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 Jidmah wrote:

The point you keep missing is that most of those mechanics you want back in the game and available for everyone as often as they spam the right units, are also those mechanics which become problematic when units have them all the time - at that point you would have to nerf those effects to a degree where there is no longer a point in having them in the game.
Just like overwatch, grenades and tank-shock, disembarking after charging as an army-wide rule is highly problematic. It removes any counter-play and eliminate the glass cannon drawback of units with high killing power.

As vipoid pointed out, we've had non-problematic implementations of most of those mechanics in the past. Grenades were fine when they were wargear with a statline that cost you points. Ramming was a cute, fluffy option that I don't recall anyone ever finding problematic. Charging after disembarking is very similar to charging after moving as a jump pack or bike unit. I'd gladly give up the mortal wound versions of grenades and tank-shock that we have now in exchange for non-mortal wound versions that I can enjoy across my army. That sounds more flavorful/fun to me.

And not to get into the weeds, but letting squishy units disembark from squishy transports doesn't really remove the "glass cannon" thing. Surely you don't think that dark eldar were a "tanky" army in 3rd-7th edition despite being able to hop out of their transports, right?

CP are a balancing mechanism to heavily limit effects which otherwise could just not be in the game at all.

Right. I'm saying that I preferred the less powerful, more fluffy, more widely-usable versions of things like grenades and ramming/tank shock. I'm not arguing that every unit in the game with the Grenades keyword should be allowed to roll 6d6 and do mortals on a 4+. Glad you agree with me.

The one conclusion one can draw from the last few pages is not that 10th Edition or stratagems don't work - it's that the Eldar (Aeldari, Drukhari, Harlequins, Ynnari) don't work. I've hardly seen any other factions complain.
In my opinion, it's a case of gods fallen to the realm of mortals. The Eldar used to have the best weapons, best equipment, the fastest units, the most durable tanks, the best melee fighters. high durability across the board and zero counterplay was part of their theme. Now they are just super fast and above average in every other aspect, and that clashes with how they felt in previous editions, how they are portrayed in their lore.
But the Eldar are not worth going back and sacrificing everyone else's enjoyment of the game, even if that has been the tradition for many editions.

Hey. I'm genuinely kind of offended here. This reads like you struggling to make compelling points and resorting to claiming that eldar players are just WAAC jerks demanding they be allowed to curbstomp their opponents with absurd rules. I like to think that I'm generally pretty civil on here and that I do a pretty good job of avoiding personal attacks. That said, feth you. Be better.

No one in the eldar camp here is saying that we want huge one-sided buffs so we can stomp the competition at the cost of our opponents' fun. We're saying that we miss/preferred some of the simulationist approaches to certain mechanics. We've been acknowledging that past implementations of those mechanics were flawed, and that those flaws would need to be addressed even if we did switch to an approach more similar to the old mechanics.

Every army has units that shoot. The vast majority of units in the game shoot. Every player wants to shoot with every unit in every turn of every game he is playing. It's central feature of the game.

Two armies had open topped assault vehicles, three if you count harlies. The majority of units aren't even vehicles, let alone transports. Most transports are not open topped. In most turns you don't want to charge from your vehicle - because there is nothing to charge or because your vehicle is empty. It's not even mentioned outside of some codices.

Orks have four open topped assault vehicles in total - the trukk, battlewagon, hunta rig and kill rig. They perform the role of transporting melee units into combat well enough to even show up in high placing tournament lists. Charging after disembarking from a moving transport is not an essential capability such a unit needs to have to function within its role.

Therefore, it's a false equivalency.

Hey. This is a terrible argument. Like, just completely missing the point. The point being made was that a primary job of a unit has been locked behind a stratagem, and your response is to say,

"Uh. Actually, raiders are totally shooting units. You definitely take them because of how well they shoot. What makes me say this? Well because lots of units in the game have guns, and thus every unit in the game is taken primarily for its firepower."

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

My main gripe is the combination of:
A.) Each strat only being able to help one unit per turn and
B.) Many strats representing (sometimes poorly) what should be or used to be non-strat mechanics.

Okay, and we can work with this now that we're no longer debating the analogy piece. Both of these are legit concerns with the strat system. One of the things that will help take care of part B) is just making equipment strats back into plain old equipment, and I totally agree with that. I think other problematic strats can be dealt with on a case-by case basis.

Addressing problem A is more complicated, but certainly within the realm of possibility. Some enhancements allow particular strat effects to be duplicated, or used at reduced cost, or to benefit more than one unit; in some rare cases, unit abilities do some of these things too. So the key is facilitating the potential for additional uses for abilities that are in high demand, within a balance parameter.

See, from my perspective, a lot of the things I actually care about/want to do *were* things you could use multiple times across your army in past editions, and they mostly worked pretty well at the time. So from my perspective, stratagems have introduced problems that weren't there before, and now some people are struggling to imagine a world without CP and single uses per phase being the only balancing factors.

Some of the mechanics we've been discussing (jink, ramming) had built-in drawbacks when you chose to use them. Some of them (grenades, transport capabilities) just had points costs to balance them out.

Regarding the Skysplinter detachment specifically, it just happens to be a smokeshow of a detachment. Like, it lets vehicles do insane, crazy cool things. Not every vehicle is going to get to a cool thing every turn, and it's even less likely that two units will be able to do the same cool thing in the same turn... But in this one specific example, the flexibility of the potential that every vehicle carries with due to strat/ enhancement/ unit ability rules interactions, might almost make losing always-on open-topped charging worth it.

As someone who has been playing dark eldar since 5th edition and plays SSA pretty frequently now, I'm telling you it's not worth it. Not in the sense that always-on open-topped was more powerful, but in the sense that as a game experience, I preferred zooming my fleet around the table with the more simulationist mechanics of old. It felt better for every raider in my army to feel fast instead of only letting one raider per turn feel fast. In 5th edition, my army felt like a fast raiding force made of glass. In 10th, my units take turns waiting for permission to feel fast.

8th onward added the Stratagem layer of rules to an army's overall power. I'm just saying I want to take that layer and replace it with a different, similarly powerful layer that exchanges spikes of power (strats) for mechanics that don't spike as hard but can be used across my army.

The overall goal being to capture the fluff of an army *army-wide* instead of making it feel artificial and gamey by tying it to single units.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

No, seriously- read the detachment. A points bump would not be enough to balance always-on open-topped charge; if you found a balance point within the skysplinter, the price would be too high in any other detachment, so the entire purpose of your proposed change (skimmers feel like skimmers in non-Skysplinter detachments) would be erased because no one would take them in non-Skysplinter detachments, and if they did, they wouldn't be able to afford enough other stuff to make the army work.

People seem to think that units moving fast, charging, and then getting +1 to-wound in melee is fine when Blood Angels do it. Charging after disembarking out of raiders/venoms is essentially the same concept except we're slightly more protected while within the transport and significantly easier to kill once we're out of the transport.

And if people aren't suggesting changes in a vacuum, maybe they could post the other changes they are suggesting in order to make their ideas work instead of the expecting the rest of us to read their minds. I know it makes for a long post, but it will save extra explanatory posts later.

