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A post from the Daemon discussion reminded me of something I have been considering for some time.
Why don't models in 40k do cool, interesting, unique things? Or rather, why so rarely they do such things.
The post in question was proposing some new daemon types:
Khorne could have more Gladiator oriented Bloodletters types. Nurgle could have a ranged unit, spitting vomit at people. Slaanesh could push off the knockers box, and have muscular body builder type heavy infantry. Tzeentch could have dragons of some kind.
Nothing wrong with that in the context of 40k but...isn't it just daemons that attack, daemons that attack, daemons that attack and daemons that attack? If the attack and defense values are the only thing that differentiates models, no wonder you run out of design space pretty quickly. But this seems to be the only way for GW.
Units seem to only have two things they do that matter- how strong they attack and how well they survive. I don't play 9th, but when I read how new units are advertised on Warhammer Community, the only selling point seems to be how many dice the unit throws and how many it can survive. If they have special rules, they are about making them killier or more survivable (rerolls for example) or offer the same thing under different names (for example dealing extra wounds that way or another). The game sounds so one dimensional as a result.
In comparison, in my preferred Warmachine, models can, apart from killing, surviving and offering a plethora of standard buffs or debuffs to every stat:
-push or pull other models (note that in WM every inch matters a lot as ranges are short!)
-teleport friendlies or enemies, also to turn them around, so that they can't see the way they want
-knock models down or freeze them or blind them to disable them for a turn
-put them on fire or cover them with acid for persistent damage
-create clouds that block LOS -create other types of terrain, like forests or magical walls (made of fire for example)
-put markers in areas where they provide covering fire
-gather and distribute souls or corpses of dying troopers to power their abilities
-make other models untargettable by spells or shooting or just plain Incorporeal
-return dead models to play
-take control of enemy models
-slam or throw other models at other models
the list goes on and on and is far from being exhausted here.
The result is that players are given a deep toolbox and can come up with multiple solutions for problems, sometimes extremely sophisticated and complex - the more experienced and creative they are, the more chance of coming up with something that deals with the problem at hand in the best way possible. It gives the game this feel of a fencing duel, where you come up with smart counters and unpreditable ripostes to every move. In comparison 40k feels more like two heavyweight dudes taking turns smashing each other on the head with sledgehammers (in this metaphore the name of the game aptly sums up the subtlety of gameplay).
So going back to the example of daemons - why not just 'attacs while it defends', but something cooler, more unique, deepeining the toolbox instead of just making more of the same?
Slaanesh daemons that lure enemies forcing them to charge even if the enemy would rather not do that?
Nurgle daemons that put 'Languid' tokens (making models slower and sluggish) on enemies fighting them, so even if the enemies manage to win or break from combat, they will be severely hindered for the rest of the game?
Tzeentch daemons that can create areas of magical fire on the battlefield to block access to certain areas they want to defend?
etc
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/25 16:15:59
Cyel wrote: A post from the Daemon discussion reminded me of something I have been considering for some time.
In comparison, in my preferred Warmachine, models can, apart from killing, surviving and offering a plethora of standard buffs or debuffs to every stat:
-push or pull other models (note that in WM every inch matters a lot as ranges are short!)
-teleport friendlies or enemies, also to turn them around, so that they can't see the way they want
-knock models down or freeze them or blind them to disable them for a turn
-put them on fire or cover them with acid for persistent damage
-create clouds that block LOS -create other types of terrain, like forests or magical walls (made of fire for example)
-put markers in areas where they provide covering fire
-gather and distribute souls or corpses of dying troopers to power their abilities
-make other models untargettable by spells or shooting or just plain Incorporeal
-return dead models to play
-take control of enemy models
-slam or throw other models at other models
the list goes on and on and is far from being exhausted here.
The result is that players are given a deep toolbox and can come up with multiple solutions for problems, sometimes extremely sophisticated and complex - the more experienced and creative they are, the more chance of coming up with something that deals with the problem at hand in the best way possible. It gives the game this feel of a fencing duel, where you come up with smart counters and unpreditable ripostes to every move. In comparison 40k feels more like two heavyweight dudes taking turns smashing each other on the head with sledgehammers (in this metaphore the name of the game aptly sums up the subtlety of gameplay).
etc
I'm not entirely sure if it was literally all of it, but close to everything on that list existed in 2nd edition of WH40k, but it was removed piece by piece as the editions progressed, mostly because GW maintained that it made games take forever, which was sort of true - at the time the model count was much, much smaller, and it increased with every edition. Other than that, some of the stuff on that list directly lead to some of the most broken lists of all time, for example the dread FZORGL, aka Lash of Submission.
