isn't,) it's less predictable when deciding who to target and, thus, less reliable.

Waaaghpower wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
More unreliable than even the old Large Blast? Hardly.

How so? Even the crappiest of marksmen could hit a single model on a 25mm base half the time with a Large Blast, if they're on their own. Make the base bigger or put them in a squad, and it's almost impossible to miss. It wasn't powerful, but it WAS reliable.
Now, you could get 6 shots and pretty much wipe out any big target or quite a few models, or you could get 1 shot and bounce off your target. Even if the average number of hits put out is higher (which it isn't,) it's less predictable when deciding who to target and, thus, less reliable.

Half the time? That's pretty delusional of you.

Hrm, with a template sporting a 2.5" radius, and BS scatter subtraction, with a 33% default hit rate, a BS3 model would net an average of 0.61 hits per shot against a single 28mm basic infantry model. Drop that to BS2 and you're looking at 0.52 hits.

Compared to straight BS3 or BS2 at 0.5 and 0.33 hits per shot respectively, doesnt sound delusional at all.

This also doesn't account for the removal of templates, which didn't even have scatter to account for. Torrent weapons in particular had no issue getting a good hit floor versus massed models, which was one of the major reasons Heldrakes were such a thing for Chaos throughout 6th.

Man, if the naysayers had a good time painstakingly spacing their infantry models every time they moved, then knock yourselves out.

If you had fun squinting at that blast template, going back and forth with your opponent over what's underneath and what's partial and what's got cover from the centre hole, more power to you.

If you enjoyed taking the pains to roll that scatter die close to the target without knocking anything over, agonising over the precise angle of the tiny arrow, and picking your way through spiky terrain pieces and giant fragile finecast demons to fit that ruler in so you could figure out if the small blast is going to hit or not, baby you do you.

After almost two solid decades of wading through that mire myself, personally I'll take a die roll...

The concerns of some here regarding how the new blast rules affect certain weapons is valid - for what it's worth, they left in the opportunity for some tweaking down the line, which may assuage a few. But ultimately, not having templates is just better for the game.

Jambles wrote:Finecast

I'm going to stop you there, bruh. Especially since 5th got rid of partials anyway (at least vs vehicles) and 6th eliminated them outright.

I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.

6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1

So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.

Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?

Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.

1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.

Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.

Thoughts/speculation/wild mass guessing?

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Jambles wrote:Finecast

I'm going to stop you there, bruh. Especially since 5th got rid of partials anyway (at least vs vehicles) and 6th eliminated them outright.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here?

There's lots of finecast demons... Here's one, second page on the Chaos Demons section. I guess he's not very big, but you can surf Forge World yourself for those ones...

Also if you'd read my whole post, bruh, you would have seen that I was talking about 40k from the perspective of many editions worth of template woes. It's been a problem for a long time.

 ross-128 wrote:

Spoiler:

I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.

6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1

So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.

Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?

Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.

1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.

Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.

Thoughts/speculation/wild mass guessing?

This is all speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if many blast weapons have their own special rules and are no longer as uniform as they once were. We might see many formerly large blast weapons getting bonus attacks and/or bonuses to hit for every X models in a unit. Many artillery pieces get a bonus for every 10 models in a unit. Smaller blast weapons might not get any bonuses against larger units.

It seems like in 40k horde units tend to be 10-30 models while in AoS that is more of a normal sized unit and horde units are more commonly 20-60. I could definitely be wrong about that, as I tend to prefer horde armies so that is mostly what I've read about in AoS. If unit sizes are smaller in 40k than AoS I could see them doling out bonuses to blasts and leadership based on every five models rather than every ten, but that is wild speculation on my part.

 ross-128 wrote:
I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but the battle cannon isn't the only blast weapon we have a preview of now. The NuMarine preview had a profile for frag grenades.

6" Grenade d6 S3 AP- D1

So frag grenades, formerly a small blast, have the same d6 shots as a battle cannon, formerly a large blast. Now, with only two data points we can't say for sure whether this is going to apply generally or if this is just frags getting a stealth buff into the "large blast" category, but the implications are potentially interesting.

Does this mean that Executioners will be spitting out 3d6/5d6 plasma shots? 3d6 on mortar teams? Will the Wyvern's 4x TL small blast, when combined with the change to Twin Linked, translate into 8d6?

Well I suppose there's a few possibilities right now.

1: Frags are getting stealth-buffed to "large blast", small blast will be d3.
2: The battle cannon is getting stealth-nerfed to "small blast", large blasts will be 2d6 or something like that.
3: Large and small blasts are being merged into a single type, all blast weapons will be d6 regardless of their former size (with an exception for Apocalyptic blasts, I would hope!)
4: Each blast weapon will have its own shot rate tailored to balance it, the fact that battle cannons and frags both happen to be d6 is a coincidence.

Considering the emphasis on simplification in 8th I suspect #3 is most likely. Which can alternately be viewed as bad news for single-shot large blast weapons, or great news for spammy small blasts.

Thoughts/speculation/wild mass guessing?

I did above. I'm hoping it's numher 4.

Battlecanon was always something pretty bad.

barely Str8 so the heavy tanks wich this weapon would have been interesting against still need 6's for a glancing hit...

Vs vehicles it was ONE hit at most and be done with it.

The AP3 of the weapon was countered most of the time with Covers anyway, and other things that you would have wanted to shoot at have 2+ armors...

Only redeeming factor was the large blast template.

Now it can deal more hits per shot Vs vehicles/Creatures wich is nice, even though its stupid to have it random but hey...

It deals D3 wounds per hit, wich is much more lethal then it ever was, even though we don't know if instant Death is still in the game.

Only bummer is that D6 hits max isn't that impressive for a weapon that could hit 10+ models with his blast...

Small blasts were getting irrelevant anyway. I agree on the case of large blasts but yeah small blast sucked unless we'd be able to shoot into close combat but that's mostly not allowed. In the grim darkness of the far future there is no idea of acceptable friendly fire unless it's by accident (which is idiotic).

Waaaghpower wrote:
To clarify, I'm not trying to argue that blasts are currently *good*. They're not. But they do offer a unique level of nuance and tactics to the game, and offer more reliability and complexity than a random number generator that shifts between 'devestating' and 'pathetic' every turn could ever hope to offer.

Complexity=/=good.

Blasts were so arse to deal with that guard and renegades could win games just by pulling a gak ton of artillery out of a bag and making their opponent 'nope' their way out. In fact bringing lots of blasts was so aggressively unpleasant to play against you might as well of just just gut-stab your opponent. Same sensation just doesn't take 15 hours to do.