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I think I've kind of spelled out my ideas a few times over the last few pages. I'll do so again below, but I also think it's unreasonable for people to need to like, write out entire detachments or codices or rulebooks just so we can discuss high-concept rule changes.

For SSA (or whatever the hypothetical 11th edition equivalent would be), I'm basically picturing something like this:
* The detachment rule probably stays the same. Lance and Ignores Cover on the turn you disembark.
* Then we delete all the stratagems.
* In place of the stratagems, we have have rules that basically say something like,

While using this detachment, Mounted and Vehicle drukhari units may use the Ramming, Jink, and Turbo Boost rules.

Ramming means... (basically get a better melee attack on the charge, but hurt yourself using it)
Jink means... (basically gain a defensive buff when targeted by shooting, but give up shooting in the following turn)
Turbo Boost means... (basically move farther in the movement phase and become harder to hit in melee, but give up shooting/charging this turn)

Additionally, the following wargear options are available to vehicles in this detachment:
...

Something along those lines. So instead of having 6 abilities that you only get to use one or two of on a unit or two, you can potentially have every bike and vehicle in your army doing flavorful things, but you give those flavorful rules built-in trade-offs or limitations so that we're not just talking about power creep. There's room to add additional cool rules in the form of wargear/enhancements, and we can balance those rules with points costs, limited uses, positioning requirements, etc.

Not being able to charge out of trucks and raiders is stupid. The whole point of the truck is that it brings the passengers into melee combat, instead when my turn begins they're all supposed to hop out, walk forward while their truck drives up alongside them, and then somehow rocket-charge up to 12" into melee. It looks absurd on the table.

And no it isn't hard to balance. Add: If a unit charges out of a transport it can only charge 1d6". That evens out the 3" deployment bringing it in line with bikes and jump packs. If even that wasn't enough (and it would be) then give trucks and raiders -3 Move and Assault on their weapons.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Not being able to charge out of trucks and raiders is stupid. The whole point of the truck is that it brings the passengers into melee combat, instead when my turn begins they're all supposed to hop out, walk forward while their truck drives up alongside them, and then somehow rocket-charge up to 12" into melee. It looks absurd on the table.

And no it isn't hard to balance. Add: If a unit charges out of a transport it can only charge 1d6". That evens out the 3" deployment bringing it in line with bikes and jump packs. If even that wasn't enough (and it would be) then give trucks and raiders -3 Move and Assault on their weapons.

Try playing Harlequin.

I can move through enemy models to charge (Detachment Rule), I can completely ignore intervening vertical terrain (Flip Belts), Consolidate 6" into the nearest enemy unit instead of model (Troupe Master), use all of the basic Aeldari movement shenanigans, and I can even pile back into a Starweaver if I'm unengaged and close enough...

...but, by the gods, charging after that Starweaver moved a single inch and I piled out of it is just a bridge too far.

In reality, it's fine. Basically, the Starweaver just becomes a sacrificial model, as you ram it down someone's throat and wait until the next turn to deploy the Troupe. Hopefully it keeps them nice and safe until they get a chance to do something, and you dumped 80 points to get them there.

But yeah, from any sort of logical standpoint, or fluff-based rules, or simulationist mechanics, it's just dumb.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

See, from my perspective, a lot of the things I actually care about/want to do *were* things you could use multiple times across your army in past editions, and they mostly worked pretty well at the time.

They worked in the past because strats didn't exist and unit abilities weren't as common. If you remove all strats and rework any problematic unit abilities, they'll work well again, but for some reason, I had thought that we were trying to make your always on rules still work in a world where Skysplinter strats or something like them- maybe I missed one of your posts or attributed a middle-ground post from someone else to you.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

So from my perspective, stratagems have introduced problems that weren't there before, and now some people are struggling to imagine a world without CP and single uses per phase being the only balancing factors.

Speaking only for myself (because you may be directing this comment at other posters too), I'm not trying to imagine a world without CP. I'm flat out telling you that I prefer the strat based system, while acknowledging I would make some improvements to it. I acknowledge the merits of your preferred mechanics as well- as I've said, I've played them, and enjoyed them when we had them. I can see (and understand) why you prefer your system.

I just disagree with you saying it's objectively better; I don't believe it is- I see merits and flaws to both systems.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Some of the mechanics we've been discussing (jink, ramming) had built-in drawbacks when you chose to use them. Some of them (grenades, transport capabilities) just had points costs to balance them out.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

As someone who has been playing dark eldar since 5th edition and plays SSA pretty frequently now, I'm telling you it's not worth it. Not in the sense that always-on open-topped was more powerful, but in the sense that as a game experience, I preferred zooming my fleet around the table with the more simulationist mechanics of old. It felt better for every raider in my army to feel fast instead of only letting one raider per turn feel fast. In 5th edition, my army felt like a fast raiding force made of glass. In 10th, my units take turns waiting for permission to feel fast.

8th onward added the Stratagem layer of rules to an army's overall power. I'm just saying I want to take that layer and replace it with a different, similarly powerful layer that exchanges spikes of power (strats) for mechanics that don't spike as hard but can be used across my army.

The overall goal being to capture the fluff of an army *army-wide* instead of making it feel artificial and gamey by tying it to single units.

I try to avoid arguing A is "objectively" more fluffy than B, so please do not see this as me arguing that the strat system is MORE fluffy- I'm not saying that at all; I'm trying to illustrate the way that the strat system is differently, but equally fluffy.

To me, someone who Jinks isn't necessarily an expert pilot; they are merely focusing their entire attention on dodging. Sure, this indicates that they have enough experience to have a few driving styles... but any non-novice pilot could reasonably attempt something similar. But I feel like a pilot who chooses to use three strats over the course of the game, or even one, is an actual Ace pilot, not merely a dude who is using what he learned in a defensive driving weekender.

And that interpretation of "fluffy" whether it matches your preference or not... It does have some validity, right? Like, you can see the point of someone saying it takes more skill to dodge and shoot in a turn than it does to just dodge. So if the only way you can dodge is to not shoot, that literally does mean that no one in your army is good enough to shoot and dodge. Again, that sounds harsh- remember, I'm not arguing it's better or more fluffy than your preference, I'm trying to demonstrate how it's equally fluffy and good in a different way.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

People seem to think that units moving fast, charging, and then getting +1 to-wound in melee is fine when Blood Angels do it. Charging after disembarking out of raiders/venoms is essentially the same concept except we're slightly more protected while within the transport and significantly easier to kill once we're out of the transport.

The specific interaction I'm seeing is deepstriking at 9" by virtue of the three inch disembark range; it combos from there with melee buffs based on unit rules and attached characters, and then the potential ability to re-embark on the same turn.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I think I've kind of spelled out my ideas a few times over the last few pages. I'll do so again below, but I also think it's unreasonable for people to need to like, write out entire detachments or codices or rulebooks just so we can discuss high-concept rule changes.

And you may have- as I said before, it may be me who missed a post or misattributed a post. But thanks for taking the time, because I honestly was somehow under the impression that we were trying to compromise and keep both some form of strats and army-wide rules. I don't know how I got that idea in my head, but this does clarify everything.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

For SSA (or whatever the hypothetical 11th edition equivalent would be), I'm basically picturing something like this:
* The detachment rule probably stays the same. Lance and Ignores Cover on the turn you disembark.
* Then we delete all the stratagems.
* In place of the stratagems, we have have rules that basically say something like,

While using this detachment, Mounted and Vehicle drukhari units may use the Ramming, Jink, and Turbo Boost rules.

