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I'm posting this on several sites and pages and would like to know which system the dakka dakka players would like.

If you could give your reasons too please.

I personally would say HH should make the jump to 8th. The reason, simply put, is to make it easier on the FW rules writers. As it stands, many HH units are also available in 40k. By bringing HH into 8th edition, it would mean that FW only has to write one set of rules, rather than writing one set then having to translate that unit into a different ruleset while still having it play and work the same.

With only one set of rules to write rather than two, it makes it far less likely that another absolute trainwreck like the FW 8th Indices will happen again.

IMO 7th is the superior ruleset due to it having complexity deeper than a puddle and to my understanding 30k doesn't suffer from the insane power creep balance issues that plagued 40k 7th.

Yeah, hours heresy has a lot more to lose than gain by being ported to 8th. It's already a great system. FW rules writers already wrote all the rules for hours heresy and they work great in 7th...

Hmm. To keep using the system that's vastly superior in terms of rule logic and tactical offerings while beating crap out in terms of being balanced or jump into game that would need serious rewrite to have chance of offering same...Yeah not difficult choice.

This will end up being another 7-8 pages of the HH fanatics complaining about 8th and not really discussing HH at all. I can see Tneva got us started

7th didnt have any more depth than 8th does beyond a few tidbits like armor facing on vehicles (but only some vehicles, depending on the whim of the author, and literally no other units in the game), nothing someone at the level of a battle commander should be concerned with. It had lots of useless complexity however (though so does 8th).

7E was no hallmark to tactical depth, rules simplicity, balance, or anything else, and was just about the nadir of 40k in all such respects. Anything to be salvaged from 7E, that 8th doesnt offer, can in almost all circumstances be better handled by just playing 5th ed. 8E isn't perfect, or indeed anywhere near it, but 7th was...unsalvageable.

HH sticking with 7th is whats keeping me from trying it more, I'd be interested in a more narrowed and focused 40k that cuts some of the variables and has a different setting, but not with 7E rules, especially the *horrifically* bad vehicle rules and the entire concept of HP's.

In the future two separate systems will be super confusing to new players.

8e has its flaws, but it has jettisoned a lot of unnecessary baggage that has weighed down the game for ages and overall is the best version of 40K that has ever existed.

 Vankraken wrote:
IMO 7th is the superior ruleset due to it having complexity deeper than a puddle and to my understanding 30k doesn't suffer from the insane power creep balance issues that plagued 40k 7th.

7th has zero complexity unless you think micromanaging degree of rotation of tank (so enemy is within half of degree of front arc and is forced to shoot it despite clearly seeing exposed side) or playing hour long game of 'resolve 20 small blasts' is "complexity"

As for power creep, let me just laugh and point to 12 quad mortars. Or lorgar/magnus with invisibility. Or small phosphex blast spam. Or 9 dracosans. Or Scoria. Or psi-titans. Or TS psy-spam. Or... Or... Or...

8th. It's time to let 7th go like the Zimbabwe economy.

I want a 'greatest hits of 3rd-7th' system that takes the underlying basics of that system and cleans out the clutter.

 Irbis wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
IMO 7th is the superior ruleset due to it having complexity deeper than a puddle and to my understanding 30k doesn't suffer from the insane power creep balance issues that plagued 40k 7th.

7th has zero complexity unless you think micromanaging degree of rotation of tank (so enemy is within half of degree of front arc and is forced to shoot it despite clearly seeing exposed side) or playing hour long game of 'resolve 20 small blasts' is "complexity"

As for power creep, let me just laugh and point to 12 quad mortars. Or lorgar/magnus with invisibility. Or small phosphex blast spam. Or 9 dracosans. Or Scoria. Or psi-titans. Or TS psy-spam. Or... Or... Or...

Add in the tediousness of artificer armour tanking, the crap all or nothing AP system (3rd to 7th era), the disjointed superheavy rules, strength D, etc. I was disappointed when they said they'll stick with 7th for now. Will grumble and muddle through until they get 8th sorted and ported.

I used to be a huge fan of 5th-7th but 8th has stolen my gaming heart, Much better and more fun edition in my mind.

I don't play HH myself but several guys at my club do. As far as I am aware they don't want HH to go the way 8th but I can't see GW and FW leaving it as it is ultimately. They will have to convert that variation over to the new rules at some point.

