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Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

gungo wrote:
Here is a silly fix that might work and deter keeping your units in reserve.

The person who goes first does NOT have a movement phase.

That means if you go first you cant deep strike until turn 2. you likely will be out of range your first turn on short range weapons, and if you deployed defensively you may not even have line of sight.

it also makes those games where first turn is random encourage you to deploy certain units instead of just keeping them off the board potentially until turn 2.

and considering the first turn is by far the LONGEST turn in terms of time played and movement especially in horde armies takes forever the first turn... this makes the game faster.

However this does hurt melee horde armies who want to move across the board as quickly as possible, who go first, and who do not have an ability to deploy or place a unit into melee range outside of the movement phase (such as a psychic power). Some of this can be fixed with psychic powers or strategems.

No. just no.

Walking/riding across the board to do anything is already a terrible thing to do, hence why assault armies deepstrike/infiltrate/outflank/teleport or otherwise 'cheat' units up the field.
And you want to give them a 50/50 chance to not move on T1 and instead let the enemy shoot them a bunch for free?

How does this solve anything?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Strategy ratings were definitely a thing in 2nd edition. Orks were a 3, but doubled to a 6 for the roll for first turn.

 daedalus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

That's been a consistent thing for quite a few years now. You'll get maybe 6-8 pieces (on average) of terrain of varying size, most of which in past years would have been able to obscure but not hide most vehicles.

That alone tends to create a very different meta from what a lot of people are apparently used to.

Yeah. . . that's one of the biggest problems, imo. Going first is going to mean a lot more without decent terrain. Not just for LOS purposes, but allowing units to start the game in cover too.

I'd also like to see the reserve rules changed somehow. Deep striking with "half the number of units" can still mean 1600 points out of a 2000 point list.

In 4th Ed. they had "Omega level" rules for games, which did something like you could only deploy a few troops and an HQ at the start of the game, and then the game escalated as reserves came in. This coupled with better LOS blocking rules (forests completely blocked LOS, for example) meant that games developed more organically over a couple turns, making the important turns 3-4 instead of 1-2. Not saying it's the best solution, a lot has changed since, but it worked well in my area at the time. Something similar could help change things up.

I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

There needs to be more LOS blocking techniques. It may not change how much is lost, but players will have more control over WHAT is lost. Then deployment becomes more of a strategy.

We play with a lot of buildings and such that creates choke points and blind sectors all over the field. It also restricts deep strikers and they're ability to get a direct path to the targets. It helps tremendously. I don't think we've had many tablings before turn 5, and none since we started more Urban and dense city scape style maps (above 1000 points). There are still games decided by tabling, but it doesn't usually happen until turn 5+.

Area terrain needs a good hard look, too. It is pretty garbage. Instructing LOS through it may help, but I cannot say without testing.

 Kanluwen wrote:
I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

If you read the "Final Table" thread, apparently it's fine for the top-of-the-line players to totally drop the ball and forget rules, and not a problem that requires addressing or even acknowledgement.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

If you read the "Final Table" thread, apparently it's fine for the top-of-the-line players to totally drop the ball and forget rules, and not a problem that requires addressing or even acknowledgement.

Yeah because that's definitely what's been said in that thread as opposed to it being a debate over the role of judges/refs in events of that size.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Changing the parameters in some of the missions would be good too. For example, we currently have 2 types..malestrom and eternal war. If this was expanded with sub factions that had different requirements, so that perhaps some were classed as "Meeting Engagements" where DS could not occur on Turn 1, but can in the other sub factions. This would force list building to cater for possible Turn 1 Deepstrike or maybe Turn 2 or later. Combine this with the Always counts as moving and second player always starts in cover (gone to ground), then the potential for Alpha Strike diminishes. More variables are what is needed so that a player can't plan his army around so many fixed parameters. He would need some versatility in the list.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Well, it has significant ramifications. If you want horde armies to always go first, do it by points (so they can still bring a massive horde of 100 guardsmen, and then spend 1600 points on Custodes/whoever brings the best SR) and if you want elite armies to always go first, do it by model count (so they can bring 1600 points of custodes/whatever brings the best SR, and then a massive horde of 100 guardsmen).

