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Plumbumbarum wrote:
Any imperfection... did you read the rulebook by any chance? Some blogs put elaborate articles to make the rules clear, I play tones of various boargames and the rules in 40K are poorly written, in my opinion mediocore, prone to abuse, ridiculous in explanations etc. Perfection is not possible and unnecessary here it's not work safety rules or sth, I want proper, balanced, tactical wargame with clear rules that are not exactly realistic maybe but at least making sense. 5th edition wound alocation example comes to mind, with one hormangaunt visible and after him being shot the others coming near him checking if he's fine and dying one after another.

As for 40K being on top, it has best fluff and incredibly visualised, the pinnacle of ripping off and merging all the great themes around and making them better.

Yes I have read the rulebook. I can honestly say my gaming group has never had a problem with it, I don't think most people have. Most complaints step from the internet. I will restate what I put above - 40k is an incredibly complex game with hundreds of variables, and millions of possible combinations. GW can only do so much playtesting.
Don't expect me to defend 5th edition wound allocation though

Plumbumbarum wrote:
You're actually encouraged to make the terrain as advantageous as possible. I guess following the designers intent is now considered WAAC?

We always just deploy terrain before the battlefield...though if you follow the instructionsI don't see how it can be gamed. Each 2 by 2 section can have D3 terrain pieces. How can you screw over an opponent's entire deployment zone like that?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
You have a real problem making an objective assessment of the game. You keep relying on slurs and insults (WAAC) to make this personal. But I guess that's because the objective facts are that the game design is lacking, and the only way to justify it is to shift the blame to the players who don't play how you think they should.

I don't spend 2 hours on the bus 3 days a week to play a poorly-designed game There are plenty of players who LOVE the gw rules.
Also bare in mind this - the 40k rules are designed primarily for teenagers, about 12-16. Plenty of people outside of this range play, but it's not aimed at them. I assume the much less popular ones are aimed at an older audience.

Grey Templar wrote:Internet consensus.

If there is whining, you probably did ok.

If there is no whining, you did awsome. Or there was a zombie appocalypse and nobody can get to their PC.

If there is tons and tons and tons of whining, its probably Warseer.

I note that there is no option for "You screwed up badly". But I guess the fanboy mindset sort of edits that out of the spectrum.

I also love how people assume that basic changes that any sound and playtested design would include (Making the Victory Point conditions less suscetible to raw luck, offering Tyranids some compensation for not being able to ally, reworking the warlod tables so they are not useless half the time) is some earth-shattering quantum mystery that we mortals outside of GW should never question lest we melt our little brains.

Ailaros wrote:But what's the point? There's no way to compare any given opinions to any objective standard.

How do we know that the opinions of any game designer, you me or redbeard are actually good or not?

We don't, that is the point.

I was being sarcastic there.

The Internet is a poor guage of quality. Its where all the whining that goes on gets dumped, magnified, cooked, and inflated to be bigger then it is.


Could GW have done a better job? Hell yeah.

Could they have done worse? O'yeah.

Did they do ok? Yes. 6th is, IMO, better then 5th in many ways. I think a decent balance was struck between competitive and casual play. There is the usual lack of proofreading and editing but we should all be used to that by now. It gives us stuff to talk about in YMDC

@rxghost, I'll bite. IMO if gw seriously cared about competative play there is one thing they should do differently when releasing a new edition. either simultaneously release new updated codexes with each edition, have significant substantive changes to codexes via FAQs, or adequately play test new editions to identify flaws in new rules interacting with old codexes.
The best example of games workshop completely failing at this is the harlistar deathstar. How is it cinamatic to have a unit that with the help of fortune has only a 1/32 chance of taking a wound (even more rediculous with look out sir which I haven't decided breaks vects force field or not). the death star isn't even power gaming it's fluff gaming and they have a rule set that allows this. Of course it's also a dynamic that makes you take 60 rolls all at one time. Simple fix either nerf fortune (elder only, coversaves only, armor save only, does not for for invulnerable saves ect), nerf how fortune works with allies, or nerf vect.

RxGhost wrote:So red beard, you seem to have all the answers...GW being so inept.

I want specific examples of how you would fix the game, including army balance. I want you to mention exact things here, no nebulous cop-outs and dissembling. Tell me the blatantly obvious things they're missing.