Long story short: due to sticking to the IGOUGO turn structure, moving enemy units or making/deleting terrain is considered too powerful by today's standards, and GW thinks that making units move involuntary is 'unfun' and have mostly removed that from the game as well. All of this leads to the 'Sledgehammer' playstyle you mentioned, but GW thinks that's a feature, not a bug.
To expand on Tsagualsa's response, the wackier you get with your mechanics, the more difficult the game becomes to balance. It increases the risk of units feeling broken or gimmicky. This is less of an issue with less popular games because people don't play them enough to really expose the flaws.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/25 17:11:28
I think the answer is much simpler: when Warhammer became popular it was trying very hard to be a WWII game, and in a WWII game you don't have a wide range of things doing weird cinematic video-game-y things, and despite all the bloat that's been piled on top of it since it is really still the skeleton of a WWII game underneath.
artific3r wrote: To expand on Tsagualsa's response, the wackier you get with your mechanics, the more difficult the game becomes to balance. It increases the risk of units feeling broken or gimmicky. This is less of an issue with less popular games because people don't play them enough to really expose the flaws.
It also adds a lot of rolls and bookkeeping if you use more than a couple of these things at a time - in 2nd edition you could have smoke grenades whose effects could shrink, vanish, expand and wander each turn, with sequences of multiple rolls, models under the influence of e.g. hallucinogens that had random movements, jump pack units where each model did individually scatter, out-of-control vehicles that did random turns and movements, models on fire that had to roll, and so on and so on. It certainly was cinematic in some way, but it also slogged down games considerably if you insisted on using all of that stuff at once. It works much, much better for a game on the scale of Necromunda, with about two dozen models in total at most.
I was also thinking about the scale, but really it's not that much of a difference for most of these effects - instead of blinding a single model, you blind a unit, instead of setting a single model on fire, you set the entire unit on fire etc. It also shouldn't be more of a lengthy process than just performing attacks - with GW's long and tedious resolution it can actually be quicker.
AnomanderRake wrote: I think the answer is much simpler: when Warhammer became popular it was trying very hard to be a WWII game, and in a WWII game you don't have a wide range of things doing weird cinematic video-game-y things, and despite all the bloat that's been piled on top of it since it is really still the skeleton of a WWII game underneath.
WW2 games tend to have more 'stuff to do' than 40K does, though. And a big part of it is that 40K has systematically stripped out many of the mechanics that differentiate units in a historical wargame beyond 'kills more' and 'doesn't die'.
Rapid-fire weapons that suppress the enemy so you can maneuver? Nope.
Indirect fire weapons that pin the enemy in cover? Not a thing.
Crossfire, so that a relatively weak unit but with good ability to position can act as a force-multiplier? No.
Good morale allowing a unit to stick in the fight longer? Gone, especially since morale is now just 'more models die'.
Cowardly units that aren't guaranteed to throw themselves into the fight, or frenzied units that must attack and can be baited into suboptimal positions? Tournament players hate not having perfect control of their troops, so no.
Better fieldcraft enabling you to go to ground more effectively? Nah.
Engineers that can interact with the battlefield, like removing obstacles? Hell no, any interaction with the tabletop beyond occupying it is verboten.
Better command and control, or faster ability to react to the enemy, or extensive ammunition supplies? Concepts that don't even exist in this game system.
Even basic things like some weapons being anti-infantry while others are anti-tank have been watered down by the changes to core mechanics creating a lot of overlap in weapon roles. Plus increasing mobility and weapon range combined with reduced board size have made range less of a limiting factor in employing fires.
So yeah, go figure that every unit is some flavor of 'kills more' and 'doesn't die'. Aside from mobility and a handful of gimmicks (eg deep strike), that's all there is to it, and the tactics you see invariably boil down to how you get a unit to kill more than it's own value before it gets wiped off the board, with units often proclaimed good or terrible on the basis of simple math.
