Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Blackheart666 wrote:but FoW isn't "WW2" 40K.

Except it really does play a hell of a lot like 40k. The same basic strategies work well in each game, with same bias towards offensive actions.

The only really marked difference is FoW having strict limits on force composition, to try and shoehorn armies into looking like something close to a realistic company size force. Which is ironic, given the level of venom you see around the place for 40k pulling back on the level of options available in army creation.

Toreador wrote:
You just don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

Unless you wear a G.F. mask...lol
It's really a bit odd, that you say something like that and use a picture of V as avatar.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Not so. 40k3 WYSIWYG was interpreted in many tournaments that an army in World Eaters colors & heraldry *must* be played as WE, and an army in Dark Angels colors & heraldry *must* be played as DA. For a while, the only armies that had options would be custom armies.

Then it's the tournaments that are at fault, not the variant lists themselves. What about people who don't play tournaments? Why should everyone else suffer because of the rules at a few tournies?

The problem with having one big flexible list is that theming your army makes it weaker because you don't gain anything from doing so.
e.g. with the old Codex you take a cult army, you get free Aspiring Champion upgrades. Now by "theming" an army you are just limiting your choices with no benefit, so many players won't do it. You will see less and less variety on the tabletop.

I'm on the fence, honestly. I agree that in some ways 3rd/4th became more complicated than 2nd ever was, so some streamlining was necessary.

HOWEVER, I remain skeptical whether the design team will improve the game. The three big reasons:

1) Backward compatibility. It's the last way anyone would ever choose to design a game. I fully understand the business reasons, but all it does is handcuff the designers.

2) Past performance. This is just a lack of execution. I've seen them fail to fix things properly too many times. And as we've seen from recent codices, some designers are simply more talented than others.

3) History of mid-edition changes. They've happened in every edition of the game so far, and I have a hard time being convinced that it won't happen again if the winds change direction (especially the winds of sales).

I HOPE things improve and I want them to do a great job. But with this many years of experience with 40K and GW, I'm firmly in the "wait-and-see" camp. Anything more and I'd just feel incredibly naive. Fool me once...

sebster wrote:Jervis has made a series of changes to the game. I happen to like the changes (finding it a more mobile, objective oriented game, rather than just deploying twinked out stand and shoot uber-units), but that’s besides the point. It’s a constantly changing game, and this is just the latest evolution.

Tell ya what I've played batletech for over 15 years now. The game has seen three or four editions and at least 2 owners. Guess what the basic rules remain the same. A game doesn't need change to make it good, unless it's bad. The move to a fifth edition indicates to me the designers have yet to get it right.
Amd to judge from the games top two armies your wrong about the games overall strategy as well. Mech Eldar and Godzilla are exactly what you are complaining about.

sebster wrote:
Some people didn’t like the changes. Some people liked being able to play around with the old codices, producing list after list of interesting armies that they never played. Other people used the old codices to produce really, really powerful armies like Iron Warriors. These people started to use terms like ‘simplified’ and ‘bland’ to describe the new books. These are excellent for internet criticism because they sound like scathing criticisms without actually meaning anything.

For the record some of us liked producing list after list of interesting armies we did play. I love how this always comes doen to saying the old way was bad because of the Iron Warriors. You can make a much more powerful list using Codex Eldar. That is going to be around for years now. The brokenness hasn't ended with Codex chaos, but I do not like it's execution, or the fluff logic used to explain the changes (the worst of which is needing 10 guys for a heavy weapon).

sebster wrote:
While that criticism was continuing, Jervis mentioned his son in the context of a couple of things that had been missed in the codices. This was brought up to show how GW and its customer base had become quite insular, a little daunting to a potential new player like his son. The boy was used as an example, related to the completely non-contraversial ideas of including pictures of gear in the books and making the books easier to reference.

People then used Jervis’ kid as the poster boy for the ‘simplified’ and ‘bland’ rules. Jervis’ kid had nothing to do with the rules changes, but that didn’t seem to matter. This is the internet, people never let reality get in the way of a rant.

How this has morphed into people being critical of Jervis for using his son in his business is, well, just another one of those ridiculous internet things.

