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Why doesn't the Battle Cannon auto hit like it use to after it generated its number of shots?

I figure that's mostly because number of hits factored in BS as well as the physical template, in (depending on edition) rolling to see if the template scatters vs reducing scatter distance by BS/

Siegfriedfr wrote:
What scares me is that some people absolutely love the current spreadsheet design of the game - and i suspect, the tournament crowd the most -, and enjoy being stuck 3+ hours around a table waiting for each others neverending blender-turn to be over.

That's how 40k has always been though. Turns and the full game aren't really any longer than they used to be since 3rd at least, as I can't speak for older editions. What it really might take longer is listbuilding or trying to learn the rules for the other factions in order to avoid gotchas. But games aren't longer than older editions.

Tiberias wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

Tiberias wrote:
As the title suggests, I am kinda confused by how GW chose to streamline the rules when 8th was released.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't think the general idea of streamlining the rules to make the game more accessible is a bad idea, but I think GW actually made the rules about equally as confusing as they were before 8th all things considered.

A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Don't get me wrong I actually like 9th quite a bit and I'm not saying the old editions were without problems. There was a bunch of clunky and arguably unnecessary/bad stuff (I think nobody really misses vehicle AV for example), but maybe some aspects deserved to survive the transition into 8th.

Stats are not balance levers, they are representations of fluff. Points is the only relevant balance lever, at the end of the day you have to evaluate whether the unit is worth its points, M5 or M8.

Initiative would be another way to express something thematic, like my Lychguard useless against elite units, not the most amazing thematic thing to express in my opinion. The game is also way too lethal for this to be in the game. Just give the appropriate units -1 to hit in melee and no, the appropriate units is not "all Space Marines, from every chapter in the galaxy", Vanguard Veterans, Captains, Lieutenants and maybe a few others I could agree to.

That's simply not true? 2W marines and T5 orks made quite a big impact regarding playstyle and balance. Sure, these stat changes also came with point changes, but one does not go without the other.

I agree that the game is too lethal. - 1 to hit is basically worthless though with the cap on modifiers, which is another bad decision imo. Not being able to hit eldar flyers as tau in 8th was super dumb, but GW overcorrected.

Just because it has an impact on playstyle and balance does not mean it is a balance lever. Otherwise you could end up with Gretchin are UP -> Gretchin get an extra wound -> Gretchin are OP -> Gretchin cost more pts -> Gretchin are UP -> Gretchin get an extra wound -> Gretchin are OP -> Gretchin cost more pts -> Gretchin are UP -> Gretchin get a 3+ Sv. Now Gretchin have been balanced at 2W T4 3+ Sv.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
IMO one of GWs biggest issues is they really do a bad job at presenting their rules, as mentioned if we had data cards like 8th and 9th in 7th, i would wage a lot of issues would be cleared up.

Balance would still have been gak. 7th needed a Chapter Approved to add pts costs to Detachments and Formations and balance some of the stupidly costed units, fix Strength D and psychic power imbalance. RO3 (6 for transports and troops) would also have been nice so you would never have to face 4 Skatach Wraithknights or 10 Razorbacks.

I think there are two good options to present rules in a codex, the way things are done now or a compact version where you have to flip through a few pages to find everything related to a unit, but not dozens of pages.
*Unit entries with battlefield role, pts costs, default and optional unit sizes, basic and optional wargear choices but no rules or stats. This is where you look when you create your army and when you're done creating your army you won't have to check this again.
*Wargear rules.
*Statlines and list of associated abilities in a big block.
*Rules text for abilities.
*Fluff, art, dioramas, guides at the end of the book after all rules have been presented.

The benefit here is that the stats for each weapon, the rules for each ability and the stats, options and points costs of units is only listed once each and if Guardian Defenders and Storm Guardians have the same stats then the unit option in the points sections can have different names but the models can have the same name (Guardian) and be listed once in the stat block rather than twice. The downside of having to flip between what options a unit can take and what those options do is minimized by leaving fluff for the end of the book instead of interspersed throughout the rules. In previous editions GW has chosen the worst of both worlds.

7th edition Codex Necrons was awful in terms of user interface design, it was also awful because it had ugly digitial painting inspiration and terrible balance.

