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 vict0988 wrote:
How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, but after that as it becomes part of the schedule it shouldn't slow down production of the next codex because the final changes should be done in a day while the rest of the time the team can be working on another codex. I just want one round of casual testing for which new mechanics to implement and which old ones to get rid of, an Indian from Fiverr to do some spreadsheet analysis to make a good points draft for the codex and one round of competitive testing to balance mechanics and points costs. This is not an insane ask. GW does not use spreadsheets and they don't have a final competitive test with all the rules they want to have in the codex (like D3+3 dark lances).

Not even 4 weeks needed. One day would be enough.

But of course that would mean game would be more balanced and that hurts GW's profit margin. And GW's goal is money. That's it. No other goal. GW isn't in this to make good games. It's here to make MONEY and that requires models be sold. Rules are there for one reason only. Sell models. Money, money money.

Imbalance isn't bug. It's deliberate feature to exploit the try hards. They chase current OP, rules changed, OP change, try hards get new models and armies. Repeat. Make profit.

GW knows how to exploit the tournament try hards.

LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

tneva82 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, but after that as it becomes part of the schedule it shouldn't slow down production of the next codex because the final changes should be done in a day while the rest of the time the team can be working on another codex. I just want one round of casual testing for which new mechanics to implement and which old ones to get rid of, an Indian from Fiverr to do some spreadsheet analysis to make a good points draft for the codex and one round of competitive testing to balance mechanics and points costs. This is not an insane ask. GW does not use spreadsheets and they don't have a final competitive test with all the rules they want to have in the codex (like D3+3 dark lances).

Not even 4 weeks needed. One day would be enough.

No, it wouldn't. Even if that were the case, you're only talking about identifying the broken stuff. The real problem is finding a solution that doesn't break anything else. So you need way more than a day. I'd say you need a couple of weeks to identify the main issues, a few days to put together possible solutions, and another week or two to test those. Assuming you get it right fairly quickly, 4 weeks doesn't seem too unlikely.

Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

So take out 1 day out of current "playtesting" and have the 1 day spent on actually useful read through codex and spot all the balance problems.

But of course...GW doesn't want to get rid of balance "problems". It's feature. It's not balance problem because it's doing exactly what GW wants it to do. Exploit tournament players by making them replace units and armies at constant rate to chase up the OP stuff.

brainpsyk wrote:
It's a LOT harder than you think. You can do the basic math on a unit pretty quickly (and I agree that GW doesn't do this). But between the many factions, many options, and strats, even seemingly innocuous buffs quickly go off the rails once things start stacking. Many units are not OP out of the gate, but give them a combo of strats and they go nuts, which is REALLY hard to model in the context of the larger whole.

Now, that doesn't excuse a bunch of stuff, like voidweavers, pyrovores, etc, which are broken just with baseline capability. But as a baseline, AdMech rangers are (or used to be) pretty good out of the gate, but nowhere near broken for a 5-man unit. Once you buff that to 20, then re-rolls, then strats, and you get a unit that isn't broken for it's points, but could remove almost any unit in the game. So it wasn't any 1 ability, it was a combination of abilities at the extremes (we software developers call this 'testing the edge cases').

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

vict0988 wrote:How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback.

If this is done before the rules go to the printers, it would delay the release schedule by one month for every codex, which gets to be quite a lot- the pace at which they're releasing codices shows that either there really isn't all that much time spent on each one, or they're being developed in parallel by different sets of designers, which adds yet another wrinkle to trying to coordinate development. And if that's one big round of tests and then incorporating feedback without testing those changes, that's almost certainly going to create problems too- again, because it almost certainly means making multiple changes in parallel. Look at all the times GW has tried to tone down an OP unit, so they've slapped it with nerfs from three or four different directions and overcorrected, or take a more conservative approach and failed to fix it.

Again, I'm not saying that GW couldn't be doing it better or that they have no choice but to release crap rules, especially when part of the problem is, again, the reliance on print media. I'm just saying, having to iterate on a product while beholden to a fixed release schedule makes everything harder, and even skilled designers (which, again, I'm not saying GW's developers are, because that's not who you get when you hire for enthusiasm) are going to release suboptimal products under such conditions. It's a big enough problem that there are product design schools of thought that throw out release timelines and feature schedules entirely to ensure that they're building the right thing.