Ramming means... (basically get a better melee attack on the charge, but hurt yourself using it)
Jink means... (basically gain a defensive buff when targeted by shooting, but give up shooting in the following turn)
Turbo Boost means... (basically move farther in the movement phase and become harder to hit in melee, but give up shooting/charging this turn)

Additionally, the following wargear options are available to vehicles in this detachment:
...

Something along those lines. So instead of having 6 abilities that you only get to use one or two of on a unit or two, you can potentially have every bike and vehicle in your army doing flavorful things, but you give those flavorful rules built-in trade-offs or limitations so that we're not just talking about power creep. There's room to add additional cool rules in the form of wargear/enhancements, and we can balance those rules with points costs, limited uses, positioning requirements, etc.

Yes- good system- I see it's merits, and it would be fun to play.. The "Room to add via wargear and enhancements" might even retain some of the cinematic feel I get from strats if it's done well, but honestly it's a longshot. To me, a strat is a part of the narrative description in a way that that choosing whether or not to use army-wide abilities that come with built in drawbacks could never really be. I mean, you could write about Jinking or Ramming in DE book, but you're writing about something that's just normal everyday behaviour that anyone in the army can choose to do any time. It sorta is a part of the story... It just, isn't particularly interesting to write about things anyone can do at any time.

As a Crusader, a big part of my job is figuring out which unit gets Marked for Greatness- it doesn't help me win games (directly) but it tells the story of the army's growth over time. Ten units that Jink and Turbo their way to a target are all equally great, but the unit that flies in close, pounces on the prey, then makes a wraithlike retreat back into the transport and uses Night Shields to weather the hale of enemy fire might be uniquely great. Strat use during the completion of an agenda usually determines what I pick as a battle honour (yes, we choose them based on the narrative rather than roll them when it is appropriate to do so).

And as reminder (because I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned it in this thread) I haven't played with more than 1k points since 5th, and I will concede that this really shapes my preferences too. At that scale, strats really do feel like little movies, but if I was consistently playing 2k, my opinion might be radically different.

But my preferences don't mean that yours are invalid. I just wish I could convince you that your preferences don't make mine invalid either.

 PenitentJake wrote:


But my preferences don't mean that yours are invalid. I just wish I could convince you that your preferences don't make mine invalid either.

An excellent statement.

Although the discussion is fun, at times fraught, and overall enjoyable, unfortunately we're all at the mercy of GW's closed-door, closed-mind policy of writing rules. I truly wish they took outside input to any significant degree, but I've been at this for 35 years, and I haven't seen it yet.

Oh well, let's keep up the wishlist!

Speaking only for myself (because you may be directing this comment at other posters too), I'm not trying to imagine a world without CP. I'm flat out telling you that I prefer the strat based system, while acknowledging I would make some improvements to it. I acknowledge the merits of your preferred mechanics as well- as I've said, I've played them, and enjoyed them when we had them. I can see (and understand) why you prefer your system.

I just disagree with you saying it's objectively better; I don't believe it is- I see merits and flaws to both systems.

That's totally fair! I *do* see the merits of the stratagem system. I just, personally, haven't felt that the pros have outweighed the cons overall. And some of the cons are kind of fundamental to how strats work. (Such as generally only being able to target one unit per turn with a given strat.)

To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that the half-thought-out approaches I'm advocating for would be objectively better or objectively more fluff. If I call something "more fluffy" without adding an "imho" afterwards, it's generally just because I'm speaking for myself.

To me, someone who Jinks isn't necessarily an expert pilot; they are merely focusing their entire attention on dodging. Sure, this indicates that they have enough experience to have a few driving styles... but any non-novice pilot could reasonably attempt something similar. But I feel like a pilot who chooses to use three strats over the course of the game, or even one, is an actual Ace pilot, not merely a dude who is using what he learned in a defensive driving weekender.

And that interpretation of "fluffy" whether it matches your preference or not... It does have some validity, right? Like, you can see the point of someone saying it takes more skill to dodge and shoot in a turn than it does to just dodge. So if the only way you can dodge is to not shoot, that literally does mean that no one in your army is good enough to shoot and dodge. Again, that sounds harsh- remember, I'm not arguing it's better or more fluffy than your preference, I'm trying to demonstrate how it's equally fluffy and good in a different way.

I hear you. For me, it's partly a matter of some of my armies kind of feeling like they've lost some of their identity over the years. Drukhari on the whole don't feel nearly as fast, for instance. And part of that comes from mechanics that used to represent their speed getting rolled into/replaced by stratagems. So a single raider pilot dancing around while firing back at the enemy is cool and all, but it doesn't really address or make up for the rest of my army missing the spark that I used to love about them.

And you may have- as I said before, it may be me who missed a post or misattributed a post. But thanks for taking the time, because I honestly was somehow under the impression that we were trying to compromise and keep both some form of strats and army-wide rules. I don't know how I got that idea in my head, but this does clarify everything.

At some point, someone was trying to make the case that we didn't need to get rid of strats because we could just move stuff like jinking or moving flat-out to core rules and then keep the strats on top of that. I kind of shrugged and went, "Sure, I guess," but that's not really my preferred approach. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?

Yes- good system- I see it's merits,

Cheers.

And as reminder (because I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned it in this thread) I haven't played with more than 1k points since 5th, and I will concede that this really shapes my preferences too. At that scale, strats really do feel like little movies, but if I was consistently playing 2k, my opinion might be radically different.

That is an interesting thing to note, and I do wonder if that's part of it. Because even if you're only using strats on a single vehicle and its passengers, those units make up a larger percentage of your army than they would at 2k. Smaller games do feel more "zoomed in", so stuff like reactive moves or damage spikes can be game changing. But at 2k, if I think of strats as the stuff I'm getting instead of the army-wide mechanics, then it feels like I'm trading the overall feel/playstyle of my army for one or two pale imitations each turn.

Drukhari have kind of shifted from that army of lightning fast craft swooping in and out of the fray quicker than you can follow to merely being that army that dies fast and only moves 2" faster than their marine counterparts, but watch out for that one unit of incubi looking to pounce each turn.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Grenades were fine when they were wargear with a statline that cost you points.

No, they were not. They were either free, melta bombs, or never taken. In later iterations, they were only used if they were more powerful than the unit's regular weapons - which was "never" for most models holding frag grenades. Even among those models that used frag grenades regularly, they usually just caused an extra wound or two. Ironically, grenades saw the most use in armies that had a stratagem to improve them.

The only way to say grenades were "fine" was if you got krak grenades for free, which allowed you to gamble against armor in desperate situations - which is exactly what the stratagem does.

Ramming was a cute, fluffy option that I don't recall anyone ever finding problematic.

Your cute, fluffy option has already been added to the game by giving every vehicle melee weapons - which is really a much better solution all around.