OP is using an overtly gameplay-first fantasy game as comparison so it's easy to dismiss it as 'things a realistic game wouldn't let you do', but the core observation that units in 40K tend to be pretty one-dimensional is spot on. Units just don't have any interaction besides shooting or punching each other.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/02/25 18:37:43
i'm not 100% sure i fully understand the question here, but in regards to chaos here's my 2 cents
i think they do chaos wrong. completely
chaos demons and chaos marine codexes are stupid imho
i think there should be codex khorne, nurgle, tzeench, slanesh, and unaligned.
khorne would include khorne deamons, WEs, and khorne cultists/traitor guard for example.
Part of the issue is that most other game systems get 1 set of rules and polish it over time. GW instead throws the rules out every edition and starts over, keeping some bits, changing others and shifting stuff around. That and their rules writing system is built more for casual than serious play. They've improved, but there are still legacy issues.
Another factor that you notice if you compare ot Warmachine is game size in terms of how many models and units. Warmachine was a skirmish game built around the idea of a smaller number of units, but each unit having more options to perform.
40K/Warhammer are built around the idea of having way more models on the table and as such having less complexity per model so that the game can flow more easily and quickly because you are dealing with way more models. Esp in 40K where you can't really use movement trays like you could in old world - so if you've got 90 Termagaunts on the table (very easily done that's only 3 squads of 30) you've got to move all 90 - whilst in a rank and file game that might be just 3 blocks to move.
So in some parts its inherent issues with GW's style of gameplay, game and structure that they go for.
Another is simply a factor of difference in scale of the games in terms of how many models and how you interact with those models.
Heck Warmachine even hit an issue with this somewhat as the game got steadily bigger and bigger and got trapped between wargame and skirmishgame
artific3r wrote: T This is less of an issue with less popular games because people don't play them enough to really expose the flaws.
This is the worst defence of 40k's genericness I've ever seen. Especially in a conversation involving a comparison to Warmachine, a game notorious for it's competitive player base.
40k USED to have a lot of fun stuff in it even up till 5th Ed. Matt Ward, for all the gak he gets thrown at him was great at coming up with flavourful rules for units. Like how lichguard shields could reflect shots back at their attacker, jump-pack Blood Angels dreadnaughts, psychically empowered bolter shells for Grey Knights. All great, flavourful stuff. The problem is GW just didn't bother balancing their game at the time so fans got SUPER pissy when these cool rules ended up OP and they squarely blamed it solely on Ward. I think this is a lot of the reason Robin "King Of Bland" Cruddace is in charge now. His rules are so boring and inoffensive and safe that they're easy to balance but lose any sense of individuality or character and thats what GW wants 40k to be. Inoffensive. Because if the game is too much of a grey goo of rules for armies that are barely distinguishable from one another then no one can really complain too much about any specific thing without complaining about the game as a whole.
2023/02/25 20:17:55
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
i think there should be codex khorne, nurgle, tzeench, slanesh, and unaligned.
khorne would include khorne deamons, WEs, and khorne cultists/traitor guard for example.
Bloat for the Bloat God!
There's no need for five different books for Chaos, any more than there is for a dozen for different colours of Loyalists.
An adaptable Chaos Marines [/Mortals] and Chaos Daemons, and better rules for allying different books is all that should be necessary.
2023/02/25 20:32:37
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
i think there should be codex khorne, nurgle, tzeench, slanesh, and unaligned.
khorne would include khorne deamons, WEs, and khorne cultists/traitor guard for example.
Bloat for the Bloat God!
There's no need for five different books for Chaos, any more than there is for a dozen for different colours of Loyalists.
An adaptable Chaos Marines [/Mortals] and Chaos Daemons, and better rules for allying different books is all that should be necessary.
Having stuff to sell is the final point of everything, the game is only relevant in so far that it helps to sell more and bigger things. They'd lose no sleep over introducing the Purselords of Spendmoneya as an additional faction if that was necessary to hit annual goals
Cyel wrote: *snip*
In comparison, in my preferred Warmachine, models can, apart from killing, surviving and offering a plethora of standard buffs or debuffs to every stat:
-push or pull other models (note that in WM every inch matters a lot as ranges are short!)