Not pointed at me but carnifex costs 160 points, top of my head.

Carnies do need to be cheaper. But not as much cheaper since 6th fixed alot of MC problems.

Grey Templar wrote:Carnies do need to be cheaper. But not as much cheaper since 6th fixed alot of MC problems.

No, no. The tyranids have been over-taken by newer, cheaper armies. This is games workshop's fault, a deliberate ploy to sell more imperial armies. If you disagree with this, you're a fanboy.

RxGhost wrote:So red beard, you seem to have all the answers...GW being so inept.

You're playing the pedantic game. Show me where I said I had all the answers.

I want specific examples of how you would fix the game, including army balance. I want you to mention exact things here, no nebulous cop-outs and dissembling. Tell me the blatantly obvious things they're missing.

I'll give you a handful, and I'll point you to the fix for random terrain that I explained just a few posts back too.

Psychic powers:

There are four ways to balance psychic powers, while still allowing powers with vastly different effects. GW is currently using one of them.

1) Cost to cast (warp charge, in 6th)
2) Cost to have (GW did this in prior editions. I think the Eldar codex is an example of this. Fortune costs more than Guide.)
3) Chance to use (a more powerful effect can have a -1 or -2 Ld penalty to go off. Or a higher risk of invoking Perils)
4) Availability in the codex.

Currently, you roll on a table, maybe you get something awesome, maybe you get something that doesn't really fit with the rest of your army's design. Rather than apply any of the other balancing factors that would be possible, they said, screw it, random is good enough.


Warlord traits:
I play orks. The most in-character table for me to roll on would be Personal Traits. I'll never pick that, because I'm going to get Furious Charge... which I already have. Space Wolves seem like another army designed for a Personal Trait warlord, but they'll end up with Counter-attack, which they already have.

Again, you can assign point values to these and let people pick the one that works with their army. I think, without having done any playtesting, that Legendary Fighter is probably the most powerful warlord trait, because it is the only one that can actually net you Victory Points. Just throwing out some values (and remember, to do this for real, there'd be playtesting involed), require that each warlord buy a warlord trait. Legendary Fighter is 50 points. You can choose to have night fighting on turn one is 5 points.

I want you to explain how the game should function without random elements, up to and including:

-terrain placement (random, can't be planned for until you come to the table)
-opponent's army and unit selection (random, can't be planned for until you come to the table)
-Also, how should we play without dice, being a random element intrinsic to the game and what not.

I've never claimed that there should be no random elements. I don't believe that random effects that have a big swingy effect on the game are good design. Something does d3 hits - okay. Something has a 1-in-6 chance of eating a few hundred points from one player (Virus Outbreak) - how does this really benefit the game. The player who loses the game for it knows they lost because of a fluke roll. The player who won the game knows it was because of the virus. How is this enjoyable for either? Roll 2d6 and on a 2, you win! Yay!

if you want to pull out the 15yrs experience stuff we're gonna' need a resume or something.

Of course you are... Tell you what, if you're actually interested and not just acting like a toughguy, PM me.

They got alot better with 6th edition.

Grey Templar wrote:Carnies do need to be cheaper. But not as much cheaper since 6th fixed alot of MC problems.

Yes in 6th I can't really say, haven't play enough games. Serves as the example for GW doing it wrong though and it's not just mr. Cruddace (I like his codex btw) as GW as a whole could have reacted after a while of monitoring the game.

Except GW's got an irrational fear of the Internet, and of giving away free stuff. So they will never put out online rewrites of existing codices.

Grey Templar wrote:Except GW's got an irrational fear of the Internet, and of giving away free stuff. So they will never put out online rewrites of existing codices.

#
Forgeworld have a gak load of free rules. The DKOK list is entirely free.

Grey Templar wrote:Except GW's got an irrational fear of the Internet, and of giving away free stuff. So they will never put out online rewrites of existing codices.

So, would be nice to properly playtest them before, or embrace internet, or they're kind of inept. It wouldn't be that much of an issue if their stuff wasn't that expensive.

btw there are a few things that are imo much better in 6th - glancing vehicles, focus fire, reserve rules, wound allocation (bar LOS!, for ICs especially). It's like few people with different visions dsigned it and didn't achieve a consensus.

Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:First, they're a UK company that escaped the annihilation of the US tabletop market in the late 80's/early 90's when Hasbro bought up half the companies in the market and subsequently nearly killed off the hobby.

