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As the title suggests, I am kinda confused by how GW chose to streamline the rules when 8th was released.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't think the general idea of streamlining the rules to make the game more accessible is a bad idea, but I think GW actually made the rules about equally as confusing as they were before 8th all things considered.

A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Don't get me wrong I actually like 9th quite a bit and I'm not saying the old editions were without problems. There was a bunch of clunky and arguably unnecessary/bad stuff (I think nobody really misses vehicle AV for example), but maybe some aspects deserved to survive the transition into 8th.

I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

I miss AV. It was a nice way to differentiate vehicles from infantry/monsters, and was a clean way to make vehicles (mostly) immune to anti-infantry weapons.

I do agree with your post though - they took the streamlining for the base rules for 8th/9th too far, and overcompensate by making datasheets and individual rules far too complex.

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

And now we're left with armies that traditionally relied on high speed and initiative stats now having rules upon rules piled on top of them to compensate as the game no longer supports their playstyles.

Good job GW!

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

So do you think what we have now is better or worse?

for streamlining the rules you need to know what rules you actually want to have in your game (either Action-Reaction, or IGoUGo)

one problem of GW rules is that different ideas that are not working well together are packed into the rules over time because different designer like different things and there is no overall guideline

as a prime example, Universal Special Rules, those were in the Rulebook, but at the end of an Edition, none of those USRs were used because each Codex got slightly different versions of it
or if one Codex got a FAQ on how to use an USR it did not affect others to avoid problems, so the same USR was used in different ways by different factions (late 5th to late 7th only worked if you ignored the "official" rules and used the communtiy FAQ/Erratas because of this mess)
AV is another example, is there was no clear line which units were vehicles and which monsters, this was a random choice and therefore caused all kinds of priblems


So, Streamling "the Rules" was more of a reducing the core rules to a minimum so that there is no conflict with the core if different designers add different rules on the datasheets

8th was not made to be easier for the players, but to be easier for the designers to add new units

8e read to me like they decided to simplify the game, but then nailed themselves to a number of concepts that prevented them from actually simplifying the game (turn structure, three-to-five-rolls-to-kill, quantity of armies/units, preserving and expanding SM-style sub-faction rules...), so they superficially simplified the game by standardizing a few things and then made it much more complicated by stacking a bunch of bloat back onto it to replace the things they'd deleted when standardizing those things.

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

Fair enough, but charging could have been a flat bonus to initiative for example and they still could have added fight first/last as very powerful rules that trump initiative....in that scenario they just really can't hand those rules out like candy like they did with invulns.

We've certainly re-hashed this conversation a lot lately.... but here we go again

In the great streamlining of the core rules, and as the OP mentions, the game lost a number of levers that were historically used for differentiating both army/unit designs and creating different tactical situations and opportunities for players.

The result of this simplification is that more of the burden of differentiating factions falls onto the actual codexes and the layers of army-specific rules. The "bloat", IMHO, stems from the same problem, which is that the core rules only provide so many levers, and so the codex-level rules have to go waaaay down into the depths of minute to seemingly differentiate factions. These depths invariably all end up manifesting as a either (a) situational die-roll modifiers, or (b) situational re-rolls, or (c) auto-ignore/succeed outcomes connected to the same simple set of levers.

All of this added bloat and fiddlyness undermines itself when you realize that for a given unit role, and regardless of faction, each unit is getting the same or close set of possible tactics/faction tactics, auras, stratagems, traits, etc. that end up yielding the same or a very similar set of die modifiers, re-rolls, and auto pass/fails. If every melee unit has the same layers of rules to add extra attacks under condition X, and re-roll 1's under condition Y, and add +1 to hit with stratagem Z, why the hell is any of it necessary? It becomes a wash. Just strip it out and make the unit's intrinsic stat line and capabilities do the job as intended in the first place!

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

Except that the "player interactive" part is unintuitive and makes no sense.

Initiative had issues, sure, but at least it largely made sense (units with the best reflexes attacked first, combats were done individually and independantly of one another).

Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

 Sim-Life wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

So do you think what we have now is better or worse?

