40k has lost its way - killing is all that matters

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**Not Online!!!**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Jidmah wrote:
I'm still wondering why I can't fit my 5th edition ork army into 2000 points though...

I wanna say it's probably the cost of vehicles/bikes?

TBF, bikes and boss bikers by extension got shafted, hard.

**BlaxicanX**

Jidmah wrote:
I'm still wondering why I can't fit my 5th edition ork army into 2000 points though...

Gee boss I don't know, why didn't my rogue trader list fit into 2,000 points in 5th edition wow it's such a mystery.

**CapRichard**

I don't remember an edition where the focus wasn't on KILLING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT BECAUSE IT'S FUN!

Arguably, i saw more people play with terrain and the mission with 8ed than before... which is weir, honestly.

**Not Online!!!**

CapRichard wrote:
I don't remember an edition where the focus wasn't on KILLING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT BECAUSE IT'S FUN!

Arguably, i saw more people play with terrain and the mission with 8ed than before... which is weir, honestly.

I mean considering baseline 40k terrain rules., regardless if more or less terain, that ain't changing much, unless ofcourse you houserule.
Which i reccomend.
And seemingly in this thread alot of people aswell.

**Banville**

Karol wrote:
My dad showed me a battle between two armies in an old white dwarf that had ultramarines and IG, fighting vs tyranids on some ice planet. heavy stuff could sink in to the ice depths. I don't think that both armies had a 100 models on the table.

I don't know when, but at some time the point drop of everything must have been huge. Like 50% on everything or more. Oddly enough in an old GK codex, they still cost 20 plus points.

I think in 2nd Edition a Tactical Squad kitted out with a suped-up sergeant, heavy and special weapon came in at 325pts.

But even then the missions were secondary to the sheer fun of massacring your opponent's toy soldiers.

What HAS changed is the nature of terrain. There were very few games where you could trace line of sight across the table. Area Terrain blocked it. And did so up until 5th,I think. I remember in 4th that Tau jump-shoot-jump was nasty because of their ability to scoot behind a wood or a ruin.

**DudleyGrim**

While the game HAS gotten more aggressive, I can honestly say that the vast majority of games I have won were by playing the objectives in the mission. Granted, I dont play very aggressive armies, but playing the game mission is still very important.

**Martel732**

Tabling has always been an autowin. I lost a 2nd ed game by tabling before I even took a turn.

**Wayniac**

Martel732 wrote:
Tabling has always been an autowin. I lost a 2nd ed game by tabling before I even took a turn.

Virus Outbreak?

**Martel732**

No. I was playing marines. Eldar just killed all my models in one shooting phase because shurikens. And sustained fire dice.

IG gunlines already win largely by shooting people off objectives. You can't score objectives if you have no models.

**Saturmorn Carvilli**

Vankraken wrote:

That said the killteam rules seem to punish armies like Orks more due to flat modifiers hurting poor BS armies more than better BS skill armies.

To be fair, if the Unit doesn't have a BS 3+ they all are shooting like Orks in Kill Team with Long Range/Obscured. I play Orks (always Bad Moons too) alot in Kill Team. I think there is something very liberating in needing like 8-9 to hit (Long Range, Cover, Assault/Heavy, Flesh Wounds, Stealth Fields, etc.) but sixes still always hit with Orks. In many ways using Kill Team shooting modifiers in full 40k would aid the Orks quite a bit. Even the best shooters are likely hitting only 50% of the time (and I would give out cover like candy same as Kill Team does) or worse giving footsloggers or melee armies a little left when they get to assault range. I would make Ork big guns with low shots a harder sell though. I don't know if I would directly port Kill Team ranged attack modifiers without making so further adjustments as well. I do think it would work out fine and get 40k closer to a game of a couple of rounds of engagement fire before assaulting that feels like the text book way games should go to me.

I always lean on the idea that 40k really should bring back/improve a suppression/pinning mechanic of some sort. At the same time reducing the actual killing potential of everything a bit. I find weird to have a platoon (okay more like company) based game with automatic weapons that doesn't have any real fire and maneuver mechanics. On top of that, perhaps one of the biggest selling points of 40k is seeing the spectacle of two armies of the table which can be very short lived as big chunks of those armies are scooped off the table. I would much rather it be a bit more difficult to remove models but about as easy as it is now to pin units that might have for go a turn to rally or fight with reducing power. I am brainstorming something like using the current leadership tests not removing models but forcing that unit losing that many models in fighting strength until they spend a rally action or something. The attack still caused a loss in combat effectiveness (or so if the unit rallies) but that unit still might be able to do something provided no more pressure is applied to them. An ignored pinned unit might even get themselves back in action mid to late game as well. I still miss suppression mechanics of Bolt Action and to a lesser degree Dust Battlefield and Dust Warfare.