The ramming portrayed by the stratagem covers two exceptional situations: big tanks ramming light vehicles, and skimmers going flat out 24" for S10 hits. And yes, four to six Wave Serpents, Battlewagons, or Raiders hitting side armor of vehicles with little to no chance of hurting themselves was problematic.

Charging after disembarking is very similar to charging after moving as a jump pack or bike unit. I'd gladly give up the mortal wound versions of grenades and tank-shock that we have now in exchange for non-mortal wound versions that I can enjoy across my army. That sounds more flavorful/fun to me.

You already have a tank shock rule on every model. What do you think Wraithbone Hull is? The pilot getting out, tearing a piece of armor off, and whacking nearby enemies in the head with it?

As for grenades, they didn't take away grenades to create a stratagem. They removed dysfunctional rules that almost no one was using and isolated the one cool thing grenades did - that desperate krak grenade - into a stratagem with more impact for everyone with grenades as well as unit abilities or weapons for particularly iconic grenade lobbers.

And not to get into the weeds, but letting squishy units disembark from squishy transports doesn't really remove the "glass cannon" thing. Surely you don't think that dark eldar were a "tanky" army in 3rd-7th edition despite being able to hop out of their transports, right?

Models in transports cannot be shot; models on bikes or vehicles can be shot. For units like Death Company or Ravenwing Command blobs, the enemy gets at least one turn of shooting to soften them up before suffering a devastating charge.

A transport - even a flimsy Raider - is not a trivial thing to destroy from 24", the average charge range of an otherwise unassisted Pounce on the Prey. The first chance to do anything about a unit using that stratagem is when it has already been launched into your face.

On Sunday, I faced a full unit of Shining Spears — way faster than units charging out of Raiders and more deadly as well. To prevent them from shredding my Daemon Engines, I deep struck a unit of Blightlords with LoV behind them and tried to kill them with plague and bolters, dealing 9 damage. This took away their ability to easily destroy the Daemon Engines, which in turn allowed one of them to fight back instead of just being knocked over. The Blightlords were stranded in the middle of nowhere, but the trade was still worth it.

Same situation with a Raider: I deep strike Blightlords behind it. Without Contagion, I'm now wounding on sixes instead of fours, but it has a worse save and I re-roll wounds, so I still deal 4–6 damage to it. It then flies off at full speed, and the unit inside deals 100% damage as if nothing happened.

The one downside of infantry/mounted units compared to vehicles is that infantry lose killing power with every model they lose. Vehicles stay at 100% until they hit the "damaged" threshold. That’s why Trukks, Rhinos, and even those weird Impulsors are everywhere.

And that is why it’s important that there is a shooting phase between three or four transports moving into enemy lines and the units disembarking and charging from them. These are the absolute basics you need to address when discussing disembarking and charging.

CP are a balancing mechanism to heavily limit effects which otherwise could just not be in the game at all.

Right. I'm saying that I preferred the less powerful, more fluffy, more widely-usable versions of things like grenades and ramming/tank shock. I'm not arguing that every unit in the game with the Grenades keyword should be allowed to roll 6d6 and do mortals on a 4+. Glad you agree with me.

Have you given an example of how grenades would look in your ideal world? I'm sorry if I missed it.
I'm no longer willing to discuss this with you based on abstract concepts. Hit me with an example that you can defend, and I will admit that I've been wrong.

Hey. I'm genuinely kind of offended here. This reads like you struggling to make compelling points and resorting to claiming that eldar players are just WAAC jerks demanding they be allowed to curbstomp their opponents with absurd rules. I like to think that I'm generally pretty civil on here and that I do a pretty good job of avoiding personal attacks. That said, feth you. Be better.

If that's what you read, I'm sorry. I own quite a lot of Eldar codices and novels despite not playing them (mostly due to time/money). I've always liked them as a concept.

However, fluff doesn’t always translate well into a game. Just like Magnus, Grey Knights, or movie Marines, Eldar cannot have everything in their rules that they have in their lore. And from a purely objective perspective, all the past topics - initiative, grenades, charging from transports, psychic disciplines - are all supported by either Drukhari or Aeldari examples. I haven’t seen a single player chime in that one of those things causes issues in the same way to Marines, Nids, Orks, Tau, Necrons or Guard.

I specifically paid attention to how Eldar feel during my game on Sunday, and while I think their skimmers and wraith constructs feel right, their infantry most certainly does not. I agreed with you that dodging is a missing mechanic in the game, and from that game, I think it’s probably what Eldar need. That and a glow up on their basic weapons like bright lances and star cannons - they just don't have the punch they should have compared to their imperial counterparts.

I’d also like to point out that I usually suffer from two-day bans for writing something like that. Funny how that works.

No one in the eldar camp here is saying that we want huge one-sided buffs so we can stomp the competition at the cost of our opponents' fun. We're saying that we miss/preferred some of the simulationist approaches to certain mechanics. We've been acknowledging that past implementations of those mechanics were flawed, and that those flaws would need to be addressed even if we did switch to an approach more similar to the old mechanics.

But you aren't actually giving examples of how to address those flaws, which means you aren't actually addressing any of the points made by people telling you that those flaws are not fixable. That’s called hand-waving. I have pointed this out multiple times now, and you still do it. You can't blame people for assuming that you don't actually have a way to fix those flaws.

Hey. This is a terrible argument. Like, just completely missing the point. The point being made was that a primary job of a unit has been locked behind a stratagem, and your response is to say,

"Uh. Actually, raiders are totally shooting units. You definitely take them because of how well they shoot. What makes me say this? Well because lots of units in the game have guns, and thus every unit in the game is taken primarily for its firepower."

The reason why that sounds so whack is because you're applying your own flawed logic to my example.

I have disproven that charging from vehicles is a basic functionality of the game like shooting is.
I have also disproven that open-topped assault vehicles have to allow charging after movement to fulfill their role.
Therefore, I have disproven your claim that a Raider needs an Assault Ramp rule to fulfill its basic functionality, in the same way a Leman Russ needs a shooting profile to fulfill its basic role.

That’s how an argumentative discussion works: you address arguments and either accept or disprove them.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:
That's totally fair! I *do* see the merits of the stratagem system. I just, personally, haven't felt that the pros have outweighed the cons overall. And some of the cons are kind of fundamental to how strats work. (Such as generally only being able to target one unit per turn with a given strat.)

I'm not opening the stratagem can again, but I would like to point out that stratagems can target more than one unit, and there are quite a few examples of stratagems that do.

The main reason why stratagems don't do that often is because it makes the stratagem too powerful. But there is literally nothing preventing GW from having the smoke launcher stratagem target "one or more units with the SMOKE keyword".

I think its a fair point that you take the raider at least in part for protection versus "gotta go fast".

I mean having an extra 6-7" on your effective threat range would be nice - but its not as if 3"+7" (Incubi)+2D6" is that low. Its not 14"+3"+2D6, but even with the slightly awkward changes to fly in 10th edition this feels a bit nuts. Do we want the Raider to be able to advance 6" as well for a 30" average threat range? At what point do we just make charge ranges functionally infinite?

But this is also a function of the index being stilted. A DE codex will almost certainly bring with it more movement bonuses - pushing that threat range up further. But I'm not really convinced a lack of speed is DE's issue. Its more just a lack of character/faction identity. Part of that is perhaps that the regular game has got faster so DE has become relatively slower. But I'm not sure 30" charges would solve that.