Better for playing a game against an actual other person.
Worse for putting my models on the table and having them fight each other because heck if I can remove my bias for one side when playing them both

 vipoid wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
I disagree with the contention that initiative was removed to make sequencing quicker/easier.

I'd say it was removed to add player input to the fight phase so it was no longer a non-interactive flowchart and the most boring phase of the game.

Except that the "player interactive" part is unintuitive and makes no sense.

Initiative had issues, sure, but at least it largely made sense (units with the best reflexes attacked first, combats were done individually and independantly of one another).

Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

Bring in the melee turn order from AoS. It's not as one-sided as in current edition 40k and has more tactical depth than the current and old 40k system as you have to take care which units you are going to activate during melee. Probably one of the best things about AoS imo.

 vipoid wrote:


Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

i mean, it kinda makes sense that chargers get to fight first tho. theyre hitting as theyre connecting with the momentum from the actual charge. And units aren't really alternating on the board, its happening all at once

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

i mean, it kinda makes sense that chargers get to fight first tho. theyre hitting as theyre connecting with the momentum from the actual charge. And units aren't really alternating on the board, its happening all at once

Not really. If some Howling Banshees get charged by a bunch of ogryn I can't see how the ogryn could possibly be faster than them. I know thats an extreme example but I mean really. If some guardsman schlub runs at a several hundred year old super human I don't care how much momentum he has. Short of being literally fired from a cannon at him I don't believe the Space Marine couldn't hit him first.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

i mean, it kinda makes sense that chargers get to fight first tho. theyre hitting as theyre connecting with the momentum from the actual charge. And units aren't really alternating on the board, its happening all at once

Not at all. Pikes vs. charging horsemen? Charging uphill? Charging through cover? There are tons of cases (real and imagined) where the weaponry and field position puts the charging forces at a severe disadvantage

Tiberias wrote:
As the title suggests, I am kinda confused by how GW chose to streamline the rules when 8th was released.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't think the general idea of streamlining the rules to make the game more accessible is a bad idea, but I think GW actually made the rules about equally as confusing as they were before 8th all things considered.

A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Don't get me wrong I actually like 9th quite a bit and I'm not saying the old editions were without problems. There was a bunch of clunky and arguably unnecessary/bad stuff (I think nobody really misses vehicle AV for example), but maybe some aspects deserved to survive the transition into 8th.

I think your analysis of the simplification of the rules is overlooking quite a bit.

First off, just because the rules were simplified doesn't mean they have to be simple. It can be, such as the new Strength versus Toughness To Wound rules, but it can result in complex rules that are just simpler.

The Fight phase is a perfect example of a set of rules that is still complex and yet much simpler in 8th/9th than the prior rules. Now days, you pick a unit and it fights. There are a number of rules deciding who gets to pick a unit to fight and which units are eligible to be picked. Still, the removal of Initiative means you don't have some models attacking while others wait. Remember when a combat between Tactical Marines and Ork Boyz was resolved like this?

Tactical Marines (I 4) pile-in and attack, except for the Sergeant with Power Fist (I 1) who stands still

Ork Boyz (I 2) pile-in and attack, except for the Nob with Power Klaw (I 1) who stands still.

The Sergeant and the Nob attack simultaneously since they have Initiative 1.

Tell me that charging units fight first, then players alternate picking a unit to fight isn't simpler? Especially when fight means pile-in, attack, and consolidate for the whole unit?

That's the thing about simplification. It's about getting to the results faster with less minutia during the resolution, not making things super simple.

Tiberias wrote:
As the title suggests, I am kinda confused by how GW chose to streamline the rules when 8th was released.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't think the general idea of streamlining the rules to make the game more accessible is a bad idea, but I think GW actually made the rules about equally as confusing as they were before 8th all things considered.

A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Don't get me wrong I actually like 9th quite a bit and I'm not saying the old editions were without problems. There was a bunch of clunky and arguably unnecessary/bad stuff (I think nobody really misses vehicle AV for example), but maybe some aspects deserved to survive the transition into 8th.

Stats are not balance levers, they are representations of fluff. Points is the only relevant balance lever, at the end of the day you have to evaluate whether the unit is worth its points, M5 or M8.

