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With 9th edition receiving slaps of haphazard rules updates, I've got one question.
Do you care about your rules?

If 10th edition is to seriously save this game, it would have to go through and squish all the stats or upgrade dice from d6s.
Lets assume they aren't willing to blow up their nottingham dice factory and instead have to stat squish. Would you care? And what could be stripped from your faction without you shedding a tear.

Just to list some I wouldn't care about:
- Reduction or removal of damage and armor penetration on weapons
- Stratagems removed
- Majority of bolter profiles are merged
- Majority of primaris types are merged
- Doctrines removed
- Luck of the Laughing God removed
- Fate dice removed
- Boyz / Beast snaggas merged

 Eonfuzz wrote:
With 9th edition receiving slaps of haphazard rules updates, I've got one question.
Do you care about your rules?

Yes. A games/editions rules becoming too onerous is one of the reasons I stop playing that game/edition.
40k is working on reaching that status. Again.

Rules are my #1.

Which is why 40k has not been in my house for a number of years.

Get rid of basically everything. Stratagems suck, 90% of them are useless bloat and 5% of them are stupidly broken. Either eliminate them entirely or reduce them to 5 per army, with one usable each turn, each of which is powerful but limited by being once per game. Think something like transhuman but on a 5+ instead of a 4+.

Vastly simplify army construction. Give each army one core special rule plus the five stratagems and everything else is basically on the datasheets.

Go to AA or if you don't at least put in a lot more opportunities for interaction on your opponent's turn.

40k should have simple rules that are difficult to master, not be a bloated mess that is more about your ability to memorize rules and regurgitate them at the proper moment than your ability to actually make smart choices in-game.

I think the main thing I'd like to see is a shift away from tournament style play and towards thematic, flavorful games. I'm glad they seem to be paying more attention to game balance, but for me, the point of balance is to allow two players to have an enjoyable pick-up game; not to contort a permanently imbalanced game into a bland dice rolling exercise that still doesn't manage to be balanced. So like, keep up the good work on internal balance and the regular patches to fix egregious balance issues, but also maybe lean into some more narrative mission design or something. But that's not really what you're asking about.

GENERAL
* Any stratagem that just boosts killing power in a bland fashion. This probably includes the fight/shoot twice strats.

* Relics as a concept. GW has done much better at implementing them recently, but I'd still prefer these just be conventional wargear with a limit on how many of each you can include in your army or per character.

* Warlord traits as a concept. I'd rather these become similar to Pivotal Roles or Exarch Powers where you have a list of them available to your characters. Let me add some flavor to my characters through their gear and power choices instead of locking them behind awkward CP and faction hoops.

* Deny the Witch. Never much cared for rules that made cool things not happen. Don't mind psychic powers getting nerfed a bit to make that happen.

* Most of the doctrine-slot special rules. Some of them I really like (like 'nids being able to adapt right before hte game, the general idea of montka/kauyon, etc.), but most of them are just bloat for bloat's sake.

* Chapter tactics sort of. I love army theme/subfaction rules, but most of the current implementations of these are just raw power boosts. I'd rather have army themes that change an army's playstyle and come with drawbacks rather than just being a raw power boost. Let your army theme determine like, half of your stratagems and potentially swap out your army-wide rules like Combat Squads, ATSKNF, Battle Focus, etc. with something equally useful that changes how you play.

* Most auras. Give me some guard-style orders or AoS style command abilities or 0CP stratagems instead please and thanks.

* Most of the stat boosts GW has been handing out; especially the AP boosts. Do tau pulse rifles really need to be AP-1?

* The faction-specific secondaries. Sort of. Rather than secondaries being these fiddly things that quadrouple the number of goals you have in a given mission, I'd rather just see missions that really lean into cool stories instead. No need to vaguely convey that my drukhari are kidnapping slaves based on how many units I finish off in melee; just give me a mission where the primary objective is basically the 3rd edition slave taking rules.

CRAFTWORLDERS
* Strands of Fate is neat, but I'd be fine with giving it up. Battle Focus is the rule I really wanted back.
* The shuriken special rule. It's nice to have, but it's always been kind of an unnecessary add-on. Especially now that shuriken weapons' base statlines are better.

DRUKHARI
* Power From Pain. I'd love to having a fun version of this back, but the current version just isn't what it could be.
* Blade Artists. Weird, tiny little buff that makes you split up dice pools. You can have it back.
* All the deep divisions between kabals/cults/covens they've been doing. It's nice to have our fluff acknowledged, but things have gotten really clunky. Just toss them all into a single subfaction keyword and let some obsessions benefit one subfaction more than another. This would make it easy to design obsessions that benefit mercenaries too for those wanting to run a solar cult or incubi shrine or whatever.

