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 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Bull . I've always stuck to the lists that "make me happy".

Indeed. There is a fair contingent of us that intentionally take unoptimised lists, even to tournaments - whether it is to be contrary (!) or to set a personal challenge (taking a woeful army and getting it into the top 10% seems to be a common aim). I am trying to wrack my brain as to when I have ever taken an 'optimised' list to a tournament.

Open things up to 'casual' or narrative play, and optimisation rapidly disappears into the rear view mirror.

It might be worth bearing in mind, before we start slinging too many personal insults about one another's mathematical ability, that the majority of players on these forums do not come close to representing the majority of players overall for 40k. The things you take as 'obvious' and 'essential' in play may just not be so.

One more vote for the current system. It is so much smoother and, I think, fulfils GW's 90/10 rule nicely.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Please elaborate what you mean with "the current system is smoother" and what the "90/10" rule is.

I'll take the 90/10 rule first, as it is way less subjective

It basically boils down to 90% of the effect for 10% of the effort. Think of the new edition's list building as the points equivalent of Contrast paints. You get 90% of everything needed for list building for 10% of the effort, much as Contrast paints do your base, shade and highlights in one pass.

And, actually, you have just reminded me of something, a conversation I had with one of the 40k designers long ago - when it comes to rules writing, they said that if they had a choice between doing a page of rules that covered every possible eventuality or a single paragraph that covered 90% of them... they went with the single paragraph.

Huh, that 90% again. Sorry, I digress, that just popped into my head...

As for smoother, the new system allows for army building within minutes (seconds?) with any addition done in your head or the back of an envelope. If you can accept that the 'correct' points value of a unit is not a laser-focussed point but a broader range across the spectrum, then it has every chance of nailing issues more often than not without getting bogged down in the weeds.

I do have some ideas of where things become better. balance-wise, with the new system and I am happy to discuss them. I can also see why some might be less than happy with the new system over old, but also think that for many this will... pass.

As I said, happy to discuss any of this further, this is just where I am coming from/my starting position.

Tsagualsa wrote:


Just for your interest, it's customary that it's more like 80/20, and known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, much more widely known than a 90/10 rule
It originated in economics, and acquired its current meaning via a detour through computer science:

Much appreciated, thank you. As far as GW is concerned, I believe it is actually the 90/10 they work to - happy to be corrected on this.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Do you agree with the pro and con list I made some pages ago?

If yes, I would like to hear if/why the pro side outweighs the con side. If not, I'd like to hear your reasoning for it.

I would be happy to.

- It is faster to write an army list / Less micro in how you equip your stuff, as it won't effect the total cost of the unit.
- Units get to use wargear that was underutilised before.

These are both true, obviously. Don't know if we want to take a massive dive on this but these are not the only advantages. To stick to the points you made though:

- The time saved during army list creation is negligible and somewhat countered by the fact that it is harder to achieve exactly the desired points value.

It is not necessarily about time saved, it is about approachability. Everything is right at your fingertips and just works so smoothly - in comparison, the last edition was a complete pain in the rear end with points tending to be scattered in different sections, and possibly multiple documents (and I say this as someone who has been playing since 1st edition, 8th and 9th were the two that really did not sit well with me, despite having a great core rules system).

- Unit size is locked in many places now where you are unable to add or remove a single model to accomodate spare points over or under your game size.

Yes, this is true, and I have been thinking about this. I have a suspicion (haven't spoken to anyone at GW HQ about this, so unsubstantiated comment coming) this might be intentional, and it is an aid to unit balancing. Bear with me...

Imagine you were building your 2,000 point list in the last (or any previous) edition. You take a Flamer out of one squad because you figured it was unlikely to have much of an effect on the battle, you take a model out of another unit, because that is not really going to cost you, you make all these little trims and cuts... and you are finally able to squeeze in that extra elite unit/tank/aircraft/hero. List optimised.