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

This is exactly how everyone feels in my gaming group. 8th ed killed all interest in 40k. Just like sigmar killed my gaming groups love for warhammer fantasy.

Time will tell, but in my group the "CCG" style of design is driving players away with overly simplistic gameplay.

Every one of us used to be "all in" for EVERY GW release for BOTH systems. Now my group is no longer paying attention to any GW releases. It's sad.

Pancakey wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

This is exactly how everyone feels in my gaming group. 8th ed killed all interest in 40k. Just like sigmar killed my gaming groups love for warhammer fantasy.

Time will tell, but in my group the "CCG" style of design is driving players away with overly simplistic gameplay.

Every one of us used to be "all in" for EVERY GW release for BOTH systems. Now my group is no longer paying attention to any GW releases. It's sad.

And in my gaming group 8th has seen us add a consistent 8 to 10 players each weekend with that number moving up as they've released codexes. Anecdotes are worthless.

That is freaking impressive!


How many hundreds of players do you have?

Its irrelevant how many people either of us have. Both of our stories are anecdotal, or do you intend to tell me you have a gaming group of over 500 people who've all dropped all GW? If that's the case I'd love to know where you play.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Well it means a rewrite from the ground up i suspect or at lerast of the points so you would address this at that point

Soup or broth is an entirely different topic I do think an army has to pick what codex it is and only get CPs from detachments wholely from that codex. You would bolt strategy rating onto that.

Or bolt CPs to the warlord and only detachments that match his most restrictive key word. As to going first I haven't seen it make or break many of my games. I play mono-GK and made my list to work if I go first or second.

I will say that terrain has a lot of effect on a game and I wish GW spent more time on terrain rules.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Its irrelevant how many people either of us have. Both of our stories are anecdotal, or do you intend to tell me you have a gaming group of over 500 people who've all dropped all GW? If that's the case I'd love to know where you play.

Agreed. Even in a fairly large local group, you can't just assume the feelings and opinions will proportionally scale up to national or international levels. Just because 75% of people in a group might hate 8e, doesn't mean that's true of the set of all 40k players.

For instance, a single person who is good at debating and has strong opinions can sway a whole group's general impressions one way or the other potentially.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Well, it has significant ramifications. If you want horde armies to always go first, do it by points (so they can still bring a massive horde of 100 guardsmen, and then spend 1600 points on Custodes/whoever brings the best SR) and if you want elite armies to always go first, do it by model count (so they can bring 1600 points of custodes/whatever brings the best SR, and then a massive horde of 100 guardsmen).

Whatever you do to sort out soup is going to have "serious ramifications" and if they want to take 1600pts of Cutodes and spend the rest on guard, fair enough, if you want to do it by model count, cool, like I said before its very easy to sort out, bet we could sit down for a day and make it work.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Well - with deep strike being handed out like candy - there needs a suitable counter.

Putting out a ton of chaff helps but if deepstrike is going to be so prevalent - interceptor within 12 inches also needs to be more prevalent. Perhaps tau will put this crap to bed in the meta but the real core issue here is the flyrant is getting close combat ability for free. MRC is a 20 point weapon (at least).

Another issue is mawlocks. Their attack is screwing up order of operations here - they kill units in the movement phase allowing tyrants to bypass your screens. This is an easy fix - just change the phase the mawlock makes it's attacks in - make it the shooting phase. Now even with 7 tyrants you aren't hitting anything valuable turn 1 with assault.

You sir totally need to L2P...a nerf for Mawlocs is completely unwarranted given the already built in nerf to multiple Mawlocs...

It's not actually a nerf to mawlocks. It would be a nerf to tyrants. Please don't start with the L2P.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

That's been a consistent thing for quite a few years now. You'll get maybe 6-8 pieces (on average) of terrain of varying size, most of which in past years would have been able to obscure but not hide most vehicles.

That alone tends to create a very different meta from what a lot of people are apparently used to.