You guys know HH already has a community 8th conversion?

 zedmeister wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
IMO 7th is the superior ruleset due to it having complexity deeper than a puddle and to my understanding 30k doesn't suffer from the insane power creep balance issues that plagued 40k 7th.

7th has zero complexity unless you think micromanaging degree of rotation of tank (so enemy is within half of degree of front arc and is forced to shoot it despite clearly seeing exposed side) or playing hour long game of 'resolve 20 small blasts' is "complexity"

As for power creep, let me just laugh and point to 12 quad mortars. Or lorgar/magnus with invisibility. Or small phosphex blast spam. Or 9 dracosans. Or Scoria. Or psi-titans. Or TS psy-spam. Or... Or... Or...

Add in the tediousness of artificer armour tanking, the crap all or nothing AP system (3rd to 7th era), the disjointed superheavy rules, strength D, etc. I was disappointed when they said they'll stick with 7th for now. Will grumble and muddle through until they get 8th sorted and ported.

In fact, the above examples, both your and mine, aren't even worst offenders. Last HH book has examples that would make even 7th edition Eldar go 'wait, are you sure'? Starting with Russ having ridiculously superior wargear to all the other primarchs (because he was known as the craftsman/scientist, eh?) letting him kill everyone, even Horus, with contemptuous ease. Then you have Magnus, flying, invisible, peeing D-shots on entire enemy army. Finally, there is Custodes tribune, who, with a bunch of cheap upgrades, can be turned into unholy rape machine of death capable of killing primarchs or 20 strong terminator units all by himself. Creep? What's that?

I find amazing the people think HH is in any way balanced. It's not. In fact, it's terribly balanced, and is only saved by two factors - one, that everyone bar small minority in HH is MEQ, forcing a bit level play, and second, the fact that fully kitted out cheese HH army costs as much as dozen 40K armies thanks to need to spend thousands of $ on all the tanks/LOWs you need. So, people only rarely can see just where determined optimizing can take 30K force. But, 'balanced because it's too expensive to break' is kind of hard sell, IMHO.

Thanks for posting this Formosa... I think it is a really big deal.

8th because of the way AP works. In the Horus Heresy novels characters (often captains or higher with great wargear) can shoot bolters at people with power armour and actually punch through. The -1 or -2 AP for things like Special Issue Bolters or relic bolters or whatever would really work well for making the 30k games feel more like the battles in the novel where bolters are effective at killing astartes.

I’d prefer using 8th to fix the glaring problems of 7th - a halfway house if you will. I’ve even started fiddling with the idea:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/745210.page

 Crimson wrote:
In the future two separate systems will be super confusing to new players.

8e has its flaws, but it has jettisoned a lot of unnecessary baggage that has weighed down the game for ages and overall is the best version of 40K that has ever existed.

a bit subjective, there are those of us who think 8th is the shi---st edition ever made, keeping HH the way it is allows the peeps who like 8th to play 8th adn those of us who loathe 8th to keep our game too.

something occurs to me.

So now HH is sticking to 7th for the time being and we have ... what 3? legions left to get full rules and legion units, that means in the long term if it does shift to 8th, this gives players a real choice, as every force will be available in 7th, and then ported to 8th.

8th with ease. 3rd through 7th was a massively restricted system that required reams of special rules to make anything but the most basic of units work, and not once do I think they got the rules for vehicles and psychers right throughout that period (not entirely sure about the Psykers though). The HH does a decent job of papering over the cracks of a bad system but it's still a bad system, and whilst 8th is far from perfect it is a damn sight better.

That said, I think I'd prefer them to keep it under 7th ed rules until all the armies are out before attempting to shift the whole lot over to 8th.

7th is one of the worst games on the market. I don't understand why anyone would choose to stay in 7th.

 Lance845 wrote:
7th is one of the worst games on the market. I don't understand why anyone would choose to stay in 7th.

Why?

What makes 8th any different ?

What were the biggest issues for you with 7th?

What do you like about 8th?

Cheers.

 thekingofkings wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
In the future two separate systems will be super confusing to new players.