The thing is (and this is only a suspicion as to the - or a - reason)... it is possible you were not supposed to squeeze in that extra unit. You have got yourself a whole new unit, and have done so by trimming elements of your army that you decided would not have much effect on the battle. That makes (in a way) the unit free.

Okay, not free - but we start getting into a situation where not all points are equal, where some points are doing more work than others... and, speaking from experience, I can tell you that this is a blinking nightmare for game design If this is the case, I can understand why they would lean into it.

- Since not all upgrades are created equal but cost the same, there now exist optimal loadouts, which in turn means less variety on the field.

Maybe. This is an implementation thing and, over time, I think this will smooth out, especially when you look at how new units are being configured.

First off, we do not have to start with a premise that, say, a Lascannon is automatically worth more than a Heavy Bolter because it is more powerful. You can make upgrades situational so that they all become much closer to an averaged centrepoint. Which is better, the Lascannon or Heavy Bolter? Depends whether you are shooting at a Carnifex or a Gaunt - but taken over a range of games and armies, they will both fall into the same range of points (and, remember, we are looking for a tight-ish spectrum of what things are worth, not a laser focus - which does not work for reasons I would be happy to go into). So an absolute optimal loadout is less likely to appear, at least in a long-lasting stable form (the meta changes).

Now, you will be able to point out a number of instances in the current lists where it might seem this is not working perfectly, and I might well agree. On a first release/temporary set of lists? I would be amazed if everything was perfect However, if all goes well, this will start to smooth out over subsequent Codexes and miniatures releases. I think that would be the aim. The current Indexes are just there to get us playing.

Second, some loadouts of the past will fall out of favour. Of course they will, this happens with every edition. If a hyper-optimised unit is no longer viable... that might actually be a feature not a bug. Others will fall by the wayside for other reasons (it might simply not be worth implementing one unit's upgrade if it means additional rules or janking a dozen other units over, for example).

- As units are pointed with upgrades taken in mind, you get less bang for your buck unless you take the "most expensive" things.

Eh, sure. Sort of

I heard someone say the other day that they are quite happy for their Marine Sergeant to have the Plasma Pistol or Thunder Hammer, because those things are fundamentally more fun to use than a Bolt Pistol or Chainsword. I find that a difficult argument to beat.

However, as I mentioned above, this will smooth over time because people will gravitate to what they view as best as they have done with every new edition that has ever been released. But, you ask, what about the people who have units built and painted for the old way of doing things? Does it just suck for them?

Umm... maybe, yes. As has happened with every edition that has come before. There have always been winners and losers and that becomes all the more inevitable when you have a change of core mechanics. It is possible that a new Leman Russ Datasheet will appear without sponsons... But I think in the next year or two, every Leman Russ you see on the table will have sponsons. Unless they are playing in 30k. Or they are with the narrative gamers.

- Depending on how much leeway you get for WYSIWYG, you might have to get new models or modify existing ones, if you don't have the best loadout and don't want to be handicapped for taking a missile launcher instead of a lascannon (silly you).

In the best of all possible worlds, unless you have really gone deep into this kind of optimisation, the differences should be minute (should as in an ideal, not necessarily as what we have now). Let's say a Lascannon is x% better than a Missile Launcher across the board. That difference will have no appreciable effect on the game, even if you take them across multiple units in the same army, because the points balance for each unit is based on a broader range and not a laser focus where one specific points value is correct and every deviation is wrong. These games simply do not work that way (they can, to a decent degree, and I am happy to talk about it but I want to keep this post from waffling ).

- If a specific wargear option is too strong on a unit, all other options will be nerfed alongside, which only helps to exacerbate the aforementioned problems.