Detachment came first (but without rules for the formations that must go in said Detachment).

Datasheets, fluff and pictures of models, all interspersed. Universal special rules, special rules that lots of units have, wargear rules and weapon stats are not explained on the datasheet, even if there is room.

Formations that go in the Detachment 90 (yes, 90!) pages earlier, fluff and pictures of models in those detachments breaking up the rules. There is really no reason for them to be here and not immediately after the Detachment rules.

An appendix explaining wargear and weapons, common special rules lots of units have, but not the universal special rules that are used in the codex. Including the USR is something some other 7th edition codexes did, it just makes sense, it's 1 page extra in a 200 page book that means you don't have to refer to another 400 page book.

Unit profiles and weapon profiles are listed again, but without the special rules the model/weapons have.

5th edition Necrons had a gallery sandwiched between pts costs and the mixed fluff/rules section which was also pretty bad. Then there are the books like Lizardmen 6th edition that had special characters hidden away at the end of the book randomly instead of listed with the rest of the units.

Siegfriedfr wrote:
What scares me is that some people absolutely love the current spreadsheet design of the game - and i suspect, the tournament crowd the most -, and enjoy being stuck 3+ hours around a table waiting for each others neverending blender-turn to be over.

I'm guessing those are people who are confident in their ability to acquire the models to field the best list but not confident in their ability to think tactically.

Hecaton wrote:

Siegfriedfr wrote:
What scares me is that some people absolutely love the current spreadsheet design of the game - and i suspect, the tournament crowd the most -, and enjoy being stuck 3+ hours around a table waiting for each others neverending blender-turn to be over.

I'm guessing those are people who are confident in their ability to acquire the models to field the best list but not confident in their ability to think tactically.

Meta-chasing tournament players will generally play against meta-chasing tournament players, they still have to think tactically.

Re: templates, the change to random number of shots also means less concern about packing a large unit in tightly. No need to make sure a horde of boyz or gants are spread to the limit of coherency. As far as I'm aware, most "within X inches of a point" are unit based aren't they? Like Infernal Gateway? So it affects players that pack in multiple units together, but not a single unit that's packed tightly. I'll take that slightly lower verisimilitude for easier play.

Regardless, 40k is a unit by unit game. It's an arbitrary line, but it's there. The argument about why a mortar only affects unit A but not unit B applies just as well for (de)buff powers, strategems, orders, etc.

Ail-Shan wrote:
Re: templates, the change to random number of shots also means less concern about packing a large unit in tightly. No need to make sure a horde of boyz or gants are spread to the limit of coherency. As far as I'm aware, most "within X inches of a point" are unit based aren't they? Like Infernal Gateway? So it affects players that pack in multiple units together, but not a single unit that's packed tightly. I'll take that slightly lower verisimilitude for easier play.

Regardless, 40k is a unit by unit game. It's an arbitrary line, but it's there. The argument about why a mortar only affects unit A but not unit B applies just as well for (de)buff powers, strategems, orders, etc.

But you could just make templates unit based?

If you want the game to be unit based, that's do-able even with templates.

GW's games vary between model and unit based though.

It matters which model in a unit has the grenade launcher, which model is the sergeant - it can even go so far as mattering for saves.

The real issue isn't templates were model while the rest of the game was units. The issue was that GW can't design rules

Ail-Shan wrote:
Regardless, 40k is a unit by unit game.

Unless you're drawing line of sight, determining coherency, moving, allocating wounds and determining casualties, using special wargear carried by one model, determining how many attacks you get in melee (half inch of a half inch, exact positioning of every squad member matters), determining which models in a unit are within range, and so on, and so on. So many things in 40K are based on individual models and the inconsistency is really weird. You'll go model by model for a 30-strong unit to see exactly how many are in range and how many shots they each get and who can see the target unit, but if they get targeted by orbital bombardment it doesn't matter if just one member is barely in the blast radius or they're all clustered around ground zero, the damage is identical.

Apocalypse is a system that's unit-by-unit. You don't move individual models, you move trays of 5 at a time. You don't resolve LOS, range, or attacks model-by-model, you do it unit-by-unit. There's none of the mess of pinpoint maneuvering in melee, nor conga lines to stay in auras. It's actually unit-by-unit from the outset and much cleaner for it.

