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

I loathe the wound allocation rules, the psychic phase is obnoxious, and the formations are out of control.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
If I don't like 8th than I'll play which ever version my opponent agrees to. Maybe 5th or even 2nd. 7th sucks hard. I've played fewer games this edition than anytime since I started back in 2nd. So it won't be my first choice unless we house rule the suck out of it.

A refined 5th edition would basically be the best thing that could come out of 40k at this point without a complete Sigmar-style reboot of its systems.

After 6th came out and now 7th for awhile, I HATE 5th ed. I would play 7th over 5th. It was such a stale game....

7th BRB rules are not bad, if you take out all the power creep the rules are so much more fun.


So the question is, do you guys hate the BRB rules for 7th, or all the formations/power creep that was added "After" 7th ed came out?

Also would you be fine with 7th is Formations were Apoc only?

BRB rules do need some tweaks, but yes, my main disagreement with 7th is the formations, multiple CADs, unlimited allies, Lords of War, Super-heavies, gargantuan monstrous creatures, etc etc. All the stuff that used to be Apoc. The games of 7th that I've played without all that have been enjoyable, even with my old man memory trying to apply previous versions of rules. But I'm just a grumpy old man...

I will probably sell off the armies I don't play much and keep my 30k models and use them as a 40k chapter too.

So long as I can play games, and use the IG I spent years accumulating, I don't mind which we play. Nobody is gonna come in my house and take my books away, so I'm not scared.
I'd be a bit upset if the lore took a nuke.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
I loathe the wound allocation rules, the psychic phase is obnoxious, and the formations are out of control.

So much this.

The wound allocation rules are the railroad-spike-in-head dumb for me. WTF were they thinking? Here, let's have a set of allocation rules that are fine at a skirmish level, but do not scale up in the slightest. Makes playing Orks or Nids even more of a masochistic experience.

1) make it so only infantry are obsec (nerfs battle company)
2) bikes no longer relentless (nerfs gravbikes/scatbikes)
3) psychic phase overhaul (nerf invis/summoning)
4) characters can only join units of same faction (nerfs superfriends builds)

tada, balance improved without needing drastic codex changes (would still do a new codex for those that haven't had the 7th ed treatment yet).

I'd play it for awhile and see how I actually felt about it instead of making a knee-jerk reaction.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
If I don't like 8th than I'll play which ever version my opponent agrees to. Maybe 5th or even 2nd. 7th sucks hard. I've played fewer games this edition than anytime since I started back in 2nd. So it won't be my first choice unless we house rule the suck out of it.

A refined 5th edition would basically be the best thing that could come out of 40k at this point without a complete Sigmar-style reboot of its systems.

After 6th came out and now 7th for awhile, I HATE 5th ed. I would play 7th over 5th. It was such a stale game....

7th BRB rules are not bad, if you take out all the power creep the rules are so much more fun.


So the question is, do you guys hate the BRB rules for 7th, or all the formations/power creep that was added "After" 7th ed came out?

Also would you be fine with 7th is Formations were Apoc only?

Formations AND all that superheavy staff)

Also no random rolls on warlord traits, spells, splitfire for different weapon in same unit, separate cover save from armour save (like pick the hightest between invul, fnp or cover), nerf bikes and then we have a deal

I play so seldom that although rules are very important to me, I'd just be happy to roll some dice with my friends.

Most of my group has agreed - we are going to stop playing 7th and play 5th if 8th sucks hard.

Could be worse, you could get a new edition, that puts the rules on cards, only available with new models, or in an overly complex form in a book that may or may not come with rules for everything beyond a few units specifically repackaged for the new release.

You could end up with two or three flavours of marines, and everything else "coming soon!"

You could get a rules re-boot and GW pretending there are no existing players...


/snarky

Assuming I keep playing, I'll go with whatever the group goes with. My concern is all they do is attempt to patch the system (which is all they have done since 3rd). I believe the rules are at a point now that they need a total rewrite.

And seriously, get rid of all the formations.

I think they need to go through every rule and ask 'what are we trying to achieve with this rule' and 'is there a better way we can achieve it'

This applies even more so with special rules. Grab all the special rules for all the formations, all the codex's, all the supplements and ask what are we trying to achieve with this rule, and can we create a generic (special) rule that will achieve this.