-teleport friendlies or enemies, also to turn them around, so that they can't see the way they want
-knock models down or freeze them or blind them to disable them for a turn
-put them on fire or cover them with acid for persistent damage
-create clouds that block LOS -create other types of terrain, like forests or magical walls (made of fire for example)
-put markers in areas where they provide covering fire
-gather and distribute souls or corpses of dying troopers to power their abilities
-make other models untargettable by spells or shooting or just plain Incorporeal
-return dead models to play
-take control of enemy models
-slam or throw other models at other models
the list goes on and on and is far from being exhausted here.
The result is that players are given a deep toolbox and can come up with multiple solutions for problems, sometimes extremely sophisticated and complex - the more experienced and creative they are, the more chance of coming up with something that deals with the problem at hand in the best way possible. It gives the game this feel of a fencing duel, where you come up with smart counters and unpreditable ripostes to every move. In comparison 40k feels more like two heavyweight dudes taking turns smashing each other on the head with sledgehammers (in this metaphore the name of the game aptly sums up the subtlety of gameplay).
*snip*
Just about every single thing on this list existed in multiple different forms back in 2nd edition 40k, where there was a bespoke rule for just about every interaction in the game:
-push/pull (or pick up and drop for fall damage) - assail psychic power
-teleportation - multiple psychic powers, personal warp jump generators
-freezing and blinding - web weapons, photon flash grenades
-persistent fire - every flame weapon used to do this, setting models on fire resulted in them running in random directions until they died or the flames went out
-clouds - blind grenades
-can't remember ever creating terrain, but you could destroy terrain with the right gear (anti plant missiles etc)
-covering fire - og overwatch
-soul gathering - every chaos god (bar Khorne) had a psychic power that would generate a new daemon for every X models killed, am sure there were others. Lots of chaos army mechanics such as the brand new world eaters blood tithes still operate on this kind of principle.
-invisibility had been a psychic power up until end of 7th, everyone hated it
-various incarnations of medics have been in 40k for ever, still exist
-controlling enemy units still exists, things like polymorphine used to be cool too
-throwing used to exist (assail and I think more), still does with imperial knights
It used to be easier to have loads of bespoke rules in 40k, back when there were fewer factions with fewer units, almost no faction specific rules and smaller game sizes (by model count). These days there is so much going on that too much can feel like bloat pretty quickly. I'd like it though if smaller form factor versions of 40k like kill team and boarding actions brought a lot of this style back - but big games need to be streamlined.
It used to be easier to have loads of bespoke rules in 40k, back when there were fewer factions with fewer units, almost no faction specific rules and smaller game sizes (by model count). These days there is so much going on that too much can feel like bloat pretty quickly. I'd like it though if smaller form factor versions of 40k like kill team and boarding actions brought a lot of this style back - but big games need to be streamlined.
Throwing existed with Ork Lifta-Droppa/Traktor weapons
The Legion of the Damned had a special character Sgt. Centurius that could collect souls and revive fallen Damned Legionaires with them.
I don't think proper morale rules and pinning negatively affected the game in the past. If anything, pinned and falling-back units speed the game up because they don't do as much.
Now morale is a side note that kills a handful of models at worse.
The layered re-rolls are much worse for gameplay speed IMO. Adding some depth to gameplay whilst cutting down on all the reroll proliferation would be beneficial.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/25 21:55:22
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
Haighus wrote: I don't think proper morale rules and pinning negatively affected the game in the past. If anything, pinned and falling-back units speed the game up because they don't do as much.
Now morale is a side note that kills a handful of models at worse.
The layered re-rolls are much worse for gameplay speed IMO. Adding some depth to gameplay whilst cutting down on all the reroll proliferation would be beneficial.
I agree and think that psychology and related stuff are a huge area of design space GW is underutilizing or failing to utilize at all.