Initiative would be another way to express something thematic, like my Lychguard useless against elite units, not the most amazing thematic thing to express in my opinion. The game is also way too lethal for this to be in the game. Just give the appropriate units -1 to hit in melee and no, the appropriate units is not "all Space Marines, from every chapter in the galaxy", Vanguard Veterans, Captains, Lieutenants and maybe a few others I could agree to.

Umm.... AV was imo a good mechanic, it made it so you needed high strength attacks to damage a vehicle. Having facings also made a vehicle feel different than infantry and gave some tactical need for mobility to shoot into the side arcs or the rear. The problem with AV was how the lack of armor saves tended to make high strength, high rate of fire with garbage AP weapons shred vehicles (gauss, scatter lasers). Vehicle damage table was also an issue but that isn't directly an AV issue so much as the compiling of 5th's method of resolving vehicle damage with having basically wounds which meant that a vehicle could both be stun or crippled (or outright explode) while also losing its finite amount of wounds which sorta double dipped the impact compared to MCs which had wounds, no damage table, armor, and generally better access to cover saves.

In the handful of times running a modified game of 7th with armor saves on vehicles, it works quite well (giving vehicles 3+ armor except for rear armor and skimmers getting 4+ armor).

As for initative, I think that removing it wasn't a bad idea but it needed something better to fill its place. Perhaps something simple like 3 levels of initiative with First Strike (hitting first similar to the old hammer of wrath hitting at initiative 10), Regular (where the bulk of melee combat happens), and Last Strike (which is where the initiative 1 unwieldy weapons would attack like Power Klaws, Fists, Melta Bombs, etc).

The big issue with 8th's approach to the game is that it gutted EVERYTHING from the BRB so now all the rules have to be crammed into unit profiles and bloated with stratagems and other marketing power creep gimmicks. Instead of having universal game concepts (something like a set of universal special rules..... but that is probably too complex for anybody to comprehend....) we get hundreds of bespoke rules that are often similar to each other but you cannot write them with any sort of rules interactions with other codexes. Trimming the BRB rules was a welcomed change but they didn't trim so much as sliced it down to the bone and left only a skeleton of a game ruleset when they where done.

 vipoid wrote:


Now we have this nonsense wherein one unit fighting in one melee can cause a unit in an entirely different melee to strike more slowly. "Curses, brothers! Our battle brothers half a mile away have struck the first blow, thus we must wait for the enemy to strike at us before we can attack!"

This statement reminds me of the whole 7th edition FAQ melee grenade thing where models had to queue up to wait their turn to use krak grenades against a hammerhead tank.

 vict0988 wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
As the title suggests, I am kinda confused by how GW chose to streamline the rules when 8th was released.

Just to get this out of the way, I don't think the general idea of streamlining the rules to make the game more accessible is a bad idea, but I think GW actually made the rules about equally as confusing as they were before 8th all things considered.

A good example of this in my opinion is initiative: GW removed the initative stat from the unit datasheet to arguably make sequencing in the fight phase quicker and easier to understand...fair enough.
But then they also introduce rules like fight first/last and suddenly you have some, in my opinion, really counterintuitive interactions that actually require FAQs to make it clear who gets to fight first.
I would argue that initiative wouldn't be more confusing than what we have now...it might even be less confusing, but with the added benefit that it is another lever GW could have used to adjust the balance of some units...and one that can be more carefully adjusted than just slapping fight first/last onto something.

Don't get me wrong I actually like 9th quite a bit and I'm not saying the old editions were without problems. There was a bunch of clunky and arguably unnecessary/bad stuff (I think nobody really misses vehicle AV for example), but maybe some aspects deserved to survive the transition into 8th.

Stats are not balance levers, they are representations of fluff. Points is the only relevant balance lever, at the end of the day you have to evaluate whether the unit is worth its points, M5 or M8.

Initiative would be another way to express something thematic, like my Lychguard useless against elite units, not the most amazing thematic thing to express in my opinion. The game is also way too lethal for this to be in the game. Just give the appropriate units -1 to hit in melee and no, the appropriate units is not "all Space Marines, from every chapter in the galaxy", Vanguard Veterans, Captains, Lieutenants and maybe a few others I could agree to.

