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Overall I really like how the edition plays. The only couple of things I don't like are the random charge distance which has already been mentioned several times, and the wound allocation for blast weapons.

I'm not sure whether it's just my interpretation of them, but I feel that what's under the marker should be what takes the hits/wounds, not X amount of models was hit by the blast, Y were wounded, allocate wounds from the front of the unit as per normal. I didn't hit the front, why are they dying from the front? Makes no sense.

Other than that I quite enjoy the edition overall.

Peregrine wrote:Random charge length was necessary. Assault is usually decisive, far more so than shooting,

Hah hah hah. Have you played 6th ed yet? Please, tell that to the plasma crisis teams that reliably land 10+ AP2 hits that ignore cover.

and with the ability to measure at any time (a long overdue change) a fixed assault distance would have meant that you could always guarantee a charge

Not true, because you're discounting the effect of overwatch, not to mention, simply not being able to get close enough to charge in the movement phase.

It's randomness for randomness's sake, and that's not good game design. Maybe all shooting attacks should have to roll before firing to see if they're out of ammo and need to reload instead of shooting that turn. Otherwise, shooting is far too reliable and there's no risk in declaring a shot.

Random charge length is just stupid and along with the other assault nerfs, makes that part of the game much weaker than shooting.

Having just come back to the hobby after a 16 year hiatus I didnt play 5th ed. While 6 th ed seems generaly ok, I think it is a giant missed opportunity for gw and us.

GW could have created a Linkedin/itunes/steam hybrid including an army builder (for not too great an investment) giving huge opportunities for revenue growth i.e. f2p games etc product tie ins etc. this could have inculded as part of the "army builder" an option to create quick reference cards for each vehicle character and unit (including stat mods from wargear etc in the stat line something the warmachine/hordes lot seem to like, but without the cookie cutter units of WM/H) allowing greater customisation at the list building stage while keeping core rules simple and solving many of my gripes.

My general impression is that they tried to simplify the game (as opposed to what i remenber) somewhere along the line through introducing standardised movement etc. But ended up complicating it with numerous special rules/ abilities inorder to keep the character/individuality of units/races/factions.

1) Bring individual movement allowances back, you wouldnt need so many special rules and you reflect equipment and races better i.e marine = 6 " scout = 7" terminator = 5" etc. This would alow better fluff compliance between units and races.

2) Charge, run, and move all in the movement phase making life better for the nids, orks etc.

3) Salvo stats for most weapons e.g. 3 if you stand still 2 if you move 0 if you run or charge (or something along these lines)

4) Walkers are either vehicles or they are not (Giant Tau Battlesuit vs Dreadnought. What is the difference?) I personally think having them as MC equivalents makes more sense.

5) Overwatch based on successfull initiative tests (orks balanced by numbers vs low intiative marines higher intiative vs low numbers) shot at base BS with modifiers for what they did in previous turn (e.g. ran shot charged) this would give you a tradeoff between keeping your units still (and counter assaults) or jump around (tau i'm looking at you) are ruduce your overwatch chances.

6) If you change movement as above, you could do a charge as 1.5 base movement + D6 and run as base movement + D6.

7) Get rid of jink (i've moved half an inch so now i have a cover save !?!) an introduce a speed save that increases the further a model has moved e.g. 15 - 20" +1 speed save 20 - 25" + 2 and so on this way you could get rid of the snap fire against flyers and have skyfire etc as a speed save modifier (eg skyfire -2 speed save auto trageter -1 stackable.)

8) On vehicle pen - glance reduces armour value and pen takes hull point. This would balance vehicles a little from 5th but prevent the mass shooting glances of death also giving a bit of extra tactical depth i.e. heavy bolters to reduce armour first then go for the kill. (AP should also mod penetration not the roll chart)

9) Melee weapons ap based on attack strength modified by weapon type (plus bring back Chainswords ) e.g. powersowrd improves AP by 2 etc

10) Flying less said the better!