DaughterOfKhaine wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.

Overwatch is used a lot in competitive play. It's an auto-use on flamer squadrons, but other squadrons use it as well as it can often swing things around. I play monthly in RTTs and BCP Leagues and I'd argue that overwatch is used in about 70-80% of the games I've been. Some units have such a high rate of fire that overwatch just becomes something amazing. Add in potential rerolls and whatnot.




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Regarding initiative it's a problematic system in many ways. The reason initiative works in RP games is usually because you roll a dice and then you have a small INI modifier for that. However, in Warhammer games the INI is usually a fixed number that creates a sort of barrier between lower INI units and higher INI units. I still have trauma from earlier editions where you could charge with a large squad, but because of INI that squad was not allowed to do and got instead butchered without ever doing a single drop of damage. In short it created death star unit/units. I mean, High Elves are really annoying in TOW because they tend to have high INI.

Now, someone might suggest that GW should imitate the RP systems, but I can only imagine the annoyance when you are on a bad luck streak and your elite units always goes last because you can't roll higher than 1. The current system, as rigid as it is, is a strangely fair system all in all. Haven't met many people who play 10th a lot complain that much about it unless they are also invested into HH or other game that has INI, and often it is more in relation to how Fight First works in 10th, which I admit is a strange ruling.

The only place where the initiative system kind of works is in Horus Heresy, but I also attribute that to the fact that the system is essentially homogenized with its marine v. marine action. So usually you are either having equal INI units fighting, or you both have access to the same high INI squashers that level the playing field.

Couldn't that be solved with an Always Strikes First on the charge that overrides any other ASF. Or even strike at same time if both have ASF? This was actually used in many previous eds of GW games. If Elves are charged, too bad I guess. That's one of their weaknesses.

 Jidmah wrote:

No, they were not. They were either free, melta bombs, or never taken. In later iterations, they were only used if they were more powerful than the unit's regular weapons - which was "never" for most models holding frag grenades. Even among those models that used frag grenades regularly, they usually just caused an extra wound or two. Ironically, grenades saw the most use in armies that had a stratagem to improve them.

The only way to say grenades were "fine" was if you got krak grenades for free, which allowed you to gamble against armor in desperate situations - which is exactly what the stratagem does.

"Free" here meaning "part of the cost of the model that has them by default." You can make the case that you don't think GW's designers factored grenades in when costing such units, but we'd be speculating at that point. In theory, grenades should have been contributing to the points costs of units that had them by default.

You've just acknowledged that frag, krak, and melta had their uses, and I'd argue that haywire/EMP grenades were solid. Plasma grenades were similar to frag in that they were a small boost worth using when you got close enough to use them. I think that covers most grenades in the game aside from stikk bombs? Certainly it covers most of the common grenades.

Ramming was a cute, fluffy option that I don't recall anyone ever finding problematic.

Your cute, fluffy option has already been added to the game by giving every vehicle melee weapons - which is really a much better solution all around.

We agree on this. As I stated on previous pages, I personally kind of like the idea of giving them a melee profile with more teeth that can only be used on the charge.

The ramming portrayed by the stratagem covers two exceptional situations: big tanks ramming light vehicles, and skimmers going flat out 24" for S10 hits. And yes, four to six Wave Serpents, Battlewagons, or Raiders hitting side armor of vehicles with little to no chance of hurting themselves was problematic.

It has been long enough that I'm fuzzy on the exact strength a long-bomb ram would have used versus a wave serpent, but if it was S10, then that's hurting the serpent on a 2+. I forget exactly how shock prows were handled throughout the ages. Regardless, none of the metas I've ever played in were particularly concerned about ramming. It was either a way for heavy, expensive vehicles to bully lighter ones (which is fine), or a desperation tactic for when you really need to hurt an enemy vehicle but didn't have a gun well-suited to the job.

And not to get into the weeds, but letting squishy units disembark from squishy transports doesn't really remove the "glass cannon" thing. Surely you don't think that dark eldar were a "tanky" army in 3rd-7th edition despite being able to hop out of their transports, right?

Models in transports cannot be shot; models on bikes or vehicles can be shot. For units like Death Company or Ravenwing Command blobs, the enemy gets at least one turn of shooting to soften them up before suffering a devastating charge.

Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always felt that most grenades don't actually need rules and should just be assumed to be part of the rapid fire or charge bonuses.
They're basic equipment that are universally available to most models in the game. They don't need to be given a hard rules representation if you just assume they are background noise. Treat them like ammo reloads, helmets or boots.

Note that this doesn't cover 'special' grenades like Meltabombs, where they do probably warrant special effects.

Tyel wrote:
I think its a fair point that you take the raider at least in part for protection versus "gotta go fast".

Agreed. Although there is a bit of a weird tradeoff there. It quickly becomes difficult to hide more than a handful of raiders in your deployment zone, and they tend to evaporate once you shoot at them. So in terms of protection, simply sticking squads behind walls might actually be better protection vs non-indirect shooting. But then you have harder to quantify stuff like charge protection, etc.

I mean having an extra 6-7" on your effective threat range would be nice - but its not as if 3"+7" (Incubi)+2D6" is that low. Its not 14"+3"+2D6, but even with the slightly awkward changes to fly in 10th edition this feels a bit nuts. Do we want the Raider to be able to advance 6" as well for a 30" average threat range? At what point do we just make charge ranges functionally infinite?

No one has advocated for advance + disembark + charge. At least not that I've seen. But you're right about 10+2d6" not being nothing. I think part of this is a matter of timing. On the turn that you actually go for the charge, your opponent has had a turn to move away from you. And you probably took a less-than-direct route to get to your current position because you're probably leapfrogging terrain in an effort to not get shot down. And then viscerally, there's a disconnect between your previous turn's movement and this turn's movement. So it doesn't feel like you're zooming forward and catapulting units into melee; it feels like you're moving about as fast as advancing infantry (after factoring in walls), and then leaving those infantry with a similar threat range to what they would have had on foot.

But this is also a function of the index being stilted. A DE codex will almost certainly bring with it more movement bonuses - pushing that threat range up further. But I'm not really convinced a lack of speed is DE's issue. Its more just a lack of character/faction identity. Part of that is perhaps that the regular game has got faster so DE has become relatively slower. But I'm not sure 30" charges would solve that.

This is definitely a big part of it. See above about a raider basically being a squishier rhino with a whole 2 extra inches of movement. Oh boy.

The issue isn't necessarily how many inches units move each turn; it's definitely the character/faction identity that used to be conveyed by rules like disembark+charge, flat-out saves, jink, etc. that no longer is conveyed. Ultimately, my issue is that I want that feeling of character/identity restored, be that with or without a version of the rules that use strats. (I just think it's trickier to accomplish when you have strats eating up design space and innately only impacting small portions of your army at a time.)

Kind of an aside, but as powerful as Battle Focus is in the new eldar codex, I was kind of bummed about it. I was hoping for something like the 9th/7th edition move-shoot-move mechanci and a return of something like Jink. Instead, we got an extra layer of what are basically stratagems with the same frustrating limitations.