I definitely want to see tabling as something that is incredibly hard but not impossible to do within 6 turns. I think a good casualty range for the type of game 40k is more like about 50%-75% of the starting army is removed off the table at the end of 6 turns.

**Crimson**

Whilst I don't think IGUGO is inherently an unworkable system, more killy the game is worse it becomes. Having units wiped out before they can act just is not fun nor does it result an interesting gameplay. Now assuming that they do not want to completely rewrite the system into some sort of alternate activation, there are some things they could do.

First is simple. Decrease the killyness of units. Show some restraint in giving offensive buffs and in writing stats of weapons. Weapons that are both multishot and multidamage need to be rarer in particular. AP should really be held in check too. AP better than -3 really doesn't need to exist and even that should be rare.

Better terrain. Now, everyone seems to agree on this one. Getting unobstructed shots is way too easy; intervening terrain doing absolutely nothing unless it is completely LOS blocking is a particularly big failure. Also the cover should do more. AP is handed out like candy, so one more point of armour is not so handy. Cover should probably grant hit penalties (armywide traits should not.) This would also make intuitively more sense as cover would not benefit already well armoured warriors more than lightly armoured ones like it now does.

More status effects. This one is most complex, but potentially most interesting. There should be more stuff that does things other than kill. Morale is the biggest and most obvious avenue for this. It is really boring that now morale just might result some extra kills if you kill a lot of models. Seems redundant. Instead morale should work more like in the older editions, and force status effects that would make units unable to hold objectives, fight worse or perhaps even force movement. More weapons an psychic powers should inflict status effects as well. For example grav weapons seem to lack a role currently, but I could easily see them slowing the units they hit. And of course this would give GW a change to sell packs of status effect markers!

**Martel732**

AP is handed out like candy, but so are invulns. It makes for ROF being king. Again.

**Grimtuff**

Daedalus81 wrote:
I think nostalgia has colored your glasses. Leaf Blower's aim was to totally remove your army from the table. You can't hold objectives if you don't have models.

You're being incredibly disingenuous with that comment. Leafblower was one list. One list that I never. EVER saw IRL. It was a theoretical list and nothing more. A normal list around that time would not table something, even your Vulkan He'Stan triple Redeemer list would struggle to wipe out a whole army.

In my entire time of playing 3rd through 5th I can only recall a single time I tabled someone in the mission (4th ed?) where you got VPs for killing your opponent's models as per usual but also got VPs for your own units alive at the end of the game. I tabled him and won the game 3000vps to zero as all my units were above half strength or vehicles were not immobile by the end of the game. That was a very lucky turn of events to get that though.

**Blackie**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Jidmah wrote:
I'm still wondering why I can't fit my 5th edition ork army into 2000 points though...

I wanna say it's probably the cost of vehicles/bikes?

Bikes are cheaper now. In 5th they were 25ppm, plus the nob upgrade and the bosspole were another 15 points that are spared now. Pks were also 25 points and now 13, probably 9 soon.

A tipycal battlewagon had a rolla and 1-2 big shootas, so 115-120 points, now it's 139, not a huge difference.

Trukks are a bit more expensive now, 64 compared to 40 (including the mandatory ram), but some of the most common characters were more expensive back then.

I honestly have no idea why a 5th edition ork army (when the standard format was 1500 points, but I can ask the same question even if it was 1750) can't fit into 2000 points of an 8th edition game.

**Adeptus Doritos**

Unpopular Opinion: Super-Heavies shouldn't be in games of 1000 points or less.

Just my opinion.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

some bloke wrote:
Now, this may seem like a weird thing to say - a game depicting the most violent future ever, preoccupied with killing? Never!

My point is that, when I was playing in older editions, tabling the opponent was a lot less common. You had units which your guns couldn't hurt, and that was your fault for not bringing anti-tank, and you had units which were too big to hurt, and that was your fault for not bringing enough template weapons. But more importantly, the game was fought over objectives, and it was rare for an army to be lowered below 25% of their starting models by turn 6/7, at least in my meta. Reading through old white dwarf batreps has reinforced this for me.

I think that GW lost their way as soon as they started trying to make units capable of deleting units. When people found that you couldn't kill hordes fast enough to table the opponent, higher RoF weapons started to appear. When players found that they couldn't kill a pure-tank list, most of which were toting these new high-RoF weapons, they brought in hull points to make tanks vanish when the paint got chipped.

Now we have repulsors who can reliably delete near enough any non-superheavy in a turn, every turn. We have leman russes shooting their 20-shot guns twice a turn. We have ex-blast weapons which are brilliant at killing tanks and overkill for infantry.

