Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

"Canned Synergy" may well be the new buzzword for 8e griping and but such an issue has existed long before in editions ago. There's this idea that explicit intraunit stat-boosts equals "synergy." Other than the fact that such "connect the dots" aspects to list-building are a little insulting to the intelligence of gamers ("Gee, you really want me to park Gulliman next to a bunch of big Ultramarine guns? U so subtle, GW"), it's occasionally funny when the intended combinations don't work as intended! Warmahordes players coined the term "Skornergy" years ago because there were so many "A buffs B" combos promoted as synergy, yet playing into them ultimately resulted in an army that was a lot worse than theorycraft indicated!

As an example of "Canned Synergy" going wrong in 7th edition, I will poke fun at a specific formation, the Demolition Claw. The Demolition Claw was 2-3 units of Acolyte Hybrids, and 2-3 Goliath Rockgrinders. The entire Formation got Tank Hunters, and there were some cute bonuses related to the Acolytes were better at tossing Demolition Charges while inside/near the Rockgrinders. The problem? Genestealer Acolytes had Cult Ambush and wanted to deploy forward and close to the enemy, but the Rockgrinders deployed conventionally. Said Rockgrinders also had a restrictive Access Point and Fire Point (passengers could only disembark shoot stuff in the Rockgrinder's rear arc); don't forget it also was not an Assault Vehicle. Finally, said Rockgrinders wanted to Tank Shock or Ram stuff to take advantage of their Drilldozer Blades, but doing this would prevent the passengers on-board from disembarking or firing!

Ultimately, the real benefit to the Demolition Claw was not the fact that it had these assorted canned synergies between the Rockgrinders and Acolyres, but the fact that due to *quality* GW ruleswriting, the Acolytes did not actually have to start on-board the Rockgrinders and could actually purchase their own Autocannon Goliaths as Dedicated Transports. Said Goliaths would benefit from Tank Hunters, and if the whole thing was part of a Cult Insurrection, those Goliaths could Infiltrate/Outflank with their Acolyte passengers. Thus, the real synergy from the formation was having access to a bunch of cheap mobile anti-tank guns, with several empty Goliaths providing Clearance Incinerators as cheap torrents! Finally, the Goliaths were open-topped and thus allowed the Acolytes to hop out and assault if it came down to that.

While attempting to "can" synergy between two units that don't work together in practice, GW wrote another combo I don't believe was actually intended.

What are your thoughts on this? Should GW avoid canned bonuses and focus on making units more flexible and promote more organic/emergent sybergies? Or is this just fever-pitched ranting?

I think it's somewhat cute that those that dislike 8th continue to make new buzz words just to insult 8th. Given that we tend to see these new insults coming from the same few people.

I can use captains on shooty units or choppy units. I don't see how that's connect the dots.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I think it's somewhat cute that those that dislike 8th continue to make new buzz words just to insult 8th. Given that we tend to see these new insults coming from the same few people.

This isn't an 8th-specific rant. I even used a 7e example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
I can use captains on shooty units or choppy units. I don't see how that's connect the dots.

It's easier to blob multiple solo shooty models around Gulliman, than multiple assault squads. Big Guns never roll random charge distance! (Imagine Lugft Huron saying that mouthful).

The canned bonuses/synergy in the game at present feel like a symptom rather than a cause; any time I've had problems with it it's been the icing on a cake made of badly-written units. Harker camping in a corner with three Manticores and twelve mortar teams got to delete 1,200pts of my 2,000pt army top of turn one because mortars are too cheap and Manticores are stupidly powerful; the existence of the rerolls helped, but if the units were fairly priced they would be almost a non-issue.

(But seriously. F*** Manticores. My Warp Hunter manages to be "pretty good" by packing a quarter of that firepower at a quarter the range for twice the price.)

Magic Juggler,

This is the board in which people create 1-2 daily threads about conscripts.

Try to explain to average user the pitfalls of the faux-synergy within the framework of the nu-design is futile.

You have been warned.

I don't think it's as simple as "canned synergy" or aura buffs are bad, as it is that it's a tool in the tool box and when utilized well it comes to great effect.

One of the great things about the keywords system they have in place in 8th is that things that effect "infantry" effect a very large broad range of things. While yes, auras and buffs that impact infantry will generally boost some infantry better than it boosts others it remains a fact that it boosts everyone. Having force multiplier units is not a bad thing.

In 7th the "Buff-mander" was a very valid build for a tau commander because he acted as a massive force multiplier.

These force multipliers are synergies between the different units that get them moving in a certain direction and how you build your list it can give many of the armies in 8th many viable directions to go in. Not every army has it as well as others (Nids are still trying to hammer down what is actually good/bad in their index because so much has become so viable when built for it).

How many specific buffs are there really? Cadre fireblades boost all the basic infantry guns besides markerlights. Longstrike boosts hammerheads (2 types exist with a large variety of weapon options). The VAST majority of the synergy abilities I have seen in 8th are all broad spectrum that get models doing their intended job better or shore up their other potential weaknesses.

Did we really need a second thread on this same topic?

In a way I think I can see what they're going for: they want characters to be the centerpiece of an army. In theory, this introduces a kind of extra layer of strategy where instead of just trying to out-DPS an opponent, you can take out the characters holding his army together. A "shoot the weakpoint for massive damage" kind of thing. This in turn creates some extra tactical space where in addition to everything else, your opponent has to think about protecting his characters.

