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I feel there is almost endless opportunity in 40k at the moment and so many resources to feed the imagination.

There is a flipside to this coin. With so much going on I think it would be hard to try be 'the apex predator' of everything 40k, which somewhat sabotages tournaments and things that aim to designate the 'best 40Ker in all the land'. The wide variety of 'settings' also makes it difficult for a 'default setting' for 40k to emerge, but I think this is more of a problem for some players than others.

Overall I am very positive.

Hard to designate the "apex predator"? It's like you've never heard of Taudar with a Revenant Titan.

A fair point, but I meant more than just the winningest list. Some 40k game modes are mutually exclusive to each other. We're not going to see Revenants in kill team or battleforce recon 40k, after all . I more meant being the best player at all aspects of 40k.

I'm not particularly happy personally.
I like the ability that anything in the game could possibly kill something else.
I mean in theory a space marine with a meltagun might be able to sneak up on a titan (or equivalent) and damage it sufficiently to render it inoperable or something.
On the tabletop you'd be lucky to get there let alone achieve anything.
I don't know if that's a fault of the changes though, it could just be the way the game works.

Is anyone else REALLY HAPPY about the way GW is doing things in 40K right now?

Absolutely not.
I am greatly enjoying my time playing 40k right now, despite GW.

Just finished playing in a tournament on Saturday Great tournament, know the hosts and most of the player base well, and had some good warm-up games this last month or two in preparation for the games.

That being said, I'm done with 40k.

Insaniak said it best, by creating imbalance in the codex's (sp) you have created about 4-5 useful tournament level armies (was speaking to one of the judges, he said 75% of the armies were Tau, Elder, or Taueldar. the rest were drop pod SM, bike SM, and Necron Wraithwing.

There are so many levels of frustration with how COMPETETIVE play is pigeonholed it becomes absurdly redundant.

I love 40k, the lore, Horus heresy, gaunts ghosts, power armor, grimdark.... the basis for the game in an army vs. army scope is awesome. No other game comes close to the military sci-fi theme (overall) that 40k brings. Squad based games don't actually appeal to me as much as army based games.

Things that don't work in a time based game of 40k:
(roughly) 50% of codex's do not have enough optimal builds
disparity of movement types
mission criteria being skewed towards specific armies
waiting on your opponent
turns not having equal time

This doesn't even touch on the borked Battle Brothers, Fliers, Monstrous Creatures, Physical Cost, Escalation, 2++ reroll, D-weapons, Scoring Vehicle Super Heavies, Bronies, doing dishes etc. that have been harped ad nausea on the forums.

That being said there is really no way to make the game balanced rather than overhaul the entire structure, which would require monumental change. It really makes me sad, I want to play, I enjoy playing with my competitive group, I love the modeling, customization, theme of the 40k universe but the game play is horrendous, and the army lists are the same across the board and are broken.

TLDR: Thanks GW, I have invested a sizeable amount of money into your company.... sad part is if you would take just a small amount of time to fix the things that are broken, I would have invested a whole lot more.

 insaniak wrote:

 BLADERIKER wrote:
I relish the chance to defeat 5+ knights in a game as I have no issue in bringing Super-heavys myself, or barring that option using my battle field to my advantage, that is half the fun of this game, adapting to the changes. This is very much a version of Natural Selection, and I can adapt.

I'm curious as to just how you plan to 'use the battlefield' to make your basic troops suddenly not be useless against an entire army of armour 13 walkers...

Deathguard HH army

Rite of War: The Reaping

Fill all all but the two compulsory slots with heavy squads all with 10 man Lascannon units.

get first turn, win game?

 insaniak wrote:

 BLADERIKER wrote:
I relish the chance to defeat 5+ knights in a game as I have no issue in bringing Super-heavys myself, or barring that option using my battle field to my advantage, that is half the fun of this game, adapting to the changes. This is very much a version of Natural Selection, and I can adapt.

I'm curious as to just how you plan to 'use the battlefield' to make your basic troops suddenly not be useless against an entire army of armour 13 walkers...

