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Played a game tonight where from the start it was mathematically impossible for my opponent to win, and I realized my biggest problem with 40k is that units can be put on the board that can have zero chance of harming other units .

So by accident you can construct two armies, that one of which can do absutely nnothing against the other except fold.

Every unit should pose at least some threat to another unit.

Any model can roll a 6 to hit and any other can roll a 6 to wound and any other can roll a 1 for a save.

However, yeah. 180 grots on the table will do little damage to an IG armored core army.

Should a tiny little grot have a chance to Kill a Warlord Titan?

Lets be honest here....

There must be a limit on what can kill what.

Sometimes everything seems "mathematically" impossible, but with proper list design and a little luck, you almost always have a chance. IMO, its a poorly designed army that runs into a list that is such a hard counter, you just can't win.

I dont know if thats the 'biggest design flaw'. That sounds more like one or both players were unfamiliar with the rules.

No, there are things that shouldn't be able to hurt other things. If one list is completely unable to hurt another list, that is a very rare situation and totally the Fual of the list writers.


The largest flaw with 40k is the I ago You Go turn mechanic. It's archaic and clunky.

The biggest flaw apart from GW's policies is definitely the way turns work. One side shooting everything first means the the second player will have a much reduced army to fight back with from the start, and the problem is worse with larger lists.

It could be fixed by removing player turns entirely and replacing them with a modified game turn like...

1st: Player 1 Movement Phase
2nd: Player 2 Movement Phase
3rd: Shooting Phase: All models have an Initiative. Each unit takes it Shooting Phase action at it's Initiative step. Slain models at the same Initiative step is handled the same way as close combat. Super-heavies would go last for balance.
4th: Charge Sub-phase Units have the option to declare charges using the same Initiative order. If a unit is charged, they may choose to counter-charge or fire overwatch.
5th: Fight subphase: Same as it is now.
*: Repeat 5-7 times.

Yeah i guess that was what happened. The guy was playing death guard and by the beginning of Round 3 I had taken out all his heavy weapons. He still had a ton of death guard, but zip he had left on the board could damage AV12, so soddenly two AV12 walkers ripped right through his army. Not even Typhus could hurt him.

It was just a bad game. I don't like that it's so easy to bring things down to mathematical certitude so quickly.

The worst design flaw is the structure of rules, special rules, and extra-special rules. There are too many, and many of them are redundant or way too specific.

^ I couldn't agree more. A lot of things they added for "depth and complexity" just end up being clunky and causing confusion and searching the rulebook. Either that or you have a character with such a situational, obscure rule that you forget to use it the one game out of 50 where it actually would've done something.

The combination of extremely powerful massive range units and the IGOUGO turn sequence.

 jasper76 wrote:
Yeah i guess that was what happened. The guy was playing death guard and by the beginning of Round 3 I had taken out all his heavy weapons. He still had a ton of death guard, but zip he had left on the board could damage AV12, so soddenly two AV12 walkers ripped right through his army. Not even Typhus could hurt him.

It was just a bad game. I don't like that it's so easy to bring things down to mathematical certitude so quickly.

1-So its not his army had NOTHING, its just that what had it got killed. its actually just smart play on your side to eliminate actual threats first.

2-If it possible to reduce you to a situation that AV12 is impossible to hurt without wiping out half your army, you ARE doing something wrong. (also, plague marines/CSM CAN still hurt AV12 in CC, its just unlikely-they got grenades on S6) and by doing something wrong, I mean on your list. units got 2 goals in the game-either to kill alot, or to not die and get objectives. death guard cover the "not die" part, but he probably went too far in "not die" numbers if he didn't have enough "kill" to get rid of AV12 (I assume dreads?)

if a lasgun can destroy a Titan then that would be a flaw
just like real world a good army is an army that is not only 1 think and has many weapons for many occasions

Yeah well unless someone plays on a table with twice as much terrain as normal, there is no way for an IG army to down an eldar army, if the eldar starts.

Makumba wrote:
Yeah well unless someone plays on a table with twice as much terrain as normal, there is no way for an IG army to down an eldar army, if the eldar starts.

Not necessarily true. My Eldar generally don't fair too well against IG. Of course I don't run Serpent Spam, so maybe that is why.

 Zagman wrote:
No, there are things that shouldn't be able to hurt other things. If one list is completely unable to hurt another list, that is a very rare situation and totally the Fual of the list writers.


The largest flaw with 40k is the I ago You Go turn mechanic. It's archaic and clunky.

This

...This leads to the question: How many 3 year olds would it take to kill OP?

um

Death Guard come with krak grenades, and Plaguebearers have Plague Knives.

He absolutely could've killed two AV12 walkers in six assault phases.

ForeverARookie wrote:
The biggest flaw apart from GW's policies is definitely the way turns work. One side shooting everything first means the the second player will have a much reduced army to fight back with from the start, and the problem is worse with larger lists.

It could be fixed by removing player turns entirely and replacing them with a modified game turn like...

