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How do?

No, not a thread of mindless gushing praise. Just one to explore the aspects people appreciate about 8th Ed.

If you’re just here to be negative and to try to piss on other people’s chips, please leave now, k? I’m always for constructive criticism, but pure negativity just makes me tut.

And on the subject of constructive criticism, feel free to add ‘but if they did X, it’d be genuinely brilliant’ type stuff. Much as I find pure negativity boring and needless, there’s little point in pure gushing praise. There’s always room for improvement. Always.

So, rules set out, here we go.

1. The change to vehicles. Oh thank the dice gods they’ve at least tried this. Vehicles as a unit type are now more durable than ever. Transports now need more than desultory firepower to drop them. That’s not to say they’ve got all vehicles quite right yet. If I’m honest, on that last point I’ve not played anywhere near enough to have formed an opinion there one way or the other. But vehicles are at least now a good deal tougher to deal with.

2. The damage stat. I’m loving it. It’s another stat, yes. But I’ve found it’s helped sort ‘the men from the boys’ when it comes to choosing the right weapons for your list. And it means the aforementioned vehicle unit type doesn’t have it quite all it’s one way. Some weapons truly excel against infantry or tanks. But thanks to the damage Stat, very few are now Jack Of All Trades. Again, I’m not saying they’ve absolutely nailed it across the board. Just that the damage stat is welcome and enjoyable.

3. Split Fire. Possibly contentious, but in a respectful way, I don’t care. I loves it.

4. Battleshock. First introduced in AoS, I am absolutely chuffed it crossed over into 40k. Tactically it’s a new and interesting challenge. Chaff units which previously relied upon the enemy just not being able to kill enough of them to make it count now have a further threat. Knowing how to apply one’s firepower and debuffs to let Battleshock do a fair amount of the heavy lifting is a skill all itself. But, they do need to watch out for two things....Immunity Creep, and Debuff Creep. Immunity is fine if it’s rare, or costs something, even if it is just CP, they’re still a finite resource. Debuff Creep? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not problem with specific builds designed around wreaking merry bollocks with the enemies Ld stat to really make Battleshock bite. But such a strategy shouldn’t ever become so common that it’s not the central theme of a force. If you go with punishing Battleshock, you shouldn’t also excel at say, Combat or Shooting. Pulling off the ‘killed one, everyone else ran away’ hypotheticals should require a fair amount of player skill.

Right. Anyone else?

The Indexes were a massive step in the right direction with respect to balance.

No more Superfriends/lots of cross-army shenanigans removed.

JSJ is now much, much less common, and typically requires stuff like CP.

Mmmmmmmmmmm
1) AP weapons. no longer all or nothing
2) to follow up on 1, no stupid 2++ outside of rare situations (if at all)
3) Damage for sure no more instant death and blowing up vehicles
4) vehicles table is gone
5) no more templates
6) no more shooting arcs.

The Damage and Movement stats have opened up so many possibilities and removed the need for so many "snowflake" rules.

JSJ being made into a Stratagem ability is great, and I say this as an Eldar player who has played jetbikes since 4th ed.

Vehicles being given the same stats as other models and thus removing essentially an entire section of the rules just to govern them.

AP values affecting all units (that use Armour saves at least), not just specific units, has made so many weapons viable that just were not before.

-

Constructive criticism here. If they brought back 4th Edition's terrain rules it'd be far and away the best iteration of the game since 2nd.

The good
Simpler to hit mechinism
Reduction and simplicity of paykee powers
Vehicle and monster wound charts and degrading profiles
The removal of free stuff via formations
AP now not instantly dead stuff

The bad
Lack of psyker power creativity
The to wound chart
Almost anything can deep strike
The codex creep being really bad
Cover is hot garbage
The amount of invul saves in the game right now

The ugly
Vehicle facings don't matter, volcano Cannon out of a tree
Rule ambiguity leading to worse rule arguments then ever before. Seriously GW could not make it clear if you can or can not stand on a fortifications with battlements.
Being able to garuntee deep strike and everything could charge outta it.
The lack of a CP cap to the point of armies can vary anywhere from 9 to 21 CP at the same point level. If you don't have cheap troops your bones
Death stars did not go away, they just got spread out.
The way modifiers, rerolls and the lack of caps to them work.