This goes into the argument above - in the best of all worlds, different wargear will have different uses in different situations, each of which wil end up with a similar effect on the result of a battle (wildly different though the actual effects might be). There will be weak points in this argument upon the edition's new release, because 40k is just too big and complex (I do not envy the 40k design team), but over time they get ironed out.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of anger (not saying it is from you ) may be coming from trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. This is a brand new edition rather than a slight tweaking, and trying to do things the old way is oft going to lead to frustration. It is my belief (which I reserve the right to change down the road...) that in a year's time a lot of this will be less worrisome.

At the end of the day, it is still a fun game which is why most of us are here...

 vict0988 wrote:

When was the last time you made a list in seconds? You'll have to do a lot more math because you have to go back and forth between combinations of units instead of just including the things you want in the highest possible quantity as pts allow.

Umm, last week? I was showing a complete newbie the new rules and I quickly knocked up two 600 point armies (the Dark Angels were scouting out an outpost that had stopped communicating, only to run into the Death Guard), and then a 1,000 pointer to continue the story (the Dark Angels originally got repulsed, but came back loaded for bear).

 vict0988 wrote:

Would you agree that it wouldn't be a tonne of effort to make all sponsons and hunter-killer missiles cost a few pts?

Doing things the old way, sure. Even better if they put those points on the datasheets/unit descriptions (pet peeve of last edition).

But okay, let's tackle your specific example of the sponsons (this will mostly apply to the Hunter-Killer too, but let's concentrate on one thing).

I put it to you that, nine times out of ten, those sponsons will not have an appreciable effect on the outcome of a battle - in which case... their presence (or not) will disappear into the broad range of the unit's value (remember, what I am driving at is that the points cost for a unit is not a laser point focus of a precise number - in these types of games it cannot, and should not, be). I will concede that, in this example, there are cases that may raise an eyebrow, as it were - a Demolisher with Multi-Meltas, for example, or an Exterminator/Punisher with Heavy Bolters, as both are adding to the main role of the unit. But your average Leman Russ with Heavy Bolters or Heavy Flamers... I would venture not so much.

However, at the same time, I would also propose that in a year's time, damn near every Leman Russ you see will have sponsons.

I guess that, ultimately, my point is that there is no singular fixed points cost that absolutely describes any unit in the game. Each unit has a range of values that would work, to one degree or another, and it is the job of the designer to get the points in the mid-portion of that range. And if the majority of weapon options also fall in that range... why not have just one points cost for them all? Simplified, but not simple.

I am not saying it is a perfect implementation. I am saying that I think this is where the system is coming from and that, with careful attention, it can work perfectly well for good games of 40k. I am not sure we can ask more of it than that.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

I believe its true that GW's writers are really that incompetent but that's a spectacularly bad and lazy way to write rules.

It is not necessarily a bad or lazy approach, and it does not make GW's designers incompetent. It is not really a great position to make that assumption about them.

The idea is that you can have a compact and simplified set of rules that follows the assumption that if a gap does open up in interpretation, the two players will be motivated to find a friendly and reasonable resolution, and not automatically lean into advantage.

The alternative, to cover every eventuality, may require a 600 page rulebook (say). There are games that do that, but Warhammer was never intended to be one of them.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

False. The new system takes almost as long as the old one, and often takes longer than the old one. At most you're saving a few seconds in adding up the totals, you're still spending all the same effort on figuring out what you want and writing it all down. And it's often slower because you can only add or remove points in whole-unit increments. If you end up at 1960 out of 2000 points but your cheapest unit is 50 points you can either play 40 points down or try to reshuffle your existing units to find some combination that works out to 1950 or 2000.

Well, it is not false, because I have done it. However, I think I am understanding your position a bit better, thank you.

In your example, you have put your 2,000 point army together, and it has everything you wanted to take (because the units or strong or are the cool stuff you want to use in that particular battle) and it is good to fight, but you have that 40 points left over.

Your army is done, and ready to go. The 2,000 points is a limit, not a target. If that 1,960 army has everything you think you need to play... you are good. Re-jigging things, all else being equal, will give you no appreciable advantage at 2,000 points, any more than facing an opponent who has a 1,980 point army gives them any appreciable advantage.