Mozzamanx wrote:
Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always felt that most grenades don't actually need rules and should just be assumed to be part of the rapid fire or charge bonuses.
They're basic equipment that are universally available to most models in the game.

Except Tyranids, which is probably why I'm fine with grenades just either not existing or being a stratagem.

Making them a core part of the rules was just another core part of the rules Tyranids couldn't use.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Hey. I'm genuinely kind of offended here. This reads like you struggling to make compelling points and resorting to claiming that eldar players are just WAAC jerks demanding they be allowed to curbstomp their opponents with absurd rules. I like to think that I'm generally pretty civil on here and that I do a pretty good job of avoiding personal attacks. That said, feth you. Be better.

No one in the eldar camp here is saying that we want huge one-sided buffs so we can stomp the competition at the cost of our opponents' fun. We're saying that we miss/preferred some of the simulationist approaches to certain mechanics. We've been acknowledging that past implementations of those mechanics were flawed, and that those flaws would need to be addressed even if we did switch to an approach more similar to the old mechanics.

Might be better to include the whole relevant quote.

Wyldhunt has, at no point, asked for massive buffs. They have wanted to swap Stratagems (individual use spikes of high power) for more powerful Detachment or Faction rules (applying to all appropriate units, but less spiky in terms of power) which, if you saw their Proposed Rules thread for Eldar, is pretty reasonable.

They don't want to just crush everyone they face. They just want something other than Stratagems.

Dai2 wrote:
Couldn't that be solved with an Always Strikes First on the charge that overrides any other ASF. Or even strike at same time if both have ASF? This was actually used in many previous eds of GW games. If Elves are charged, too bad I guess. That's one of their weaknesses.

I think it usually has to be resolved by pushing things together.
I.E. "My guys are fast" - "well so are my guys."
"My guys are choppy" - "well so are my guys."
"My guys are shooty" - "well so are my guys."
etc.

In the olden days GW seemed (occasionally) to try and write rules which were more fluff focused. And for some people maybe that was better. But it often produced fundamentally bad gameplay experiences.
Want to play the shooty Ork units? Well that's a mistake. Don't you know Orks are bad at shooting? Look at their BS2. You should be playing boyz, nobz, nobz on bikes, boyz the end.
Want to run say Banshees? Well that's a mistake. I mean its only a weedy elf. Obviously you should be wounding anything bigger than GEQ on 5s with a small number of attacks, leading to a high chance of doing precisely nothing. Much fluff. Much narrative.

I'd say a good aspect of the 8th-10th evolution has been GW trying far more to make units good in their own terms. Shooty units should shoot well and assault units should assault well etc. A unit should have a reason for existing in 40k as a game, rather than "in the fluff this wouldn't be great, so it isn't."
This has been good at increasing the spread of competitive factions - but perhaps more importantly the "good units" in the various codexes. If we go with 7th, I think Eldar were mad overpowered - but maybe 2/3rds of the codex was kind of a trap you shouldn't run competitively. Unfortunately Dark Eldar were something like 95% a trap (basically everything but Reaver spam.) GW have often got things wrong - but the number of out and out useless datasheets seems well down. Whether this bothers you is I guess debatable - but it is I think a function of this... rounding.

Which is why I'm not keen on this idea that certain units should always go first in combat. You end up with "this is the ultimate combat unit (for now), that functionally makes all other combat units in all other factions a trap". That feels like bad design. Its the same sort of issue if two factions line up their shooty units and shoot each other across objectives, one has the odds so stacked in their favour. You can't then say "DE should always get the charge". It produces: "You can't stop this, I'm going to get to roll my dice, if I roll well I just win the end."

There can be some variety here. I wouldn't want the codexes to end up just being [stabby unit] [shooty unit] [small tank] [big tank] [anti-tank melee] [anti-tank shooting] etc. But I'm hostile on anything that takes us back to "this is an assault unit, and the core rules mean its terrible at its job." DE being able to play a perfect uninteractive game where they just delete the opponent is as problematic as them being glass spoons that try to hit say Space Marines (or 7th edition Necrons) just to bounce off and get insta-deleted in turn.

Mozzamanx wrote:
Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always felt that most grenades don't actually need rules and should just be assumed to be part of the rapid fire or charge bonuses.
They're basic equipment that are universally available to most models in the game. They don't need to be given a hard rules representation if you just assume they are background noise. Treat them like ammo reloads, helmets or boots.

Note that this doesn't cover 'special' grenades like Meltabombs, where they do probably warrant special effects.

It was another way to distinguish troops from one another. There are armies with "rabble" units, like Gretchin/cultists/conscripts etc. and it makes sense that these units not be able to use grenades effectively, or just not have them. Then there are well equipped troops and veteran/elite troops that were provided with special equipment to help them out in certain situations, such as Assaults or against armored targets. Krak grenades helped basic Marines make offensive moves against tanks in ways that the "rabble" or lesser troops couldn't. This is a good thing.

You could make some more abstracted version of this and bake it into their profile somehow, but that has the potential to make undesirable knock-on effects, and it's also at the cost of some nice narrative detail.

 Tyran wrote:

Mozzamanx wrote:
Might be an unpopular opinion but I've always felt that most grenades don't actually need rules and should just be assumed to be part of the rapid fire or charge bonuses.
They're basic equipment that are universally available to most models in the game.

Except Tyranids, which is probably why I'm fine with grenades just either not existing or being a stratagem.

Making them a core part of the rules was just another core part of the rules Tyranids couldn't use.

Different armies get different strengths and weaknesses. Imo that's also a good thing. Instead of Grenades Tyranids got unbreakable Synapse units, floating bombs and true hoard units that lots of other armies didn't have access too. You could say it wasn't balanced correctly (I'm not sure I would, necessarily), but different armies really should have real differences. That's my ideal anyways.


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 Jidmah wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Grenades were fine when they were wargear with a statline that cost you points.

No, they were not. They were either free, melta bombs, or never taken. In later iterations, they were only used if they were more powerful than the unit's regular weapons - which was "never" for most models holding frag grenades. Even among those models that used frag grenades regularly, they usually just caused an extra wound or two. Ironically, grenades saw the most use in armies that had a stratagem to improve them.

The only way to say grenades were "fine" was if you got krak grenades for free, which allowed you to gamble against armor in desperate situations - which is exactly what the stratagem does.

Frag Grenades had plenty of use when it meant that units could Assault into cover and ignore the defensive Initiative bonus. But they also had a real use against Armored Targets in at least one edition where they could be used at S4 in CC. This was a big deal for Guard, whose native S3 couldn't hurt them. And Krak grenades were a huge deal for Marines in CC against Vehicles. And don't even get me started on how the "only one model can use Grenades in CC" rule change in 7th affected Orks and Eldar/Dark Eldar, with their entire units traditionally equipped with Tankbusta Bombs, Melta and Haywire Grenades. Grenades were efin useful.

Of course all of the above examples are different even from the 2nd ed paradigm, when whole units could throw Frag Grenades, whic (while time consuming) was also incredibly useful.