From their point of view, there are a few reasons that were given from time to time for why they've removed so much of it:
- Pinning units, units that do have to act a certain way, are hindered from acting at all etc. are 'unfun' and not well-liked by players in their imagination
- With their limited range of morale values and the way they resolve it, too much hinges on a single 2D6 roll that can make or break whole battle plans
- Due to the limited range of morale values, you can't do much with modifiers in either direction too, so morale in general is not very 'interactive'
- In contrast, re-rolls are nice from a purely game-design-mathematical point of view, because they can be calculated exactly and the shift in probability can be adequately mapped; they do not, in general, bring such a make-or-break situation, but rather shift curves and are easier to incorporate in battle plans
Of course, that's mostly due to arbitrary limits they set themselves and could be done away with, but in this case they chose the lazy path.
Eh, my primary army is one traditionally vulnerable to morale effects with low-average Ld (Imperial Guard).
I think constructing a list to mitigate that or have sufficient redundancy for fleeing units was interesting. Some of my most memorable moments in 40k were also from morale tests, like when the battered survivors of the third wave of conscripts passed their test against the odds to hold the game winning objective (avenging the 130+ of their dead fellows...), or when one of my Chimeras tank-shocked a full ten-strong squad of Chaos Terminators off the board and destroyed them all.
I agree it could be swingy, but it was fun swingy IMO.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/02/25 22:18:42
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
Funnily enough, my conscript example above was fighting Night Lords. The remnants of the first two waves of 50 conscripts each had fled the board screaming in terror...
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/02/25 22:32:34
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
Funnily enough, my conscript example above was fighting Night Lords. The remnants of the first two waves of 50 conscripts each had fled the board screaming in terror...
And the final wave defied the odds and held? Yes, I agree that is the kind of " swingy" that is fun. I quite enjoy games like that, even if the "swing" causes me to lose. Guardsmen rallying in the face of their losses and Holding the Line is very thematic and cool. Sounds like it was a fun game.
2023/02/25 22:39:36
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
Funnily enough, my conscript example above was fighting Night Lords. The remnants of the first two waves of 50 conscripts each had fled the board screaming in terror...
And the final wave defied the odds and held? Yes, I agree that is the kind of " swingy" that is fun. I quite enjoy games like that, even if the "swing" causes me to lose. Guardsmen rallying in the face of their losses and Holding the Line is very thematic and cool. Sounds like it was a fun game.
Exactly. I think I had about 13 or so left in the squad that had gone to ground on the objective. I could find out exactly how many, all the survivors got a medal glued on
It was a fun game.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/02/25 23:21:11
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
This bias is ok, esp considering 30k has fun things like pinning & morale that isnt...just lose more models.
At the flgs Flea Market the other day I snagged all three RT rulebooks and was enjoying reading the rules that we both did/didn't use when we played BITD. But then immediately followed by lamenting how diluted the game has become in the search for more minis on the table at once plan.
2023/02/26 03:08:22
Subject: Re:Why don't models in 40k do cool things?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
Funnily enough, my conscript example above was fighting Night Lords. The remnants of the first two waves of 50 conscripts each had fled the board screaming in terror...
And the final wave defied the odds and held? Yes, I agree that is the kind of " swingy" that is fun. I quite enjoy games like that, even if the "swing" causes me to lose. Guardsmen rallying in the face of their losses and Holding the Line is very thematic and cool. Sounds like it was a fun game.
Exactly. I think I had about 13 or so left in the squad that had gone to ground on the objective. I could find out exactly how many, all the survivors got a medal glued on
It was a fun game.
I absolutely love that. That's really "telling Your Guys story", IMHO
Racerguy180 wrote:
Spoiler:
Gadzilla666 wrote: I personally find the more impactfull morale rules, including Pinning, in 30k to be much more fun than the weak 40k morale rules.
But I'm probably a bit biased.
This bias is ok, esp considering 30k has fun things like pinning & morale that isnt...just lose more models.
At the flgs Flea Market the other day I snagged all three RT rulebooks and was enjoying reading the rules that we both did/didn't use when we played BITD. But then immediately followed by lamenting how diluted the game has become in the search for more minis on the table at once plan.
Ehhhh.....I really don't think it's a "model count" issue. As you point out, we have loads of these "crunchy" rules in 30k. Pinning, morale, AV, Facings. But the "average" 30k list is 3000 points, and yet generally plays faster than a game of 9th with two 2000 point lists. It's entirely possible to have these kinds of rules with high model counts
@EviscerationPlague: Preaching to the choir buddy.
artific3r wrote: T This is less of an issue with less popular games because people don't play them enough to really expose the flaws.