8th is a good example of when you do to much to a game. 7th had it's problems, but 8th decided to fix problems it had no need fixing. Vehicle facings is the best example.

Banville wrote:
Constructive criticism here. If they brought back 4th Edition's terrain rules it'd be far and away the best iteration of the game since 2nd.

No doubt that the terrain is probably one of the weakest part of the base game right now.

I’m really liking 8th too. Most, if not all, the reasons are already mentioned before. What I do miss and would like to see is the IGYG being replaced by a more (inter)active way of gaming.

my favourite thing is that it is much more balanced than 7th, and they've committed to keeping it balanced and FAQed.

It keeps the competitive game fresh and means they can fix obvious oversights (e.g. when they accidentally created the daemon screamer-star by an improbable combination of the grimoire, fateweaver and a BRB psychic power to make a 2++ rerollable save unit) and obviously undercosted units (e.g. conscripts, razorwings, brimstones, stormravens, flyrants etc.) and we don't have the stupid situation where windriders, riptides and wraithknights were point-for-point the best units for over a year...

With regard to regular FAQ, they’re certainly welcome, and I get the comment that they keep the competitive scene on its toes.

But, if peeps want to delve into the relative merits of a given FAQ, this isn’t the thread.

Vehicles going back to RT and having a profile and being hurt the sam as anything else

removing the 0-10 cap on stats, they need to work more with this and frankly should have taken the chance to re-baseline around S5 & T5 for marines to provide a bit more space below them

stratagems are a nice mechanic to have with a lot of the buffs moving there, more should move there - like have the Auras as stratagems that cost points to use

I like not feeling like a passenger any more

I like the removal of special rules that when you look them up just mean you have another special rule, in a different book, that when you look that up gives +1A or something - rolling them into the stat line was so overdue

The return of the movement stat has perhaps been the largest change and so simplified the core rules

Not rolling for psyker powers and Warlord Traits.

The guy that thought that was a good idea should be given a ticket directly to North Korea.

Movement values. That's it.

Straight up X+ to hit, rather than some calculation with BS or WS vs. WS. Though, they should have printed a To Wound table rather than just write the formula out.

I'm somewhat iffy on the degrading stats, but vehicles and monsters do seem a lot more resilient than before. Thank goodness for the death of the vehicle damage table.

In a similar vein, glad to see facings and turn restrictions for vehicles be gone. Not quite happy with LOS rules, but it's better than figuring out weapon arcs.

Love that everything is done with a datasheet that has all the rules. I do wish they would sell cards (up to 3x5 index if needed) with the stats.

Love the Indexes and the idea of Chapter Approved, though I wish they hadn't done the codexes.

They do, however, really need to fix the terrain and cover rules.

Now that I finally have a codex I'm really enjoying this edition. Lots of powerful but not overpowered combos, more internal balance than previous editions.

8th edition with index was the worst edition ever because indexes were so unbalanced in terms of points and so limited in terms of options.

The real drawback about 8th is the fact that all the rules are spread out in a hundred different sources, but I'd rather have tons of FAQs and CA and a more balanced game than only a single source of rules and units that stay overpowered for the entire edition.

The best have been the indices, which have provided an update of the armies in one shot.

 wuestenfux wrote:
The best have been the indices, which have provided an update of the armies in one shot.

Because you don't play SW, orks or drukhari.

Unfortunately the indexes made 90% of my models pure garbage. And I own three large collections. I don't even consider playing with an index a real edition of 40k anymore. At least CA made the wolves playable with a massive points reductions.

Pretty much anything that isn't troop is utterly overcosted on indexes, with the exception of AM and SM stuff. In fact several AM and SM units got some price hikes, when the majority of points changings have been reductions in this edition.

Many armies were boring to play before the codex, and I'm thinking about DA, BA, tyranids, drukhari, eldar and necrons mostly, some still are (especially my beloved orks) because they don't have one.

I like that vehicles aren't now insta wrecked by assault units and can overwatch with their weapons.
Though I'm torn on the changes to flyers. On the one hand it means they're not all but untouchable. On the other hand it's made them too easy to take down. Though the possibility of losing a jet to an infantry squad with rifles is annoying.