Stratagem Grenades suck.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Hey. I'm genuinely kind of offended here. This reads like you struggling to make compelling points and resorting to claiming that eldar players are just WAAC jerks demanding they be allowed to curbstomp their opponents with absurd rules. I like to think that I'm generally pretty civil on here and that I do a pretty good job of avoiding personal attacks. That said, feth you. Be better.

No one in the eldar camp here is saying that we want huge one-sided buffs so we can stomp the competition at the cost of our opponents' fun. We're saying that we miss/preferred some of the simulationist approaches to certain mechanics. We've been acknowledging that past implementations of those mechanics were flawed, and that those flaws would need to be addressed even if we did switch to an approach more similar to the old mechanics.

Might be better to include the whole relevant quote.

Wyldhunt has, at no point, asked for massive buffs. They have wanted to swap Stratagems (individual use spikes of high power) for more powerful Detachment or Faction rules (applying to all appropriate units, but less spiky in terms of power) which, if you saw their Proposed Rules thread for Eldar, is pretty reasonable.

They don't want to just crush everyone they face. They just want something other than Stratagems.

I appreciate it, JNA.

Probably best to let it drop though. Jidmah has stated they're done with the conversation, and that's probably for the best. If they're being honest in their last post, then they and I have been having completely different conversations.

Dai2 wrote:

DaughterOfKhaine wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.

Overwatch is used a lot in competitive play. It's an auto-use on flamer squadrons, but other squadrons use it as well as it can often swing things around. I play monthly in RTTs and BCP Leagues and I'd argue that overwatch is used in about 70-80% of the games I've been. Some units have such a high rate of fire that overwatch just becomes something amazing. Add in potential rerolls and whatnot.




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Regarding initiative it's a problematic system in many ways. The reason initiative works in RP games is usually because you roll a dice and then you have a small INI modifier for that. However, in Warhammer games the INI is usually a fixed number that creates a sort of barrier between lower INI units and higher INI units. I still have trauma from earlier editions where you could charge with a large squad, but because of INI that squad was not allowed to do and got instead butchered without ever doing a single drop of damage. In short it created death star unit/units. I mean, High Elves are really annoying in TOW because they tend to have high INI.

Now, someone might suggest that GW should imitate the RP systems, but I can only imagine the annoyance when you are on a bad luck streak and your elite units always goes last because you can't roll higher than 1. The current system, as rigid as it is, is a strangely fair system all in all. Haven't met many people who play 10th a lot complain that much about it unless they are also invested into HH or other game that has INI, and often it is more in relation to how Fight First works in 10th, which I admit is a strange ruling.

The only place where the initiative system kind of works is in Horus Heresy, but I also attribute that to the fact that the system is essentially homogenized with its marine v. marine action. So usually you are either having equal INI units fighting, or you both have access to the same high INI squashers that level the playing field.

Couldn't that be solved with an Always Strikes First on the charge that overrides any other ASF. Or even strike at same time if both have ASF? This was actually used in many previous eds of GW games. If Elves are charged, too bad I guess. That's one of their weaknesses.

Elves has had the issue of brittleness which they sometimes they had been given true ASF (which went before chargers), but this caused issues (though dwarfed by the daemons army book balance, and arguably the problem wasn't the going first but how hard they hit when doing it, as A2 models were much more common then). At the moment in TOW it's more of a compromise, so charging gives +3I, while elves have higher I value and gain extra in the first round of combat (along with a universal bonus for spears) means they go at the same time or before most units that charge them, however spear elves (or even swordmasters down to A1) are hardly rocking the environment and generally their infantry is regarded as pretty poor (the top infantry are in Dwarfs, Night Goblins and various flavours of undead, all of which are not famed for going first in combat) and they're kept strong by their dragon mounts on characters.


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To add, the striking first for charging makes sense in a phased manoeuvre game like Fantasy Battle, but with 'skirmish formation' IGOUGO I think it falls apart a little. For that, strict initiative is better, with points balanced around that, and you enter combat because it's advantageous to you rather than for any bonusses.

I will say that I hated the high elf ASF rule as it bypassed the core mechanic of initiative entirely and made it difficult to balance the cost and value of I in their army, let alone anyone else's.


When you look at the basic initiative mechanic in 3-7th, you find only 3 states - first, last, simultaneous.

IMO Simultaneous should be the default, with skill determining who is likely to win.

Modern 40k however is determined to remove comparative stats, S vs T is barely comparative anymore with its exponential curve requiring S20 to wound T10 on a 2+. It has very little relationship to the numbers.

You could rejig the statline where Initiative is a static value and WS becomes your attack dice (your weapon skill is represented by how many dice you can roll with that weapon).

You then use the SvsT table with I vs I to determine what you need to hit. In this system your initiative determines how fast you are to strike your opponent accurately.

All attacks are worked out simultaneously. Striking first would be a strategem or special skill that is only sometimes performed - 'surprise assault' type of thing.



EDIT: You can even apply this to BS as well, where I is your ability to strike your enemy and BS is your skill with the gun, representing how many shots you can get off.

Not a bad idea, but I wouldn't use Initiative as a Stat when a simple Defense Stat could be used. I would basically a reverse the current system where WS and BS are used to attack.

So you would have:

Attacks: The number of dice the Model gets to roll when attacking with the weapon. This represents how many chances a model gets to effectively damage a target. Could be the weapon (Blast, high rate-of-fire) or Skill (Space Marines get more attacks with a Bolter than a Guardsmen).

Evasion or Ranged Defense: The target number for Ranged attacks to hit the model. It is harder to land a hit on a Aeldari than an Ork with a gun.

Defend or Melee Defense: The target number for Melee attacks to hit the model. The more skilled and/or agile the target, the better their defense score.

Once you Hit the target, you have the good old Strength Vs Toughness roll followed by the Save. Thus a system that uses both hard to hit and hard to would in the basic set of rolls rather than as an add-on system.

That's pretty much BFG (which is still by fav GW game).

I don't have a problem with it personally, but I can see some people not being keen on the feeling that their own model has no influence on it ability to hit something.

It's why I prefer comparative mechanics. The current rules have a marine hit their target on a 3+, whether it's an ogryn, plaguebearer, necron or exarch, greater daemon or solitaire.

Inverting that still has the same issue, it just puts it on the attacker - Marines hit an aspect squad on the same chance of success as guard conscripts or grotz, or chapter masters.

If we're actually discussing WFB in the Oldhammer days, I'd argue that, with blocks of troops trying to outmaneuver each other on the board, the simplest solutions were always best.

You got the charge off? Impacted my unit? You strike first, we strike back.

No one broke. Awesome, the fight continues next round. Highest initiative fights first. Modifiers are basic...if you have a two-handed weapon adding to your strength, and lowering my save, you go last. Unless you've paid extra points to have the ability to strike at initiative, i.e. High Elf Swordmasters, and...well...no one else I can think of offhand.

Now it's a competitive match between I, WS, S, T, and armor saves, plus who decided to pay enough points in their army list to have ranks, standards, numbers, etc., plus dice rolls.

Or, you can be happy with the 40K clone crap-show AoS is. Warhammer Fantasy Battles died with the end of 7th edition. 8th was just another stupid pendulum swing where if you brought as much magic as possible, you won, and if not, you were nuked to death. Ask my Slann miniature how I know that.

