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Oh, trust me, it's a better way of moderation than banning and muting everyone.

After years of Fantasy (and other games) "hobbysm", I began to be interested in 40k while in 6th edition, and only started playing after 7th edition was out.

The ruleset, as I see it, is a mess. A disjointed mess full of poorly implemented nice ideas. Plus some things (super-heavies, many flyers) that are simply out of place in a 28mm scale game. Titans in Epic? Good. Titans in 40k? Eeeergh.

There are so many silly things that I wouldn't know where to begin and where to finish. Cover - which should be a key mechanic of a skirmish-like shooting game - is implemented in a terribly silly way. There's movement in three different phases of the game - was it that difficult to include the "run" mechanic in the, you know, "movement phase". Some things looked blatantly stupid since the first time I took a look at the rules: why does twin-linked allow you to re-roll missed hit rolls? As far as I'm concerned in the past it was one roll for two hits, which seems way more logical for weapons with two barrels that shoot once (and it's actually quicker to play, since there's no re-roll possibility, so the "streamlining" excuse is BS).

Actually the whole "streamlining" thing just feels stupid at this point. There are so many random elements that for a 1650-1850 game (what I usually play) you may easily need more than half an hour before the game actually begins, and then we're usually lucky if we manage to play 3 full turns in the following two hours.

Despite all this, it's still fun if both you and your opponent manage to keep a positive attitude. Not gonna lie, I've had good times while playing 7th, but mostly due to everything that surrounds the game (satisfaction feeling of fielding your painted models, social enjoyment, funny moments, etc.) more than to the rules themselves. Which says a lot for an almost 30-yeared old game in its 7th edition.

Saddest part is GW not caring at all about the game itself and treating it merely as their favorite cash cow.

 koooaei wrote:
Oh, trust me, it's a better way of moderation than banning and muting everyone.

Yeah there is probably something between the state this forum seems to be in and outright banning/muting everyone. I don't think the moderation job is easy, but i don't think it is being handled great on this forum. Don't see as much negativity on other forums I use, but of course there is probably less traffic at those too.

Love it. It's still 40k. Maelstrom is awesome. Dirty heretics and xenos still die to my hammer. Life on the tabletop is good.

Loborocket wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Oh, trust me, it's a better way of moderation than banning and muting everyone.

Yeah there is probably somethign between the state this forum seems to be in and outright banning/muting everyone. I don't think the moderation job is easy, but i don't think it is being handled great on this forum. Don't seem as much negativity on other forums I use, but of course there is probably less traffic at those too.

So you think moderation should involve reducing the amount of so called 'negativity'?

Sounds like you just want an echo chamber of your own opinions.

oops. duplicate post somehow

Loborocket wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Oh, trust me, it's a better way of moderation than banning and muting everyone.

Yeah there is probably something between the state this forum seems to be in and outright banning/muting everyone. I don't think the moderation job is easy, but i don't think it is being handled great on this forum. Don't see as much negativity on other forums I use, but of course there is probably less traffic at those too.

Soo...you only want to hear opinions that you agree with? Seems legit.

6th and then 7th killed off any interest in 40k in my local area, so much so that the FLGS stopped stocking it, so now I can't play.

So while I don't have any experience with 7th (nobody was interested in getting it after reading reviews etc etc) I feel that I wouldn't have enjoyed it as it seemed to make things I disliked about 6th (random tables, change in cover) more problematic.

But it's okay, I'm not allowed to voice my opinion in the matter because I'm not actively playing it.

7th:

Good: Declaring Jink is good idea. Ummmm... still much of 6th in it... I can still play it.
Bad: Play pretty much anything, psychic phase I am not liking, not sure why, many models are useless, balance I am not sure what that means now, anti-aircraft specific stuff is nerfed to death.

My attitude is pretty much how you play 7th, pray to the dice gods, roll the dice, hope 8th will end in a good result, pretend it is all planned rather than left to random chance.

I will keep building up to a good standard what models I have until that time it is worth having a go.

 insaniak wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
Also, the whole experience thing for individual models really confused me.

The what...?

I believe it was 5th edition, but the rulebook from 2004 had a section where you applied experience to your units and they leveled up over the course of battles. It was really wonky.

gruntl wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

- 7E is a battle between individual models, but with Codices that have better external balance.

Based on what? I haven't played a single game of 40k where the outcome has been decided by an individual model.

