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Well gents, let me ask a basic question: Is sixth edition more complicated than 5th?

I ask because as I read the new rules I find myself going 'huh?' I only ask cause I am in the middle of teaching a friend the game when I realized that a new edition arrived. I was just wondering what others thought in terms of the difficulty of learning. I haven't played any games in 6th yet, so my knowledge is limited. I can only say though that I almost had to re-read the assault phase a third time. Also the addition of some rules seem unnecessary, I.e. "Gets Hot!" for blast weapons. I feel this may make the game even more complicated for newcomers...

Thoughts?

I think that is because they added a whole bunch of stuff ( fliers, over watch, etc.) without really taking much away.

Blast weapons always could Get Hot, if you didn't know that you weren't play them correctly.


I think 6th in many ways is more streamlined. Wound allocation being closest model is a much simpler, and realistic, method then the previous one.

Gets Hot applying to vehicles is also a streamlining tool. Its much easier to say "if you roll a 1, you take a wound or lose a hull point, whichever applies" then "O that doesn't apply to vehicles"

Try it. It really isn't that complicated.

Well, if you only teach the game using the basic part of the rules, it is not that much different (only new things are random charge lengths and snap fire/over watch).

I don't know, the rule allocation system gets complicated and slow pretty often. Taking more varied units, or getting shot at by a unit with a variety of weapons can slow it down. For example, I took a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser, and a vet squad with x3 plasma, ac, and lasguns. Playing against a black templar player with neophytes in his crusader squads, I had to apply the wounds carefully if I wanted maximum effect (autocannon and weaker AP stuff first to kill neophytes, saving plasma for the marines in the back) Add in his chaplain he had in there, and we started having to roll saves and los! rolls for the chaplain. If you do it right and make sure you don't skip steps, it can take much longer than 5th's "ok, I'm putting the AC wounds on this guy, and the plasma wounds on these guys."

Other than that, there's a bunch of little things they've added, but LOS! really slows the game down for me. It's a lot of extra rolling we didn't have to do before. I'm glad we have it, I just wish it was implemented differently.

I think it's mostly a matter of getting used to it. Although 2 armor types and a character make it a bit slower.

As I'm coming back in having not played a game since 4th I have to say it certainly /feels/ that way.

I think its getting used to it. But I just played a game of 6th and alot of stuff makes more sense now("different" profiles for power weapons,OW,taking out the closet model) and I enjoyed it ALOT.

MrMoustaffa wrote:I don't know, the rule allocation system gets complicated and slow pretty often. Taking more varied units, or getting shot at by a unit with a variety of weapons can slow it down. For example, I took a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser, and a vet squad with x3 plasma, ac, and lasguns. Playing against a black templar player with neophytes in his crusader squads, I had to apply the wounds carefully if I wanted maximum effect (autocannon and weaker AP stuff first to kill neophytes, saving plasma for the marines in the back) Add in his chaplain he had in there, and we started having to roll saves and los! rolls for the chaplain. If you do it right and make sure you don't skip steps, it can take much longer than 5th's "ok, I'm putting the AC wounds on this guy, and the plasma wounds on these guys."

I think this is a good thing as it changes the dynamic of the game and requires more head work.

Thumbs up for 6th so far.

It's not so much more complicated as just different. It's daunting seeing the huge rulebook and bevvy of new rules, but for the most part things didn't get much more involved and not all that much was added. It's a bigger change than 4th to 5th, but it's not a massive confusing leap. Just give yourself time to play a few games.

Technically, 6th edition is more complicated (what with having an extra 25+ page in its rules section), but I think it's also easier to play. This is mostly because there were a bunch of counterintuitive things that 6th ed threw out. Now, a model has cover if it has cover, and a model moved if if moved. No more fumbling with ranges, more intuitive rules for vehicles (well, at least, rules that make them more like infantry) or bothering with a bunch of tiny, annoying rules.

As such, I don't think complexity is necessarily a bad thing if most of your interactions with the game have been made easier.

Also, I like the idea of random objective actually doing things if your holding them. I think its extra motive to actually hold the objective as opposed to having the last two turn rush to them just for VP. Expect if you roll the sabt. one, that would be a pain

Byte wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:I don't know, the rule allocation system gets complicated and slow pretty often. Taking more varied units, or getting shot at by a unit with a variety of weapons can slow it down. For example, I took a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser, and a vet squad with x3 plasma, ac, and lasguns. Playing against a black templar player with neophytes in his crusader squads, I had to apply the wounds carefully if I wanted maximum effect (autocannon and weaker AP stuff first to kill neophytes, saving plasma for the marines in the back) Add in his chaplain he had in there, and we started having to roll saves and los! rolls for the chaplain. If you do it right and make sure you don't skip steps, it can take much longer than 5th's "ok, I'm putting the AC wounds on this guy, and the plasma wounds on these guys."

I think this is a good thing as it changes the dynamic of the game and requires more head work.

Thumbs up for 6th so far.

Oh I didn't say I didn't like it (I love the fact that shooting more weapons actually means I kill more things now, unlike last edition, where shooting small arms could actually KILL LESS than if you only fired certain weapons.) OP asked if the game was more complicated, I stated that it felt more complicated and slowed down. I love a lot of the changes though. Just hope they don't get abused too much.

MrMoustaffa wrote:

Byte wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:I don't know, the rule allocation system gets complicated and slow pretty often. Taking more varied units, or getting shot at by a unit with a variety of weapons can slow it down. For example, I took a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser, and a vet squad with x3 plasma, ac, and lasguns. Playing against a black templar player with neophytes in his crusader squads, I had to apply the wounds carefully if I wanted maximum effect (autocannon and weaker AP stuff first to kill neophytes, saving plasma for the marines in the back) Add in his chaplain he had in there, and we started having to roll saves and los! rolls for the chaplain. If you do it right and make sure you don't skip steps, it can take much longer than 5th's "ok, I'm putting the AC wounds on this guy, and the plasma wounds on these guys."

I think this is a good thing as it changes the dynamic of the game and requires more head work.

Thumbs up for 6th so far.

Oh I didn't say I didn't like it (I love the fact that shooting more weapons actually means I kill more things now, unlike last edition, where shooting small arms could actually KILL LESS than if you only fired certain weapons.) OP asked if the game was more complicated, I stated that it felt more complicated and slowed down. I love a lot of the changes though. Just hope they don't get abused too much.

You know they are going to be used and abused by WAAC.

Well I am going to start to implement the rules slowly tonight with the buddy I am teaching, and now self-teaching myself some of the new updates to the Special Rules (i.e. Rage seems AWESOME now)...In regards to the Get's Hot! does that apply to frag missiles (blast template)? Or am I just missing something?

I also just feel that the assaults seem a bit longer especially with the LOS. It will take time and I will adjust as usual, although I do feel this game is moving towards a greater influence of fliers and such. I hope my Rhino/GH Space Wolves will still fair well.

Frag missiles do not have the Gets Hot rule. Only weapons with the Gets Hot rule (typically plasma weapons) use that rule.

Most wound allocation goes faster until you involve multiple characters and armor types.

Yeah, I've found that new wound allocation hasn't slowed things down much. It doesn't really effect close combat (where the reciever gets to allocate them), and most of the time you're shooting at something, it all has the same armor save anyways. The only time you need to slow down is when a character is involved, and even then, it's not THAT much slower.

It's not like a single character is going to take 40 wounds that they need to roll individually, and once they're killed, it's back to wounding as normal.

Really, the only difference seems to be which models are removed, not how long it takes to kill them.

Well... It is very possible for a single character to tank that many wounds over one phase if you're using a 2++ reroll tank, but yeah.