I am critical for how Jervis used his son because it was fairly predictable what would happen to the poor kid once the changes started. As special characters went from forbidden to almost required in the DA and then the BA lists people decided this change was what Jervis meant when he was talking in wd319. It was then further generallized to be any change= Jervis's son. I feel that it was simply put a very bad idea to bring his son into the conversation, in particular as an example of a young gamer at a time when he began making some contreversal changes to assist young players. My feelings are justified by the existance of a thread about his son, and this is one of the nice ones.

the new lists in some cases (like Eldar, Chaos & Orks) allow players to make very different army types (should they choose) all from the same central army list without requiring additional rules (like Clan rules) or sub-army lists (like the Craftworld lists).

Personally, the only problem I have is that I cannot wait for the rest of the codices to get the same treatment (especially the SM codex) so that the same design philosiphies are in effect throughout the entire game.

QFT.

I started playing a couple months back. Since I've started I've seen the new Dark Angels, new Blood Angels, New Chaos Space Marines and now the New Orks. Chaos, BA and Orks strike me as improvements. I've never seen an old style DA codex, so I can't speak to that. What I really can't wait for is a new codex for my crons, in the new style.

JohnHwangDD wrote:So yeah, I remember when SM were mostly only differentiated by color. And that is most definitely NOT where Jervis is going. BA, BT, and DA are all clearly different armies, but it's OK if they share some common characteristics beyond the basic statline and ATSKNF.

Ok JohnHwang, I'm going to have to call bulls#!t here. BA, BT, and DA are most certainly NOT all clearly different armies. They could all easily be subsumed into a revised vanilla SM list. Take the DA for example. Why the hell do DA need a separate codex? How different will DA be after the SM codex gets Jervisified? When every SM tac squad comes in multiples of 5? When terminators can only take 1 heavy? When scouts are moved to Elites? Will we really need a separate codex just to give DA bikes and termies Fearless? 1ksons used to have Fearless termies too ya know...

The same goes for BA and BT. You want Death Company? Just use assault marines and a chaplain with "counts as" (look - your favorite thing, JohnHwang!). You want neophytes? Just use scouts with "counts as"! Emperor's Champion? "Counts as"! Veteran assault squads? "Counts as"!

The only reason why DA and BA and BT get separate codexes is because they're spase marienz (hurr!) and spase marienz (hurr!) don't have to follow the rules like everybody else. So while Jervis' new philosophy requires Ork klans, Eldar craftworlds, and Chaos legions to be "standardized" and absorbed by their generic parent lists, spase marienz (hurr!) get split into a bazillion unnecessary separate codexes with only superficial differences.

You are very correct. All marines could be in one codex, but the game really is based around the popularity of the Space Marines, so more of the unique chapters have a full on book. They don't have to do it, but they can, and they are very popular. I don't think that will change any time soon.

What the generic dexes do allow them to do with the other armies though, is use them as building blocks. The Chaos dex is wide open, and a lot of different themed lists can be made from them. The purists don't like that they can't make Legion lists like they used to, but you can come close. But it really opens them up to build upon this if they choose to, and come out with legion books like marines have. It really depends on what they can do in the constraints of time, money and popularity.

sebster wrote:The only really marked difference is FoW having strict limits on force composition, to try and shoehorn armies into looking like something close to a realistic company size force. Which is ironic, given the level of venom you see around the place for 40k pulling back on the level of options available in army creation.

The difference is in the game itself. Artillery, aircraft, dedicated anti-tank units, smoke, tanks...all are viable.

Not so in 40K.

Also, the basic army lists if you apply them to 40k would be like this:

Jump troop army.
Rhino army.
Predator army.
Infantry army.

Etc etc...which means you really do have lots of different army variants, given the weapon and corp support choices available to most armies.

Yak, glad we can disagree.

I'll just throw in my 2 cents, I only started playing WH40K properly(As in bought my army,Painted and played regularly) with the release of the new Chaos codex. I had played some games with old Chaos and Tyranid and I have to say while on closer inspection of the last Chaos codex I miss some of the flavour, Thrall Wizards, Specialised Dreds,Demagogues and so on I still really prefere the new one.

It is a shame some of the stuff the fits with Chaos got chopped but the old Codex was bewildering the first time I picked it up, Its only after I got to grips with the new one I can honestly say I have an understanding of the rules.

Ahwell not sure what I accomplished with this post but screw it

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Asmodai wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:I've always wanted to play a Hyper-Puritan SM army that's so far gone, they're CSM, but the rules and Fluff didn't allow me to do so until recently. Now I can create the army based on my own personal Fluff and preferences of what my army should be, rather than being shoehorned into some narrow variant army list.

