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'Gotta watch out for trolls going over this bridge!'

I have to say that, without being too pedantic, that the 5th edition rulebook is well balanced. But maybe I'm just being uncreative in my appraisal of the RULES. I'd like to hear what Dakka thinks.

Go visit YMDC and then re-ask that question.

I think 5th is a great edition, though (being a nid player) I find you have to work alot harder to keep your big gribbly MC alive, where as vehicles get away with shot's that would got straight through your T6 nid.
I also had a bit of a rage over MC psykers only being alowed on power a turn . Overall i dont have many problems with 5th


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rigeld2 wrote:Go visit YMDC and then re-ask that question.

Why dont you go to YMDC and ask what YMDC is for?

cheapbuster wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:Go visit YMDC and then re-ask that question.

Why dont you go to YMDC and ask what YMDC is for?

It's for clarifying rules. It seemed like the OP was saying the rulebook is pretty clear.
If it was that clear, YMDC wouldn't be as active as it is.

The codices are the problem in 5th. The core rules are quite good, minus a few glaring issues (wound allocation, strength of vehicles).

Both the dexes and the core rules have their good points and bad. The bad is bad enough I'm waiting for 6th with baited breath and really hoping for the changes I'd like, but it's not bad enough to make me quit playing.

The mech in 5th is horrible, but thank the gods they toned down skimmers from 4th.

Pskyer abilities need to be fully clarified IN THE BOOK. I don't care, make the damn thing longer, but if I have to go through the crap where lash becomes a shooting attack, but JOTWW doesn't again, it will primarily be a big issue there.

Not to mention they need some better rules for some things, Monstrous Creatures aren't cutting it in 5th, not to mention a large number of weaponry types.

Jump Infantry aren't exactly great either, there's one army that consistently takes them and that's because they are a troops choice. Not sure what can be done there though.

Also, get rid of Wound Allocation. I don't care if this nerfs some things, you shouldn't be relying on this at ALL.

All things considered, I don't think 5th is that bad. I didn't actually play in 4th, but from everything I've heard, it doesn't quite sound as fun (and this is from re-tellings by people who loved 4th).

The biggest problem I have with 5th is that EVERYTHING is random. Random game length, random who gets first turn, random what scenario you play, random run length, random moving through cover... well, you get the idea. My biggest complaint is that it feels like, even if you play a 'perfect' game (whatever that means) you're still victim to die rolls. It's like playing Chutes and Ladders.

I personally hate the cover save rules and pinning needs to be fixed but rumors say they might have fixed pinning rules. Other than that it seemed fine to me.

Never understood why a unit that is providing cover from another unit doesn't take wounds and how a weapon can punch through Power Armor but it stopped cold by a tree.

Wound allocation nonsense, vehicle shooting and damage rules, passenger in vehicle rules, pinning is too weak, that's all I can think of. There's not a lot wrong with 5th, the issues lie more with certain codexes.

Silentway wrote:
Never understood why a unit that is providing cover from another unit doesn't take wounds and how a weapon can punch through Power Armor but it stopped cold by a tree.

Well, that's just hard cover vs soft cover for you. It's not that the tree is stopping the weapon; it's that the tree obstructs view to the target such that you wind up firing at a nonvital part of the target or miss entirely.

Now, whether that should be as good of cover as a concrete wall, well, that's a different story altogether.

daedalus wrote: My biggest complaint is that it feels like, even if you play a 'perfect' game (whatever that means) you're still victim to die rolls. It's like playing Chutes and Ladders.

This is endemic to 40k, though, not just 5th ed.

Anyways, I agree that 5th is better than 4th, and is actually pretty good over all. The only two things that really bug me are wound wrapping and TLoS. Also, as I've played more, I'm slowly starting to agree that there needs to be something a little more substantial that happens to passengers in a vehicle explosion than nothing, which is what usually seems to happen.

I have thoroughly enjoyed 5th edition and consider it the best edition of the game so far.