Which, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, is probably because Apocalypse was designed from scratch by a single team in the modern era, with all the armies in the game developed side-by-side and all released at once, while 40K is currently a mass-battle system that grew out of a 1980s skirmish system with a few dozen too many cooks in the kitchen and constantly-changing design principles.

 vict0988 wrote:
Meta-chasing tournament players will generally play against meta-chasing tournament players, they still have to think tactically.

Nah, because at that point your choice of codex and purchases mean more than what you do on the board.

Tiberias wrote:
A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Completely agree, we still have to look it up every game that involves a fight first and fight last interaction. Initiative wasn't a perfect system but it was certainly a lot simpler than it is now.

 catbarf wrote:

Which, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, is probably because Apocalypse was designed from scratch by a single team in the modern era, with all the armies in the game developed side-by-side and all released at once, while 40K is currently a mass-battle system that grew out of a 1980s skirmish system with a few dozen too many cooks in the kitchen and constantly-changing design principles.

I've never played Apocalypse but always heard good things. Did the Dev Team that worked on those rules stick around and get absorbed back into 40k or did they get shifted to 30k or AoS?

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Completely agree, we still have to look it up every game that involves a fight first and fight last interaction. Initiative wasn't a perfect system but it was certainly a lot simpler than it is now.

This was one of my biggest concerns about 8th, and now has shown itself in 9th even worse, and was something i was hounded over as being a nay sayer for showing general concern over. GW was making an attempt to streamline the rules by removing "Complicated" rules they deemed that slowed odwn the game, but as a result, forgot that those "Complicated rules" are what also introduced a lot of balance, and flavor aspect to the game, and as a result only created more issues.

Great example of this we are seeing get really REALLY worse is the AP system, which because of the AP rending system, this made 3+ and 2+ armors really weak feeling, so to answer that they gave a lot of those models 2 wounds, but because of that they got to strong, so they gave out a lot more multi wound weapons, but those started killing everything way to fast, so they handed out a bunch of invuln saves but even then, they decided to introduce only wounded on 4+ which now made big guns feel crappy, so now they have ignores invulns as well. So the system they introduced in 8th, to balance i guess, the AP system ended up causing more problems because they did not expand upon it when they redid it.

A lesson from tzeentzch, change for changes sake is never good.

Oh I'm right there with you, it's band-aid after band-aid to fix the AP system. I'm not the biggest fan of the previous iteration of AP but it's starting to feel like we're coming full circle with "Too much AP", "Too many Wound", "Too much damage!", "Too many Invuls", "Too many Transhumans" haha.

I feel like most of this could have been avoided if they simply toned down the killy parts. If AP-1 was uncommon, AP-2 rare, and AP-3 Artifact or Antitank there'd be less "Armor Saves suck" moments. They'd still exist but far less common.

The AP system really, was a non issue, the biggest issue was if you were playing anything that had a 5+ or 6+ which i mean yeah i feel bad if you had that but generally that would have been solved if the bolter was changed to a AP 6.

Because taking tshirt saves really sucked and felt bad. But those issues were really only related to an army or two, the AP system now, is causing nothing but issue after issue.

The pro hammer actually had the best version of AP i have seen.

If you AP is greater then your armor save, you get a save.
If the AP is lower then your armor, you dont get a save
if the AP = save, your get your save -1

The other thing is that toughness and saves seem kind of redundant. I play ASOIAF and units have a to hit value and a save value, and it allows for differentiation of offensive capabilities while keeping things simple.

Hecaton wrote:
The other thing is that toughness and saves seem kind of redundant. I play ASOIAF and units have a to hit value and a save value, and it allows for differentiation of offensive capabilities while keeping things simple.

No they are not, toughness and save are not the same thing. we DO need to go back to the old toughness to wound char though because that, for all its faults had better balance, and it was easy to know what wounded what.
we dont need "Simpler" rules. we need the "Complicated" rules, which really are not that complicated if you put effort into understanding them, which im not saying anyone here is not doing that."
Simpler means less flavor, and less diverse rules/armies, which means more boring games because they all feel the same.