HARLEQUINS
* Luck of the Laughing God. It's cute, but it feels like someone had to fill a quota and couldn't come up with something more interesting in time.

MARINES
* ATSKNF. It doesn't come up all that often, but we're all aware of how annoying it is when it does. Given how many factions can be considered to be essentially fearless but don't have a similar rule, I think it's reasonable to say that marines can become disorganized/suppressed/etc. just like necrons and daemons can.
* Litanies. I like these, but we don't need a whole sub-system dedicated to them.
*Combat Squads. Fluffy, but does anyone every use them?
* Doctrines. Not all that fluffy. Not all that interesting. Literally a power boost GW handed out to discourage soup lists in 8th edition.
*Consolidate lots of datasheets. Tactical Marines and Intercessors can just get rolled together finally. We can have drop down to like, 2 or 3 bolter profiles. We can drop down to 1 terminator datasheet.
* ^And then we can use all the pages we saved to roll all the unique snowflake content into the main marine book. Wake up marine sheeple! Embrace the freedom of not being doted on by mother GW!

THOUSAND SONS
* Sorcery Points. I like these, but I could part with them if I had to.
* Also, our not-litanies.

CHAOS MARINES
* Lol. Summoning. Do we technically still have that?
* Also, our not-litanies.

SISTERS
* Sacred Rites, War Hymns, Crusade special mechanics, etc. All of these are good but we could probably stand to drop one or two of them. I'd rather keep Miracle Dice as-is though. They're fun.

DEATH WATCH
* The kill team specialisms. I like what GW was going for, but they're kind of bland in execution. You could probably reduce them down to a single warlord trait or stratagem or something. Or turn them into a series of battlefield role-related stratagems similar to the anti-ork, anti-eldar, etc. stratagems.

What I would do is to broadly increase the survivability of units, especially more "basic" infantry types of units while allowing for avenues of counterplay that keep more of the current lethality. I'd also want to reduce the mental load / overhead of play. I want my attention focused on the table and what units are moving where, instead of juggling a rolodex of stratagems.

Some specific stuff.

- Revise the wound table and make it more like the old one. Remove the ability for mass weak fire to be able to wound heavy armor / high toughness models.

- Re-introduce some restrictions on shooting to make it less feasible to perfectly optimize shooting. Could be combinations of adding in screening rules (have to shoot the closer unit if the line of fire would pass through an intervening unit), no units splitting fire (or only allow in certain situations), etc.

- Revamp cover saves. Soft vs. Hard cover should be +1 vs. +2 to armor saves. Or use cover to negate points of AP up to certain values, etc. Cover and terrain should matter more.

- Totally revamp morale system. Go back to units retreating and falling back, no more "dying units, die more" on failed morale checks.

- Add in more unit reactions to break up the turn (stopping short of going full AA). Reactive/return fire, etc. should be a thing.

- Increase vehicle durability by making attacks from the front and/or side grant a bonus to toughness, or reduce incoming damage, or something to make vehicles more robust and reintroduce needing to flank vehicles with infantry to get around.

- Remove random charge distances. Consistency in better, and 6" charge range is fine.

- Revamp stratagems. Do something where CP's are spent to purchase stratagems and then you can only do X stratagems per turn, or each purchased one is a one time use but you also can't use more than 2 per turn or something like that.

- Revise LoS and targeting rules. Define "body" and "hull" for models in a way that excludes random parts / protrusions and just refers to the core of the model. Go back to more abstract / hybrid LoS where it's easier for units to count as being out of sight.

- Bigger boards, better missions.

I gave up somewhere during Psychic Awakening back in 8th.

If I play any more 40K, I'm rolling back to 8E indexes.

 Stormonu wrote:
I gave up somewhere during Psychic Awakening back in 8th.

If I play any more 40K, I'm rolling back to 8E indexes.

Good for you. I'd play anything from 3rd to 9th but 6th and 8E indexes.

10th edition won't be much different than 9th, 40k was re-written not long ago and new editions are just new iterations of this new game. GW will simply try to improve it, not re-write it again. Not anytime soon at least, at some point (12th? 13th?) maybe they'll re-start everything again.

I'm personally not looking forward to 10th. 9th is only 2 years old and several main factions still need their codex. Other main factions got a codex too recentely that would probably need to wait their patch in order to settle down. I'd like to stick with this edition for another couple of years.

Endless cycle of books is what annoys me. Not rules. I'd love to stick with my rules for much longer, 4-5 years at least without replacing the books. Frequent free patches are good instead.