The main motivation for GW of course, is characters are far more expensive than generic models so they want to "encourage" people to buy them. By making them basically mandatory.

In practice though, character protection mechanics are so strong and anti-character options are so weak that pretty much any character with less than the arbitrary 10-wound cutoff can safely expect to survive a battle until 95% of his army is dead. Unless he's facing an assault list, since there is no rule that protects characters from assault.

Still, the end result is that extra tactical dimension doesn't actually exist. Either you're shooting and can't target them, or you're charging and they were going to get randomly swept up in the rolling melee whether you cared about them or not. So then you mostly get a game of who can grant the most buffs to the largest number of models with the lowest overhead.

 ross-128 wrote:
In a way I think I can see what they're going for: they want characters to be the centerpiece of an army. In theory, this introduces a kind of extra layer of strategy where instead of just trying to out-DPS an opponent, you can take out the characters holding his army together. A "shoot the weakpoint for massive damage" kind of thing. This in turn creates some extra tactical space where in addition to everything else, your opponent has to think about protecting his characters.

The main motivation for GW of course, is characters are far more expensive than generic models so they want to "encourage" people to buy them. By making them basically mandatory.

In practice though, character protection mechanics are so strong and anti-character options are so weak that pretty much any character with less than the arbitrary 10-wound cutoff can safely expect to survive a battle until 95% of his army is dead. Unless he's facing an assault list, since there is no rule that protects characters from assault.

Still, the end result is that extra tactical dimension doesn't actually exist. Either you're shooting and can't target them, or you're charging and they were going to get randomly swept up in the rolling melee whether you cared about them or not. So then you mostly get a game of who can grant the most buffs to the largest number of models with the lowest overhead.

I quit using snipers because of this.

 ross-128 wrote:
In a way I think I can see what they're going for: they want characters to be the centerpiece of an army. In theory, this introduces a kind of extra layer of strategy where instead of just trying to out-DPS an opponent, you can take out the characters holding his army together. A "shoot the weakpoint for massive damage" kind of thing. This in turn creates some extra tactical space where in addition to everything else, your opponent has to think about protecting his characters.

The main motivation for GW of course, is characters are far more expensive than generic models so they want to "encourage" people to buy them. By making them basically mandatory.

In practice though, character protection mechanics are so strong and anti-character options are so weak that pretty much any character with less than the arbitrary 10-wound cutoff can safely expect to survive a battle until 95% of his army is dead. Unless he's facing an assault list, since there is no rule that protects characters from assault.

Still, the end result is that extra tactical dimension doesn't actually exist. Either you're shooting and can't target them, or you're charging and they were going to get randomly swept up in the rolling melee whether you cared about them or not. So then you mostly get a game of who can grant the most buffs to the largest number of models with the lowest overhead.

Bingo. Always-on auras that cannot be efficiently targeted without list-tailoring don't actually add much strategic depth and might arguably diminish it in turn.

I want to clarify what Skornergy actually means as a Skorne player in Hordes.

It was when
Unit A buffed Unit B
Unit B required Unit C
Unit A/C did not buff each other

or
2 Things literally did not work together, tho they clearly wanted to work together.

The most common example was Zaal
Zaal has a lot of buffs for Construct Models
Zaal requires a lot of souls to function
Contrust Models provide no Souls...
Skornergy

Makeda was a good example
Makeda brings buffs to Swordsman
Swordsman already has the buffs she gives...
What?
I mean Skornergy!

Another fun one with Mordikaar
Mordikaar has a spell that turns people Undead, and when they die he gets their Soul
Undead models have no Souls...
Skornergy

Here is a good one
Hexeris Ultimate allows him to take control of models he 'destroys' this turn.
When Hexeris kills a model, they are not 'Destroyed'. They are removed from game...
Skornergy!

A lot of these were fixed in the newest edition, but they worked like this for a LONG time.

Yeah, 8th generally has the opposite of Skornergy. Instead of the buffs that simply don't work due to contradictory conditions, we have buffs that always work with no conditions, and sometimes work too well.

My personal favorite in Mk 2 was that Morghoul was supposed to be the "Warbeast" Warlock for Skorne due to having access to Abuse, allowing Warbeasts to critically punch above their weight class, yet he had the poorest Control Rating, and Skorne Beasts tend to be deceptively fast, due to Rush, Hyper-Aggressive, and other move-boosts. Zaal was ironically decent for a Karax/Venator gunline, just because Last Stand and Combined Melee Attack worked surprisingly well together.

Back to 40k, I can think of assorted "fake synergies" or "broken synergies", due to the wonky nature of the Keyword System. Stuff like an Astropath/Sanctioned Psyker being only able to buff the armor save of a Guard Infantry squad (no buffing Stormtroopers, Heavy Weapon Teams, etc), or Ogryns being ironically inefficient for melee since you cannot give them orders, or Beastmasters granting rerolls to DE Beasts/Razorwing Flocks.

At least with something like WMH, you could get the occasional "unconventional" option like a Gun Mage Captain letting its marshalled 'Jack use Rune Shots, which at least allows for some "clever" combos.

I don't really see what you are saying here.

How is canned strategy different from... regular strategy?

I doubt GW sat down and went "what we want Marine players to do is park as many razorbacks/flyers next to RG as possible." Its just that this is the most efficient way to use his rules. So players unsurprisingly will do it.