I am also looking forward to 6th, and am sure I will enjoy it just as much.

5th is okay, but not great. Mech and Universal Cover are probably the biggest things that need to be edited (+5 Cover Save and maybe something more drastic to passengers in exploding transports).

Not having a decent counter to Out Flanking (Besides cramming into the center of the table) needs to be addressed as well.

As mentioned, the rulebook itself has a few big glaring issues that really need addressing to balance things a bit more come 6th edition;
a) Vehicles are too strong meaning that mech is dominating while a few armies are left out in the cold because they don't get cheap super-effective transports. (Tyranids & Daemons)
Convsersely, MC's could do with a bit of tweeking to make them more desirable.

b) How scoring & contesting work needs added clairificaiton. Basically, you shouldn't be able to sit around in your metal bawkes and claim objectives, nor should a 200+pts Troops squad fil to hold an objective because a 50'ish pts transport is nearby.

c) Missions are stale as hell and need a serious overhaul to inject some variety into them again. Oh, and Kill Points really need to scale in regards to the units you're killing! Seriously, right now a grot is equal to a paladin interms of it's KP value! Or to put it another way, a 700+ pts fully tricked-out Elites unit is worth the exact same KP's value as that 60pts unit of Boyz...

d) The Force Org Chart needs to be 100% re-worked. Right now it can't scale and it overly favours MEQ type armies who don't require the same amount of redundancy and/or have far more 'specialist' type units than any marine army ever will... For example, Daemons can't get enough of their crucial Elites units onto the table at higher pts game, whereas a smurf army can take a Sternguard + Hammernators and be fine with a slot to spare.
Either scale the chart in relation to the pts level of the game, (ala 6th & 7th editions of Fantasy), or else bring percentages back into play with hard limits on the number of 'duplicate' entries allowed, (ala 8th edition Fantasy.)

e) Wound allocation abuses need to go.

f) Melta needs to be tonned way down. Rapid Fire type weapons need some buffs to make them worthwhile again.

g) Psychic powers need to have clairified classes such as 'psychic shooting attack', 'start of turn', 'unit augment', etc...
Also, every army needs to have some kind of basic psychic defense i nthe rulebook itself.



The biggest issues however lie with the codicies... Some books like SW's & IG have a few gaffs that lead to the spaming of 2 or 3 undercosted units. In the case of SW's, while Longfangs will always be 'really good', the Grey Hunters would lose a bit of their punch if the overall efectiveness of cheap transports & melta spaming were tonned down.

Some books however are just plain 'average' with few real standouts, not a single no-brainer option and haven't ajusted well at all to the current mechfest meta. (Tyranids - looking at you!)

Then you have the 'well balanced' books like Codex Marines, DE, Orks, Eldar, Necrons & Daemons which can play perfectly well and do just fine in the right hands even at the top levels of competition.

Finally, you have the 'game breakers' which are just nothing more than Codex: 'X' + 1 like BA's & GK's.
BA's are pretty much C:SM + 1, while GK's is a pile of steaming crap that reaks of being BA/SW/Eldar +11!

The rest of the books, wich are just old and need a facelift like Chaos Marines, DA's, Tau, Templars & those poor, poor Sisters!


If GW can start doing for 40k what they've started doing for Fantasy, then 6th edition could easily become the greatest edition yet with a decently rounded rulebook and well balanced army books that are short on hugely OTT entries.
What's really interesting to note so far in 8th edition Fantasy's 'new balance', Ward has yet to write a single book, while every other author has penned at least one book and so far there's very little difference between the percieved 'top book' and 'bottom rung' book! (so what does that tell us?!! )

on the whole "universal +4 cover save" isn't that just a result of player habit? When you read the rulebook, a lot of the terrain is listed at a +5 cover save (dont have book, but things like woods, ruins, chest high walls, wrecks, etc.) The way I've heard it described, GW intended +5 in most situations (KFF for example) and everyone just latched onto the whole +4 thing out of habit. I'm kind of new and dont own the rulebook though, so if someone could quote that page it'd be great. Of course, it doesnt matter if I'm right because I doubt player habit will change now.