I only started playing in 6th edition, so can't really comment on earlier editions.

Based on actually playing the game from 2E through 7E. Up through 5E, there is none of this per-model positioning. You take wounds as you like within the unit. It doesn't matter if the Sergeant is the closest to the enemy, heroically leading the charge - you just pull whichever model you like within the unit. Toughness and cover are based on the unit.

Getting back to that example, if you want the Sergeant at the fore, he's the first to die, so that would make a big difference.

If you had played earlier editions, you'd probably understand what I was talking about.

As a Guard player, 6E and 7E are not well-suited to the massed infantry with special weapons/equipment typical of Guard forces.

How to enjoy 7th edition.

Get some friends, get some beer, get some pretzels, play 40k.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's the way the mechanics work really. In 5E, wounds could be allocated to the entire unit regardless of weapon range, you could take casualties from anywhere, cover was determiend by a majority of the unit being in cover or not, etc. Everything was done around the unit as a whole, rather than individual models, with the sole exception of how you allocated wounds taken by the unit which got real fiddly and abusive with multi-wound units. But aside from that, the mechanics were much more "unit to unit" than "model to model".

6E/7E introduced a lot more model specificness as opposed to unit specific mechanics. It didn't matter what kind of power weapon a model had, it was just S:user and Ignores Armor Saves whether it was a mace, sword, axe, or lance.

Yup. The thing is, wound shenanigans would have been simplified if the rules had simply specified that the player must always allocate failed saves to remove the maximum number of models possible. That would have simplified and sped things greatly, even in multi-wound units.

Its k

 crazyK wrote:
How to enjoy 7th edition.

Get some friends, get some beer, get some pretzels, play 40k.

Even with friends and beer, I need house rules to enjoy 7th, specifically to ignore "closest first". That really grinds my gears.

Objectively bad.

The ruleset is poorly written, poorly edited, with very little interest in making a coherent, functional, easy to play and enjoy game. It is no more beer and pretzels than, oh, data analysis, and no more effectively competitive than Russian Roulette.

I honestly enjoyed the start of 6th; the Chaos dex was a move in the right direction, as was Dark Angels, hull points were a good idea, and I honestly like directional casualties, a unified set of psychic powers simplified matters, and having a "warlord" was one of my gripes with 5th, having the guy in charge always provide something for your army was a good idea. Balance got out of hand right-quick with Tau/Daemons/Eldar, but the issues were surmountable still.

7th, however, didn't address most of the problems with what was a promising, but still flawed product. It made challenges slightly less intolerable (though still nonsensical considering "Forge the Narrative for everyone but Black Templars and Chaos, and maybe Dark Eldar), vehicles getting a little more durability was nice, but not broken 5th levels, and reducing volume of smash attacks has made MCs/Walkers somewhat even in a fight and having all psychic powers occur at the same time made sense when previously it was a whole other job keeping track of when you can do what, but that's about all I can say that's positive.

Psychic phase is beyond broken. While the idea makes sense, psychic powers are so insanely powerful now if you put even the most basic effort into exploiting; bring lots of psychic dice and one good caster, and get a second shooting phase, or be Eldar and be buffed so insanely it's funny, and if you don't bring a psyker you basically have no defense. At least trying to deny every targeted power was something in 6th...

Directional casualties now make no sense when cover is no longer directional. If you're touching it, you've got the save, and considering how easy it is to give stealth and/or shrouding to things, you can be shooting at guys with no intervening cover, but since they're touching a ruin, viola, 2+ save.

Special rules are a mess, and how they're handed out. There's dozens and dozens of them, all stacking, and the resulting buff combinations has made this the most death-star-y version of 40k I've ever seen, with ridiculous things like re-rollable 2+ or 2++ not just possible, but routine.