Why were you shoe-horned? You were always free to ignore the variant lists / traits / doctrines and just field your army with the basic list regardless of colour scheme.

No one ever forced you to play your Khorne army as World Eaters. If you wanted to, great. If you didn't, that was cool too. Now the option and choice are gone.

Not so. 40k3 WYSIWYG was interpreted in many tournaments that an army in World Eaters colors & heraldry *must* be played as WE, and an army in Dark Angels colors & heraldry *must* be played as DA. For a while, the only armies that had options would be custom armies.

In the case of CSM, those armies would have had to have been played as MoCU renegades, rather than a Legion, because all of the Legions had specific color, etc. In any case, the excess of 0-1 restrictions was stifling to army concept, and the ridiculous point costs for certain CSM units made many concepts totally nonsensical.

With the current CSM book, there are far more options expressly given to the player, so I don't have to be some guy who's twisting the fluff unnaturally to field my army.

To be honest, you need to stop playing in tournaments with crappy house rules.

The Space Marine Codex for instance specifically states that you can use the regular list to represent White Scars, Imperial Fists, etc. The Guard Codex likewise specifically states that you can use the regular list to represent Cadians or Valhallans if you don't like messing with doctrines. The fact that some tournaments invented nonsensical house rules is no excuse to reduce the options available to the vast majority of players who didn't play at those tournaments.

Not all renegades needed to be MoCU either. It was perfectly feasible to have Khornate Renegades or Slaanesh Renegades that weren't WE or EC. The 0-1 restrictions are just poor army design, and have nothing whatsoever to do with variant lists.

BA, DA, BT are quite different because they're entirely different Codexes. It's understandable you couldn't field DA with SM rules for the same reason who can't field Tau with Tyranid rules.

Since there is no requirement anywhere making you use the variant lists and all they do is add variety for expert players, I don't think that removing them simplifies the game for new players. In the past new players would probably start with the generic list maybe using the variant as a guide to what's fluffy, and then after playing a few hundred games move on to the variant list when things started getting stale. Now when things start getting stale they'll move on to... the XBOX360 probably.

I am very disappointed with the new codexes, especially Orks and Chaos.

I have an Emperor's Children army. The majority of my army was made invalid with the new codex. Models I own simply have no rules anymore.

I play Kult of Speed. I'm hard-pressed to make a 2000 point army with my existing models because of change to where things fit in the force org, drops in points, and, again, models that I own being deemed invalid in the new codex.

The new ork codex, to me, seems like it was designed by someone who had no understanding of how the ork army actually functions. Removing all the rules that made small squads viable is the worst example of this.

I've been gaming over 20 years, and played far more complex games than 40k when I was 9 and 10. Chainmail (original), Car Wars, Battletech, etc. There's no reason to stupify the game to appeal to younger players.

I still say they they should clean house and get rid of most of the game designers and get some fresh faces. Its either that or let Phil Kelly do every codex so then every army has 1-2 unbeatable combos in them.

wow, that was very interesting to read. yaks posts make so much more sense than those from the usual internet-jerks.

and btw. it's Spider-Man, efarrer. with a -

yakface wrote:

Stelek wrote:

Won't happen. The new designer incoming will revamp his half of the game system.

Oh, and the changes Jervis is making make me less likely to buy 40K product and more likely to seek life elsewhere.

Jervis is digging a hole he can't get out of.

Sales aren't plummeting through the floor because of anyone else's decisions.

Screw the 10 year olds. I don't want to play them, and their parents don't like the fluff one bit.

They obviously aren't making GW money, probably as a result of not having any.

Am I bitter about the changes? Yes. The only interest I have is in variant armies. A book with 1 army in it? I'm not interested in buying that crap. It's too confusing? Don't play.

You won't be missed.

What new designer? Do you have some inside information or are you just speculating?


GW's sales have been declining long before Jervis took over the design studio so I think the only thing we can say for certain is that his changes have not contributed to halting that slide.


I understand that there are players who love variant army lists and are very unhappy to see them go. But remember that there are players out there (like) me who actually do like the direction the game is going quite a bit.

Sales are plummetting? I heard they were up 11% this year.

Redbeard wrote:
Removing all the rules that made small squads viable is the worst example of this.

I think this is part of the new design philosophy also. Alot of the whiners whined about 'min/maxing' and people not using full-sized squads. GW listens to whiners and voila...New design philosophy.