As for the only issues I've noticed in 5th as a new player, there is a rediculous emphasis on transports in this edition (at least as far as rhinos and chimeras are concerned) Explosions are fairly non threatening, and wrecks dont threaten the occupants at all. Plus you can capture an objective without leaving a transport, which strikes me as odd. Only other thing that could probably be tweaked are the wound shenanigans things you can do with palidins and nobs. Do that and I'd probably be happy.

MrMoustaffa wrote:on the whole "universal +4 cover save" isn't that just a result of player habit? When you read the rulebook, a lot of the terrain is listed at a +5 cover save (dont have book, but things like woods, ruins, chest high walls, wrecks, etc.) The way I've heard it described, GW intended +5 in most situations (KFF for example) and everyone just latched onto the whole +4 thing out of habit. I'm kind of new and dont own the rulebook though, so if someone could quote that page it'd be great. Of course, it doesnt matter if I'm right because I doubt player habit will change now.

No, a 5+ is described as "High Grass, Crops, Bushes, Hedges, Fences" and 4+ includes things like Woods, Ruins, Walls, Wrecked Vehicles.

rigeld2 wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:on the whole "universal +4 cover save" isn't that just a result of player habit? When you read the rulebook, a lot of the terrain is listed at a +5 cover save (dont have book, but things like woods, ruins, chest high walls, wrecks, etc.) The way I've heard it described, GW intended +5 in most situations (KFF for example) and everyone just latched onto the whole +4 thing out of habit. I'm kind of new and dont own the rulebook though, so if someone could quote that page it'd be great. Of course, it doesnt matter if I'm right because I doubt player habit will change now.

4+ includes things like Woods, Ruins, Walls, Wrecked Vehicles.

Or essentially every piece of terrain on a 40k board.

Ailaros wrote:

daedalus wrote: My biggest complaint is that it feels like, even if you play a 'perfect' game (whatever that means) you're still victim to die rolls. It's like playing Chutes and Ladders.

This is endemic to 40k, though, not just 5th ed.

Anyways, I agree that 5th is better than 4th, and is actually pretty good over all. The only two things that really bug me are wound wrapping and TLoS. Also, as I've played more, I'm slowly starting to agree that there needs to be something a little more substantial that happens to passengers in a vehicle explosion than nothing, which is what usually seems to happen.

Average casualties from an exploding chimera is 4.4, on top of a pinning and morale test. If one of my chimeras gets popped I assume the squad inside is already dead so I'm not really sure where the idea that exploding vehicles are not powerful enough. A single extra point of strength damage, or AP5, would make mech guard unplayable.

Anyway other than wound allocation bs I'd like to see less arbitrary randomness - stealing initiative should go, cover should be 5+ by default, "25% of the game board as terrain" is bs, more like 15%.
There are others.

I think Ailaros was speaking about MEQ, not IG.

How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

The movement rules are terrible
AP system is bad
Cover rules are terrible
Wound allocation is prone to abuse and clumsy

Joey wrote:How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

I guess you could make it ignore armor. Hurts IG more, but it lessens the gap between the two. To be fair, if the metal box in which you are currently residing in EXPLODES, it should probably be quite damaging, whether you're in kevlar or in fiction armor.

Joey wrote:How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

I like how the Leaked book did it.

D6 for each unit, on a 6, they die. No armor save, but an INV save can.

daedalus wrote:

Joey wrote:How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

I guess you could make it ignore armor. Hurts IG more, but it lessens the gap between the two. To be fair, if the metal box in which you are currently residing in EXPLODES, it should probably be quite damaging, whether you're in kevlar or in fiction armor.