These are the main ones Ive come across so far (there will be many more I'm sure e.g. mounts and bikes as wargear that mod stats based on army fluff rather than catch all). My main problem is in the presentation. You used to get handy little things, like a diagram showing the fire arcs for the different vehicles and their weapons, which made things so much clearer rather than some vague rule about turrents vs pintle vs sponson (and nothing about the hardpoints?). I also have a problem with the catch all criteria and ability chains e.g. this model type gets these rules which give these rules etc. Just spilt each ability up into simple entrys and list each in its army entry individually. Allowing you to check at a glance rather than rather than manically search backwards and forwards through mutiple pages or have some sort of super human memory!

Despite all this I am greatly enjoying my foray back into wargamming and 40K (at least once I got over the shock of the fact my parents had thrown away/given to charity 15K of (old points) guard and blood angels, which I thought had been safely stashed in the actic when I went to uni, including two unopened original land raider kits !! )

I love it. Much more fun to play than 5th edition.

Once you get used to all of the pre-game rolls, the game goes much more quickly.

 Peregrine wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
That's what overwatch and pinning are for. Literally.

Which would be fine, if overwatch and pinning were actually effective at stopping charges. Overwatch is limited to an occasional bonus casualty or two unless the assaulting unit is trying for a maximum-range charge with only 1-2 models in range to make it, while pinning suffers from low chance of success (most things you care about pinning have very high leadership, or are fearless) and not working at all on overwatch (when it would be most important for stopping a charge).

This is all a big non sequitur. Overwatch and pinning not being effective enough to suppress a charge doesn't change the fact that they are the game's in-universe representation of suppressing fire. Ergo, that is not the in-universe justification for random charge length.

Because in 5th you theoretically couldn't measure and be sure of your distance to the target until you committed to a charge. There was still uncertainty in your positioning,

lol. Give me a break dude. After a dozen games it doesn't become hard to make a rough guestimate of "Am I in charge range?" The chances of you being off in your eyeballing is laughably low.

 Redbeard wrote:
Hah hah hah. Have you played 6th ed yet? Please, tell that to the plasma crisis teams that reliably land 10+ AP2 hits that ignore cover.

Obviously there are exceptions to every general rule. But shooting units that automatically kill their target are much rarer (and usually a lot more expensive) than situations where a successful assault automatically means killing the entire target unit with no real losses.

(Also, you're not getting 10+ hits and ignore cover out of a single crisis team. Only a 500-1000 point Farsight bomb can do that.)

Not true, because you're discounting the effect of overwatch, not to mention, simply not being able to get close enough to charge in the movement phase.

Overwatch isn't really relevant because at BS 1 you're unlikely to kill many models, and will only stop a charge if the unit was trying to make a long-range charge with only 1-2 models out in front to get them into range. With a more conservative approach you're much less likely to fail.

And yes, you can fail to get close enough in the movement phase. But if you can measure at any time with fixed charge distance you know you failed, so you can just go move into cover/target a different unit/etc instead of moving out to attempt a charge.

Maybe all shooting attacks should have to roll before firing to see if they're out of ammo and need to reload instead of shooting that turn. Otherwise, shooting is far too reliable and there's no risk in declaring a shot.

Shooting is already random, since you have to-hit rolls, to-wound rolls, and cover rolls. Assault technically has these as well, but if even a tactical squad charges a squad of guardsmen none of them actually have an impact on the final result.

Random charge length is just stupid and along with the other assault nerfs, makes that part of the game much weaker than shooting.

Why do all parts of the game need to be equal? Why does assault need to be 50% of the game instead of something you do after shooting to decisively finish off the last survivors that shooting couldn't get?

 Peregrine wrote:

Why do all parts of the game need to be equal? Why does assault need to be 50% of the game instead of something you do after shooting to decisively finish off the last survivors that shooting couldn't get?

Because GW has created a game in which a long list of models are devoted to melee at the expense of all shooting. Many of these models (Assault Terminators, Incubi, etc.) are expensive enough that you do not want to use them to simply wipe out a couple models that are nearly useless anyways.

Because several Armies (Orks, Tyranids, Chaos Demons) and several army Archetypes (Descent of Angels BA, DE Wyche Cult, Khornate CSM) are also built around the assault phase. Should these armies suffer just because GW decided to make shooting more powerful, at the expense of CC?