I know that when I started out (2nd ed) I found the game was more about the 'image' of what was taking place than what the rule said happened.

I also don't like that games are getting bigger (model count wise) sure, its cool to do huge games from time to time, but if they toned down the scale of the games they could add some extra detail (making the different phases more involved) - now, I don't want to pull right back to 2nd, games took too long for their size, but the idea of average toughness, average weapon skills, that annoys me. Pair off against who you are fighting.

I also don't think it would hurt to bring back +/- for range, weapon types, firing when moving etc.

I wouldn't object if they got rid of the instant death rule from double T weapons either, they make for far more dramatic moments when nothing is a sure thing.

Ok, rant over

I won't sell anything (or maybe the stuff bought for new projects that are not worth starting it any more) but won't get with the new edition either.

It depends on my local group, but it will be Warpath FireFight or switching completely to historical games (SAGA is already a thing, and Bolt Action has a chance to replace 40k)

The big problems with the 7th ed core rulebook are easy to identify.
- The Army Comp system is a burning bag of poop that has been urinated on in an effort to put it out, but that attempt failed, and so now it is just extra smelly.
- The Psychic phase was poorly designed, and is absurdly time consuming / Complicated.
- The rules for Super Heavies and Strength D weren't well thought out, and don't function right.
- The game doesn't scale right or really at all (Mostly due to army comp).

To fix the big problems, the easiest thing to do is bring back Apoc as a different way to play. Super Heavies, Formations, and Strength D are limited to Apoc. Apoc is unlimited Detachments. Normal 40K is 1 Detachment per 1,000 points.

That plus a rewrite of the psychic phase would go a long way to make the game scalable, and fun.

However, these were all problems evident from Day 1. Nobody read the 7th ed rulebook, and didn't immediately recognize that these are the problems. The Army Comp was so bad as to be functionally unplayable, and so everyone had to house rule it to even play a game. To make matters worse, every new release has essentially exacerbated the problems. It is clear that what I consider problems, the rules team would consider great successes. To them, this was the point of 7th to introduce these awful mechanics. I think we a fooling ourselves if we expect 8th to be a major improvement. I'm sure many marginal things will change, and some of them for the better, but a rules team this visionary / incompetent / Idiotic isn't going to turn out a set of rules that is significantly better than the current crop. You'd need a real shakeup on the rules team, and specifically at the management (Jervis) level.

Would I like GW to release a tight, fun, and playable 8th edition. You Bet. But I think that is entirely unrealistic. A much more realistic hope is that they release a rule-set so bad that we finally give up on them as rules writers, and switch over to a fan-made or alternative company rule set that is written by people that care about their product, have a consistent design philosophy, design and testing procedures that make some amount of sense, and have at least a limit degree of competence in rules design and technical writing.

My biggest fear for 8th is that it is a lateral move. Because 7th is in a terrible place right now. It is clearly not a game for me. I want a wargame that is scalable, and easy to play as a friendly pick-up game among a fairly large group of friends. 7th doesn't work for that. But it works well for Min/Max extreme power gamers. It works well for "I only play with people that aren't A-Holes" Garage hammer types. It works well for "Rules Don't Matter" extremely casual gamers, and it works well for "Let's have our game master house-rule everything for this campaign to make it work" narrative gamers. If you stitch those groups together you've got enough to keep a functional player base and avoid a mass exodus to better rules, but that leaves an awful lot of gamers like me who are pretty unhappy.

After years of painting and modeling and playing maybe a dozen or so games between 6th and 7th edition, I'm interested in returning to the local league if the next edition is different than the last two. I haven't kept up with and GW news for about 9 months or so, so I have a very vague sense of the direction WH40k is heading in. I've browsed a few sites and blogs to see if I could glean some info but nothing really concrete seems to be out there. Maybe someone here can offer some insight?

Is 8th edition being released this year? IS there any hope or expectation of parity between the armies? Will the formations still exist, and if so, essentially dictate the nature of (pickup/semi-competitive) games? Will the rules be completely overhauled or just minor tweaks?

