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Apologies if this has been discussed in other threads.
I was just reading the December White Dwarf bat reps,
and noted that mortal wounds are dealt in a 3inch diameter during planetstrike games.
Is this the beginning of the return to templates?
And a side question, is anyone aware of alternative rules using templates in 8th?

No that's just a spicific rule for planet strike games. It's the firestrike rule. Attacker gets to put down tokens then defender gets to move them 2d6 " in ant direction, units in 3 inches of the marker take mortal wounds.

That said I would like templates back, save for the small template which was all but useless

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No that's just a spicific rule for planet strike games. It's the firestrike rule. Attacker gets to put down tokens then defender gets to move them 2d6 " in ant direction, units in 3 inches of the marker take mortal wounds.

That said I would like templates back, save for the small template which was all but useless

Thanks for the rapid reply.
Me too.
On the small template, its existence did force people to consider spacing, rather than bunch everything up and this in itself added to realism on the tabletop because in real situations with real grenades and mortar rounds everywhere, troops stagger and space themselves to minimize damage from incoming small blast weapons. Now, it doesn't matter, so the tabletop seems even that much less realistic, and this gives me a headache even to look at...

Yeah which, honestly made the small template so pointless. Especially when marins went up to 32mm from 25, even in clumped up on average you gonna hit like 2.

Wounds dealt to targets within some kind of radius are already a thing in 8th; that's how vehicle explosions work, and Marine orbital bombardments.

GW used "damage to everyone within x" of the target" instead of blasts for artillery in Lord of the Rings; it's a little more annoying to measure, but if you only need to measure it a few times (if you're not using it for quad-mortar batteries...) you don't need to haul templates around or worry about foreshortening from not having the right angle over the template.

Let's not go down any path which involves "realistic" with "40K" in the same sentence. 40K exists as a science-fiction property entirely because it is not realistic. One word: chainsword. Many words: Every large combat art piece in 40K.

Pls no templates ever again! I'd rather have a crap unreliable system than spending hours (I am not joking! I saw one argument that lasted 3 hours!) Over how many units are below some green plastic.

The old templates were legacies from when troops were smaller and measuring was more restricted. If they return I’d like to see clear rules for resolving them quickly and template sizes adapted for the new primaris-scale game.

I really think 8th did far too much to remove the importance of positioning from the game which makes games play rather sloppy these days. Blast, terrain, cover, armor facings, wounds from the front, etc all made it important how you move your models and also made target priority less obvious (aiming that plasma cannon at those terminators seems like the more effective use of the weapon but that group of scouts only consolidated 1 inch out of combat so a blast would hit like 5-6 models). I personally loved blast weapons with Grotzookas being my favorite but I will say that guard arty lists with a gak ton of quad mortars and especially wyverns (barrage TL with 4 blasts per ~60 point vehicle in a squadron, probably thought up by the same person who though a unit of 20 master crafted snazzguns was a good idea) really started to drag on.

As to the whole "how many are actually under the model" argument, it just seems like proper courtesy to have some give and take where one blast might only get 5 hits when the 5th was questionable but the next questionable one goes in the favor of the other person. That being said the same arguments can crop up involving true line of sight, movement, cover (especially 8th's cover system if you can call it that), measuring who is in range to swing in close combat, etc. That being said relatively unbiased 3rd party opinion can make short work of such disagreements. Much rather have templates then that example from Planet Strike where you do the whole blast radius thing but without a proper template.

 Vankraken wrote:
I really think 8th did far too much to remove the importance of positioning from the game which makes games play rather sloppy these days. Blast, terrain, cover, armor facings, wounds from the front, etc all made it important how you move your models and also made target priority less obvious (aiming that plasma cannon at those terminators seems like the more effective use of the weapon but that group of scouts only consolidated 1 inch out of combat so a blast would hit like 5-6 models). I personally loved blast weapons with Grotzookas being my favorite but I will say that guard arty lists with a gak ton of quad mortars and especially wyverns (barrage TL with 4 blasts per ~60 point vehicle in a squadron, probably thought up by the same person who though a unit of 20 master crafted snazzguns was a good idea) really started to drag on.

As to the whole "how many are actually under the model" argument, it just seems like proper courtesy to have some give and take where one blast might only get 5 hits when the 5th was questionable but the next questionable one goes in the favor of the other person. That being said the same arguments can crop up involving true line of sight, movement, cover (especially 8th's cover system if you can call it that), measuring who is in range to swing in close combat, etc. That being said relatively biased 3rd party opinion can make short work of such disagreements. Much rather have templates then that example from Planet Strike where you do the whole blast radius thing but without a proper template.