Anung Un Rama wrote:wow, that was very interesting to read. yaks posts make so much more sense than those from the usual internet-jerks.

and btw. it's Spider-Man, efarrer. with a -

Glad to hear it was the only thing you thought worth criticizing, as to it meh. I've made worse mistakes (like buying On More Day)

General Hobbs wrote:
Sales are plummetting? I heard they were up 11% this year.

Really, since the last anyone else heard GW posted a loss and I'm pretty sure the sales graphs I have seen showed a slight decline (although it may have been a modest rise not keeping with the costs)

I live in germany, so I'm like a year behind or so of what you're curreently reading, but until now, JMS' Spidey storys were excelent.


back on topic: I don't mind that 40k get's simplified. besides the fact that I have to re-convert about 2 dozen of my current space orks, I'm very happy with the new book and I'm all for pictures of different guns in a Codex. I remember, back when I started 40k, I couldn't tell the difference between a melter and that stupid looking 2nd editon flamer you found on chaos models.

Jervis is merely the latest excuse for people here to whine. I've been posting or lurking since roughly the release of the 3E Nid book, and most of the people who are upset have always been upset.

Abba's my particular favorite for this; he (rightly) bitched for years about how horrible Thousand Sons were, and now that they're awesome, he bitches because they don't have a defined sub-list. Some people just gotta be angry.

I will admit that it's irritating that GW won't issue FAQs to address balance issues, especially since the only things that really need to be rebalanced after the new Ork book are Dakkafexes, Assault Cannons, and Holo-fields, but the game is hardly in the horrible awful no-good very-bad position that people make it out to be.

Anung Un Rama wrote:I remember, back when I started 40k, I couldn't tell the difference between a melter and that stupid looking 2nd editon flamer you found on chaos models.

Hallo - did you ask Jervis' son which weapon was which?

efarrer wrote:Tell ya what I've played batletech for over 15 years now. The game has seen three or four editions and at least 2 owners. Guess what the basic rules remain the same. A game doesn't need change to make it good, unless it's bad. The move to a fifth edition indicates to me the designers have yet to get it right.

I also play Battletech and it’s a cool game, albeit needing a fair few house rules to make it work to my liking.

Your point is misplaced though, I never said anything about 40k needing to evolve or being better for it. Different people will come in to run the game, with different ideas about what makes a game ‘best’. I simply said that it is an evolving game, and will continue to evolve. If you don’t like the current changes you can just wait them out, the winds will soon change and maybe the next design philosophy would be more to your liking. On the other hand, if you can’t handle a game where the rules and design focus change over time, choose a different game.

Amd to judge from the games top two armies your wrong about the games overall strategy as well. Mech Eldar and Godzilla are exactly what you are complaining about.

Your point about Godzilla and mech eldar pretty much came out of nowhere, and had little or nothing to do with anything I was talking about. I can only assume you believe the only changes making the game more mobile are those two codices, which is a particularly strange idea. There’s been a marked and clearly stated push to make the game a more mobile game… objectives are more important, troops can move and rapid fire twice, vehicles are penalized less for moving and firing and benefit less from sitting still (these two rules have not worked well, but the intention was clear), newer codices (DA, BA and CSM) have stopped minimum tactical squads taking heavy weapons, they’ve brought in harlequins (who are lethal to static shooting lists and very vulnerable to anything else). The list goes on.

For the record some of us liked producing list after list of interesting armies we did play.

Except all the variety and depth of the chaos codex rarely ever saw the table. I talked to people at length about all the lists that could be fielded, and I know they spent hours playing with the book and building all kinds of lists, but whenever I played anyone I saw the Iron Warriors safh, or the all-infiltrating alpha legion, or daemon-bomb or one of the other one-dimensional army lists. Whatever you say your personal experience was, I know that most of the depth of that book rarely, if ever saw the table.

I’ve played a fair few games against the new book and each game I’ve found myself re-evaluating my strategy each turn, adapting to the impressive versatility of the new units, as so many units are effective at range and in melee. The codex is nowhere near perfect, or even good, but it’s producing a lot more interesting games for me than the old codex ever did.

I love how this always comes doen to saying the old way was bad because of the Iron Warriors. You can make a much more powerful list using Codex Eldar. That is going to be around for years now. The brokenness hasn't ended with Codex chaos, but I do not like it's execution, or the fluff logic used to explain the changes (the worst of which is needing 10 guys for a heavy weapon).