Just to touch on this point a bit...

Imperial Knights, while the first codex to feature a full AV13 mech army as standard, is certainly not the first to render standard infantry largely useless. Necron AV13 and Flyer lists come to mind, as do Land Raider lists. There are many more. When we talk about a "Full Knight Army" we are actually talking about a list that is not at all competitive, because Imperial Knights is the first codex I know of to have a codex-wide hard counter that is easily available to every army out there (I'm speaking of flyers).

Further, there are very few armies in the game that do not have basic infantry that can't hurt the Knight. Tac Squads with Melta, Genestealers with Rending/Warriors with venom cannons, Necrons with Gauss, etc. Are these the most effective units for tackling an AV13 superheavy vehicle? Nope. But they can hurt it. Point being, there are numerous options that competitive lists have at their disposal to take down a Knight. Yes, they do change the meta a bit. Seems that you can say the same about every other codex. And like I mentioned, Knights is unique because you cannot build a truly competitive army using only Codex: Knights units. You will just about always see them being used as allies, in which case you will face a max of three, and more usually just one or two.

As for how battlefield positioning comes into play...it comes into play more when facing Knights than almost any other unit. That's because Knights have to choose only one side to receive their 4++. Pincer attacks, backfield strikes, varied threats all come into play. Do you throw up your shield against the multi-melta bikes to your side or to where you expect that pod of Sternguard will be dropping on rear armor? This becomes even more challenging when you throw in that good ol' flyer or FMC which can maneuver all over the place.

This was probably too much outside the scope of the original topic, but was just meant to address the fact that Knights have changed the meta, but haven't even come close to breaking it. If you are running an all infantry army with no flyers, no melta, nor redundant answers to AV13 etc., then you're probably going to have an issue with a lot more than just Knights. What Knights have done is to simultaneously break the stranglehold that shooty MCs have had on this edition thus far while simultaneously forcing you to be more strategic in your list building and to reintegrate some answers for vehicle threats into your plasma/grav-gun heavy lists.

I appreciate the fact that GW is introducing cool new models to effect this change rather than releasing an FAQ to nerf the other cool models that have been released. Again, I feel and appreciate the fact that we are getting options, not nerfs.

I like 6th edition rules. I really enjoy the HH books from Black Library and Forge World. I really (x2) like most of the FW models from the last few years.

I don't like Escalation or Strong Hold Assault, for reasons I've posted x10 in other threads. Fortunately, I use my pie hole for things other than my 10th Mountain Dew of the day, and actually TELL my opponent the type of game I'd like to play...

Edit: Also, the Imperial Knight Models are meh. I won't buy one.

themadlbb wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 BLADERIKER wrote:
I relish the chance to defeat 5+ knights in a game as I have no issue in bringing Super-heavys myself, or barring that option using my battle field to my advantage, that is half the fun of this game, adapting to the changes. This is very much a version of Natural Selection, and I can adapt.

I'm curious as to just how you plan to 'use the battlefield' to make your basic troops suddenly not be useless against an entire army of armour 13 walkers...

Just to touch on this point a bit...

Imperial Knights, while the first codex to feature a full AV13 mech army as standard, is certainly not the first to render standard infantry largely useless. Necron AV13 and Flyer lists come to mind, as do Land Raider lists. There are many more. When we talk about a "Full Knight Army" we are actually talking about a list that is not at all competitive, because Imperial Knights is the first codex I know of to have a codex-wide hard counter that is easily available to every army out there (I'm speaking of flyers).

Further, there are very few armies in the game that do not have basic infantry that can't hurt the Knight. Tac Squads with Melta, Genestealers with Rending/Warriors with venom cannons, Necrons with Gauss, etc. Are these the most effective units for tackling an AV13 superheavy vehicle? Nope. But they can hurt it. Point being, there are numerous options that competitive lists have at their disposal to take down a Knight. Yes, they do change the meta a bit. Seems that you can say the same about every other codex. And like I mentioned, Knights is unique because you cannot build a truly competitive army using only Codex: Knights units. You will just about always see them being used as allies, in which case you will face a max of three, and more usually just one or two.