I know these questions will irritate some of ya but I'm having trouble finding any relevant info online, and simply don't have the time to head into the flgs or GW to socialize right now. Working 60+ hours and six days a week so I just cant budget much else into my life atm. Thanks to anyone offering even the most general of infos. Really looking forward to some free time and hoping 40k can be part of it.

Given that there probably won't be a Sisters of Battle release, there's almost no way it wouldn't disappoint, so I'll probably treat it the same way as I have seventh.

sand.zzz wrote:

Is 8th edition being released this year? IS there any hope or expectation of parity between the armies? Will the formations still exist, and if so, essentially dictate the nature of (pickup/semi-competitive) games? Will the rules be completely overhauled or just minor tweaks?

8th is coming this summer but nothing official from GW
We don't know how the game will look like in 6 months, if all books are obsolete in June or not or if it is just an update.

the common guess/hint is that Formations and Campaign books will replace the standard CAD and Codex, rules will come with the boxes and 8th will be more focused on the narrative part (replay the battles described in the campaign books)

 kodos wrote:
8th will be more focused on the narrative part (replay the battles described in the campaign books)

Man, that would be one of the shittiest moves they've ever done.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing can be as bad as 7th edition. Or maybe, it's not that 7th is bad, but the whole Formations, Detachments, and Unbound has gotten completely out of control. There are a few Psychic Powers that need an overhaul as they have broken the game (cough cough Invisibility cough). Things like the Psychic Phase in general is nice, and Overwatch is a great rule they brought back. The vehicle rules need to be gutted and completely re-written, or Monstrous Creatures will ALWAYS be better then any vehicle or walker. The melee to hit chart is a joke- WS 10 vs. WS 1 should not be a 3+/5+. It should be auto hit/auto miss at those levels. Challenges make no sense and have zero impact on the close combat. Rules bloat is everywhere- why so many different special rules for moving and shooting? Why Precision Shots and Precision Strikes when you have "Look Out, Sir!"? My favorite is the characters that gain Precision Strikes in melee when they are fighting a challenge.

At least there are not a bunch of "Gotcha!" style rules like other systems, but there are a lot of rules, and I see a lot of them being misplayed all the time. Every time I'm playing the game, I'm looking up a rule to prove it, or show my opponent something he didn't know, and that's a frustrating, annoying problem in 7th.

Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

 Melissia wrote:
Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

Yeah I agree with this. There is an issue with some factions not having too few (or none) formations or not very useful formations whilst other factions being spoiled for choice. The concept is great though.

if they drop that tombstone of a rule book in favor for AoS style, i might actualy begin to play that game.

7th is already such a disaster that it's basically killed play for me. If 8th were worse, I don't think it would any difference at this point, a dead scene can't be made any deader.

Between ramping up of unit power levels, formations, mix-n-match detachments, freebies, allies, and the scale issues, 40k really is just an awful game that's only playable if both players spend some time negotiating dozens of aspects and essentially re-writing the game themselves. Hard to see how an 8E could make it any worse, points values are already effectively meaningless, as are FoC restrictions, it's already early AoS but with even less balance.

 Melissia wrote:
Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

We didn't need formations to make the game fluffy. People had no problems doing that for years without formations, so lets not pretend that's what formations are about.

Guess I'll just keep the hobby on hiatus until we see exactly what happens with the game when 8th edition is released. Thanks for the feedback guys.

 SolarCross wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

Yeah I agree with this. There is an issue with some factions not having too few (or none) formations or not very useful formations whilst other factions being spoiled for choice. The concept is great though.

When I first read about formations I thought they were crazy, but they've grown on me. The FOC makes less and less sense to me. Counter-intuitively, I think the FOC makes more sense (fluff-wise) as a combined arms formation for apocalypse sized games than it does for normal sized games.

There are some broken formations and some factions have received better ones than others, but that doesn't mean the whole concept is bad.

I think it would be good if they had points costs assigned to formations like they do in AoS. I can also see having some sort of over-arching requirements that the entire army has to fit into, kind of like the FOC but less restrictive.

sand.zzz wrote:
We didn't need formations to make the game fluffy.

No, but they helped and honestly aside from a few over-the-top nonsense ones, they've really helped make the game better.

I love the concept of formations. It could use work on executions, but it is a solid concept.