And made a horribly bulky game even more horribly bulky.

Good riddance..

As long as the scatter dice NEVER comes back, I'm ok with templates

Oh please templates never made the game more bulky, the reason they got rid of it was because of bickering from players that would argue tooth and nail over a model that was clearly in but did not wanna take the hit.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Oh please templates never made the game more bulky, the reason they got rid of it was because of bickering from players that would argue tooth and nail over a model that was clearly in but did not wanna take the hit.

Or some guy that wanted an extra hit and moved the template 2 degrees from the arrow after a long scatter.

or the guy that brings too many quad mortars slowing the game to a crawl.

Blast templates would be fine as a way to determine the # of shots a weapon gets.
For example: Weapons that currently roll D3 for their shots could instead place the small (3") template down on the target unit (with the center whole entirely on a model) and the number of models hit is the number of dice you roll to hit. Weapons that roll D6 would use the large (5") blast. I would also make it so that only 1 unit could get hit like this (no clipping)

These weapons could still roll D3/D6 against single model units so that they are not utterly nerfed against monsters/vehicles.

That said, I enjoy not seeing arguments over what models got hit, etc. Which might get reduced if we no longer use the scatter dice.

-

 sfshilo wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
I really think 8th did far too much to remove the importance of positioning from the game which makes games play rather sloppy these days. Blast, terrain, cover, armor facings, wounds from the front, etc all made it important how you move your models and also made target priority less obvious (aiming that plasma cannon at those terminators seems like the more effective use of the weapon but that group of scouts only consolidated 1 inch out of combat so a blast would hit like 5-6 models). I personally loved blast weapons with Grotzookas being my favorite but I will say that guard arty lists with a gak ton of quad mortars and especially wyverns (barrage TL with 4 blasts per ~60 point vehicle in a squadron, probably thought up by the same person who though a unit of 20 master crafted snazzguns was a good idea) really started to drag on.

As to the whole "how many are actually under the model" argument, it just seems like proper courtesy to have some give and take where one blast might only get 5 hits when the 5th was questionable but the next questionable one goes in the favor of the other person. That being said the same arguments can crop up involving true line of sight, movement, cover (especially 8th's cover system if you can call it that), measuring who is in range to swing in close combat, etc. That being said relatively biased 3rd party opinion can make short work of such disagreements. Much rather have templates then that example from Planet Strike where you do the whole blast radius thing but without a proper template.

And made a horribly bulky game even more horribly bulky.

Good riddance..

I don't consider them bulky because I enjoy the process of scatter + using the blast template. It contributes to the game having a more "tactile" (for a lack of a better word) feel and gave those weapons their own style and mechanic instead of just rolling Y numbers of dice hitting on Z's. In particular it made the game a bit less mathhammerable as the scatter, template, and spacing mechanics gave those weapons an X factor which could vary greatly in performance depending on the battlefield conditions.

 Galef wrote:
Blast templates would be fine as a way to determine the # of shots a weapon gets.
For example: Weapons that currently roll D3 for their shots could instead place the small (3") template down on the target unit (with the center whole entirely on a model) and the number of models hit is the number of dice you roll to hit. Weapons that roll D6 would use the large (5") blast. I would also make it so that only 1 unit could get hit like this (no clipping)

These weapons could still roll D3/D6 against single model units so that they are not utterly nerfed against monsters/vehicles.

That said, I enjoy not seeing arguments over what models got hit, etc. Which might get reduced if we no longer use the scatter dice.

-

This would probably be the simplest way to reintroduce templates and make those D3/D6 hit weapons more reliable while giving incentive to not clump models into giant blobs.

But yet rolling random number of dice for the number of shots IS a unique effect vs the normal set number of shots.



Templates could be better. most template weapons should be following the vindicator formula in that it should increase the number of hits based on squad size.

maybe then it would be better against hordes which "thematically" works better. (and i know this hurts certain factions that have horde like elite unites.

I honestly have a hard time buying that so many people got into so many arguments over Templates. I have never once had the issue in over a decade of gaming.

You people play with some fething cry babies.