It used to be that if you found yourself facing a horde, you had to think tactically on how to pull a win out of a game where it was unfeasable to kill them all. Now, everything is tuned to the max for killing and the tactics are simply what to kill first. A whole army of terminators was hard to kill, but easy to outmanoeuvre. Now, with everyone tuned up for maximum damage output, bringing terminators is a joke. It used to be terminators would shrug off anything except anti-tank weapons. Units throwing out bucketloads of dice was the exception, like a full ork horde making it into combat intact. Now, 3 aggressors put out enough firepower to suck the fun out of playing against them.

They made the game too fast. First you could run instead of shoot, then you got a 2D6" charge, then they brought in rules to let you move, advance and charge. You used to get 1-2 turns grace before combat, then they made turn 1 or 2 charges almost a given, then they ramped up the firepower to compensate, and now here we are, almost everything dies almost every game. I think that they could tone it down significantly if they just slowed everything down - drop charges back to 6", advancing to D3". Then they wouldn't need a gun that puts out 20 shots at a time, twice per turn, or units which fire 12+2D6 shots per model in units up to 6, rerolling yadda yadda yadda. everyone could just breathe we could return to needing 2 turns to kill things if you don't focus on them, and you'll have a chance to react to your opponent instead of numbly watching your army get destroyed in a single turn.

That's my thoughts, anyway.

My thoughts:
I have not been tabled this edition, at all. [I can't say the same for my opponents] All of the games I have lost I lost because I failed to occupy and hold enough objectives to win the game.

I can probably count the number of games where I won by tabling when I wouldn't also have won on objective on my hands, though I haven't kept count, and I know at least two of those were because I destroyed half the enemy army in two turns and the other half couldn't arrive so the scoring didn't progress long enough to look different, and in those cases the tabling definitely wasn't really a factor of my doing so much as them getting greedy on Deep Strike.

**Voss**

Pancakey wrote:
8th has been officially painted into a corner faster than you can say “matt ward”.

The only way to fix 40k is to release a new edition and sell you 123 more rule sources.

Like 7th, its all those extra rules sources that are the problem. They provide multiplier after multiplier and don't balance.

Not a divergence from fictional 'classic' armies, or people suddenly hating marines for existing or whatever the complaint of the week is.

**Not Online!!!**

Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Unpopular Opinion: Super-Heavies shouldn't be in games of 1000 points or less.

Just my opinion.

Tbh that isn't really unpopular.
Infact going even higher with the min point requirement wouldn't be that unpopular i rekon

**Gadzilla666**

Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Unpopular Opinion: Super-Heavies shouldn't be in games of 1000 points or less.

Just my opinion.

I love playing my super heavys but I'm going to do you one better.

No super heavys below 2000 just like hh. I could maybe go for the no more than 25% of points rule too if gw would just fix the points on non ik/ck low.

**Headlss**

Meaningful cover wpuld be am amazing.

The last edition of epic also used blastmakers. A unit would do damage but they could also place blast markers on their target.

A unit full of blastmakers had reduced fire power and reduced assult.

**Smirrors**

I feel the slide to the current point was when flyers were introduced and became prevalent. This was around 6th edition from memory. Flyers prior to this point were more FW and rarely seen. My nightmare from 6th was the helldrake.

**Pointed Stick**

Smirrors wrote:
I feel the slide to the current point was when flyers were introduced and became prevalent. This was around 6th edition from memory. Flyers prior to this point were more FW and rarely seen. My nightmare from 6th was the helldrake.

This is my memory too. 3rd-5th played very similarly as I recall, with each edition being a refinement of the previous one. Then came 6th edition and all hell broke loose: we got flyers and super-heavies and hull points and 2D6" charge ranges+overwatch fire and advance moves and rapid fire weapons with no movement penalties and fire-on-the-move heavy weapons and "Look out, Sir!" and challenges and a thousand pages of USRs. The game just totally broke. It feels like GW has been trying to clean up the mess since then. I miss my 5th edition. ...Except for the vehicle rules. They were awful.

**Daedalus81**

Grimtuff wrote:
Daedalus81 wrote:
I think nostalgia has colored your glasses. Leaf Blower's aim was to totally remove your army from the table. You can't hold objectives if you don't have models.

You're being incredibly disingenuous with that comment. Leafblower was one list. One list that I never. EVER saw IRL. It was a theoretical list and nothing more. A normal list around that time would not table something, even your Vulkan He'Stan triple Redeemer list would struggle to wipe out a whole army.