Actually, this is an important point. For those saying that GW is winning only because it's big, look at what happened to battletech. Battletech was THE game to play, with GW-esque amounts of merchandize in local stores, with local gaming nights. It also had tons of fluff, an expanding rules system and player base, and a large, expanding line of miniatures.

By all rights, if bigger systems naturally guaranteed that they would continue by sheer means of their size, then the utter implosion, neigh-disappearance, and ultimate sale to Hasbro wouldn't make any sense at all.

Put short, if a large game system put out by a large game company can be beaten if it isn't doing a good enough job. GW isn't still the biggest purely because they're the biggest.

FASA had a lot of other...internal issues going on, and wasn't anywhere *near* as big as GW was when it closed in 2001. FASA is not a great comparison here. The problem wasn't their tabletop games, it was some very poor investment in odd schemes (the BattleTech centers...) and management decisions that the primary owner didn't want to deal and him believing that there was no long-term future in tabletop games.

Testify wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Except GW's got an irrational fear of the Internet, and of giving away free stuff. So they will never put out online rewrites of existing codices.

#
Forgeworld have a gak load of free rules. The DKOK list is entirely free.

Yeah, but FW is kinda free to do its own thing since the models are even more expensive. Nobody's going to run a DKoK list with regular guardsmen.

Redbeard wrote:
You're playing the pedantic game.

Asking for you to back up your opinions with facts makes me pedantic? I do not think that word means what you think it means...after all, it wasn't so long ago that I read:

Redbeard wrote:
Do you have any data to back up this assertion?

But if insulting me makes you feel better, keep at it, I've got skin thick like an old-blood.

Redbeard wrote:
There are four ways to balance psychic powers, while still allowing powers with vastly different effects. GW is currently using one of them.

1) Cost to cast (warp charge, in 6th)

Yup, that's new for 6th alright.

Redbeard wrote:
2) Cost to have (GW did this in prior editions. I think the Eldar codex is an example of this. Fortune costs more than Guide.)

You have to pay points for a psyker, psykers come with a selection of powers specific to their model as part of their cost. I know what you're trying to say, with each individual power costing a specific amount of points that you buy like upgrades, but I don't think the Eldar piecemeal way is a good example to follow, especially in the face of the reality that just about everyone's Farseer build is identical to anyone elses (they pick Eldrad, HA!). No, for reals, everyone uses the exact same load out on their farseers, it's practically a fixed cost unit that requires more bookkeeping.

Redbeard wrote:
3) Chance to use (a more powerful effect can have a -1 or -2 Ld penalty to go off. Or a higher risk of invoking Perils)

So models that can cast psychic powers don't have their own leadership value that can affect chance to use? There aren't any armies that have some sort of way to force a change in this value? I guess 6th got rid of Ruins of Warding/Witnessing, Shadow of the Warp, Death Leaper's d3 Leadership penalty, stop me if you've heard this joke, I know it's old.

Redbeard wrote:
4) Availability in the codex.

Currently, you roll on a table, maybe you get something awesome, maybe you get something that doesn't really fit with the rest of your army's design. Rather than apply any of the other balancing factors that would be possible, they said, screw it, random is good enough.

No, currently you can use the exact same rules that your codex has for psychic power selection OR you can roll on the table and you can always take the primaris power if you didn't like what you got. I bet you can get something that does fit with the rest of your armies design, with the current balancing factors already in place and simply not using the random system. You know,stuff like point cost of model and powers available for some codices and not for others.

Redbeard wrote:
Warlord traits:
I play orks. The most in-character table for me to roll on would be Personal Traits. I'll never pick that, because I'm going to get Furious Charge... which I already have. Space Wolves seem like another army designed for a Personal Trait warlord, but they'll end up with Counter-attack, which they already have.

Again, you can assign point values to these and let people pick the one that works with their army. I think, without having done any playtesting, that Legendary Fighter is probably the most powerful warlord trait, because it is the only one that can actually net you Victory Points. Just throwing out some values (and remember, to do this for real, there'd be playtesting involed), require that each warlord buy a warlord trait. Legendary Fighter is 50 points. You can choose to have night fighting on turn one is 5 points.