The loss of templates probably hit orks the hardest due to our low BS, but thank god they're gone. It took me so goddam long to move my boyz blobs and ensure they were spaced out enough. Now I can literally just bunch them all together and scoot them up their 5 inches, speeding up the game a lot. Seriously, imagine if those ork players who have 120 models had to measure out each individual boy to ensure they were far enough away to avoid template damage, because those hurt us a lot.

I've always had fun with templates, and we still play older editions with them at home. As for everyone's issues with spacing and arguments, I had always thought the answer was just to not be such a tight arse. I usually had my opponent place my templates. Usually went quick, and I don't think anyone in almost 20 years of gaming was such a prick that I felt the need to argue with their job. And for spacing, did it really matter if you lost an extra guy because they were only 1 and 1/4 inches apart? Even if it cost the game/tournament? Of course not.
Now we don't get to have nice things.
Thanks a lot.

I'd love to see templates come back without the scatter die (just roll to hit those under the template).

I'd also like to see movement trays for folks who use horde armies. Something like putting 5 guys on a painted up CD or something.

Nothing worse then spending hours measuring out 2 inches to maintain unit coherence but minimizing blast template. I hope I never see another blast template again.

 Elbows wrote:
Let's not go down any path which involves "realistic" with "40K" in the same sentence. 40K exists as a science-fiction property entirely because it is not realistic. One word: chainsword. Many words: Every large combat art piece in 40K.

Which were actually recreated, tested and found to cut surprisingly well. Weight is somewhat issue but then again for marines that is less of a issue. Even half strength swing is more than enough for marine so if you need to change direction of swing apply full strength and momentum is of lesser worry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

IronmanKC81 wrote:
Nothing worse then spending hours measuring out 2 inches to maintain unit coherence but minimizing blast template. I hope I never see another blast template again.

If you want to spend hours doing that fine. Others just do it quickly. Why spend hours when one can get same faster?

 jeff white wrote:
Apologies if this has been discussed in other threads.
I was just reading the December White Dwarf bat reps,
and noted that mortal wounds are dealt in a 3inch diameter during planetstrike games.
Is this the beginning of the return to templates?
And a side question, is anyone aware of alternative rules using templates in 8th?

Make it where I don't need to field over a hundred infantry and 8 tanks at 2000pts and we can talk about bringing back templates and armor facings. You don't realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to resolve stuff like that unless you play an army like IG. It's all fun and good when you're space Marines and you have maybe 3 tanks and 40 guys, but I'm regularly fielding 2-3 times that. It slows the game down drastically, even with cooperative players. Anyone who has played back when templates were a thing can probably think of at least one iffy situation where it was rough to tell where *exactly* a template had landed, with a 1/2" making a huge difference on the course of the game. That's not always just a single model, if you caught a unit piled into assault, that could be 10-20 models on the edge that would get clipped. And that's with a good opponent, theres always that one guy who apparently has a crooked skull because your templates always *just* miss his models.

Same goes for armor facings, sponsons/hull mounts, and casualty removal from closest. These ideas can be fun and work well in a drastically smaller scale of game, or one where vehicles and units are far more standardized. But 40k has such a crazy amount of variation, any hard and fast rule inevitably breaks certain vehicles and units. For example, finding side arc on a Russ is easy enough, but what about a dark eldar raider? What's the weapon traverse on an Ork buggy, especially if it's converted and looted? Where do land raider sponsons draw their arcs (remember how people used to argue over whether modelling the land raider sponsors in front of the doors was modelling for advantage to get extra range?) Now multiply this for the size of an average 40k army and you see why 40k was notorious for being slow to play and klunky. This all adds up and drastically slows the game down and promotes arguments. Yes, 8th edition is a very simplistic ruleset on the surface, but that's because it has to be. It's quite literally got as many models running around as most 15mm scale wargames, and all of these games simplify these rules as well if they want to be successful.