To be fair, your chances of surviving such explosion should be magnitudes better in power armour when compared to flak armour or no armour at all.
If you want realism, anything up to AP5 is easy to explain. Would be hard to support AP2 (direct hit by lascannon) or AP3 (equivalent to direct hit by armor piercing missile) fluffwise, though that hasn't stopped anyone before.

Personally, I'd like the mech toned down (though I run MSU list), but I really don't want the pendulum to swing back to the "All transports are death-traps. No sane commander would ever risk actually putting troops inside" which has happened in few editions.

daedalus wrote:

Joey wrote:How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

I guess you could make it ignore armor. Hurts IG more, but it lessens the gap between the two. To be fair, if the metal box in which you are currently residing in EXPLODES, it should probably be quite damaging, whether you're in kevlar or in fiction armor.

That would eliminate mech guard in a stroke. Losing all the normal guys plus a special weapon, plus a pinning test, plus a morale test. Leaving you with 2 special weapons and a sargent, probably gone to ground/fleeing.
Yeah, no.

Right, there are ways of making vehicle damage worse while sill making it fair. For example, in 4th ed if you were in a vehicle explosion, the guys inside were pinned. End of. No roll. In this case, what the player lost wasn't models as much as time, which was still a real loss.

Even in the case of vets in a chimera, they get blown up, lose a couple of abblative wounds and then. more often than not just run around shooting as if nothing happened, and that's in one of the worst case transport loss scenarios.

As for cover, you've got to look at all the changes in light of 4th ed.

In 4th ed, cover was really easy to get thanks to the old non-TLoS system. Furthermore, close combat was already a joke. Yes, you could skip between units, but that's if you ever got there in the first place. In order to make CC viable, especially in a world where they were switching to TLoS, and getting rid of the (admittedly abusive) aforementioned chain close combats, they needed to give close combat a big boost. As such, they all gained the ability to run, and all imperium armies got frag grenades standard. Some of them also gained the ability to outflank, and the 4+ cover of intervening units (which is way better than the 4th ed leadership test system), means that units can actually make it to the other side of the board.

If you reduce cover to a universal 5+, an already very shooty game relapses into a practically only shooty game, as even a 4+ is already tough to make foot hordes work against opponents who know what their small arm is for. Plus, worse cover makes long-range armies even more powerful, which means more sit-and-shoot dice rolling sessions, and even less movement than we have right now.

If we want cover to get worse, then we need to make everything else faster to compensate. For example, you could give everybody in the game the equivalent of the current fleet special rule as standard, and make it so that units with fleet get to roll an extra D6 for their charge range, or something.

If you don't like cover as it is right now, you have to do things to actually keep the balance, rather than just making cover worse.

Joey wrote:

daedalus wrote:

Joey wrote:How can you make it more damaging to MEQ without making it devestating to IG? Higher strength? Give it an AP?

I guess you could make it ignore armor. Hurts IG more, but it lessens the gap between the two. To be fair, if the metal box in which you are currently residing in EXPLODES, it should probably be quite damaging, whether you're in kevlar or in fiction armor.

That would eliminate mech guard in a stroke. Losing all the normal guys plus a special weapon, plus a pinning test, plus a morale test. Leaving you with 2 special weapons and a sargent, probably gone to ground/fleeing.
Yeah, no.

Okay, rending perhaps? Always 3+ to wound regardless of the toughness?

rigeld2 wrote:

cheapbuster wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:Go visit YMDC and then re-ask that question.

Why dont you go to YMDC and ask what YMDC is for?

It's for clarifying rules. It seemed like the OP was saying the rulebook is pretty clear.
If it was that clear, YMDC wouldn't be as active as it is.

From what I've seen, YMDC is widely used to try and prove one's interpretation of the rules using mental acrobatics and arguing in circles.

Don't forget the sophistry, rhetoric and dogged refusal to recognise that you've lost, or that the other poster may actually be agreeing with you

YMDC can be fun sometimes