So let me understand your position, the warlord traits system is random and broken because there's a 1-in-6 chance you might get an ability you already have levered against the 5-in-6 chance of getting something else, and that's assuming you roll on a single list of the three offered? That's like the safest odds you can possibly get in this game and you think that it's an example of how the system doesn't work? I must have read your statement wrong, that cannot possibly be what you're trying to say, help a brother out. Space Wolves would end up with (a conditional) Counter-Attack one sixth of the time if they chose Personal Trait.

Redbeard wrote:
I've never claimed that there should be no random elements.

Redbeard wrote:
A good start would be getting rid of unbalanced random effects

Just throwing those out there, oh, here's another good one:

Redbeard wrote:
I don't believe that random effects that have a big swingy effect on the game are good design. Something does d3 hits - okay. Something has a 1-in-6 chance of eating a few hundred points from one player (Virus Outbreak) - how does this really benefit the game. The player who loses the game for it knows they lost because of a fluke roll. The player who won the game knows it was because of the virus. How is this enjoyable for either? Roll 2d6 and on a 2, you win! Yay!

You crowded your last remaining scoring units on the objective and attempted to hold out to win. I managed to get my wounded vinidcator in range and blast them out of the mountain with a difficult shot that didn't scatter. I win based on a single dice roll? Didn't you have to make saves and allocate wounds? Didn't we just play a whole game with a series of causes and effects that lead to that ultimate roll? Is the system broken?

Also, your Virus Outbreak example is farther from reality then my butt is from Mars. Both the way you describing it working (it's not that dangerous) and the effect it can have on the game are grossly exaggerated and ill-informed. If you're worried about triggering it, you can simply keep other units 12" away when activating an Archaeotech Artifact or simply not approach it with expensive units. That and the Virus Outbreak has only a 1-in-36 chance (2 on a 2d6 roll to generate) of even manifesting as an Acrahaeotech Artifact effect.

Redbeard wrote:
Of course you are... Tell you what, if you're actually interested and not just acting like a toughguy, PM me.

Again with the insults, but that's okay, I forgive you; I'm cool like that...I get an extra die on my leadership test and can pick the two lowest.

You have a real problem making an objective assessment of the game. You keep relying on slurs and insults to make this personal. But I guess that's because the only way to justify it is to shift the blame to the players who don't play how you think they should.

Oh wait, hold on...you had something to say about that to?

Redbeard wrote:
You have a real problem making an objective assessment of the game. You keep relying on slurs and insults (WAAC) to make this personal. But I guess that's because the objective facts are that the game design is lacking, and the only way to justify it is to shift the blame to the players who don't play how you think they should.

Just so we're on the same page.

I was being facetious about asking for a resume, it'd be a worthless document anyway.

Aaaaand this has now gone full slow, and you never go full slow.

I found Warmahordes to be quite boring actually, especially with its "We have giant Robots and monsters fighting, why do we need a story?" outlook. Also, I like to play a shooting army, which in WM/H if i wanted to do that i'd be hard pressed since they put so much emphasis on getting in close, the whole PLAY LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR!! thing. The ruleset was solid but it had no variety, Machine A acts like Machine B which acts like Machine C. Sure you might have slight differences, but a Heavy Mech is a Heavy Mech.

To me Warmachince functions like magic only with Models.

Now about the competitiveness of WH40k. Well it was never meant to be competitive in the first place right? Its a beer and pretzels game, had fun with your mates game. So I can't blame GW for it not being competitive. Thats up to the TO and other Crunchy players to fix.

Offhand, my list of 'incredibly stupid obvious things GW has done.'


1) As has been mentioned, the terrain setup. I'm going to put a giant pillar in front of your bastion. That makes perfect sense. Oh, and now you can't see past it for it to do anything.

2) Pyrovores

3) Stormtroopers. I get the idea, I like the idea but surely someone would have looked at it and gone "wait... these are as many points as a marine?"

4) Vendettas. Even in 5th someone should have been able to glance at their costs and gone 'no, thats stupidly cheap.' It's even too cheap accounting for the 'ooh shiny, make people buy it' sales factor. It's now even nastier in 6th.

5) Flyers in general in 6th. They could have fixed this with the whole Flakk missile thing, but actively decided not to.

6) Scaling abilities. This comes up a lot in both extreme, whether its Sisters faith points the same no matter the size of the game, to Vulkan effecting every melta weapon, whether it's a 500 point game, or 5000.