Peregrine has stated in the past that he doesn't think assault/melee combat belongs in the setting.

So, yeah.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
Hah hah hah. Have you played 6th ed yet? Please, tell that to the plasma crisis teams that reliably land 10+ AP2 hits that ignore cover.

Obviously there are exceptions to every general rule. But shooting units that automatically kill their target are much rarer (and usually a lot more expensive) than situations where a successful assault automatically means killing the entire target unit with no real losses.

(Also, you're not getting 10+ hits and ignore cover out of a single crisis team. Only a 500-1000 point Farsight bomb can do that.)

You really don't know that codex do you.

Commander, 2 plasma guns
Crisis team: 2x 2 plasma guns, 1x team leader w/ command&control and multi-spectrum suite.

Total cost: under 300 points

In rapid-fire range, they're getting 8 TL bs-3 shots and 4 TL bs-5 shots. Expected results: 9.9 hits. And that's without markerlight backup, which increases the number of hits to 11 with one marker token.

So...

Shooting is already random, since you have to-hit rolls, to-wound rolls, and cover rolls. Assault technically has these as well, but if even a tactical squad charges a squad of guardsmen none of them actually have an impact on the final result.

Wait, if a 180 point unit charges a 60 point unit, the 180 point unit will win? Shocking! You know, if that 180 point unit of SM rapid-fires at those guardsmen, they're going to die too.

Why do all parts of the game need to be equal? Why does assault need to be 50% of the game instead of something you do after shooting to decisively finish off the last survivors that shooting couldn't get?

Because for twenty years or so, the game has been designed in such a way as to make assault a viable strategy. Several army's themes are heavily dependent on assault prowess, and because assault is more tactical than shooting, which is largely a matter of deciding target priority and order. Whether you like it or not, the assault army archetype is found throughout science-fiction, not just 40k. Whether it's highly skilled warrior mages from Star Wars, endless swarms of aliens from Starship Troopers, or steathly xenomorphs from Aliens, assault is cool, and in a universe where flying tanks and teleportation provide perfectly viable explanations of how these guys with swords are engaging in gunfights, why shouldn't it be a viable strategy?

 Redbeard wrote:
Whether it's highly skilled warrior mages from Star Wars, endless swarms of aliens from Starship Troopers, or steathly xenomorphs from Aliens, assault is cool, and in a universe where flying tanks and teleportation provide perfectly viable explanations of how these guys with swords are engaging in gunfights, why shouldn't it be a viable strategy?

To be fair, Tyranids have never been able to rely on strong assault alone. Tyranids have always had fantastic short ranged and some long ranged anti infantry firepower to soften up targets before assaulting. The only thing Tyranids ever relied on assault for was anti tank, and 5th and 6th editions gave them good ranged anti vehicle options. Tyranid armies relying on assault have always tended to be shot to peices before getting there, even before overwatch.

 Redbeard wrote:
You really don't know that codex do you.

No, I just assumed that you were talking about a single unit, not a full unit + attached IC.

And 9.9 average is not the same as 10+ average.

You know, if that 180 point unit of SM rapid-fires at those guardsmen, they're going to die too.

Unless they're in cover and maybe even go to ground, in which case they have a decent chance of surviving. And the gap is not 60 to 180, it's more like 80+ to 180.

and in a universe where flying tanks and teleportation provide perfectly viable explanations of how these guys with swords are engaging in gunfights, why shouldn't it be a viable strategy?

Those aren't viable explanations. The only reason assault works as a strategy in 40k is that the scaling of ranges/movement speeds/etc is completely screwed up. If everything was done at true 28mm scale assaults would almost never happen.

Also, "not a viable strategy" and "not exactly equal to shooting" are not the same thing. Assaulting should be a viable strategy in some situations. It shouldn't be equal in power to shooting.

It should be noted that all of those armies you just described died in droves when they went up against gunline armies.

Bugs in Starship Troopers? Die by the thousands to kill a dozen Troopers, with or without their power armor.