8e has its flaws, but it has jettisoned a lot of unnecessary baggage that has weighed down the game for ages and overall is the best version of 40K that has ever existed.

a bit subjective, there are those of us who think 8th is the shi---st edition ever made, keeping HH the way it is allows the peeps who like 8th to play 8th adn those of us who loathe 8th to keep our game too.

Except plenty of people who have played both think that 7th is the most doggak fethstick cork-up in the history of ALL wargaming and that 8th, while by no means perfect is significantly more playable(and replaces mindless rules tedium for actual (if relatively shallow) tactical interaction) and even if 30k was their main game before 8th, can't help but look longingly at tables where people still have vehicles alive at the bottom of turn 1.

 Lance845 wrote:
7th is one of the worst games on the market. I don't understand why anyone would choose to stay in 7th.

For a few reasons actually (my opinion with playing 40k so take with some but after playing 8th a few times I can honestly say I miss 7th and going back to playing 7th confirms my feelings on the matter)
-Terrain and cover matters a lot while the same cannot be said of 8th. Its very difficult to meet the requirements for a cover save in 8th and if you have low armor then cover isn't going a thing vs plasma
-Blast Weapons are a much more interesting mechanic that heavily factor in model proximity instead of just being a flat X number of shots (or the far worse d3 or d6 shots garbage)
-Vehicles are more interesting than just being multi wound meat boxes
-USR and unit types help give units more varied mechanics
-The differences between AV and toughness plus how wounding works gives weapons far more defined roles.
-The different weapon types and special rules for weapons also add to the diversity in weapon function and create more niche uses. The changes in 8th resulted in a lot of diverse arsenals having heavy overlap.
-Psychic phase (despite its massive amount of problems) at least has some risk/reward in warp charge usage unlike 8th's "1 in 18 chance to perils"
-Morale (while ignored half the time due to widespread ATSKNF or Fearless) is at least interesting in 7th if a bit underdeveloped
-A bit more decision making as the defender with actions like Jink or Go to Ground but also a bit underdeveloped
-Deep Striking is very risk/reward which allows for some potentially rewarding actions if played risky but still allows you to play with more minimal risk or utilize tools to reduce the risk while deep striking. 8th is just a dull "appear 9" away".
-Usage of reserves allows for more interesting tactics and flexibility instead of 8th where you can only reserve if you can deep strike or do some sort of outflank
-For all the power creep BS that went on as 7th rolled out, formations often times created some very fluffy and interesting game play variety. Seriously go back and look at all the formations that got ignored because of things like Riptide Wing, Skyhammer, Battle Company, Decurion, Aspect Host, etc existed and those ignored formations sometimes had some very fluffy and interesting gameplay mechanics.

7th's main issue is that GW sucks at game balance and ripped out the brakes on the rules bus with the Necron dex (probably to push sales) and kept the pedal floored all the way until 8th landed. 8th got a ton of praise for the index balance (which has some horrid internal balance) but that's because they just broke everything down to children's level complexity and yet faction imbalance, broken mechanics, and BIS unit spam continues on. Its just that now 8th is a much less complex game and frankly more shallow game which to me just feels boring to play win or lose.

I just want them to finish all the Legions before FW converts over to 8th. I'd like to see The Lion and Sanguinius in 7th edition rules before they are stripped bare and made into a pale copy of themselves in 8th like what happened to Guliman.

The major weaknesses of 7th are marginalized or non-existant due to limited detachments, and everything having T4 3+. Yes, there are still some issues, but in my mind, the single biggest thing that broke 7th ed was all the detachments and wonkiness that resulted. With the release of the new Red Rulebook for the Horus Heresy, they have also eliminated the whole invisibility issue and clarified more than a few other rules.

The Horus Heresy is not about the armies. It's about the Primarchs, and, well, in 8th edition, it really feels like characters, especially the big characters, have been distilled down to a "Everything Ultramarine gets +1 to hit while within 12". And, well... that's great and all, but it's not "special". Look at Horus with Worldbreaker and The Warmaster's Talon going to translate into 8th? World Breaker -1 to hit, S+3, AP -3, d3 wounds? And the Claw- How will that work? It'll have to be completely different, and it'll be something like "enemy models are -1 t hit in the fight phase".

8th edition is fun, but the shrinking of the design space and GW's reluctance to give special rules to special characters beyond more CP's and +/- rolls, means the Primarchs will be nowhere near the power level or battlefield presence they have in 7th edition.