Yeah. . . that's one of the biggest problems, imo. Going first is going to mean a lot more without decent terrain. Not just for LOS purposes, but allowing units to start the game in cover too.

I'd also like to see the reserve rules changed somehow. Deep striking with "half the number of units" can still mean 1600 points out of a 2000 point list.

In 4th Ed. they had "Omega level" rules for games, which did something like you could only deploy a few troops and an HQ at the start of the game, and then the game escalated as reserves came in. This coupled with better LOS blocking rules (forests completely blocked LOS, for example) meant that games developed more organically over a couple turns, making the important turns 3-4 instead of 1-2. Not saying it's the best solution, a lot has changed since, but it worked well in my area at the time. Something similar could help change things up.

Totally agree!
Not much can be done about the terrain issue but I 100% agree that going first is 10 times more valuable if your opponent has no where to hide.
I think a good table has enough LOS blocking terrain to cover your important peices so if they want to come at you 100% - it's going to be a situation where your best units will be able to retaliate against their best units (while their alpha strike fell on the units you picked to not completely hide). It's still probably better to go first in this situation but at least the game is closer.

When it comes to deep striking units I also agree. It should be about points - not units.

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

fething preach brother.

An easy short term fix would be to have you not able to do Deepstrike more than half your POINTS rather than UNITs.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
There needs to be more LOS blocking techniques. It may not change how much is lost, but players will have more control over WHAT is lost. Then deployment becomes more of a strategy.

One of the biggest issues is that, much like Infinity, it seems like environmental rules are a thing that GW wants to push but are afraid to have be mandatory.

We play with a lot of buildings and such that creates choke points and blind sectors all over the field. It also restricts deep strikers and they're ability to get a direct path to the targets. It helps tremendously. I don't think we've had many tablings before turn 5, and none since we started more Urban and dense city scape style maps (above 1000 points). There are still games decided by tabling, but it doesn't usually happen until turn 5+.

Area terrain needs a good hard look, too. It is pretty garbage. Instructing LOS through it may help, but I cannot say without testing.

You would love the way that Forgebane's environmental stuff works then.
On a 1, a "Corrosive Squall" rolls in. Players have to make a single saving throw for each unit that is not wholly within a terrain feature. if the save is failed, unit suffers a Mortal Wound.
2-3, Dust Storms roll in. Until the end of this Battle Round, the range of all ranged weapons is reduced by 6" to a minimum of 12".
4+ Clear weather: nothing additional applies.

What I’d like to see.

Weapon scaling to hordes. The Demolisher gun scales from 3D3 to D6 based on 5+ models in the unit. I think this should scale to 2d6 on 15 models in the target squad. I think Flamer weapons, and other weapons of massive anti horde ability in editions paste should scale also. If your shooting a flamer at 10+ models, it should go to 2D6 automatic hits as an example. Other weapons of this type should get the same treatment in other factions.

Revamping Detachments. I don’t know if that is removing some, adding others, limiting the specific detachments.

Soup something. Maybe that could be a bonus to mono-theme armies, maybe a restructure on what stratagems they can use, maybe a limit to 1 detachment can be souped. I don’t know the answer. (just my opinion man)

I kind hope they also do something really crazy in the course correction to give some of these people who seem to hate the game a reason to leave… finally. Because GW kinda build something you liked 5 editions ago shouldn’t be a reason for you to still be here screaming about how something in a current edition you don’t even play.

Reemule wrote:
I think Flamer weapons, and other weapons of massive anti horde ability in editions paste should scale also. If your shooting a flamer at 10+ models, it should go to 2D6 automatic hits as an example. Other weapons of this type should get the same treatment in other factions.

This, in particular, is something I think would be a fantastic idea.

I don't know if the "scaling guns to unit sizes" is really a solution.

You'll end up with 3x 10 Termagaunts instead of 30, but they all take up the same space, give you more CP, if you want, and can be deployed exactly identically to 30.

That's a valid point, though it does somewhat limit aura shenanigans, slingshots, and magic conga lines.