The exception would be someone whose skill at the game is so fine tuned that a percent difference in points does make that difference - but I am really not sure that such a player exists. Warhammer is just not that kind of game, and it was never intended to be (that last bit, I am sure about).

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Really? Because I find "I like PL because the overpowered things are the ones I want to use in my army" an easy argument to beat. .

Sure... but you just misquoted me there, Sir. I didn't say that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's because of box size, and the number of miniatures that come in a box.

First, the two are not mutually exclusive. Second, the box sizes have most changed between editions.

I absolutely agree with you that unit sizes in the game are dictated by the number of models in a box. That does not mean they would not have utilised that as part of a more global balancing within an army - and I stress, I do not know that. It is just an idea.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

As are upgrades most of the time, or is Mongoose convinced the starting loadout of Havocs being 2× of a different heavy weapon is just coincidence?

I am not convinced of that, no Sir.

 kodos wrote:
how do other games manage to get to that point with half the pages of rules current 40k has, but 40k would need much more and still does not work

I think that is a very good question. I would venture that 40k is much, much broader in scope than most other games, with a lot more moving parts that cannot be easily set aside for historical reasons, all of which introduce interactions that get very complex very quickly.

Put another way, it might be very easy to imagine a games designer approaching a new edition thinking 'right, I'll start by dropping all the Firstborn, all those Aspect Warriors that have really old miniatures, all the Imperial Agents...' and so on, reducing that broad scope and the complexity that goes with it to create a solid base to move on from.

But, of course, they cannot do that. There would be riots.

I am trying to think of another game system that would be comparable. I find myself glancing at a nearby shelf to see BattleTech, but while that has an incredibly diverse range of units, they all (mostly) use a common design system and each faction (mostly) uses the same units.

I think it would be interesting considering similar games and how they have approached things - I also think that might be off topic :(

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And I don't think they've put that much thought into it, and I believe that everything else they do proves that.

You see, I think we are acknowledging the same point but coming out in different directions (and I am not married to my point, it is just speculation). However, I am extremely unwilling to fall back on the idea that GW's design team is incompetent/lazy/stupid because a) in the past I have known some of them and they were smart people and b) for decades they have been producing games that, for any rough edges, have been giving us all joy for all that time. That ain't nothing. That is far from nothing, and it does not point to silly people doing silly things.




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 vict0988 wrote:

Owl was referring the argument that you said nobody could beat about more thunder hammers always making the game more fun.

But I did not say that!

I said that an argument stating that special weapons were fundamentally more fun than standard weapons was something that I found difficult to beat. Me. Just me.

I am not sure we can have an objective argument about fun. I was just raising the point, nothing more.

shortymcnostrill wrote:

Stares in onepagerules

Also, which moving parts does the game have that are especially complex compared to other games? I'm more inclined to think the opposite, that it's a pretty simple game that tries to appear deep by covering itself with superficial stuff (stratagems come to mind). If you're referring to the amount of armies and their units instead then I'll simply resume staring...

Yeah, I was not a fan of the implementation of stratagems before and, while better now, I am still not convinced that there are not too many basic ones. Army specific seem fine in terms of number, yet to see any issues there.

However, I was wondering if someone would bring up the OPR. That is a set of rules I like, and my group almost adopted them wholesale as there were some real peeves with 8th and 9th. The only thing we felt they lacked (and this is really subjective) was a bit of... soul. Clashes with core units were great, but as soon as you added in the cooler characters or funkier war machines like Imperial Knights, we just found it lacked a certain... 40kedness... for want of a better term.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to like about OPR. It would also be worth pointing out that OPR has not gone through the crucible/scrutiny that 40k has.

But yes, I like them. Haven't yet tried the OPR variants - I really like what GW have been doing with Age of Sigmar anyway, but I am interested in trying out the OPR equivalent of Kill Team as I am not too fond of the current version of that.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

If you don't like the "yes man" bit then take it up with MongooseMatt, who claimed that he knows the GW writers and they're smart people who had to have been forced by management to write all the bad rules GW publishes.