I'm already so used to my Orks and Tyranids being trash that them continuing to be bad won't even bother me. I have transcended the point of being able to grow any more embittered, I have ascended beyond the circle of reembitterization, accepted the four grumpy truths, walked the eightfold griping and finally reached IDGAFavana.

 Melissia wrote:

sand.zzz wrote:
We didn't need formations to make the game fluffy.

No, but they helped and honestly aside from a few over-the-top nonsense ones, they've really helped make the game better.

I love the concept of formations. It could use work on executions, but it is a solid concept.

I agree that the concept is good. But yes, the execution is a thinly veiled sales tactic that has sacrificed game quality in an attempt to push product.

 Melissia wrote:
Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

What are you talking about? "give Players more freedom to play the game how they want" should be "Give players bonuses so long as they play the game exactly the way GW wants them to, and even let's GW write the bulk of their lists for them."

 Melissia wrote:
No, but they helped and honestly aside from a few over-the-top nonsense ones, they've really helped make the game better.

I love the concept of formations. It could use work on executions, but it is a solid concept.

I disagree pretty fundamentally with this. I can agree the execution of formations has been abysmal, and a few over-the-top formations are certainly causing a great deal of the frustration, but the core concepts of formations is deeply flawed from its conceptions.

Formations are about removing player choice in list building by offering them incentives to build the lists that GW thinks that they should run. It is about raising the financial cost of army variation, and limiting army diversity by limiting list diversity. I don't think we really want any of those things. I see where GW likes raising the cost of list diversity, but I don't like that much as it makes it harder to recruit and maintain new players, and I definitely don't like the limiting effect on the meta. In 6th ed, it was a Pejorative to say someone had used a "cookie cutter netlist". Formations have essentially taken that and made it part of the rules. "I played against a War Convocation". "I'm going to see a White Scars Battle Company". "He Ran some Scatbikes with a Riptide Wing". All of those are about the limited army diversity that is the natural outcome of Formations. I play alot of 40K, and I'd love a return to a more diverse meta, and realistically the way to accomplish that is to limit formations to Apoc, or just do away with them.

tag8833 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Formations and detachments are actually the best part of 7th as far as I'm concerned. The problem isn't formations and detachments, which give the player more freedom to play the game how they want and give more reason to play fluffy lists (as long as the formations are designed to be fluffy, and they usually are)... the problem is the game rules themselves are kinda fethed.

What are you talking about? "give Players more freedom to play the game how they want" should be "Give players bonuses so long as they play the game exactly the way GW wants them to, and even let's GW write the bulk of their lists for them."

 Melissia wrote:
No, but they helped and honestly aside from a few over-the-top nonsense ones, they've really helped make the game better.

I love the concept of formations. It could use work on executions, but it is a solid concept.

I disagree pretty fundamentally with this. I can agree the execution of formations has been abysmal, and a few over-the-top formations are certainly causing a great deal of the frustration, but the core concepts of formations is deeply flawed from its conceptions.

Formations are about removing player choice in list building by offering them incentives to build the lists that GW thinks that they should run. It is about raising the financial cost of army variation, and limiting army diversity by limiting list diversity. I don't think we really want any of those things. I see where GW likes raising the cost of list diversity, but I don't like that much as it makes it harder to recruit and maintain new players, and I definitely don't like the limiting effect on the meta. In 6th ed, it was a Pejorative to say someone had used a "cookie cutter netlist". Formations have essentially taken that and made it part of the rules. "I played against a War Convocation". "I'm going to see a White Scars Battle Company". "He Ran some Scatbikes with a Riptide Wing". All of those are about the limited army diversity that is the natural outcome of Formations. I play alot of 40K, and I'd love a return to a more diverse meta, and realistically the way to accomplish that is to limit formations to Apoc, or just do away with them.

I agree with ya. I had been pretty disenchanted with 40k's rules for a couple years, but when formations were introduced, I watched myself and about 80% of the players just lose interest. When I left the last tournament I saw was a bunch of unpainted or partially painted formation lists, and a bunch of players that cared little for fluff. So the fluff argument in favor of formations is pretty weak. The fluffy players I know, including myself, pretty much shun formation play.