1st: Player 1 Movement Phase
2nd: Player 2 Movement Phase
3rd: Shooting Phase: All models have an Initiative. Each unit takes it Shooting Phase action at it's Initiative step. Slain models at the same Initiative step is handled the same way as close combat. Super-heavies would go last for balance.
4th: Charge Sub-phase Units have the option to declare charges using the same Initiative order. If a unit is charged, they may choose to counter-charge or fire overwatch.
5th: Fight subphase: Same as it is now.
*: Repeat 5-7 times.

I think this would only work with vastly different initiative values for each unit within an army. As it stands, that would, for the most part, just change it so that the movement phases are slightly closer to one another because initiative values tend to be army-wide. I mean, if an Eldar army goes up against a Marine army, the Marines might get a character or two that gets to fire at the same time as the Eldar; otherwise the Eldar are going to be able to shoot their entire army before the Marines can fire a single shot.

ForeverARookie wrote:
The biggest flaw apart from GW's policies is definitely the way turns work. One side shooting everything first means the the second player will have a much reduced army to fight back with from the start, and the problem is worse with larger lists.

It could be fixed by removing player turns entirely and replacing them with a modified game turn like...

1st: Player 1 Movement Phase
2nd: Player 2 Movement Phase
3rd: Shooting Phase: All models have an Initiative. Each unit takes it Shooting Phase action at it's Initiative step. Slain models at the same Initiative step is handled the same way as close combat. Super-heavies would go last for balance.
4th: Charge Sub-phase Units have the option to declare charges using the same Initiative order. If a unit is charged, they may choose to counter-charge or fire overwatch.
5th: Fight subphase: Same as it is now.
*: Repeat 5-7 times.

So what you're saying is that my guard should always go second against anyone except sisters and orks.

Definitely solved the Igo-Ugo sequence there!

If I am reading ForeverARookie's post correctly, he is saying that units would have an additional "shooting initiative" state that would determine in what order they got to shoot. Presumably this could also be affected by orders, psychic powers, etc.

Not a bad idea, but I'd want to see the entire 40k ruleset redone from scratch.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


So what you're saying is that my guard should always go second against anyone except sisters and orks.

*Necrons.

 Jayden63 wrote:
Any model can roll a 6 to hit and any other can roll a 6 to wound and any other can roll a 1 for a save.

However, yeah. 180 grots on the table will do little damage to an IG armored core army.

True as that may be, a str 3 weapon cannot ever wound some things, even if they roll 6's. And I'm not talking about vehicles.

I think that the core of the issue in your situation is that a good portion of 40k relies on how good your list is. Some armies/lists have blatant counters and certain armies are easier to make lists for than others.

There's quite a bit of imbalance, but if you know what army your opponent is bringing, you can plan accordingly.

 jasper76 wrote:
Played a game tonight where from the start it was mathematically impossible for my opponent to win, and I realized my biggest problem with 40k is that units can be put on the board that can have zero chance of harming other units .

So by accident you can construct two armies, that one of which can do absutely nnothing against the other except fold.

Every unit should pose at least some threat to another unit.

You are not supposed to assemble army lists by accident. Picking the right combination of units is one of the skills of the game.

If you happen to be a Tyranid player and go up against a Knight army, it may not be mathematically impossible, but it's getting close, lol.

Yeah, Tyranid S4 hordes. You'll get a lot of matchups were you really don't need to deploy. Necron AV13/11 wall. Your S4 critters can't hurt them. At all. Same with Dreadnoughts. But I'm not saying it's a design flaw by any means.

 N.I.B. wrote:
Yeah, Tyranid S4 hordes. You'll get a lot of matchups were you really don't need to deploy. Necron AV13/11 wall. Your S4 critters can't hurt them. At all. Same with Dreadnoughts. But I'm not saying it's a design flaw by any means.

Even if you go monster mash you're pretty screwed against a Knight army. A horde army is probably more likely to pin the knights down and maybe win on objectives, but Tyranids are so woefully ill equipped to deal with any decently armoured walker, especially super heavy ones. I do think it's a bit of a design flaw.

Morale is not important enough. All the races are stupidly made into lame fearless stuff. Morale having little to no effect on most games really eliminates one important way of winning.

Imagine having a knight swarmed by 360 tyranids bugs, and him breaking his nerve (because they could be pulling cables, getting blood over his optics and so forth) so instead of killing being your option, you still can win via other means. He runs off the board and the swarm continues trying to, well swarm the next knight.

As an example, I was at a tournament the other day with some Japanese for Flames of War. There was a list I faced which was all heavy Tanks (the T-35). I couldnt actually kill them with my list. But because of the way moral works, I could push back the tanks from the objectives and managed to use my brains and take another objective winning me the game. Sure, I killed nothing, lost all my men except 4 bases worth of infantry and so forth. But killing was not the only way I could win. Why? Morale. (and brains )

Its an important factor thats missing, and one that could fix many issues.

In my opinion, rules wise it needs to be fixed.

Necrons not being army-wide Fearless.