And perhaps most damning of all (as the above are but a mere sample of my frustrations) has been the complete abandonment of flavour. The 6th edition codexes, until Imperial Guard and Tyranids actually gave back a lot of customization, flavour and character which been steadily stripped from these armies since 3.5/early 4th. Chapter Tactics made a meaningful comeback, Chaos alignments actually meant something, Dark Angels had fully developed Green/Raven/Deathwings, Tau got a bunch of unique advanced wargear to act as their version of psychic powers, and one of the few good, unique fluffy supplements, Farsight Enclaves, etc. But in the leadup to 7th, when clearly the design direction had changed in preperation, that all stopped. Guard lost what remnants of the Regiment system was left via their special characters, Tyranids were left a hollowed out nerfed codex reliant on dataslate DLC to function well or fluffy, which would mark a new trend in cut content and DLC to make "complete" $150+ codexes for what is a self declared model, not games company. The actual 7th edition codexes only doubled down on that trend, with Orks, Dark Eldar and Blood Angels losing most of what made them interesting or what tools for army variation existed. They remain viable books, and balanced against one another, but painfully monobuild with the player dependent on dataslates, bare-bones codex-priced supplements to have any real variation, or quite often, power neccessary to survive against other books.

I'll play a game with bad rules if it's at least fun and variable. Many of my favourite RTS games on the PC have been, ultimately, flawed in terms of balance (Company of Heroes never had good balance, but remains my favourite RTS of all time, because you could do so many different things to try and win) but as 40k in 7th commits further and further to bland, but still imbalanced rules with painfully little choice or customization, where more often than not I can say how I game will go once lists and terrain is deployed, I simply lose interest. There are increasingly not enough positives in the game to outweigh all the problems in design and business. Were it not for Forgeworld at least allowing me a few armies which are fun and reasonably flexibile, if not competitive at all, I would have given up completely, and should the next Marine book reduce it to something akin to the current run of codexes, I'll simply leave the hobby for good.

I do hold out hope for the future, and I'll never sell my armies, as sooner or later GW will have to change its game and practices, but I'm ever so close to leaving the hobby for a good long hiatus with it in its present state.

I have never played 7th, but last saturday, I got shield of baal deathstorm.
It came with a campaign book and a 7th edition rulebook. I thought it was ok. I need to do some more reading though. Better to stick to 5th.

Started near the end of 5th, played through 6th, then played a handful of games in 7th and quit.
A lot of things got on my nerves. Psychic powers, the pushing of books, and making IoM one giant faction.
What really did me in, was the Maelstrom Missions.
I know a lot of people will disagree, I know a lot will agree. But it's not a tactical or strategic game to me now.
When I started it was nice and simple. You knew the objective going into the game and would fight the entire game based around that.
Now the mission changes based on card draws and your opponent's draws are different from your own.
The games that we did play were always won based on a deck rather that what I did in the game. It's like if they just changed the "roll for turn 6" into a "roll to see who won"

I think one of the only reasons I still care is to see if they ever put "Missile Lock" on anything or if it will be a USR that no model actually has.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Objectively bad.

The ruleset is poorly written, poorly edited, with very little interest in making a coherent, functional, easy to play and enjoy game. It is no more beer and pretzels than, oh, data analysis, and no more effectively competitive than Russian Roulette.

I honestly enjoyed the start of 6th; the Chaos dex was a move in the right direction, as was Dark Angels, hull points were a good idea, and I honestly like directional casualties, a unified set of psychic powers simplified matters, and having a "warlord" was one of my gripes with 5th, having the guy in charge always provide something for your army was a good idea. Balance got out of hand right-quick with Tau/Daemons/Eldar, but the issues were surmountable still.

7th, however, didn't address most of the problems with what was a promising, but still flawed product. It made challenges slightly less intolerable (though still nonsensical considering "Forge the Narrative for everyone but Black Templars and Chaos, and maybe Dark Eldar), vehicles getting a little more durability was nice, but not broken 5th levels, and reducing volume of smash attacks has made MCs/Walkers somewhat even in a fight and having all psychic powers occur at the same time made sense when previously it was a whole other job keeping track of when you can do what, but that's about all I can say that's positive.

Psychic phase is beyond broken. While the idea makes sense, psychic powers are so insanely powerful now if you put even the most basic effort into exploiting; bring lots of psychic dice and one good caster, and get a second shooting phase, or be Eldar and be buffed so insanely it's funny, and if you don't bring a psyker you basically have no defense. At least trying to deny every targeted power was something in 6th...

Directional casualties now make no sense when cover is no longer directional. If you're touching it, you've got the save, and considering how easy it is to give stealth and/or shrouding to things, you can be shooting at guys with no intervening cover, but since they're touching a ruin, viola, 2+ save.

Special rules are a mess, and how they're handed out. There's dozens and dozens of them, all stacking, and the resulting buff combinations has made this the most death-star-y version of 40k I've ever seen, with ridiculous things like re-rollable 2+ or 2++ not just possible, but routine.