 Blackie wrote:

I'm personally not looking forward to 10th. 9th is only 2 years old and several main factions still need their codex. Other main factions got a codex too recentely that would probably need to wait their patch in order to settle down. I'd like to stick with this edition for another couple of years.

Endless cycle of books is what annoys me. Not rules. I'd love to stick with my rules for much longer, 4-5 years at least without replacing the books. Frequent free patches are good instead.

100%. I wish they won't reset the edition again.
The wet dream would be an official digital ruleset in place of paper books for rules, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

I don't think 9th is salvageable and I don't think 10th will fare any better. The problem is that there is no clear design philosophy at the studio as well as the corporate interference. GW need to hire some ACTUAL game designers instead of promoting store managers then give them some room to breathe.

As it is I don't care anymore if 40k is a good game. I just want it to be fun and currently it's not fun.

I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

I'm wondering what you're referring to in 3rd ed with that? I remember experimental assault rules and . . Chaos 3.5?

And all the FAQs from various sources, the oodles of Indes Astartes articles, two... maybe three Chapter Approved books (before CA mutated into a tournament-only thing in 9th).

 Aenar wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

I'm personally not looking forward to 10th. 9th is only 2 years old and several main factions still need their codex. Other main factions got a codex too recentely that would probably need to wait their patch in order to settle down. I'd like to stick with this edition for another couple of years.

Endless cycle of books is what annoys me. Not rules. I'd love to stick with my rules for much longer, 4-5 years at least without replacing the books. Frequent free patches are good instead.

100%. I wish they won't reset the edition again.
The wet dream would be an official digital ruleset in place of paper books for rules, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Sorry but they make too much money from making us all buy new books every few years.

Rules updates Arnt about improving the game but squeezing our wallets.

Rules are the most important for me, and 40k is not for me any more and I fear it never will be again
different regions/markets want different things from games/rules and 40k seams to please a certain market (and sells well)
so it won't change to please someone else

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

same as 8th went from "last edition" and "living rulebook" to 9th

so I guess 10th will also go the same way, from "finally a balanced game" to "we need a no edition and a re-write of the rules" in 1.5 years

 auticus wrote:
Rules are my #1.

Which is why 40k has not been in my house for a number of years.

This. An anachronistic game without AA in 2022 will suck. I won´t even bother to write down how badly the rules fail as everybody should already know that GW is a model company and not a games company. Play something different or use custom rules.

It's an interesting question. I guess yes and no because it depends on the application. So removing and squishing into what. I like the streamline Grimdark futures for example so what would GW do to keep the feel of 40K and change mechanics. I sorta feel they need a system like theD20 system*, where it was rules available that other game designers could use and stack onto. a set of good core mechanics and GW used but were free to use or licensed but would have 10 to 20 years of longevity for them so they could publish setting books and occasionally new units but at a different pace. I feel like modern GW is in too much of a hurry but an approach like Warmachine might be a small improvement as long as we had good stable core rules.

* Not suggesting moving to D20. it's a rule set, if you didn't know.

I'm not really excited to move on to 10th. Hope the new HH game is solid. GW's fallen so far below my expectations. I am very tired of them having to add patches as I play so infrequently that it's begun to become unplayable with out a weeks worth of refresher before a game. Such a disappointment.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

They stopped repeating the lie about the playtesting?

I mean, we all knew that was just marketing hype anyways....
Oh. Wait. Some of you actually believed them. And continue to do so. :(

 Stormonu wrote:
I gave up somewhere during Psychic Awakening back in 8th.

If I play any more 40K, I'm rolling back to 8E indexes.

I'd suggest giving Grimdark Future a try. It has that streamlined Index feel but plays quicker. I find it can feel a little too bare-bones at times, but playing it made me realize that a lot of the mechanical detail in current-ed 40K isn't really contributing enough to the experience to be worth the headache. AA alone makes for a more engaging and tactical game than any number of layers of purity bonuses or turn-by-turn abilities.

I can't recall off-hand what the name of it is, but there's a well-recognized principle that people care more about what you take away than what you add or what they've been missing to begin with. I wouldn't mind major consolidation of statlines, weapon profiles, abilities, and a general simplification of the dice-rolling mechanics; but I'm sure there are many who see those simulationist details as essential to the 40K experience, in spite of the glaring holes in certain mechanics (eg everything hit on the same value, regardless of range, size, or speed, or tanks scooting sideways across the battlefield and shooting fixed-front guns out the back).