We need the old toughness system back, and we need the old to wound system back, as it gave a better, all be it not that much better, range of wounding and balancing in the game.
We also need to bring back armor facings and armor values IMO but thats another topic.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
The other thing is that toughness and saves seem kind of redundant. I play ASOIAF and units have a to hit value and a save value, and it allows for differentiation of offensive capabilities while keeping things simple.

No they are not, toughness and save are not the same thing. we DO need to go back to the old toughness to wound char though because that, for all its faults had better balance, and it was easy to know what wounded what.
we dont need "Simpler" rules. we need the "Complicated" rules, which really are not that complicated if you put effort into understanding them, which im not saying anyone here is not doing that."
Simpler means less flavor, and less diverse rules/armies, which means more boring games because they all feel the same.

We need the old toughness system back, and we need the old to wound system back, as it gave a better, all be it not that much better, range of wounding and balancing in the game.
We also need to bring back armor facings and armor values IMO but thats another topic.

I agree that things can get too simple, but I'm not sure what we gain by having two defensive stats, seriously.

Hecaton wrote:
The other thing is that toughness and saves seem kind of redundant. I play ASOIAF and units have a to hit value and a save value, and it allows for differentiation of offensive capabilities while keeping things simple.

1W T3, 1W T4, 2W T4, 3W T4, 1W T5...

1W, 2W, 3W... Lot fewer options here.

Hecaton wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Meta-chasing tournament players will generally play against meta-chasing tournament players, they still have to think tactically.

Nah, because at that point your choice of codex and purchases mean more than what you do on the board.

As always in 40k .


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:


Great example of this we are seeing get really REALLY worse is the AP system, which because of the AP rending system, this made 3+ and 2+ armors really weak feeling, so to answer that they gave a lot of those models 2 wounds, but because of that they got to strong, so they gave out a lot more multi wound weapons, but those started killing everything way to fast, so they handed out a bunch of invuln saves but even then, they decided to introduce only wounded on 4+ which now made big guns feel crappy, so now they have ignores invulns as well. So the system they introduced in 8th, to balance i guess, the AP system ended up causing more problems because they did not expand upon it when they redid it.

On the other hand weapons that completely bypassed 3+ or 2+ saves now still allows a save for those models. My meganobz used to be obliterated by AP2 weapons, now they have basically a 5++ against (non buffed) those. I used to spam rokkits to bypass power armour saves, now they still get a 5+ or even 4+ while in cover.

Not to mention that in most of older editions 2+ and 3+ save models felt really bad because at 1W and a higher point cost they used to die too easily to low S high RoF weapons. Overall they seem much more resilient now.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Simpler means less flavor, and less diverse rules/armies, which means more boring games because they all feel the same.

We need the old toughness system back, and we need the old to wound system back, as it gave a better, all be it not that much better, range of wounding and balancing in the game.
We also need to bring back armor facings and armor values IMO but thats another topic.

IMHO the only thing we need from older editions is the dice rolling. Now we roll too many dice. A unit of ork bikes roll more than a hundred dice, dakkajets roll 36-42 dice, scrapjets also can roll up to 30 dice, which must be resolved in 4 different moments. I'd definitely reduce the dice rolling dramatically. So for example 9 warbikes, buffed by a speedwaaagh, would roll 27 dice, a dakkajet no more than 10, etc... all platforms of powerful weapons would fire single shot or two shots.

Hecaton wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Meta-chasing tournament players will generally play against meta-chasing tournament players, they still have to think tactically.

Nah, because at that point your choice of codex and purchases mean more than what you do on the board.

If both players are playing the latest Drukhari hotness, then the codex and purchases stop being a factor in who wins because the factor is equal for both players.

If, on the other hand, I am playing a casual game against my buddy's Drukhari with my Necrons and my buddy happens to have collected a large amount of Covens units and not much else then the disparity in power between our lists will be great.

If you are just now seeing that GW says one thing and does another, you may be late to the party. They just like to say things they know are truth and we agree with then say " funk that " and spend the rest of an edition about making people forget they ever said it in the first place.

We are well and gone from simplicity and removal of bloat now we are well filled like a massive great unclean one after the holiday without need to diet and the perfectly sized banana hammock to lounge on the beech ready to go.