None of this has anything to do with 11th edition 40k.

Initiative in 40k should be simple as hell. I charged you. I strike first. You also have the strike first ability, regardless of if you were charged or not? Cool. We roll all of our attacks at the same time, and absorb the results.

This isn't rocket surgery or brain science. It makes it stupid simple. I charged. I hit first, Specific units (Banshees, Lictors, whatever) get to strike simultaneously, rolling their attacks before casualties are inflicted on them. These units can be rare-ish and have appropriate points costs. Maybe even be a touch over-priced as far as points, to punish players who use them badly. You should be using them to get the charge, not absorb the charge, so you get to pay a premium for "strikes first," i.e. simultaneously to the chargers. Because you messed up.

The Initiative stat doesn't even come into play until the second round of a melee combat, and who strikes first then.

I really don't see why this is so hard, or why previous editions can't be drawn upon for rules. Hell, you could even add Strategems to the game that change this base, if you wanted.

Old man yells at clouds again.

 Hellebore wrote:
I will say that I hated the high elf ASF rule as it bypassed the core mechanic of initiative entirely and made it difficult to balance the cost and value of I in their army, let alone anyone else's.

I remember disliking that High Elves not only got ASF but also a super-special version of ASF that let them strike first even if they were using Great Weapons (which conferred Always Strike Last and would normally cancel out Always Strike First).

 vipoid wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
I will say that I hated the high elf ASF rule as it bypassed the core mechanic of initiative entirely and made it difficult to balance the cost and value of I in their army, let alone anyone else's.

I remember disliking that High Elves not only got ASF but also a super-special version of ASF that let them strike first even if they were using Great Weapons (which conferred Always Strike Last and would normally cancel out Always Strike First).

And by 8th edition could re-roll hits on top of that due to higher initiative and ASF. Yeah that was a ridiculous over correct in allowing High Elf elites to actually always be worth their points.

I agree that I think ASF on the charge could be worthwhile in modern 40k but with a random charge it is probably less fair as you could roll high for charge and destroy the poor glasshammer unit a quarter the way down the board.

I will add I am only chiming in out of curiosity though and probably play current 40k only a couple times a year so am more than open to other opinions.

Dai2 wrote:
I agree that I think ASF on the charge could be worthwhile in modern 40k but with a random charge it is probably less fair as you could roll high for charge and destroy the poor glasshammer unit a quarter the way down the board.

I think the issue is with foodchain-40k.

Because... what's a "random charge"? I mean say 10 Guardsmen get the jump on some Incubi. On average they kill one Incubi. Who then respond by gutting most of the squad.
Is that a problem? If instead they bring 20 guardsmen (issues of getting them all into range etc but whatever) and a bunch of supporting characters plus stratagems (if there are any), isn't that now a reasonable investment to kill an 85 point 5 man Incubi squad?

But then if say assault intercessors charge the Incubi, they have a decent chance to wipe them without reply. Which maybe upsets - as assault intercessors are just Marine troops, while Incubi are meant to be more elite. But then if the Incubi charged, they'd almost certainly wipe the Assault Intercessors - and other things up the Marine food chain besides. If the assault intercessors charge, should they just get insta-deleted without reply? Seems to render them worthless in a bunch of matchups.

This has often been the issue with say Ork Boyz. Are they meant to be a reasonably scary assault unit in terms of 40k's food chain. Or are they meant to be chumps that die - a PK Nob delivery system at best? Players of different factions tend to end up with different views on this food chain - but even just people neutrally interpreting competing fluff. How does say a Striking Scorpion scale up against a Necron Flayed One or a Khorne Berzerker?

Some of these seem like a lot of work to implement across the multitude of factions that exist today.

I see a further simplification of rules for the main games at GW and the complex rules for the Specialist Games division.

Tyel wrote:

Dai2 wrote:
I agree that I think ASF on the charge could be worthwhile in modern 40k but with a random charge it is probably less fair as you could roll high for charge and destroy the poor glasshammer unit a quarter the way down the board.

I think the issue is with foodchain-40k.

Because... what's a "random charge"? I mean say 10 Guardsmen get the jump on some Incubi. On average they kill one Incubi. Who then respond by gutting most of the squad.
Is that a problem? If instead they bring 20 guardsmen (issues of getting them all into range etc but whatever) and a bunch of supporting characters plus stratagems (if there are any), isn't that now a reasonable investment to kill an 85 point 5 man Incubi squad?

But then if say assault intercessors charge the Incubi, they have a decent chance to wipe them without reply. Which maybe upsets - as assault intercessors are just Marine troops, while Incubi are meant to be more elite. But then if the Incubi charged, they'd almost certainly wipe the Assault Intercessors - and other things up the Marine food chain besides. If the assault intercessors charge, should they just get insta-deleted without reply? Seems to render them worthless in a bunch of matchups.

This has often been the issue with say Ork Boyz. Are they meant to be a reasonably scary assault unit in terms of 40k's food chain. Or are they meant to be chumps that die - a PK Nob delivery system at best? Players of different factions tend to end up with different views on this food chain - but even just people neutrally interpreting competing fluff. How does say a Striking Scorpion scale up against a Necron Flayed One or a Khorne Berzerker?

This is a fair point.

I would suggest that part of the issue is the fact that you can no longer cut down enemies that flee from combat. Those rules, while harsh in some sense, meant that you didn't need to kill every single opponent in combat in order to win.

But now all that matters is raw killing power. So you can't really afford the same back-and-forth you could in prior editions.

To say nothing of the fact that most of the factors that once made melee more effective than ranged have also been removed, so melee units need to be even killier to justify being taken over ranged units.

I mean, I started 40K in an edition where melee units were slowed by difficult terrain, were killed before they could swing because of Initiative, stood in the open to be gunned down when they killed their opponent, casualties had to be taken from the front, increasing assault range, melee weapons being basically the only weapons in the game without AP, Sergeants were neutralized by enemy chars (or outright went into Leroy Jenkins Mode when CSM)...

So, which are the factors you think "made melee more effective than ranged in the past"? I know 4th edition had an extreme advantage for CC, but other editions in the 3rd-7th era usually gave ranged an advantage, with 6th and 7th taking it to the extreme. Melee since 8th is in a quite good position.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I mean, I started 40K in an edition where melee units were slowed by difficult terrain, were killed before they could swing because of Initiative, stood in the open to be gunned down when they killed their opponent, casualties had to be taken from the front, increasing assault range, melee weapons being basically the only weapons in the game without AP, Sergeants were neutralized by enemy chars (or outright went into Leroy Jenkins Mode when CSM)...

Yeah. I mean there were good (undercosted/broken) assault units in the past - but 5th to 7th 40k, and arguably even into 8th was very much a shooting game. (Even in 3rd, admittedly perhaps with less competitive analysis, I remember list building often seemed focused around the best dakka heavy support option your codex had.)

I think progressive objective scoring and the rise of L-Shaped breachable ruins are really want cemented the importance of assault. You can't really just castle up in a corner and nuke anything that walks towards you. Not only because the opponent will likely just run away on objectives - but you probably won't be able to get LOS on useful targets.

It might make the game less RPG and more like checkers - but I think it works.