I'd really just love to see a single coherent design philosophy for the game, executed all the way from the core rules to every last codex. Is the game meant to be a simple, fast-playing, streamlined competitive experience? Fine, then pare down the cruft in the codices and strip out the time-consuming elements like endless re-rolls. Is the game meant to be a complex simulation of warfare in the 41st millennium? Fine, let's get some more detail in the core rules to support that approach. Is it supposed to do both? Fine, make them explicitly-coded game types and attach distinct add-on rules packages to each, rather than this half-hearted attempt where you have Matched Play and Matched-Play-but-ignore-some-rules. Anything but this incoherent, too many cooks in the kitchen, new ideas every six months, throwing darts at a board approach to game design.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

It was the most playtested edition ever. GW just doesn't listen to playtesters, and instead uses them as unpaid advertisers.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I recall that someone said Richard Siegler was asked to be a play tester, but refused because he doesn't believe in working for no pay.

Someone feel free to correct me on that, but regardless of whether he said it, it's something we should think about when we consider the way GW does playtesting.

I dont doubt it was the most playtested edition EVAH.

But when tournament players concerned with listbuilding being so important playtest they have a different set of priorities and goals and 40k is run by the tournament crowd and a former ITC / ETC "big name".

As an example, as someone that participated in past playtesting for these games and others, many tournament players' goals were simply "so long as each faction has a viable build, we're cool".

And viable build of course is a very abstract term that will vary from person to person.

The game is owned and playtested through that lens right now, from all accounts.

(and of course since the release... things have broken down rapidly from all accounts)

IMO -> you have to playtest from MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES and find your middle ground, not just one perspective.

*disclaimer - I was not a part of 9th edition playtesting so I'm basing my information off of what was revealed and past gw playtesting and playtesting other games with people that were also gw players and what they want out of games and how they playtest.

each faction having 1-2 viable builds is ok from a certain perspective

the problem that comes with ETC like tournaments that 1 army being the hard count to 1 other army and useless against everything else is also a viable build

and I doubt 9th was tested enough to get each 1 army 1 viable build

Save the game? 40k is too big to fail. Popularity feedback loops be like that.

My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

Save the game? 40k is too big to fail. Popularity feedback loops be like that.

100%.

Honestly if 40k could copy the coming HH 2.0 rules that would honestly be super duper, idk how i feel about reactions right now, but so far HH 2.0 is looking really really good.

I was going to write out a reply but Wyldhunt has thoughtfully written pretty much everything I was going to say:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I think the main thing I'd like to see is a shift away from tournament style play and towards thematic, flavorful games. I'm glad they seem to be paying more attention to game balance, but for me, the point of balance is to allow two players to have an enjoyable pick-up game; not to contort a permanently imbalanced game into a bland dice rolling exercise that still doesn't manage to be balanced. So like, keep up the good work on internal balance and the regular patches to fix egregious balance issues, but also maybe lean into some more narrative mission design or something. But that's not really what you're asking about.

GENERAL
* Any stratagem that just boosts killing power in a bland fashion. This probably includes the fight/shoot twice strats.

* Relics as a concept. GW has done much better at implementing them recently, but I'd still prefer these just be conventional wargear with a limit on how many of each you can include in your army or per character.

* Warlord traits as a concept. I'd rather these become similar to Pivotal Roles or Exarch Powers where you have a list of them available to your characters. Let me add some flavor to my characters through their gear and power choices instead of locking them behind awkward CP and faction hoops.

* Deny the Witch. Never much cared for rules that made cool things not happen. Don't mind psychic powers getting nerfed a bit to make that happen.

* Most of the doctrine-slot special rules. Some of them I really like (like 'nids being able to adapt right before hte game, the general idea of montka/kauyon, etc.), but most of them are just bloat for bloat's sake.

* Chapter tactics sort of. I love army theme/subfaction rules, but most of the current implementations of these are just raw power boosts. I'd rather have army themes that change an army's playstyle and come with drawbacks rather than just being a raw power boost. Let your army theme determine like, half of your stratagems and potentially swap out your army-wide rules like Combat Squads, ATSKNF, Battle Focus, etc. with something equally useful that changes how you play.

* Most auras. Give me some guard-style orders or AoS style command abilities or 0CP stratagems instead please and thanks.

* Most of the stat boosts GW has been handing out; especially the AP boosts. Do tau pulse rifles really need to be AP-1?

* The faction-specific secondaries. Sort of. Rather than secondaries being these fiddly things that quadrouple the number of goals you have in a given mission, I'd rather just see missions that really lean into cool stories instead. No need to vaguely convey that my drukhari are kidnapping slaves based on how many units I finish off in melee; just give me a mission where the primary objective is basically the 3rd edition slave taking rules.