Dude, I said ‘such as’. Which means it was an example, indicative of a lot of other, similar situations. You really shouldn’t ignore clearly articulated phrases to score cheap points, that’s really lazy. There were several very powerful builds in the old chaos codex, daemon bomb, all infiltrating alpha legion and so on.

You don’t need ten guys for a heavy weapon, by the way. You can take five and give them four heavy weapons, if you take havocs. If you want tactical squads on the board, though, there’s now a rule in place that encourages you to use them as tactical troops, instead of havocs-lite. Tactical troops are now most useful as short range shooters (thanks to the move and rapid fire rule change) and melee fighters (thanks to the grenades and second CCW), instead of being another static shooting unit like the old codex. It’s another change towards a more mobile game.

But all of that is entirely besides the point. Yeah, godzilla was a poor, unbalancing inclusion into the new codex. Same for three holo-field falcon lists. But poorly balanced options are hardly anything new in 40k. You either have to learn to deal with those lists by taking your own cheese, or play against people who are happy to take non-cheesy lists for the sake of a good game.

I suggested people were upset they lost their overpowered army lists but didn’t want to say ‘I don’t like losing my unfair advantage’, and were instead using ‘simplified’ and ‘bland’ to complain. When the nerf bat comes around and hammers the godzilla and three falcon lists, expect the same complaints from those players. Expect me and plenty of others to treat the godzilla and three falcon list players with the same level of bemused disinterest we currently have for the people complaining about losing their old chaos lists. As I said earlier, it’s a constantly evolving game, if you want to stay on the knife’s edge of cheese, you should expect to soon get nerfed.

I am critical for how Jervis used his son because it was fairly predictable what would happen to the poor kid once the changes started. As special characters went from forbidden to almost required in the DA and then the BA lists people decided this change was what Jervis meant when he was talking in wd319. It was then further generallized to be any change= Jervis's son. I feel that it was simply put a very bad idea to bring his son into the conversation, in particular as an example of a young gamer at a time when he began making some contreversal changes to assist young players. My feelings are justified by the existance of a thread about his son, and this is one of the nice ones.

No-one can be held responsible for the stupidity of the internet. No-one can predict it, control it or limit it. If someone makes the statement ‘my son didn’t know which weapon was which, and identified more with his army through the special characters’ they are not inviting their family member to be mocked openly. That is the result of that special brand of anonymous loudmouth crap you get from the internet.

And no, the two changes his son was mentioned in relation to were not controversial. We’re talking about including pictures of guns in the book for heaven’s sake. The internet has attached Jervis’ son to the more controversial changes to justify it’s aforementioned stupidity.

Stelek wrote:The difference is in the game itself. Artillery, aircraft, dedicated anti-tank units, smoke, tanks...all are viable.

Not so in 40K.

One game is platoon level, the other is company level. Aircraft and artillery really shouldn’t play that big a part in the small scale engagements of 40k. I think its ridiculous that people can put basilisks on the field.

Besides, you’re listing specific units as a counter to a comment about strategy, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. When talking about strategy, we’re talking about the maneuvers and thought processes that help you win a game. Battletech was mentioned earlier in this thread, learning to play Battletech well involves knowing your weapons and your enemy’s to identify the specific range you should be from the enemy mechs, then using the split movement and your mobility to get as many units as possible at their optimum range. Warmachine revolves around key unit combos and stopping the other guy using his. 10 years of experience in either of those games won’t help you for one second in becoming a good 40k or FoW player.

40k and FoW revolve around similar concepts of matching your weapons with their optimum targets, and making successful assaults under supporting fire. FoW has a superior mechanic for suppression (in that it actually has one), but other than that the two games play pretty much the same. A good 40k player will, after a couple of games, be a good FoW player.

Also, the basic army lists if you apply them to 40k would be like this:

Jump troop army.
Rhino army.
Predator army.
Infantry army.

Etc etc...which means you really do have lots of different army variants, given the weapon and corp support choices available to most armies.

You’ve missed the point. If you take a mechanized company in FoW you are limited to specific support options, you can’t take footslogging infantry, artillery or fixed guns without their own trucks to support them. You can’t take three separate units of heavy tanks to support a conscript army. When I first sat down and started building my Russians, I was surprised how constrictive army selection was.

But when I started playing I loved that every army taking the field was fairly plausible (if you ignore the slightly excessive levels of support weapons). It stood in stark contrast to the 40k armies you can see, with two squads on minimum troops surrounded by full squads of elite troops and heavy support.