I'm pretty easy when it comes to editions, I just like the cool models and rolling dice. I really like the new missions in Chapter approved, there is some great ones in there.

Really loved the removal of the not so universal USRs and page refer to a page to another page.

I especially like the reintroduction of the move stat and ap modifiers. I always found the pass/fail ap method frustrating. I found that anything worse than ap3 only useful in niche cases and that models with armor saves of 5+ or 6+ might as well be unarmoured. I may be biased, I was usually the guy getting his saves nullified and having all of his big guns bounce off of power armor.

I would have liked it even more if they'd set the standard (marine/human) move stat at 4" instead of 6" (so orks at 4", cw eldar at 5", etc). Basically what they were in 2nd ed. I think this would make movement more meaningful and that it would increase the value of transports and the 6 wound fast light vehicles. I get why they didn't do this though, I doubt people would be happy if their marines suddenly move 33% slower :p

 Stormonu wrote:
Straight up X+ to hit, rather than some calculation with BS or WS vs. WS.

Personally that's one thing I am a little disappointed by. It makes more sense to me that someone with a high WS should be harder to hit in combat.

I am really enjoying not having to cross-reference special rules all the time.

I much prefer this edition to 7th with a few minor changes / tweaks it could have been flawless :

Language around reserves and reinforcements needs tidying up

Make Deployment a phase and reference it in stratagems, rather than this whole start of game but before turn begins spin a bottle, roll a 6 and throw darts at a double to start!

clarify where Reserves and embarked stuff is please

Bring back Nightfightin on a dice roll for turn 1

some one mentioned USRs ... I get that every datasheet wants to feel special but ... we ALL know it's still Deepstrike .. it's still FNP ... it's still a 3++

#Make Terrain Great Again!

#Make Chainswords great again ..

I do really like the new <FLY> ignores all the things on movement and charges ... it's just so easy

It's not as bad as it's close relative AoS.

Oh, another thing I'm really appreciating? Well, two things.

1. As others have said, the removal of formations. I liked the concept, but the way they executed it left a lot to be desired. Some Codexes gave free stuff (and a lot of it). Others? Not so much. The uneven dishing out irked me.

2. USR demise. By putting it all on the one page, it's easier to reference - and to tweak. Consider before. FnP on Unit X made them worth taking. But on Unit Y, it made them nigh compulsory. Tone down FnP to sort out Unit Y, and you risk making Unit X obsolete. Gives them more options in tweaking.

And I feel the big FAQ is at least a solid start. Yes, it's proved contentious in some circles. But I wonder if that may be, at least in some part, a hangover from the days when FAQs were few and far between? So far they've fulfilled their promise, and released the first big FAQ. But the proof of the pudding will be what they do with that feedback.

Vehicle changes and split fire are the big ones for me. It was never fun explaining to new players in intro games that they couldn't fire the rocket launcher at a tank and the rifles at infantry.

Also a fan of moving things to the bigger picture - resource management and battleplan are more important than spacing models exactly 1.99" apart and ensuring that the Bolter dude is 2mm forward of the Plasma dude.

I only joined the game in 8th, but i've done a lot of retroactive investigation of why people say 7th was so bad. So here's my favorite thing!

No templates. No longer is spreading out all your models EXACTLY 2 inches from eachother an option you need to do anymore, and no longer are there arguements about hovering the template too high or being off centre. Now it's all LoS based, which you can pretty well do with a piece of yarn.

I got to admit, playing against no templates is really nice. Not having to worry about spacing my models out, in stark contrast to when I run a foot horde for my 12th in HH is refreshing.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2. USR demise. By putting it all on the one page, it's easier to reference - and to tweak. Consider before. FnP on Unit X made them worth taking. But on Unit Y, it made them nigh compulsory. Tone down FnP to sort out Unit Y, and you risk making Unit X obsolete. Gives them more options in tweaking.

USR's were only bad when they didn't allow any sort of flexibility. Instead of making FnP a flat number, make it FnP (X) so you can tweak X as needed per unit.

That being said, the death of USRs allows for not so standard rules to have subtle tweaks and exceptions, which is nice. Tau drones bodyguard rule being different to the "standard" rule for example.

I like that they removed a lot of the randomness from pre-game. Roll for psychic powers, now roll for Warlord Trait, etc.