My friend, I fear that is a point being made in bad faith, as at no point did I mention management. That was someone else who brought them into this conversation. I do not know the current crop of design staff, the last of the gentlemen I knew left a year or so ago. I had the opportunity to talk with some of what might now be called the Old Crew on a fair few occasions, had the privilege of playing some games (including a White Dwarf battle report at one point!), and did some (very) small amount of work with them. I may have some small amount of insight which I felt might be useful here, and I have tried to be careful to highlight when I have been speculating and drawing conclusions.

If you are really interested in where GW is coming from with new editions/core markets/that 90-10 rule, I can point you to a recent YouTube video made by some ex-staffers. It is an hour-odd long, but it is quite fascinating and comes from a period in the company after my conversations with designers.

I would also very much want to point out that, at no time, have I said that you or anyone pushing forward the 'granular points' side of things is wrong. Of course you aren't. Granular points are a perfectly valid way of doing things. As is the current 10th edition method for list building. Both can result in a perfectly fun game with little soldiers doing cool things on the tabletop. They are just different ways of doing things with slightly different goals.

One thing that might be worth considering - you might have started moving outside of GW's 'trumpet', as they put it. What you are looking for in a game might be no longer what GW are considering their core market today, at least as far as 40k is concerned (something 'older school', like current Heresy, might be closer?).

However, I would also suggest that simply presuming that stupidity is the cause of something you do not like is quite... lazy, and it does not gel with my own experiences.


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Deadnight wrote:
Wouldn't surprise me if half the staff involved at the start of a project are away by the end.

It is my understanding that the design lead is fairly static in terms of turnover - my information on this is at least a year old, but given GW's lead times on projects, I would assume it still applies to 10th edition.

Deadnight wrote:


I'd genuinely be interested in this as well Matt, thank you.

It is actually 2 hours long (!), but they go through the process GW used to select and develop their hobby items and the criteria used to choose what products to go ahead with. You'll hear about the 90/10 rule and their 'trumpet', which may be relevant to the discussion here and why GW take the approaches they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-63A7cDkOm8

Grab a coffee and settle in

Deadnight wrote:

met jervis once at a convention - nice guy.

Jervis is officially known as the Nicest Man in Gaming

 vict0988 wrote:

You are disagreeing with points being objectively superior to PL. By saying they're equal but different, you are saying we are wrong.

I am sorry, my friend, I am not saying you are wrong with wanting granular points. What I would question here is your use of the word 'objectively' because if a game system is working well for one group of gamers but not for another, it cannot be objective.

I do understand where you are coming from because I have been a proponent of granular points in the past and have happily used them. But our gaming journeys are all different and we are obviously at different places - this is not a surprise as damn near every group, of any game, plays it differently. That is just one of those things in creative games, that are capable of covering such a massively broad base.

I am not even really trying to convince you of anything, you should approach these games in the way that gives you the most satisfaction. I just want to put a counterpoint forward and maybe get people thinking about different approaches.

Problems arise when people start throwing around words like 'objectively' or phrases like 'end of discussion', because there are just too many people involved in different aspects of the hobby for any one answer to have a decent chance of being the right one.

At the end of the day... can we all not just get along without a presumption of being utterly correct or calling people stupid? Let's apply some sportsmanship to the conversation, as if we had just met across the tabletop.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you just like Mongoose and have a personal vested interest because you personally know some of these "rules writers"?

My personal vested interest is in the games, not the people who made them.

Slipspace wrote:
Now the answer is the Cyclone. Always.

Is it? The Cyclone has range over the Assault Cannon and is better against vehicles and heavy characters. However, the Assault Cannon is going to be better against horde infantry and more consistent than the frag option of the Cyclone.