Jedi? Not an army, and never have been. Even the Army of Light, the largest military force the Jedi ever fielded, was predominantly non-Jedi soldiers lead by Jedi Knights. In the prequels, the Grand Army of the Republic is tens of millions of non-Jedi Clones lead by Jedi Staff Officers... who died in droves against the clones during Order 66. And in both cases, the actual army component of the army was a gunline.

The Xenomorphs of the Alien franchise either die in droves (much like the SST bugs) against gunlines, or they mitigate the advantage of the gunline (which in 40K would be Stealth, or making use of LOS-blocking terrain) army while they pick off 1 troop at a time.

I'm having trouble of envisioning a SF IP in which melee/assault soldiers are on-par with a gunline opponent, provided the melee guy isn't an IC with heavy amounts of plot-armor, or is not significantly out-gunned (it's easier for a Jedi to block blaster fire from one guy than it is to block sustained blaster fire from 20 guys).

What's actually being argued right now?

It could be called "OMG, I brought a knife to a gunfight, WHY R I LOSING?!"

Peregrine wrote:

and in a universe where flying tanks and teleportation provide perfectly viable explanations of how these guys with swords are engaging in gunfights, why shouldn't it be a viable strategy?

Those aren't viable explanations. The only reason assault works as a strategy in 40k is that the scaling of ranges/movement speeds/etc is completely screwed up. If everything was done at true 28mm scale assaults would almost never happen.

I disagree. Lots of things get changes to make it a playable game, and these things aren't always due to scale. There's no reason to believe that, storywise, a unit couldn't teleport in and be in assault range immediately. Gamewise, you have to wait a turn to assault to make it fair for the shooty guys, but storywise, that's not necessary.

Likewise, storywise, armies like orks and tyranids expend wave after wave after wave of troops with no purpose other than to expend the defender's ammunition. Gamewise, how much fun would it be for a shooty player to get one turn of shooting in and then run out of bullets? Probably not much.

You say the scale is compressed, sure. But the timescale is also compressed. The game we play represents the critical moment, and the thousands of extra dead bugs that died are rather irrelevant as long as the small handful of models that we play with got close enough while you were shooting the others.

Also, "not a viable strategy" and "not exactly equal to shooting" are not the same thing. Assaulting should be a viable strategy in some situations. It shouldn't be equal in power to shooting.

Well, that's one viewpoint. I disagree. In a game that is balanced using a point system, either strategy should be equal when points are factored in. If shooting is three times more powerful than assault, then shooty models should cost three times more than assault models. The goal is to have a fair game between two players, and the tools exist to do so. That they are not is a flaw in the game.

Psienesis wrote:It should be noted that all of those armies you just described died in droves when they went up against gunline armies.

And, yet, still won battles.

Bugs in Starship Troopers? Die by the thousands to kill a dozen Troopers, with or without their power armor.

But they have many more thousands to expend. Hence the notion of points. A Trooper is worth way more points than a bug. So a lot of bugs die, big deal.

Jedi? Not an army, and never have been. Even the Army of Light, the largest military force the Jedi ever fielded, was predominantly non-Jedi soldiers lead by Jedi Knights. In the prequels, the Grand Army of the Republic is tens of millions of non-Jedi Clones lead by Jedi Staff Officers... who died in droves against the clones during Order 66. And in both cases, the actual army component of the army was a gunline.

I'm not as well versed in Star Wars backstory as you, obviously. Needless to say, Star Wars would never have been as popular as it is without Lightsabers, the single most iconic weapon in the franchise. Assault clearly has a place in Sci-fi.

I'm having trouble of envisioning a SF IP in which melee/assault soldiers are on-par with a gunline opponent,..

That's because you're thinking of it in terms of soldier versus soldier. We're playing a game based on points. If my guys are 100 times cheaper than yours, then I can afford to have a 1:50 kill ratio, and still win the battle.


- Real world example, just for fun. Consider the battles of the Zulu wars. You had a British gunline, in a time when they had Gatling guns and cannon, against the Zulu army. At Rorke's Drift, the gunline prevailed. But at Isandlwana, the Zulu's numbers got them into assault and the Zulus won the battle. The Zulus were outgunned, but had the numbers to overcome that.