EviscerationPlague wrote:LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Nope, but I'd rather play Indexhammer than against on-release SM2.0 Iron Hands any day of the week.

Sim-Life wrote:The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

Absolutely, 100%. There was a rumor going around early in 9th that all the 9th Ed codices had been developed in parallel, so we would see consistent design philosophies and power level rather than GW's hallmark power creep and changing design mid-edition. Well, THAT certainly turned out to be nonsense, but if they actually were to develop the entire game in parallel, I fully believe it would be in a better state than it is.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

 catbarf wrote:


Nope, but I'd rather play Indexhammer than against on-release SM2.0 Iron Hands any day of the week.

I'd play 3rd, 4th or 5th editions if I had to play pre 8th codexes 40k instead. Index times were the only period ever since 3rd in which I contemplated quitting/pausing from 40k due to the state of the game, and I played orks in 7th.

 Ordana wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

I'm agreeing with you my guy.

Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

brainpsyk wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

I'm interested, what combo's is the community still finding months and months after the codex released?

 Ordana wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

Because all it does is make a little bit of money right now at expense of a lot of money over time. It's short term gain, long-term cost that GW only gets away with because 40k has no meaningful competition. What GW forgets is that if balance is so bad people don't have fun then it doesn't matter if there's no alternative wargame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As someone who has spent countless hours play-testing far more detailed rule sets, I can say that, yeah, you can spot these things during the testing process.

IMO, it comes down to the process of testing, that being whether GW is really doing it in a comprehensive fashion.

Results seem to say that they're not.

Agreed. Time crunch or no, plenty of the stuff in new releases is THAT obvious.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

Yes. They clearly struggle to keep pace with their own releases and the meta. There is no reason it needs to be a 36 month cycle, open it out to 48 months and spread thinner. Bin off the limited time campaign books.

 Ordana wrote:

brainpsyk wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

I'm interested, what combo's is the community still finding months and months after the codex released?

They're not. Everything is found within a couple of weeks AT MAX.
Now maybe sometimes it isn't DISCUSSED as a valid tactic, but nothing NEW is being discovered.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

I mean, 40k has to many factions. Which is my biggest complaint about squats. It already takes forever to update books despite the fast pace. The last thing 40k needs is more factions.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

I'd say "people are howling" because balance is bad. If balance was good while people waited for their new books, I imagine there would be less howling.

If IG were rocking the tournament wins, I think you'd be hearing a lot more howling from non IG players.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

If GW hired like 4 guys at the beginning of an edition (let's say 10th), said "Start writing 11th edition and all the codexes now, you have 4 years before it goes to print" and that was their sole job at GW I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to do it. The foundational work is there in terms of game structure, mechanics, unit themes etc, all they need to do is make a design philosophy within the framework of what is already set in stone (IGOUGO, hit/wound/damage, Movement/Psychic/Shooting/melee turn structure) and get to work fitting the armies into the design philosophy. If Uwe Rosenberg can average 2.5 unique games a years I'm sure 4 guys could fix 40k in a 4 years.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

If GW hired like 4 guys at the beginning of an edition (let's say 10th), said "Start writing 11th edition and all the codexes now, you have 4 years before it goes to print" and that was their sole job at GW I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to do it. The foundational work is there in terms of game structure, mechanics, unit themes etc, all they need to do is make a design philosophy within the framework of what is already set in stone (IGOUGO, hit/wound/damage, Movement/Psychic/Shooting/melee turn structure) and get to work fitting the armies into the design philosophy. If Uwe Rosenberg can average 2.5 unique games a years I'm sure 4 guys could fix 40k in a 4 years.

Stuff set in stone is part of the problem.

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

"Here are my 5 obsec, -3 to hit Stormravens with full rerolls to hit and wound"

ERJAK wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

"Here are my 5 obsec, -3 to hit Stormravens with full rerolls to hit and wound"

Sure, but the nerf to that was changes to the core rules, not the codexes. It'd be interesting to see late 8th core rules use the index armies, and then simply try to balance using point adjustments from there.

Like a lot of things, I feel Index Hammer was fine if you both had decidedly unoptimised lists (due to moving from 7th).

Certain units being clearly undercosted, no restrictions on soup and spam, and 1st turn deepstrike were however clearly an issue which needed to be resolved.

Alphabet Soup Chaos Turkey is what I remember being the most traumatic about indexhammer.

Should've let the FW guys write the rules.