This is the worst defence of 40k's genericness I've ever seen. Especially in a conversation involving a comparison to Warmachine, a game notorious for it's competitive player base.
40k USED to have a lot of fun stuff in it even up till 5th Ed. Matt Ward, for all the gak he gets thrown at him was great at coming up with flavourful rules for units. Like how lichguard shields could reflect shots back at their attacker, jump-pack Blood Angels dreadnaughts, psychically empowered bolter shells for Grey Knights. All great, flavourful stuff. The problem is GW just didn't bother balancing their game at the time so fans got SUPER pissy when these cool rules ended up OP and they squarely blamed it solely on Ward. I think this is a lot of the reason Robin "King Of Bland" Cruddace is in charge now. His rules are so boring and inoffensive and safe that they're easy to balance but lose any sense of individuality or character and thats what GW wants 40k to be. Inoffensive. Because if the game is too much of a grey goo of rules for armies that are barely distinguishable from one another then no one can really complain too much about any specific thing without complaining about the game as a whole.
Don't think we're disagreeing on anything here. Weird how much you seem to want to make this an argument though. I don't know anything about war machine but the fact is, balance simply doesn't matter as much for smaller games with less moving parts, fewer players, and comparatively niche competitive scenes. For a game the size of 40k, in an age of YouTube, social media, and professionally paid, competitive streamers, balance matters a lot. GW can't have little Timmy tuning in to his favorite 40k discord and finding out his chosen faction has basically zero chance of ever winning a game. That's just bad for business.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/28 03:25:20
Some of that stuff does happen in other side-games though.
You want wacky things to happen? Take a look at the rulesets for...
Necromunda - all sorts of status effects can happen, grenades can bounce off walls, your guys can end up needing to crawl back to cover or get run over by a dune buggy.
Blood Bowl - plenty of push-and-pull mechanics, knocking people prone or killing them outright, and all so you can get a little spikey ball from one side of the board to the other.
Titanicus - Titans being knocked around, forced to turn, having weapons blown up, having reactors melt down, having to manage your power and shields, all things that are actually really well employed and a lot of fun to have happen in a game.
Warcry - For as quick and brutal as the game is, there's all sorts of little things that make units and factions unique. The latest Khorne Karanak Claws guys have an ability that lets them suplex an enemy and move them into a new position so their friends can beat on them.
Age of Sigmar - You like bringing models back to life? Welcome to the entire Death faction, where that sort of thing happens as a FEATURE, including free summons for a variety of armies, spells that you summon and can control, and all sorts of other wild things.
Those games are all fantastic, and that's just within the realm of what GW produces. I'm sure many other games would have other crazy things in them.
40k is GW's flagship product so they're gunna play it safe to keep from scaring people off while also creating as many situations to use your models as possible without breaking the game.
Don't think we're disagreeing on anything here. Weird how much you seem to want to make this an argument though. I don't know anything about war machine but the fact is, balance simply doesn't matter as much for smaller games with less moving parts, fewer players, and comparatively niche competitive scenes. For a game the size of 40k, in an age of YouTube, social media, and professionally paid, competitive streamers, balance matters a lot. GW can't have little Timmy tuning in to his favorite 40k discord and finding out his chosen faction has basically zero chance of ever winning a game. That's just bad for business.
I'm arguing because if anything balance in smaller games matters MORE and just because a game is smaller doesn't mean people don't spot broken builds within hours of new rules being released. 40k and GW have coasted on inertia for a LONG time at this point. The gameplay isn't great and codex balance internally is objectively bad and externally not great depending on your groups meta. If 40k got launched fresh today, with its rules as is now it would falter and die within months. Small games NEED to have good gameplay and balanced rules in order to stand a chance at surviving in the market.
Warmachine was not a "niche" game. During its peak in the last few years of 7th Ed 40k it was probably selling on par with 40k and had a reputation as being a more competitive, better balanced game. But PP botched the rules of its 3rd edition right as GW released 40k 8th edition and continued to make mistakes from there and it basically killed the game. Because the rules were bad. If a wargame isn't 40k levels of popular they live and die on their ruleset and anyone who likes tabletop games enough to branch out into non-GW games tends to be able to spot bad rules (hence why they've moved away from 40k).