As for how battlefield positioning comes into play...it comes into play more when facing Knights than almost any other unit. That's because Knights have to choose only one side to receive their 4++. Pincer attacks, backfield strikes, varied threats all come into play. Do you throw up your shield against the multi-melta bikes to your side or to where you expect that pod of Sternguard will be dropping on rear armor? This becomes even more challenging when you throw in that good ol' flyer or FMC which can maneuver all over the place.

This was probably too much outside the scope of the original topic, but was just meant to address the fact that Knights have changed the meta, but haven't even come close to breaking it. If you are running an all infantry army with no flyers, no melta, nor redundant answers to AV13 etc., then you're probably going to have an issue with a lot more than just Knights. What Knights have done is to simultaneously break the stranglehold that shooty MCs have had on this edition thus far while simultaneously forcing you to be more strategic in your list building and to reintegrate some answers for vehicle threats into your plasma/grav-gun heavy lists.

I appreciate the fact that GW is introducing cool new models to effect this change rather than releasing an FAQ to nerf the other cool models that have been released. Again, I feel and appreciate the fact that we are getting options, not nerfs.

Well said.Also the use of terrain to block LOS, Fortifications (Buildings) to block movement. Those knights have massive bases and do not ignore impassible terrain, and also being a good General with the army you are playing. As a Necron player, None of the Super-heavy's/ Gargantuan Monsters give me pause, as I have an answer to every one of them in my army without having to tailor or change my normal lists.

Am I happy playing 40k now?

Yes.

Would I be happy if I decided to play this game competitively?

No.

I play with friends and decent people at the local hobby store.
I even have made or borrowed scenarios to play and they are lots of fun.
The bunch of micro-releases like escalation and that other one I do not remember have good material but are pricy for what few jems they bring to the game.
Death from the skies pretty much set the tone.

Just cant wait for the Codex for Imperial Knights (which I DO think are cool...) of 60 odd pages at $50 for essentially 2 models (not so cool...).
At least they priced them for about half what the Khorn Mower costs.

I like that pretty much anything in the fluff we could set a game for and agree that a neutral party can define some army composition rules and it is great fun.

A "special" rule book would need to be made for very narrowly defining army by army what can be done for competitive play and I just cannot see GW doing that.

I think GW is getting better at making it pretty clear they are making this for "fluff": "Forge the Narrative", so you are really fooling yourself if you think this is a truly competitive game.
Too many elements depend on luck and the army list you made vs. what your opponent picked.

It is strange in a time I have the most complaints for how GW does things but rules and models have allowed me to play games I wanted to for a long time.
I think it is the timing of it in my life rather than the quality that is being produced now.

Maybe the answer is it is all relative to how much time and disposable income you have.

 Vash108 wrote:
Fill all all but the two compulsory slots with heavy squads all with 10 man Lascannon units.

get first turn, win game?

And then follow it up by getting tabled first turn by an army that isn't made up entirely of knights...

No, not really.

themadlbb wrote:
Imperial Knights, while the first codex to feature a full AV13 mech army as standard, is certainly not the first to render standard infantry largely useless. Necron AV13 and Flyer lists come to mind, as do Land Raider lists.

The difference being that those lists do have units in them that your infantry squads can hurt.

... because Imperial Knights is the first codex I know of to have a codex-wide hard counter that is easily available to every army out there (I'm speaking of flyers).

Well, if everyone has to start taking flyers in case their opponent shows up with Knights, I guess that at least finally creates a point to buying the Space Marine anti-air tanks...

dont the Knights perform terribad against Flyer lists? Having such a limitation to the different types of units you can field in your codex means Stormravens are gonna have a field day with an army of Knights, zipping around and between them and putting their TL-Las, TL-MM and Stormstrike missiles to good use.

Absolutely. As a tyranid player I loved shelling out for a new codex, and then having to spend another 45 dollars to get all the rules I should have had. It's GLORIOUS!

No, wait, not glorious... what's that other thing?