People on 40k forums show a lot of love for FoW. But if you ever tried to introduce it’s system of army creation into 40k there would be hell to pay. It’s an interesting little irony.

sebster wrote:And no, the two changes his son was mentioned in relation to were not controversial. We’re talking about including pictures of guns in the book for heaven’s sake. The internet has attached Jervis’ son to the more controversial changes to justify it’s aforementioned stupidity.

In any case where you know a co-worker was beat up for a document he wrote, leaving family out of it is the best choice that can ever be made. The fans of these toy soldier games we play can be mean spirited and stupid. That is a known quantity after Gav got beat up. Even mentioning you have a kid who plays is a bad idea when you are the head designer starting to make major changes. I feel bad for his kid, but I think Jervis is an idiot who should have known better.

Salvation122 wrote:

I will admit that it's irritating that GW won't issue FAQs to address balance issues, especially since the only things that really need to be rebalanced after the new Ork book are Dakkafexes, Assault Cannons, and Holo-fields, but the game is hardly in the horrible awful no-good very-bad position that people make it out to be.

Errata address balance issues.

FAQ's answer questions. Problems arise when FAQ's areused to address balance. FAQ's should answer questions which come up frquently (ie. can I choose to a charge I know will fail?)

efarrer wrote:
In any case where you know a co-worker was beat up for a document he wrote, leaving family out of it is the best choice that can ever be made. The fans of these toy soldier games we play can be mean spirited and stupid. That is a known quantity after Gav got beat up. Even mentioning you have a kid who plays is a bad idea when you are the head designer starting to make major changes. I feel bad for his kid, but I think Jervis is an idiot who should have known better.

Gav got beat up?

I never heard about that. Comments on the internet are one thing. Physical assault is something quite different. I hope that 'fan' is in jail being punished for that right now.

I'd just like to say I got back into Warhammer 40k when I got a look at the latest Codex: Chaos. I'm a big fan of Epic: Armageddon and I really like how Mr. Johnson has brought some of that elegance into 40k. The move away from fiddling around with lists to actually playing the game is a welcome relief to me from previous editions, and I've had the opportunity to re-evaluate how the game is played and how people play the game as a result. It's still kind of clunky, game-wise, but there's a surprising depth to everyone's favourite beer and pretzels game. That is to say it's deeper than I thought it was and I'm pleasantly surprised. Perhaps it's just my experiences with LOTR, and everyone should play about ten games of that just to see what GW when not weighed down by legacy baggage (and fan expectations...), but I've discovered that you can have an exciting game of 40k just with a platoon each of Imperial Guardsmen if you choose the right mission and someone whose tactical expertise isn't limited to doing the obvious.

Something I strongly recommend is playing a game of 40k with identical armies like a couple of platoons of Imperial Guard each, and scoring it based on objectives (2/3 means win).

sebster wrote:

efarrer wrote:Tell ya what I've played batletech for over 15 years now. The game has seen three or four editions and at least 2 owners. Guess what the basic rules remain the same. A game doesn't need change to make it good, unless it's bad. The move to a fifth edition indicates to me the designers have yet to get it right.

I also play Battletech and it’s a cool game, albeit needing a fair few house rules to make it work to my liking.

Your point is misplaced though, I never said anything about 40k needing to evolve or being better for it. Different people will come in to run the game, with different ideas about what makes a game ‘best’. I simply said that it is an evolving game, and will continue to evolve. If you don’t like the current changes you can just wait them out, the winds will soon change and maybe the next design philosophy would be more to your liking. On the other hand, if you can’t handle a game where the rules and design focus change over time, choose a different game.
.

And you miss mine as well. Mine is I wish GW would write a workable set of rules for the long term for 40K. Fasa did with Battletech. You may need houserules, but the game is solid in general. Gw even managed it with LotR. But they either cannot or will not with 40K and fantasy.

sebster wrote:
Your point about Godzilla and mech eldar pretty much came out of nowhere, and had little or nothing to do with anything I was talking about. I can only assume you believe the only changes making the game more mobile are those two codices, which is a particularly strange idea. There’s been a marked and clearly stated push to make the game a more mobile game… objectives are more important, troops can move and rapid fire twice, vehicles are penalized less for moving and firing and benefit less from sitting still (these two rules have not worked well, but the intention was clear), newer codices (DA, BA and CSM) have stopped minimum tactical squads taking heavy weapons, they’ve brought in harlequins (who are lethal to static shooting lists and very vulnerable to anything else). The list goes on.