That's simply not true? 2W marines and T5 orks made quite a big impact regarding playstyle and balance. Sure, these stat changes also came with point changes, but one does not go without the other.

I agree that the game is too lethal. - 1 to hit is basically worthless though with the cap on modifiers, which is another bad decision imo. Not being able to hit eldar flyers as tau in 8th was super dumb, but GW overcorrected.

Sigh.... I wish more people played circa 4th edition. It was a needed refinement of 3rd. 5th was good too, but the global power/damage creep started to set in towards the end.

So much of people's reaction to the "complexity" of older editions seems sourced by their experience with 6th and 7th, which was overly complicated and fiddly for sure. 3rd-5th was much, much cleaner IMHO.

The discussion about initiative above I don't feel is a good example of streamlining when considering the broader context. Tracking initiative order was not particularly difficult, even accounting for cover, grenades, mixed initiative, etc.

The more relevant discussion with respect to initiative was the tradeoff between initiative being a design lever for unit differentiation vs. having an player-determined, pseudo-alternating activation process for fight order. The latter is a nice alternative to initiative, except charging units fighting first anyway is often the most pertinent aspect to the way fights are resolved and similarly doesn't involve any player decision (other than the active player choosing the order of charging units to resolve).

In terms of player interactivity, I feel that could have been achieved just by adding in more effects that modified initiative.

In the past it was a largely passive stat, with the only modifications typically being either wargear related (power fists etc.) or else due to charging into cover, though even that was basically passive based on whether GW liked a model (in which case it got frag grenades) or not (in which case it got to suck).

However, I'm sure they could add more ways for armies to raise the initiatives of their own models and/or lower the initiative of their opponents.

Hell, I don't like Stratagems or Auras but this is something they could have been used for, had initiative not just been removed outright.

Initiative on datasheets was good, and could still simulate fight first/last by adding or subtracting

Imo GW just simply exchanged one set of confusing complicated rules for another.

Personally I think 9th is no more.confusing then 7th. Where 7th had lots of USR most of them were blanket things that either effected a whole army or specific units. 9th is filled with a lot of aura's, spells, and effects that are based off of keywords so now you are just juggling key words and aura's rather the USR. Which IMO there is more to remember in 9th the 7th.

It's the same thing with the idea that "removing scatter and templates helped get rid of arguments" it really did not all it did was change what people argue over.

Ultimately the rules are never the actual issue, it's people either wanting to argue over the existing rules, or choose not to read/understand them then say they are complicated. The same people I saw mis read rules in 7th with things like reroll 1 miss vs reroll all misses, are still the same people I see miss reading rules on what aura's do to them

Just my opinion on the matter is all

They still have templates anyways. The game is rife with "pick a point/model/whatever. Everything within X" of that model gets [hit/buff/curse/whatever]"

That's literally just a blast template. All templates in the game from 4th can be reworded to "all units within x" of a point are hit" or whatever.

The only difference is the scatter, which really isn't that hard if people understand how parallel lines work and everyone brought a tape measure.

I agree it's easy to understand, what I was saying is the same people that argue over scatter templates are the same ones that argue about the point they pick.

Point being, people who want to argue rules will still find rules to argue about.

Right, I am agreeing with you, lol. The removal of templates solved very little in truth.

Honestly I think removing templates just caused more balance issues. Same thing with the changing of AP and the to wound chart, just made more issues then it fixed in the long run .

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Right, I am agreeing with you, lol. The removal of templates solved very little in truth.

They should have kept templates but removed scatter really.

Nah scatter and templates needed to stay, because it was a risk reward situation.
Remember with templates you could EASY hit 10+ models or entire squads in some cases.

In regards to template the only thing I would change would probably be the small blast template should have only scattered 1d6. Because it was so horribly small it was a bitch to hit anything that was sitting on 32mm bases.

It was one of the reason the plasma canon was so poop.

Small aside regarding templates - in ProHammer we have all template weapons pick a target and roll to hit as normal with the model's BS. If a miss occurs, then the template automatically scatters 2D6" (and the scatter distance is limited to a max of half of the original distance from shooting model to the target model).