Oh, right, horse crap. That's what it is.

I like how a thread asking who likes something is filled with posts about how they don't like it. That's like posting all the things you hate about cheese on a pizza forum.

Speaking of which, we should have a pizza thread.

Anyway I'm cool with the current GW decision-making process flowchart. Pretty happy with having an enormous selection of products and more every week. Moderately happy with the option of secondary codices. Vaguely happy with the slow baby steps towards the inclusion of digital media. Warily happy about a possible future full of Forgeworld-type kits in dependable GW plastics instead of warped lung-murdering resin.

Prices are hilarious, but that's why I'm also happy to buy all my product from discounted online stores and secondary markets. Rock on, GW.

6th edition is great. 7th edition will be even better. Of course there is no balance whatsoever but 7th edition will transform the gaming scene into a true eye of terror where random wacky things happen on a daily basis.

I believe that if balance isn't possible, and the evidence from the last 20 years points me to thinking that it isn't for GW, the fun alternative is an anarchy of legal armies with hundreds of options. Sure people will get blown to bits and hard countered left and right, but atleast there's endless variations to the ways in which you can lose the game. There's nothing I have hated more in all my years playing GW games than stagnation.

That's why I'm very happy GW keeps releasing ridiculous mini-codices. Noone I know can even name off the top of their head how many legal armies there are in 40K right now, and when you add in dataslates and allies the combinations are in the hundreds. Once 7th edition finally without a shadow of a doubt legalises Forgeworld and all superheavies the evolution of the game is complete.

And to the guy who whined about tournaments only consisting of Tau, Eldar, Taudar and Necrons, there's never any more viable armies than that at the cutting edge. 7th edition will make a mess out of the current pecking order as well, since everyone else benefit a lot more from the inclusion of superheavies than Tau does.

So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

 streamdragon wrote:
Absolutely. As a tyranid player I loved shelling out for a new codex, and then having to spend another 45 dollars to get all the rules I should have had. It's GLORIOUS!

No, wait, not glorious... what's that other thing?

Oh, right, horse crap. That's what it is.

While I agree with you in the sense that it would be great to have a codex with all of the great rules and everything right off the bat, I will say that the situation we are in now is far preferable to how it would have been in the past. You would get your codex and....enjoy! That's all you've got for the next four years at least, and sometimes up to twelve!

Occasionally White Dwarf would release a rules add-on or you'd get a supplementary codex or something, but that would happen very, very sporadically. Now we've got two dataslates and more on the way, with great rules that do offer new ways to play 'Nids. Formations are something that has never really been seen before, but in any case they are not the sorts of things I would expect to just exist in the codex from the get-go. Frankly, I'm really glad that they didn't wait a year to release new rules that make the 'dex powerful.

I mean, just to be clear, I think we can all agree that we'd like lower prices for Games Workshop stuff. However, the hobby has always been expensive, and there have always been ways to get around paying full price.

Martel732 wrote:
So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

I love the pace of releases and all the new things coming out. The real downer has been some of the relentless negativity surrounding GW.

 Therion wrote:
6th edition is great. 7th edition will be even better. Of course there is no balance whatsoever but 7th edition will transform the gaming scene into a true eye of terror where random wacky things happen on a daily basis.

I believe that if balance isn't possible, and the evidence from the last 20 years points me to thinking that it isn't for GW, the fun alternative is an anarchy of legal armies with hundreds of options. Sure people will get blown to bits and hard countered left and right, but atleast there's endless variations to the ways in which you can lose the game.

That's why I'm very happy GW keeps releasing ridiculous mini-codices. Noone I know can even name off the top of their head how many legal armies there are in 40K right now, and when you add in dataslates and allies the combinations are in the hundreds. Once 7th edition finally without a shadow of a doubt legalises Forgeworld and all superheavies the evolution of the game is complete.

And to the guy who whined about tournaments only consisting of Tau, Eldar, Taudar and Necrons, there's never any more viable armies than that at the cutting edge. 7th edition will make a mess out of the current pecking order as well, since everyone else benefit a lot more from the inclusion of superheavies than Tau does.