The rapid fire rules did not change the game in a substanital way. It's still better most of the time to assault. The (non-speeder) vehicles still are not worth taking in most lists. Removing the las plas doesn't really help the game as much as you think. And I'm wondering what you feel harlies die to, because my experiance is they kill almost everything when they dismount.

sebster wrote:
Except all the variety and depth of the chaos codex rarely ever saw the table. I talked to people at length about all the lists that could be fielded, and I know they spent hours playing with the book and building all kinds of lists, but whenever I played anyone I saw the Iron Warriors safh, or the all-infiltrating alpha legion, or daemon-bomb or one of the other one-dimensional army lists. Whatever you say your personal experience was, I know that most of the depth of that book rarely, if ever saw the table.

Which again shows regional differences. Yes the successful lists were IW in gerenal, but darnit the other lists were fun, and I used them and people I know used them.

sebster wrote:

I’ve played a fair few games against the new book and each game I’ve found myself re-evaluating my strategy each turn, adapting to the impressive versatility of the new units, as so many units are effective at range and in melee. The codex is nowhere near perfect, or even good, but it’s producing a lot more interesting games for me than the old codex ever did.

.

How long have you played against it. Give it time. The good lists will come to the fore in the new year, and the lists which don't cut the mustard will be gone. There will not be as many possible good lists as the old book.

sebster wrote:
Dude, I said ‘such as’. Which means it was an example, indicative of a lot of other, similar situations. You really shouldn’t ignore clearly articulated phrases to score cheap points, that’s really lazy. There were several very powerful builds in the old chaos codex, daemon bomb, all infiltrating alpha legion and so on.

You don’t need ten guys for a heavy weapon, by the way. You can take five and give them four heavy weapons, if you take havocs. If you want tactical squads on the board, though, there’s now a rule in place that encourages you to use them as tactical troops, instead of havocs-lite. Tactical troops are now most useful as short range shooters (thanks to the move and rapid fire rule change) and melee fighters (thanks to the grenades and second CCW), instead of being another static shooting unit like the old codex. It’s another change towards a more mobile game..

That's bull. Heavy Support choices should not be the only ones that can have heavies. A false arguement. I used Havocs always have. The use of chaos marines for a mixture of tactical roles is the point to giving a heavy weapon.

And for at least one of my armies I can no longer use the heavies as heavies, Seeing as I can no longer take a 4 heavy Noise Marines squad.

sebster wrote:
But all of that is entirely besides the point. Yeah, godzilla was a poor, unbalancing inclusion into the new codex. Same for three holo-field falcon lists. But poorly balanced options are hardly anything new in 40k. You either have to learn to deal with those lists by taking your own cheese, or play against people who are happy to take non-cheesy lists for the sake of a good game.

I suggested people were upset they lost their overpowered army lists but didn’t want to say ‘I don’t like losing my unfair advantage’, and were instead using ‘simplified’ and ‘bland’ to complain. When the nerf bat comes around and hammers the godzilla and three falcon lists, expect the same complaints from those players. Expect me and plenty of others to treat the godzilla and three falcon list players with the same level of bemused disinterest we currently have for the people complaining about losing their old chaos lists. As I said earlier, it’s a constantly evolving game, if you want to stay on the knife’s edge of cheese, you should expect to soon get nerfed.
..

Which I call bS on. A large nmber of people enjoyed playing those odd quirky lists, and don't feel the new list represents them. It is not losing an unfair advantage, It's losing what you worked on. THe company appraoches each book as a tabula rosa looking at how best to sell it's models. Not only the knife's edge of cheese got thrown out. So did the poor edge of odd lists. The probelm is those od lists cost money. Tabula rosa works for something without established roots. GW has had 15 years to establish things. There should not need to be massive upheavels at this point.

Asmodai wrote:

efarrer wrote:
In any case where you know a co-worker was beat up for a document he wrote, leaving family out of it is the best choice that can ever be made. The fans of these toy soldier games we play can be mean spirited and stupid. That is a known quantity after Gav got beat up. Even mentioning you have a kid who plays is a bad idea when you are the head designer starting to make major changes. I feel bad for his kid, but I think Jervis is an idiot who should have known better.

Gav got beat up?

I never heard about that. Comments on the internet are one thing. Physical assault is something quite different. I hope that 'fan' is in jail being punished for that right now.

So I was told.