Guns need ammunition. Any commander who has more troops to throw away than his opponent has bullets to use can get into assault. The 40k background is not devoid of stories of this nature.

 Redbeard wrote:
There's no reason to believe that, storywise, a unit couldn't teleport in and be in assault range immediately.

It's a matter of scale. You can only teleport in at "immediately assault" range in 40k because distances are compressed. If distances were scaled up correctly that "precision" teleport might land hundreds of feet away from the target. There's a reason that terminators carry storm bolters instead of just melee weapons, after all.

Likewise, storywise, armies like orks and tyranids expend wave after wave after wave of troops with no purpose other than to expend the defender's ammunition.

Which is the other problem with 40k: it scales down the damage of shooting. Artillery/air strikes/nuclear weapons/etc all turn "run a whole horde of infantry across an open field" into a joke in a realistic game. To counter this GW had to significantly decrease the power of heavy weapons and reduce the number of models they can kill.

You say the scale is compressed, sure. But the timescale is also compressed. The game we play represents the critical moment, and the thousands of extra dead bugs that died are rather irrelevant as long as the small handful of models that we play with got close enough while you were shooting the others.

Actually the time scale isn't really compressed, it's just completely screwed up. If you look at the time required for a unit to move 6" in "reality" you realize how absurd the whole "I go, you go" system is. A turn has to represent more than a few seconds to make the movement distances be even remotely sensible, but then you have units standing around doing nothing while assault units close the distance and start chopping people in half.

Well, that's one viewpoint. I disagree. In a game that is balanced using a point system, either strategy should be equal when points are factored in. If shooting is three times more powerful than assault, then shooty models should cost three times more than assault models. The goal is to have a fair game between two players, and the tools exist to do so. That they are not is a flaw in the game.

You're making the assumption that assault has to be a primary method for winning the game, rather than a tool that you use occasionally in specific situations.

We could go back to 3rd edition, where shooting was a tool that you used occasionally in specific situations, rather then assaulting.

 Peregrine wrote:

You're making the assumption that assault has to be a primary method for winning the game, rather than a tool that you use occasionally in specific situations.

Yes, it does. For some armies, assault has to be the primary method of winning the game. Chaos Daemons come to mind, doubly so if you play a thematic mono-god army. It's not an assumption, it's the only thing those armies can actually do.

 Redbeard wrote:
Yes, it does. For some armies, assault has to be the primary method of winning the game. Chaos Daemons come to mind, doubly so if you play a thematic mono-god army. It's not an assumption, it's the only thing those armies can actually do.

Coincidentally I happen to think that making daemons a separate army was a really stupid decision and they should be merged back into CSM where they belong.

6th edition is a disappointment overall for me. While some things are fine, there are too many areas that I dislike or that are badly handled rules-wise.

I greatly dislike all the randomness for randomness sake - totally unnecessary except for GW acknowledging that they are unable to make a game with good/tightly written rules. The random warlord traits and psychic powers are ridiculous. There is enough random in all the regular dice rolling that more random was not needed. Random charge length was badly handled - better would be 3+d6 or 4+d6 - then there is still some risk but you know you will still get a reasonable distance. I am fine with the idea of overwatch but it is the many nerfs added together to assault that makes many units poor choices as GW chose not to errata them to adjust for the nerf.

Random psychic powers is annoying as well. My favourite army is nids (shelved now because I am tired of fighting the poorly written nid dex and 6th edition), and there is no doubt that there are some powerful powers that you can get, but I would rather have had GW errata the nid dex when 6th came out so that the dex powers were all good choices (and many are but the hive tyrant has 1 good one out of 4). I dislike the idea of waiting until the battle is about to begin to see if I got the powerful powers or useless ones.

Allies - by house rules/friendly games you could ally whatever you want. But making such a goofy allies matrix part of the game so that necron and GK show up working together often - yeah that makes sense. And nothing for nids to compensate? Nids shouldn't have allies (either should necrons) but they should have gotten something to compensate. Allies is just another obvious money grab by GW. Armies should have strengths and weaknesses, but allies allows many armies to cover their weaknesses and just adds new imbalance issues.