And perhaps most damning of all (as the above are but a mere sample of my frustrations) has been the complete abandonment of flavour. The 6th edition codexes, until Imperial Guard and Tyranids actually gave back a lot of customization, flavour and character which been steadily stripped from these armies since 3.5/early 4th. Chapter Tactics made a meaningful comeback, Chaos alignments actually meant something, Dark Angels had fully developed Green/Raven/Deathwings, Tau got a bunch of unique advanced wargear to act as their version of psychic powers, and one of the few good, unique fluffy supplements, Farsight Enclaves, etc. But in the leadup to 7th, when clearly the design direction had changed in preperation, that all stopped. Guard lost what remnants of the Regiment system was left via their special characters, Tyranids were left a hollowed out nerfed codex reliant on dataslate DLC to function well or fluffy, which would mark a new trend in cut content and DLC to make "complete" $150+ codexes for what is a self declared model, not games company. The actual 7th edition codexes only doubled down on that trend, with Orks, Dark Eldar and Blood Angels losing most of what made them interesting or what tools for army variation existed. They remain viable books, and balanced against one another, but painfully monobuild with the player dependent on dataslates, bare-bones codex-priced supplements to have any real variation, or quite often, power neccessary to survive against other books.

I'll play a game with bad rules if it's at least fun and variable. Many of my favourite RTS games on the PC have been, ultimately, flawed in terms of balance (Company of Heroes never had good balance, but remains my favourite RTS of all time, because you could do so many different things to try and win) but as 40k in 7th commits further and further to bland, but still imbalanced rules with painfully little choice or customization, where more often than not I can say how I game will go once lists and terrain is deployed, I simply lose interest. There are increasingly not enough positives in the game to outweigh all the problems in design and business. Were it not for Forgeworld at least allowing me a few armies which are fun and reasonably flexibile, if not competitive at all, I would have given up completely, and should the next Marine book reduce it to something akin to the current run of codexes, I'll simply leave the hobby for good.

I do hold out hope for the future, and I'll never sell my armies, as sooner or later GW will have to change its game and practices, but I'm ever so close to leaving the hobby for a good long hiatus with it in its present state.

Couldn't have said it better myself.
(though I don't think CSM should be held up as a good example of flavor.)

I don't like it much.
In 3rd-5th, I played 5 games a week on average.
In 6th it dropped to 2 pretty quickly.
It's about 1.5 now...sometimes I get in 2 games if they end fast, but setting up and rule arguments usually means 1 game at most.

Most of my time is spent playing warmachine or a role playing game now. The new release has my hyped for skorne in a major way, and 5th edition is awesome after the horror that was 4th.

Been playing since 3rd and I think 7th is the best yet. Allies, psykers, flyers, superheavies; all are fair game and I love it.

Actually my only beef is that I love the beautiful artwork and page layout of the 6th codexes a thousand times better than the model pictures of 7th but hey, can't have it all.

 buddha wrote:
Actually my only beef is that I love the beautiful artwork and page layout of the 6th codexes a thousand times better than the model pictures of 7th but hey, can't have it all.

GW is never going back to unit artwork, due to losing the Chapterhouse lawsuit. Showing the actual model for each unit removes the potential for 3rd party artistic interpretation of a different model or part.

You'll still see artwork for other stuff, but not for the army lists of in-game models and units that get played on the tabletop.

The state of the game is solely based on your gaming area. If you are just playing casual games with friends/fiendly people who take a mix of units it doesn't really matter how the rules are.

If you are a WAAC or competitive group, I can see why people would hate one edition over another.

Buy the toys, assemble and paint the toys, then play with the toys. Why so serious?

partninja wrote:
The state of the game is solely based on your gaming area. If you are just playing casual games with friends/fiendly people who take a mix of units it doesn't really matter how the rules are.

If you are a WAAC or competitive group, I can see why people would hate one edition over another.

Buy the toys, assemble and paint the toys, then play with the toys. Why so serious?

I'm not a WAAC or competitive player, but 7th pushed me out because making a fluffy army was punished even more. No, I'm not WAAC (aka. wanting to win an occasional game) but I do need the expectation of a possible win to enjoy the game.