This ended up bigger than I thought, but wanted to provide a counterpoint to some of these.

 Vankraken wrote:

-Blast Weapons are a much more interesting mechanic that heavily factor in model proximity instead of just being a flat X number of shots (or the far worse d3 or d6 shots garbage)

There were several problems there. First they had some structural issues in the way they affected different units, they had a massive casualty potential but a very low average damage output, both because of the scatter mechanic and the spread of models, often even a dead on battlecannon shot from a 150+pt tank may only potentially be able to nail 3 or 4 dudes, and that's assuming you hit, before rolling to wound or any saves. Against big monsters and vehicles, blast weapons also consistently underperformed, as they paid lots of points to inflict multiple hits on units, but could only ever inflict a maximum of one hit on something big.

The other problem is that the blast mechanic was tedious to work out, particularly with things like the Wyvern where it's indirect, barrage, twin linked and the battery has 3 hulls and you're trying to align flipping templates dynamically by hand twelve times just to determine how many dice you get to roll. Human measurement error, bias, cheating, perceptions, table scenery, moving models, etc all made this a really awkward mechanic.

Yeah, it had its fun moments. That fades after the first couple of games. The game isn't played at skirmish/RPG scales, leave blast templates to games more suited to them.

-Vehicles are more interesting than just being multi wound meat boxes

And all they did was suffer for it. They got stuck with two overlapping kill mechanics for whatever reason, one essentially making them a 3 wound high T creature with...no save, while the other allowed them to be crippled or disabled or potentially killed on any successful "to-wound" roll that beat the minimum required to hurt it.

Yeah, vehicle facing had some tactical depth. The problem is that at the scale 40k is playing at, that's not something a battle commander should be worried about, and, more to the point, why are vehicles the only units that have to deal with that? Monstrous Creatures never had to deal with facings. Nobody ever complained about not having it on them. Why should a Dreadnought or a Falcon need facings but a Daemon Prince, Wraithlord, or Exocrine did not?

Primarily the only vehicle units that got any competitive play time in 7E fell into one of 3 categories. A: Skimmers/Flyers, that could Jink and generate a 4+ save on demand and often still function relatively well (either through virtue of twin-linked weaponry or being a transport and Jink having no effect on passengers), and also typically had dramatically less differentiation in armor facings than their Imperial counterparts and usually had identical front/side armor, making facing mostly moot for them. B: Discounted/Free/Boosted, stuff like the much bemoaned free drop pods/rhinos or formations that had powerful effects. C: Knights, they got 4+ invul saves, mostly ignored one of the overlapping kill mechanics, were fast and had lots of melee attacks with the ridiculous 7E Destroyer weapon mechanics.

-The differences between AV and toughness plus how wounding works gives weapons far more defined roles.

-The different weapon types and special rules for weapons also add to the diversity in weapon function and create more niche uses. The changes in 8th resulted in a lot of diverse arsenals having heavy overlap.

The fundamental interaction of weapon strength and the HP mechanic proved this concept false, what dominated 7E tables? S5-7 multi-shot weapons, weapons that could wound infantry on 2's and glance light and medium vehicles to death with a couple lucky 6's. Add in things like Jink saves that stress volume of fire over quality with vehicles and the AP "all or nothing" coupled with increasingly present and widespread invul/cover saves in general, and 7E really made specialized heavy AT weapons difficult to justify in most cases (stuff like Hammerhead railguns)

7E was the zenith of the "do it all" weapons.

While GW hasn't gotten it all right, the return of Damage was a good idea, and that has allowed for differentiation in a way not possible before, that works much better than what 7E did. It was way too easy to make something abusively good at killing tanks by upping Strength, now with a Damage stat and a reasonable number of wounds allocated to vehicles, Strength alone has less meaning in regards to direct AT potential.

-A bit more decision making as the defender with actions like Jink or Go to Ground but also a bit underdeveloped

If you didn't get an armor save (which is all the time for a vehicle), you *always* Jinked. Go to Ground was something of a choice, but Jink was...rarely really a choice, it was pretty binary. Smoke Launchers were a choice, still are.