The Heavy Flamer will be the 'challenging' one, but will be a decent choice in tight terrain such as a city fight, a teleport drop into tight terrain or (especially) a boarding action, dropping a hit compared to the Assault Cannon but getting the AP benefit. Plus works well in Space Hulk, but I digress.

In general, I think I would be opting for a mix of Assault Cannon and Cyclones across Terminator Squads, with maybe a Heavy Flamer in one for situational battles (and the aforementioned Space Hulk).

I fear this may go round the houses - whether or not you agree with the above, we all know there will be other examples that are skew-whif. But I am not sure Terminators are a completely awful example that at least points the way to how 'even but different' wargear choices could be constructed.

 Elminster wrote:

If the options gave units different purposes or changed how they worked, there would be a point to it.

For what it is worth, I agree with this gentleman right here. I would very much like to see happen with the coming Codexes.

Slipspace wrote:

Sadly, frag has the Blast keyword, which is what pushes it over the edge as being better anti-horde than the assault cannon.

Point.

Slipspace wrote:

Personally, I think GW should probably have kept the frag profile of the cyclone at D6 shots with Blast,

Again, point. Quite like that.

Slipspace wrote:

The fact they didn't is part of the problem with PL. It's a system that can work well, but never will because GW have implemented it so badly and fixing it would require a complete rewrite of weapon profiles and roles.

See, this is my argument - implementation The Codexes will be the next chance to start squaring things away (yeah, I know...).

 kodos wrote:
put it this way, the difference between the Cyclone and the AC is big enough that GW invested the time and money to make it 2 different Landspeeder versions with their own Datacard and point cost for those 2 weapons

Now you see, I don't think that was the reason they did that

I have a suspicion that there have always been three Land Speeders (Vanilla, Tornado, and Typhoon) and that is why they have three Datasheets rather than one combined

 vict0988 wrote:

When has an extended timeline or larger budget let 40k designers make something excellent?

I am not sure we are aware if the designers have ever had an extended timeline or larger budget?

However, you do touch on an interesting point here, and I want to make sure I understand you properly - is this a suggestion that, regardless of budget or timeline over the years in 40k, the designers have not made something excellent? Or am I misreading you?

Because my next question would be (and I apologise if I have misread you)... why are we doing this game?

 BertBert wrote:

Mostly because of the fantastic miniatures and setting

And the rules are tolerated. Interesting.

You could certainly have painted me with that brush in 8th and 9th. Not so much 7th and 10th, I think.

 Lobokai wrote:
more time playing the game and less pouring over rules

Yes, this, absolutely. You are just sitting there, talking my life.

This was the big shake up/advance/revelation between WFB and AoS. Switch systems and the 'rules debates' disappeared overnight. Core rules were memorised by the time you got into your second game, leaving you with just the Warscrolls (and Battleplans, and Battalions, and Time of War sheets, I grant - but I know the design team recognised the bloat that was going on there early on) for reference during play. Limit the number of unit types in your early games, and you started to memorise those too.

What you were left with was a much more (arguably, subjectively) dynamic game that provided the spectacle and let you see cool things happen on the table.

Even when 40k adopted the AoS core rules, it was not quite 'there', but we do seem to be moving closer. I would opine that 8th and 9th took (some of) the wrong lessons from AoS (they also took some of the right ones), but 10th is beginning to lean closer.

I remain optimistic.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Ya, because AoS is such a good and liked game and has not fundamental issues at all and doesn't just turn into big thing spectacle...

I think Sigmar is good, I like it, the core system is solid, and it is a miniatures game... spectacle is kind of the thing.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yeah truly a spectacle.

I meant more generally - the painted miniatures and terrain creating the 'spectacle' is kinda the point of a miniatures game?

Not Online!!! wrote:

Cough double turn nonsense,

The double turn, and manipulating the double turn, is one of the things that makes Age of Sigmar.

Not Online!!! wrote:

And the majority agrees.