Agree with this. With the release of the new 'Nid dataslates and the Knights kits, I'd go so far as to argue that in the next few months there will be a greater variety of top-tier lists than there has ever been.

Obviously the ideal goal would be to have every unit in every codex be viable in some way. However, that is not a realistic expectation. I'd say we are closer than ever to having every codex out there have at least one tournament-tier competitive build, which is definitely not something I can say about any other edition in the time I have played the game.

 pretre wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

The real downer has been some of the relentless negativity surrounding GW.

Welcome to the internet, where every single sports, gaming and politics forum is filled with relentless negativity.

 Therion wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

The real downer has been some of the relentless negativity surrounding GW.

Welcome to the internet, where every single sports, gaming and politics forum is filled with relentless negativity.

Oh, I'm aware. Just laying out where my discontent with the hobby has been recently. Certainly not with GW.

 pretre wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

Spoiler:

I love the pace of releases and all the new things coming out. The real downer has been some of the relentless negativity surrounding GW.

That's why I made this thread. For the longest time, the complaint around 40k was one of stagnation, repetitive gameplay, and lack of rules updates. I would never argue that GW is perfect, but they do seem to be actively giving the playerbase what we've said we wanted for years now. I can't help but be both ecstatic at this and simultaneously disappointed in the fans a little bit. As soon as GW releases something crazy and cool the discussion now turns immediately to how we can ban that thing, or else how to shame someone for bringing the best and coolest units in their army.

themadlbb wrote:
That's why I made this thread. For the longest time, the complaint around 40k was one of stagnation, repetitive gameplay, and lack of rules updates. I would never argue that GW is perfect, but they do seem to be actively giving the playerbase what we've said we wanted for years now. I can't help but be both ecstatic at this and simultaneously disappointed in the fans a little bit. As soon as GW releases something crazy and cool the discussion now turns immediately to how we can ban that thing, or else how to shame someone for bringing the best and coolest units in their army.

Exactly.

themadlbb wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
So happy that I haven't bought anything from them in 8 months or so.

Spoiler:

I love the pace of releases and all the new things coming out. The real downer has been some of the relentless negativity surrounding GW.

That's why I made this thread. For the longest time, the complaint around 40k was one of stagnation, repetitive gameplay, and lack of rules updates. I would never argue that GW is perfect, but they do seem to be actively giving the playerbase what we've said we wanted for years now. I can't help but be both ecstatic at this and simultaneously disappointed in the fans a little bit. As soon as GW releases something crazy and cool the discussion now turns immediately to how we can ban that thing, or else how to shame someone for bringing the best and coolest units in their army.

That's because new stuff costs money, and people have always bitched about power creep whether real or imagined. I agree with you fully because I remember the times when I was expecting a new SM codex and the most interesting things would be if an assault cannon had 3 shots or 4, and what the new librarian psychic powers were. That was about the level of forward movement the game had. The stagnation was pretty terrible and the battles were much less balanced than what we have now or will have in the future.

I played my first 40K tournament when I was 14 years old and my opponent's entire army consisted of Space Wolf Terminators with Assault Cannons & Cyclone Launchers, lead by one teleporting Terminator Librarian I can clearly remember just thinking how crazy in a fun way it was to get wiped out in one turn to some strange army, but I guess times were different

Even more unbalanced models is not what I, or anyone else in my play group, requested. The new releases are blatant money grabs with very little thought behind them.

Martel732 wrote:
Even more unbalanced models is not what I, or anyone else in my play group, requested. The new releases are blatant money grabs with very little thought behind them.

What did you, or your group request then?

Martel732 wrote:
Even more unbalanced models is not what I, or anyone else in my play group, requested. The new releases are blatant money grabs with very little thought behind them.

Gamers have been clamoring for plastic titans for years. No one should be surprised if GW makes them. I can't wait for the rage when GW surprises us with some other long requested item like Plastic Sisters or a Thunderhawk. People will gak themselves with how angry it makes them that GW is forcing super heavy flyers or women on their games.