-Deep Striking is very risk/reward which allows for some potentially rewarding actions if played risky but still allows you to play with more minimal risk or utilize tools to reduce the risk while deep striking. 8th is just a dull "appear 9" away".

Hrm, lets be fair, 7E reserves and Deep Strike was pretty lenient, certainly the most risk-free up until 8E, certainly dramatically less risky than 4th or 5th. It also avoids the "you're within a hair's breadth of an inch of my dude, mishap!" sillyness. It does feel a bit dull, and I'd like it to be riskier, but it does play better given how lenient 7E already was.

-Usage of reserves allows for more interesting tactics and flexibility instead of 8th where you can only reserve if you can deep strike or do some sort of outflank

On some level I'd agree with this, but the table requirements of 7E (which didn't exist in 5E) killed most of the actual interesting overarching strategy.

-For all the power creep BS that went on as 7th rolled out, formations often times created some very fluffy and interesting game play variety. Seriously go back and look at all the formations that got ignored because of things like Riptide Wing, Skyhammer, Battle Company, Decurion, Aspect Host, etc existed and those ignored formations sometimes had some very fluffy and interesting gameplay mechanics.

8E's detachment mechanics will let you build structurally almost any concept, you won't get all the free special abilities, but that was not great game design, and you will get CP's to use on rationed special abilities.

7th's main issue is that GW sucks at game balance and ripped out the brakes on the rules bus with the Necron dex (probably to push sales) and kept the pedal floored all the way until 8th landed. 8th got a ton of praise for the index balance (which has some horrid internal balance) but that's because they just broke everything down to children's level complexity and yet faction imbalance, broken mechanics, and BIS unit spam continues on. Its just that now 8th is a much less complex game and frankly more shallow game which to me just feels boring to play win or lose.

8E is a less complex game. It is however, still remarkably complex. That said, I don't think there's a case that can be made that 8E is a less *Deep* game than 7E. 7E had lots of complexity, but little depth, at least of the kind that should be concerning a battle commander of a company sized force (yeah, armor mechanics were kinda interesting, not something the CO needs to be directing. Yeah blast mechanics were visually theatrical with the template and all...but really bad actual mechanics). 40k is not, never has been, and never will be a particularly tactically deep game. The game is a framework to play with pretty toy soldiers.

8th edition. I did not care for 7th editions HP system and the way it handles heavy weapon damage. Getting rid of armor facings is fine with me as I felt like on the scale most 40k games are on that kind of micromanaging is really unnecessary. The fact that the Horus Heresy did not port over to 8th ed killed my interest in the game for a long time.

Also multi-blast template spam, courtesy of quad mortars, can go die in a fire.

YPu should post this in the 30k discussion page as well, otherwise the results could be skewed as most people on the 40k page will only want to talk about 8th edition

 Formosa wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
7th is one of the worst games on the market. I don't understand why anyone would choose to stay in 7th.

Why?

What makes 8th any different ?

What were the biggest issues for you with 7th?

What do you like about 8th?

Cheers.

-7th utilized 6(?) different resolution methods. Along with 3 different charts to reference to understand what was a pass/fail.
WS vs WS (comparative attribute tests)
BS (or target number tests)
Str vs AV with degrees of success
Single dice attribute tests (str test)
2 dice attribute tests (leadership)
scatter dice

-Scatter dice opened the door for ALL KINDS of wonkyness due to human error. A couple degrees off could wildly effect the outcome.

-No control over reserves coming in meant the tactical planning of reserves was left up to chance.

-Formations and worse decurions, pigeon holed armies into prebuilt blocks of units that cut down drastically on army composition variety and options.

-Units immune to damage due to high T made it so a strategy built around taking as many high AV or T units as possible would effectively negate half of an opponents army.

-How many unit types were there? Was the different between jump and jet pack really so significant that it needed to be 2 different things?

-How many PAGES of USRs were there in the core book?

-How many weapon types were there? Was ordinance really necessary?

-Random warlord traits/psychic powers which amounts to book keeping to keep track of those things you didn't pick

-Vehicle damage was book keeping too

-Stop the game for every action to roll a random die on some table for more book keeping.

-The psychic phase. The whole thing. But especially warp charges turning most psykers into batteries to fuel 1 or 2 other models.


What do I like about 8th?

Simplicity. All of that bs is gone.