40k players want all the skirmish type rules like armor facing, true templates, true line of sight, etc. but never seem to get that the scale of the game has crept far past where that's really feasible. You have to choose, do you want super detailed action and interactions for every model, or do you want massive pitched battles to play smoothly? You cannot have both. Templates added on at least half an hour to every game I played in 7th. Not just from the blasts themselves, but all the movement I had to do to avoid it. I was hardly doing any meaningful positioning aside from maybe blocking a deepstrike and double checking orders ranges. And I was regularly fielding double the infantry I do now. Positioning is arguably more important this edition, templates haven't changed that. With aura abilities, deepstrike denial, screening, and potentially first turn charges and charges from reserve, very specific placement matters more now than ever. Even a single squad sloppily placed can decide a game in a way I never saw in 7th. As for units bunching up... Uhhh... That's every single 40k picture to a T. 40k armies bunching up now ironically look closer to the artwork than ever before. Be it Imperial Guard, Space Marines, Chaos, Tyranids, Orks, even Eldar, they're always bunched up in pictures and artwork. It's a callback to the games fantasy roots. If anything, I'd argue the big blocks of infantry and parking lots is the game working as intended, as insane as that sounds. If GW wanted us to spread out and treat this like a typical strategy game, we wouldn't having every single army and codex cover doing it's best to put Napoleonic blocks to shame. The most iconic 40k picture ever, of the Crimson Fists last stand, literally has Marines standing on the bodies of the fallen, shoulder to shoulder, pushed back into one tight knit ball that calls to mind a lot of the deployments I see where space marine players bunch their infantry around a core of buff characters like a flag ancient, captain, and chaplain.

If 40k is to bring back these more in depth rules, it has to drop army size down, drastically Something in the 1,000pts range and less would be a good spot. Then you have a much more manageable table for even horde armies to work with and can incorporate more terrain and fancy rules.

One thing I will agree on is terrain rules are way too simplistic. I do not miss random move through cover one bit, but it feels wrong to advance through it with no penalty. It also feels wrong that intervening terrain has almost 0 point, making most terrain functionally pointless. Something like bolt action has, where certain area terrain blocks line of sight, even if you can see through it physically would be a nice start.

tneva82 wrote:
If you want to spend hours doing that fine. Others just do it quickly. Why spend hours when one can get same faster?

You needed to do it after movement, after running in your shooting phase, when consolidating after combat. Multiply by 120 orks plus another 60 gretchin. It will add up to a lot of time over the course of a game. Play multiple games and you'll be in the range of hours very quickly.
But apparently you only played a single game of WH40k before 8th if you could do it in less than an hour for all your games.

I'm very glad this complete waste of time has been removed from the game. If your favorite part of the game is the movement phase, go move your army around on your shelf at home.

Not to mention that you simply lost a mob of boyz after their vehicle was destroyed or you rolled badly for consolidation and then some flamer got 14 hits on them.

Even the new "blasts" not care for models hit, but for units, which then take some amount of wounds. Which means the position of units matters, but the position of models doesn't. Therefore no need for blast templates.

GW made the best decision ever by removing blast templates. They were useless gak that only gave you something useful if you were using the really large ones or you were playing against a player who forgot to space out their troops.

That is by the way ignoring the other problem of the templates which was the scatter die which made Pickup Fights even worse as people come in all sorts and many wanted debates about quaternions or some gak.

Did templates sometimes offer fun scenarios? Yes, but that's one fun scenario in hundreds of annoying games with templates.

 lolman1c wrote:
Pls no templates ever again! I'd rather have a crap unreliable system than spending hours (I am not joking! I saw one argument that lasted 3 hours!) Over how many units are below some green plastic.

Then the problem there is with the operator, not the system.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
Pls no templates ever again! I'd rather have a crap unreliable system than spending hours (I am not joking! I saw one argument that lasted 3 hours!) Over how many units are below some green plastic.

Then the problem there is with the operator, not the system.

Exactly this.

If blast templates added HOURS to your games then look, maybe you need to either game with some folks who are less strict ass darts or go back to school because counting plastic soldier under a clear circle is not that fething hard.

The biggest groups of people I have heard bitch about templates is competitive 40k players, and honestly who really cares about them anyway?

If you bring back templates, expect my movement phase to take about 45-60 minutes. No complaining.

 Marmatag wrote:
If you bring back templates, expect my movement phase to take about 45-60 minutes. No complaining.

...sooooo your standard nid movement phase ok.

 Marmatag wrote:
If you bring back templates, expect my movement phase to take about 45-60 minutes. No complaining.

This ^ with nids and orks finally playing large hordes again, we will measure every model 1.999999" apart. I only play with 100+ models time to time.. no big deal right?

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
If you bring back templates, expect my movement phase to take about 45-60 minutes. No complaining.

...sooooo your standard nid movement phase ok.

LOL, not really, placing them quickly within 1-2" many times just btb is completely different than making sure they are 1.99" apart