CRAFTWORLDERS
* Strands of Fate is neat, but I'd be fine with giving it up. Battle Focus is the rule I really wanted back.
* The shuriken special rule. It's nice to have, but it's always been kind of an unnecessary add-on. Especially now that shuriken weapons' base statlines are better.

DRUKHARI
* Power From Pain. I'd love to having a fun version of this back, but the current version just isn't what it could be.
* Blade Artists. Weird, tiny little buff that makes you split up dice pools. You can have it back.
* All the deep divisions between kabals/cults/covens they've been doing. It's nice to have our fluff acknowledged, but things have gotten really clunky. Just toss them all into a single subfaction keyword and let some obsessions benefit one subfaction more than another. This would make it easy to design obsessions that benefit mercenaries too for those wanting to run a solar cult or incubi shrine or whatever.

HARLEQUINS
* Luck of the Laughing God. It's cute, but it feels like someone had to fill a quota and couldn't come up with something more interesting in time.

MARINES
* ATSKNF. It doesn't come up all that often, but we're all aware of how annoying it is when it does. Given how many factions can be considered to be essentially fearless but don't have a similar rule, I think it's reasonable to say that marines can become disorganized/suppressed/etc. just like necrons and daemons can.
* Litanies. I like these, but we don't need a whole sub-system dedicated to them.
*Combat Squads. Fluffy, but does anyone every use them?
* Doctrines. Not all that fluffy. Not all that interesting. Literally a power boost GW handed out to discourage soup lists in 8th edition.
*Consolidate lots of datasheets. Tactical Marines and Intercessors can just get rolled together finally. We can have drop down to like, 2 or 3 bolter profiles. We can drop down to 1 terminator datasheet.
* ^And then we can use all the pages we saved to roll all the unique snowflake content into the main marine book. Wake up marine sheeple! Embrace the freedom of not being doted on by mother GW!

THOUSAND SONS
* Sorcery Points. I like these, but I could part with them if I had to.
* Also, our not-litanies.

CHAOS MARINES
* Lol. Summoning. Do we technically still have that?
* Also, our not-litanies.

SISTERS
* Sacred Rites, War Hymns, Crusade special mechanics, etc. All of these are good but we could probably stand to drop one or two of them. I'd rather keep Miracle Dice as-is though. They're fun.

DEATH WATCH
* The kill team specialisms. I like what GW was going for, but they're kind of bland in execution. You could probably reduce them down to a single warlord trait or stratagem or something. Or turn them into a series of battlefield role-related stratagems similar to the anti-ork, anti-eldar, etc. stratagems.

 auticus wrote:
My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

Yeah but a lot of people will say it must be that way so balance patches can make changes to overused and underused units which will keep the game alive (and a game without constant changes is dead)

And 40k is now perfect for those kind of people

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And all the FAQs from various sources, the oodles of Indes Astartes articles, two... maybe three Chapter Approved books (before CA mutated into a tournament-only thing in 9th).

The thing about the CA books (there were three of them, I've go them on my shelf ) is that each one included all the various errata from the various sources, and then each one had the relevant content from the prior books. I'll take a look when I get the chance to confirm, but I think you only needed the latest one. My overall recollection was that it was very handy, in that if you had your codex plus the latest CA, you had pretty much everything. Plus it had more interesting content, like the Vehicle Design Rules and bonus army lists like Kroot and Feral Orks

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Save the game? 40k is too big to fail. Popularity feedback loops be like that.

I wouldn't be to sure of that. GW shrunk during 7th edition and, tho based on anecdotal evidence, the general vibe online was that local communities were dying out and quitting or moving to other systems.

GW, through bad rules, is certainly capable of killing 40k. Its no easy feat and we are all addicted to plastic crack enough that a glimmer of hope sees us flocking back (aka 8th) but I would not call 40k to big to fail.

The problem with hoping 10th will fix the mess that is 9th is that there is no reason to assume GW is learning their lesson and won't change course yet again half way through the edition and then turn 11th into another bloated mess.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I just want to know how 9th went from the "most playtested edition ever!!!" to late-stage 3rd Ed nonsense in such a small time-span.

They stopped repeating the lie about the playtesting?

I mean, we all knew that was just marketing hype anyways....
Oh. Wait. Some of you actually believed them. And continue to do so. :(

It wasn't a lie. 'Most' is a relative term. Since they never playtested anything they released before 8th, they only really needed 1 game to make that a true statement.

Whether or not they DID anything with that one playtest game...meh.

Bring on 10E indexes!