In my entire time of playing 3rd through 5th I can only recall a single time I tabled someone in the mission (4th ed?) where you got VPs for killing your opponent's models as per usual but also got VPs for your own units alive at the end of the game. I tabled him and won the game 3000vps to zero as all my units were above half strength or vehicles were not immobile by the end of the game. That was a very lucky turn of events to get that though.

The entirety of 7th was one giant punch fest with D-weapons. People weren't aiming for objectives then, either. The notion that previous editions were more enlightened is not true. You even mentioned kill points, which was one of the most popular "missions" for quite some time.

**AnomanderRake**

Daedalus81 wrote:
...The entirety of 7th was one giant punch fest with D-weapons. People weren't aiming for objectives then, either. The notion that previous editions were more enlightened is not true...

The notion that 7th was more enlightened is false, sure. I personally think 4th was quite a lot more enlightened.

**TheAvengingKnee**

Smirrors wrote:
I feel the slide to the current point was when flyers were introduced and became prevalent. This was around 6th edition from memory. Flyers prior to this point were more FW and rarely seen. My nightmare from 6th was the helldrake.

There were a few models in 5th that became flyers in 6th, storm ravens and doom/night scythes come to mind, they were just fast skimmers in 5th.

**AnomanderRake**

TheAvengingKnee wrote:
Smirrors wrote:
I feel the slide to the current point was when flyers were introduced and became prevalent. This was around 6th edition from memory. Flyers prior to this point were more FW and rarely seen. My nightmare from 6th was the helldrake.

There were a few models in 5th that became flyers in 6th, storm ravens and doom/night scythes come to mind, they were just fast skimmers in 5th.

I'd point at the introduction of jump-MCs (Riptide/Dreadknight/Wraithknight) and easy move-and-fire AP2 large blasts (Riptide again) in 5th. That feels like the point where new models stopped being an interesting side-grade that let you build lists differently, and more of the "OMG BUY THREE OF THE NEW THING AND WIN GAMES" overblown bigger-is-better design that came into its own with Escalation and Flyers in 6th.

**WhiteDog**

Imo the 8th was kinda good in the beginning. The problem is that GW is totally inconsistent : codexes are very imbalanced, even in the most basic things (all armies do not have the same number of relic / stratagem ; there are some stratagems that are so good that they define an entire army, like the Vect, etc.). The imbalances created by those inconsistencies force GW into producing more and more rules up to a point where some armies just stomp others and can table in a few turn.

**mightymconeshot**

Riptides were 6th. DE had their planes first introduced as very fast skimmers in 5e and I think the Storm Raven which was a Blood Angel only unit I believe to go with their fast vehicle theme. Otherwise I don't think there were any other "flyers" released in 5e.

5ths problem had to do with a few core rulebook problems and a few books at the end of the edition. I think if that edition had been modified and refined like 8th is, it would have been a fantastic basis. The only thing I miss really is formations from future editions and not the ridiculous ones of 7th but the more subtle theme ones such as the void claw formation for Space Wolves that allowed the squad to act as Teleport beacon and come in early. Those were fun. The stupid deep striking ridiculous grav weapons locked behind a theoretical paywall that no one actually abided by was something that should burn.

**TheAvengingKnee**

AnomanderRake wrote:
TheAvengingKnee wrote:
Smirrors wrote:
I feel the slide to the current point was when flyers were introduced and became prevalent. This was around 6th edition from memory. Flyers prior to this point were more FW and rarely seen. My nightmare from 6th was the helldrake.

There were a few models in 5th that became flyers in 6th, storm ravens and doom/night scythes come to mind, they were just fast skimmers in 5th.

I'd point at the introduction of jump-MCs (Riptide/Dreadknight/Wraithknight) and easy move-and-fire AP2 large blasts (Riptide again) in 5th. That feels like the point where new models stopped being an interesting side-grade that let you build lists differently, and more of the "OMG BUY THREE OF THE NEW THING AND WIN GAMES" overblown bigger-is-better design that came into its own with Escalation and Flyers in 6th.

Kind of yeah, though the riptide wasn’t out until 6th ed

**urzaplanewalker**

Lethality in regular 40k is a serious problem with power creep, where attack strategems are priced significantly lower in cp to defensive ones. I don't think GW will ever fix this issue without quite a big retooling of the game (I hear 9th is not going to change a lot).

I would highly recommend anyone that is currently unhappy with 8th edition to give the new apoc a try. Every time I play, I have 50-75% of my army still alive after turn 6 and, due to the fact that the strats come as random cards, it is much harder to assemble a big wombo combo. If 99% of the players in my area weren't unwilling to play anything but base 8th edition, I would completely change to apoc. The games are even played on bigger tables and so fit the number of models that I would normally take to a 2k point game in 8th.

Even super heavies feel extremely well balanced...