The majority of... what?

Not Online!!! wrote:

cue Dawn of war into DoW 2 into Dead on arrival 3.

Oh, they lost me on DOW2, but I understand I am among the minority on that one.

Not Online!!! wrote:

yeah, but an actual as an army discernable force looks better than spam which is what AoS mini factions often devolve into.

Hmm. Got one in mind?

Not Online!!! wrote:

and one of the reason why it tactically not satsifying game at all.

Manipulating and using the double turn is one of the tactics in Age of Sigmar. Once players have that surrounded, the game really opens up.

Not Online!!! wrote:

here, the online community and we had already threads discussing that it is a significant enough community, and locally.

I have to disagree. This forum represents a tiny, tiny fraction of players. I might go as far to say as being statistically insignificant.

Not Online!!! wrote:

You can streamline something to death, and that is what AoS is to many.

And what of the people for whom that is not the case? This was being discussed a little earlier in this thread - these games are not one thing to all people. There are so many ways of approaching them. Indeed, that is their strength.

Not Online!!! wrote:

but then again historicals on average are also far better designed mechanically...

Citation needed.

This is not targeted at you personally, but there seems to be an almost manic desire in this thread to deal in absolutes. These games are way too broad in their function for that to be an easy fit.

 LunarSol wrote:
I think that attachment is a sign that people are used to being rewarded for taking it.

That might be the most insightful thing I have read on this thread thus far. Going to have to ponder on that.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

What happens now is that you are punished for not taking any option you can as you are already paying for it.

Okay... I can see that...

Leaving aside painted units that have been built to the old lists, where would be the issue with this? You want most efficient, you just don't go with the no-option choices. Or are existing armies the sticking point?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

It invalidates future models too

Errrrr.... Don't think I follow...

 vict0988 wrote:

What if Timmy comes into the store tomorrow and asks whether it's a good idea to build naked Assault Intercessors for his Flesh Tearers? He's told that thunder hammers are the only real option, so sadly no tearing of flesh for Timmy, only clubbing tanks.

I think when Timmy sees what a Thunder Hammer can do, he is going to be just fine with that.

 LunarSol wrote:

If someone is gone far enough off the main road to be running Flesh Tearers they should absolutely be up for using Eviscerators as their Power Weapons.

Sensible policies for a noble, if misunderstood, chapter.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Even if the decision is reasonable from a "feth veteran players" lense, it's probably right and just for the veteran players to not like being fethed.

This is a good point - just because every edition more or less does this to some degree, does not mean it is desirable. It might be fairly inevitable, with only the degree and amount of units/armies affected being the factor.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The fact that the actual rules mean the game will collapse when the veterans stop giving free advertising by playing is just the way of things.

Now here you lose me I am really not certain that, outside of YouTube and similar circles, we veterans have all that much effect in comparison. Not saying it is nothing, just there are far more effective ways of GW getting the message across than the traditional veteran hobbiests bringing the new blood in.

I would agree that this is different for smaller gaming companies.

Slipspace wrote:
Unfortunately, 40k comes with a whole lot of historical baggage. SM have 6 heavy weapon options, for example. Crisis suits have a similar number of weapon options. There's just no way to sufficiently balance that array of options using a system of sidegrades without ending up with obviously superior choices.

Oh, you have hit a big nail on the head here - I did a post about exactly this way back in 2015:

https://ttgamingdiary.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/this-is-madness-dark-angels-in-age-of-sigmar/

In a nutshell, I experimented with converting Marine units to AoS. And the sheer amount of weapon options was exactly the problem I hit.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

To be fair, it's hard to have a rule debate when nobody is playing the game. AoS was a dead game on launch and a very serious threat to end GW as a company,

Can I ask where you got that from? Because the information I had at the time on AoS sales vs. 40k was very different.

Not Online!!! wrote:
AoS launch?

Boy what a massacre by community

Very true.

But that is not the same as sales.