Flyers - what a mess. First I don't believe flyers should even be in a game of this scale, but fine since they were determined to add them in, then at least make some attempt at good rules and options across the armies for flyers/FMC and skyfire/interceptor. Again, another blatant money grab at the expense of the game (and many players).

40K is a game with a lot of potential that GW botches consistently in the game design area for quick money grabs, and the seeming popularity of 6th in my area means they don't need to make a good game because people are willing to spend the money on the mess they produce. Even many of their models are poor kits for the cost. Look at the plastic hive tyrant kit - its great to have plastic wings finally but they produce a kit with no devourers when they made double devourers practically mandatory for the unit to be useful?

I'll wait on the next nid dex to decide if it is decent enough (not OP) to be worth playing in such a poor ruleset.

I enjoy the balanced books they are doing and I like the variety of lists they are allowing. 6E is much more about simulation than it was in the past which helps.

I love how assault players think it's stupid that an assault can completely fail (snake eyes), but don't have a problem with a space marine missing a land raider from one inch away.

Also, I like 6th edition. I like:

*Hull points. I play mech guard but I still think hull points were desperately needed to balance vehicles.
*Warlord traits. The idea, not the execution
*5+ cover
*Random charge range. Assault needed a nerf.
*The new power weapons are pretty cool
*Boost to blast weapons
*Lots of cool new special rules

I don't like:
*Rolling for warlord traits, for reasons expressed plenty of times by others.
*Flyers. 'nuff said

So all in all, pretty positive.

Only thing I dislike, really dislike is random psychic powers. It just doesn't make sense for a great many races.

That and psychic powers (and random again) for Demons! That can fail and cause them Perils of the Warp!

I love my iron arm swarmlord, you''re not taking my iron arm swarmlord.

I gotta say. I have been playing since end of 3rd early 4th Edition and this edition is my favorite. I don't know if its that i wasn't very experienced back then and i was a kid (must have been about 12, im 24 now) but i really like this edition.

I like Overwatch, I like hull points, i like flyers (well I play Tau so i like shooting down flyers), i like all the new mission deployments (maybe not so much all the missions themselves) I even like the random rolling for warlord traits and whatnot, it makes every game feel slightly different, especially when you play against the same people often (which is bound to happen more if all the hate-mongering about GW shrinking is correct)

Overall i think this is a great edition and will only get better as all the codices are updated to be inline with 6th edition.

I'm happy with 6th, it has the feel of the 90s with the streamlined mechanics of the 00s. We sometimes "forget" about mysterious objectives and night fighting, though.

 BryllCream wrote:
I love how assault players think it's stupid that an assault can completely fail (snake eyes), but don't have a problem with a space marine missing a land raider from one inch away.

This is actually a terrible analogy, you have to understand that you are comparing a to hit roll in shooting, to a roll to determine if there will be ANY rolls in close combat. This analogy makes it seem like you have forgotten that units in close combat also have to roll to hit, and then roll to wound. Yes, that Space Marine can miss a Landraider from one inch away, but I have also seen a close combat squad roll nothing but 1s and 2s to hit against guardsmen. That is the equivalent you are reachign for, flubbing a to hit in shooting is far more equivalent to flubbing a to hit in close combat.

Your analogy would actually have teeth and be worth noting down if shooting had random range. Lets pretend that Bolters had random range 4d6, and that before every shot is declared you had to roll 4d6 dice to determine if you were in range BEFORE you were allowed to roll to hit. That would be incredibly obnoxious, and it would be equivalent to what happens to assault units now.

 Shandara wrote:
Only thing I dislike, really dislike is random psychic powers. It just doesn't make sense for a great many races.

Agreed. That's rather annoying.

I have to say that I love the Codexes that came out in 6th Edition, but I think they could have handled 6th Edition a little better as a core ruleset by incorporating a smoother release system for the flyers. Being too lazy to FAQ in AA for armies was just stupid.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
I have to say that I love the Codexes that came out in 6th Edition, but I think they could have handled 6th Edition a little better as a core ruleset by incorporating a smoother release system for the flyers. Being too lazy to FAQ in AA for armies was just stupid.

It's so we'll all have to buy their shiny new AA models and bits.