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 Blackie wrote:

Ok, not when fighting each other although in my experience characters fighting other characters was not very common. I surely kept my "always fighting last and no invuln" warboss away from enemy characters, chasing elites or vehicles instead.

And even with herohammer the difference was still +1 or -1 to hit even with extremely different WS. When a character with WS4 fights against another one with WS10 for example the former hit on 5s, the latter on 3s. Not much different than now, when one of the characters has a defensive -1 to hit ability. And there was no chance to hit on 2s or 6s before 8th. Ever. So it's not true that there was more differentiation for characters in combat under the old rules.

It absolutely is true. The difference was huge in terms of lethality and in terms of the actual values needed to hit. Almost every character now hits on a 2+ (sometimes 3+ with a PF, TH, etc) and combined with the increase in attacks and damage for many of those weapons you just don't get drawn-out combats with back-and-forth blows being dealt. It's almost always literally a one-round combat, with the character going first much more likely to just splatter their opponent because they pretty much always hit and almost always wound.

I'm not sure how you can say going from a 3+/4+ to hit down to a 2+ to hit for both characters is "not much different than now". It was actually fairly uncommon for even the best characters to get above WS7 in previous editions and very few were WS4. Those that were tended to be non-combat characters anyway, so it actually made sense.

Note that under the old rules characters had 2-3 wounds and could be instant killed by a single S6-8 blow.

They were not so different than now because under the old rules, regardless of the WS, the difference between the to hit value of two characters was always one or two points. It's not like a super skilled fighter could hit on 2s and be hit on 6s.

I definitely feel like duels between characters can last longer NOW than they used to last. Maybe I'm biased since my characters never had invulns or other defensive abilities though. But in older editions only characters with 3++ or 2++ could actually survive a round of combat against another close combat oriented character or even a melee elite unit. All you needed was a single power fist attack that hit (typically on 3s) and wounded (on 2s) to delete pretty much every character in the game, except the uncommon T5+ ones.

There might be more attacks, and better WS now but the vast majority of characters also come with invulns or other defensive abilities now.

Anyway duels weren't and aren't the most common scenario in melee.

A slightly above average fighter used to hit on 3s just like the best duellists in the game against the vast majority of the same targets. Which is something that always bothered me and flat out canceled any possible differention between melee oriented units, characters or not. The jump from WS4 to WS5 was huge. Above that, completely irrelevant.

 vict0988 wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I'm teaching another person how to play, and I think I'm really going to lean into core rules before we start adding things in. We'll play a couple 25PL games without strats, WL Traits, relics or chapter tactics.

Have you taught someone before? In my experience, the only thing you need to strip away is codex Stratagems.

Not this edition. And yeah, I could just dial back dex strats and I know my opponent would pick it up- but I want them to have time to figure out which subfaction is the best fit for their army and playstyle. Also hoping they will not mind if I shoot video to make batreps, and that means being very confident with rules.

We'll see what happens. Most people will paint easter eggs this weekend; I'm painting Wyches. We can't play until I finish 9.5 of them.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
There are a lot of good ideas that are being wasted. I think bespoke rules and Core are two rules with the most potential that are ruined by simply not being used properly and unthematic implementation respectively.

What does the good version of CORE look like? I think SM Captains should just have a +1 to hit ability at the end of the Movement phase and then you could add a note about them being able to target every Troops unit in addition to the main target. So you can tell a single Predator to shoot harder same as you can tell a unit of Eradicators to shoot harder, but all nearby Tactical Squads also get to shoot harder. Or maybe something more tactical, like Fall Back and Shoot or Action and Shoot etc.

I think Core should be more thematically applied and tied to stratagems, since GW look like they're going to keep insisting on using them and make most strats relevant only to Core units, since the implication is that they're the most important part of the army, the CORE of the army. Obviously it would be mostly Troops choices and a few other (probably mainly support type models) would have the Core rule and most strats would revolve around interrupting your opponents phase and actions at the cost of CP to allow your Troops to act. This would hopefully in turn make Troops more versatile and valuable in the game.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
There are a lot of good ideas that are being wasted. I think bespoke rules and Core are two rules with the most potential that are ruined by simply not being used properly and unthematic implementation respectively.

What does the good version of CORE look like? I think SM Captains should just have a +1 to hit ability at the end of the Movement phase and then you could add a note about them being able to target every Troops unit in addition to the main target. So you can tell a single Predator to shoot harder same as you can tell a unit of Eradicators to shoot harder, but all nearby Tactical Squads also get to shoot harder. Or maybe something more tactical, like Fall Back and Shoot or Action and Shoot etc.

I think Core should be more thematically applied and tied to stratagems, since GW look like they're going to keep insisting on using them and make most strats relevant only to Core units, since the implication is that they're the most important part of the army, the CORE of the army. Obviously it would be mostly Troops choices and a few other (probably mainly support type models) would have the Core rule and most strats would revolve around interrupting your opponents phase and actions at the cost of CP to allow your Troops to act. This would hopefully in turn make Troops more versatile and valuable in the game.

That sounds intriguing, can you name 2 support units you think should be CORE?

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
There are a lot of good ideas that are being wasted. I think bespoke rules and Core are two rules with the most potential that are ruined by simply not being used properly and unthematic implementation respectively.

What does the good version of CORE look like? I think SM Captains should just have a +1 to hit ability at the end of the Movement phase and then you could add a note about them being able to target every Troops unit in addition to the main target. So you can tell a single Predator to shoot harder same as you can tell a unit of Eradicators to shoot harder, but all nearby Tactical Squads also get to shoot harder. Or maybe something more tactical, like Fall Back and Shoot or Action and Shoot etc.

I think Core should be more thematically applied and tied to stratagems, since GW look like they're going to keep insisting on using them and make most strats relevant only to Core units, since the implication is that they're the most important part of the army, the CORE of the army. Obviously it would be mostly Troops choices and a few other (probably mainly support type models) would have the Core rule and most strats would revolve around interrupting your opponents phase and actions at the cost of CP to allow your Troops to act. This would hopefully in turn make Troops more versatile and valuable in the game.

That sounds intriguing, can you name 2 support units you think should be CORE?

Of the top of my head the Sisters Dialogus/Hospitalier, techmarines, stuf like that. Maybe Utility units would have been a better term than Support. Basically units that have no inherent use or combat ability by themselves. Keep in mind I've not given this much thought beyond wanting 40k to be a bit more thematic, dynamic and less down-timey during your opponents turn.