7th is hugely flawed. Unbound is a thing. Playing bound is basically unbound with slight restrictions. Detachments give you stuff you normally would have to pay huge points for for free just for losing a few slots of CAD that you can just make up for by taking another detachment. Cover shenanigans have gotten worse...stealth confers to a squad...go to ground make units in cover indestructible. Look out sir is the dumbest mechanic ever invented. Melta still OP, Plasma still OP, Cover still OP, Seriously OP units in wave serp, wraithknight, Riptide. Psykers OP. Game is still fun but it's not really competitive in any way. It's more like magic the gathering now going tri color than a table top game.

 jreilly89 wrote:

I believe it was 5th edition, but the rulebook from 2004 had a section where you applied experience to your units and they leveled up over the course of battles. It was really wonky.

Ah, that would be campaign rules. A couple of editions have had variations on them included in the back of the book. They weren't part of the normal rules, and were largely ignored.

partninja wrote:
The state of the game is solely based on your gaming area. If you are just playing casual games with friends/fiendly people who take a mix of units it doesn't really matter how the rules are.

Buy the toys, assemble and paint the toys, then play with the toys. Why so serious?

Actually, I'd argue that balance has a greater impact on groups that are casual and care more about taking random mix of units and 'fluffy' lists.

In a competitive environment, you know to expect only the strongest, hardest lists, and many of those lists are generally known in advance, or at least known strong elements that should be considered in list building. Oddly enough, this provides probably one of the most level playing fields; no one's going to call you out for bringing three knights, or five serpents, or 3 riptides because its expected to bring a lot of strong units to make a strong list.

In a casual setting, a player may really like Knights; potentially enough so to run a mostly Knight list, or using their special formation. On the flip side, the Knight player's best friend may be a Guard player with a strong liking of abhumans and rough riders, which are generally the weakest units in the book. Both are playing fluffy lists and bringing what they enjoy, but the games are going to be so hilariously lopsided, I can't imagine either one of them finding much entertainment in curb stomping the other or being repeatedly curb stomped.

Then again, the entire notion of casual is so poorly defined that just saying 'play casual games' means almost literally nothing.

 Blacksails wrote:

partninja wrote:
The state of the game is solely based on your gaming area. If you are just playing casual games with friends/fiendly people who take a mix of units it doesn't really matter how the rules are.

Buy the toys, assemble and paint the toys, then play with the toys. Why so serious?

Actually, I'd argue that balance has a greater impact on groups that are casual and care more about taking random mix of units and 'fluffy' lists.

In a competitive environment, you know to expect only the strongest, hardest lists, and many of those lists are generally known in advance, or at least known strong elements that should be considered in list building. Oddly enough, this provides probably one of the most level playing fields; no one's going to call you out for bringing three knights, or five serpents, or 3 riptides because its expected to bring a lot of strong units to make a strong list.

In a casual setting, a player may really like Knights; potentially enough so to run a mostly Knight list, or using their special formation. On the flip side, the Knight player's best friend may be a Guard player with a strong liking of abhumans and rough riders, which are generally the weakest units in the book. Both are playing fluffy lists and bringing what they enjoy, but the games are going to be so hilariously lopsided, I can't imagine either one of them finding much entertainment in curb stomping the other or being repeatedly curb stomped.

Then again, the entire notion of casual is so poorly defined that just saying 'play casual games' means almost literally nothing.

This is just my personal experience, but the casual players tend to get more upset when they lose a game then the competitive players. I find this is true in several games that I used to compete in, back in the day (smash bros, starcraft, LoL, WoW).
It's mostly because they don't understand how a game works, and buy into the fluffy nature of the game, or have some sort of blind trust in the game developers. I've had friends tell me that everyone was viable in SSBB because "the game developers give everyone a strength and weakness, every character is equally viable", and then get outraged when they can't win with a bad character like ganon when their friend likes metaknight.
7th really takes advantage of this, by pushing fluffy players to build whatever they want, without learning the meta of the game. I'm lucky that no one has played knights at our club (there is a soft ban of super heavies there), but we warn people who come in to order them not to. Some, usually warmachine players, get quite upset by this, but so far it's worked out.

Really love it, it feels much better than 6th edition.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Objectively bad.

And I stopped reading right there.

Being more specific:

Death of pick-up games, I use X-wing for that.

For games with friends: not much has changed except we can play any strange fluff thing we want.
It is now like Apocalypse battles for less points!