7) 6th edition barrage rules.... I read them and immediately went 'what the frig is this guy talking about?'

8) Grey Knights, particularly during 5th. I could split this into (a) (b) or (c) if I really wanted to. But surely someone must have looked at it and gone 'so, psychotropic grenades basically mean I autowin almost 5 out of every 6 combats I get into? Then there's rad grenades, fortitude.... Cleansing flame, vindicares anti tank shot. Plus, loads I haven't mentioned.... There's loads that is really a massive, 'how couldn't you spot that'd be a big issue for most players? - Particularly the casual ones.

9) More tyranid codex stuff, but I'm not an expert on them to really comment.

And finally....

10) 6th edition allies. Not only is the table utterly illogical fluffwise (Black Templars really dislike sisters of battle? Someone should tell Grimaldus that.) but... anyone could see that having it as part of the main rules, as opposed to back of the book stuff ala fantasy, is just asking for random jerks to be well, random jerks, except now they have the book on their side. As has been said before, you can choose not to play against them but since it's now 'official' and in The Book, you've lost the high ground and may end up looking like the random jerk

I agree, Pyrovores are crazy strong now. They were good before, but now they're even better.

Warmachine lost my interest when I found out that in competitve play you don't use all those giant hulking cool robots you bought, assembled, and painted because massed infantry is just better.

40K is NOT chess. All variable are not equal and chance plays a big factor into it. The tournament players will adjust accordingly.

If you are looking for shooty armies in Warmahordes, you can check out Cygnar, Retribution, and Legion of Everblight. All 3 of those armies can be played with lots of shooty elements and do well.

And you can play a competitive Warmachine army with lots of jacks, assuming you are using a jack caster. Karchev usually runs with 3 heavy jacks and that's basically the whole army. And he is a very powerful warcaster. Cryx has Mortenebra, Protectorate has Reznik & Amon, and Cygnar has Darius. Oh, and the elves have Vyros.

The thing about Warmachine is that most casters can support 2-3 jacks max, so you fill out the points with infantry and solos. I don't know what faction you were looking at or how many jacks you wanted to run, but that is one of the limitations of the focus system.

On the other hand, if you run Hordes, it is possible to run nothing but warbeasts with a few support pieces.

RxGhost wrote:I agree, Pyrovores are crazy strong now. They were good before, but now they're even better.

This, just this. I'm genuinely not sure if your sincere or not.

I am totally serious. My pyrovores were always useful in 5th, and they were much improved by the new rules.

Only warning, folks - if you can't discuss this without bickering, or spamming the forum with OT images, I'm going to take your toys away.

I am getting a bit irritated by comments like "GW have added allies back in to force players to buy new models".

I think they did it because lots of players complained that they couldn't mix and match their old models. I think the idea is that if you have bits of different armies laying around already, you can now legally use them as one force.

We can't have it both ways

Testify wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Carnies do need to be cheaper. But not as much cheaper since 6th fixed alot of MC problems.

No, no. The tyranids have been over-taken by newer, cheaper armies. This is games workshop's fault, a deliberate ploy to sell more imperial armies. If you disagree with this, you're a fanboy.

If you really, truthfully believe that any company would deliberately sabotage a whole line of their own products for any reason, your're not even worth listening to.

Casbyness wrote:I am getting a bit irritated by comments like "GW have added allies back in to force players to buy new models".

Yeah, I never understood this either. I mean, you don't have to take allies...no one is getting forced into anything.

RxGhost wrote:

Casbyness wrote:I am getting a bit irritated by comments like "GW have added allies back in to force players to buy new models".

Yeah, I never understood this either. I mean, you don't have to take allies...no one is getting forced into anything.

And in many cases the Allies are only situationally more effective then just taking your own codex units.

GKs really don't get much benifit from taking SW allies. And taking IG covers a long ranged combat shortcoming, but it means you also have less GKs to do what GKs do.

Allies still cost points. Points you could spend on your own army.


Tau and IG can take some decent melee units now, but at a cost of taking less Tau units. That might mean one less unit of Crisis Suits and a Hammerhead instead of Broadsides. Or maybe 3 Veteran Squads in Chimeras instead of 5. 2 units of 2 LRBTs instead of 2 units of 3, etc...