Sim-Life wrote: I'm arguing because if anything balance in smaller games matters MORE and just because a game is smaller doesn't mean people don't spot broken builds within hours of new rules being released.
It does, because smaller game means far less people bruteforcing and theorycrafting every single possible build to find most broken wombo combo. It also means you're playing it with buddy, making incentives to not go straight for cheese much bigger, unlike 40K terrainless board tryhard scene, and much less inane whining like 'assault gun rules don't work' because such issues are ignored by everyone with working brain in smaller rulesets.
Incidentally, I found small solo game ruleset a few weeks ago and had tons of fun with it - despite rules being really not that clear (say, opposing Inquisitor detection abilities or possibility of cheesing power generation depending on rules interpretation). There was also the fact rules invite you to roleplay a bit (say, evil choices being strong pick, but one that would logically make NPC faction hate you, even though it's just mentioned in passing without 20 tables spelling out bad consequences of such choice).
If similar ruleset was released for 40K, though? I am strangely sure screeching about rules being 'broken' and rule interpretations based on word definitions from another planet to squeeze maximum amount of WAAAC that aren't even in sane rule readings to begin with would start pretty much instantly. Add copious amounts of inane fanon and claims of army generation being 'solved' because build XYZ is 0.001% more efficient than the rest (despite it being nonsense in DoaDL because said army generation there is really open ended to account for individual player tastes and even the planet the game is played on) and you have perfect mix of issues plaguing current 40K that wouldn't be the case in any other game, pretty much. Go figure...
Sim-Life wrote: 40k USED to have a lot of fun stuff in it even up till 5th Ed. Matt Ward, for all the gak he gets thrown at him was great at coming up with flavourful rules for units. Like how lichguard shields could reflect shots back at their attacker, jump-pack Blood Angels dreadnaughts, psychically empowered bolter shells for Grey Knights. All great, flavourful stuff. The problem is GW just didn't bother balancing their game at the time so fans got SUPER pissy when these cool rules ended up OP and they squarely blamed it solely on Ward.
And the worst part is, they weren'tOP. 5th was the most balanced edition in history with every book having multiple viable builds. It was also the most usable one, having ditched the stupid, broken, page flipping nonsense that is armory in favour of individually balanced options. Yes, 3rd and 4th edition books with bad rules struggled to compete but it wasn't the fault of 5th edition in any way, shape or form.
Really, the idiotic screeching about Ward was all due to single line of fluff (that he didn't even wrote, that was Phil Kelly) that upset 4chan grade special snowflakes and is one of the best proofs that loud whiny minority screaming the hardest about nonissues should be completely ignored, not catered to (see also new SW)
There's no need for five different books for Chaos, any more than there is for a dozen for different colours of Loyalists.
An adaptable Chaos Marines [/Mortals] and Chaos Daemons, and better rules for allying different books is all that should be necessary.
Wrong. It would mean less, not more books, because you could do Khorne book instead of current separate Khorne Daemons, WE, Khornekin (or whatever the faction was called), and Khornate CSM. It would also mean you could make proper Khornate mortals list, not the extremely narrow space lobotomized WE allow, and make subfactions more logical (say, WE being one of the subfactions, not dozen subfactions of just WE alone).
Cyel wrote: In comparison, in my preferred Warmachine, models can, apart from killing, surviving and offering a plethora of standard buffs or debuffs to every stat:
This is why I like Necromunda, Infinity, Warmachine, Adeptus Titanicus, basically anything that isn't 40k, better than 40k as an actual ruleset. 40k has the coolest models and full battles on a painted table look amazing, but the game itself is just bland. I've had more memorable moments in my current Necro campaign than I have in 25 years of playing 40k. We were talking about this at my local Warhammer store last week because guys were playing Necromunda, Titanicus, Warcry, Underworlds, AoS and 30k but nobody was even thinking of playing 40k at the moment. We're all waiting for 10th and ready to just play specialist games if it's as bad as 7th-9th have been.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/28 18:46:54
