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 Ashiraya wrote:
To put it in other terms then: He will on average kill less than one guardsman.

My point stands.

Your interpretation is off-kilter, but whatever. Most of the time, that guardsmen will die, a far better than even proposition.

To get kill rates to what you would deem acceptable, if kiling guardsmen is the measure we're using, they'd need to be S5, which mathematically would make them the same thing as S6 AP3 against marines.

If your immersion is broken because you can't just literally sweep guardsmen off a table with a broom, I'm sorry, this game has never, ever been that way. If you must see marines the way some of the more absurd BL writers portray them, well, you're never going to get a workable game out of that, and a lot of those tales are difficult to take in the first place. The game stats work just fine, a squad of marines will utterly ruin a squad of guardsmen with very little return threat. That works for me. We don't need recreations of Brothers of the Snake where a single tactical squad takes on 47,000pts worth of Dark Eldar and comes out just fine. Take Black Library as overblown propaganda stuff and that's a lot more accurate.

Besides, if we're going to get into actual fluff and what should be reflected on a table, there should be several hundred million guardsmen and hundreds of thousands of Leman Russ tanks for every Space Marine in existence. When you get your S5 Assault 6 Rending bolters, I'll take take entireTank Divisions as individual troops choices

Heh, play the FFG40k RPG and you'll see what true-to-fluff bolters are like. On average I think it takes around 6 hits to kill a marine in power armour. Eldar turn to a fine red mist if they take a hit or two. Honestly, if I could figure out how, I'd just use Black Crusade/Only War/Dark Heresy instead of the current tabletop rules.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To get kill rates to what you would deem acceptable, if kiling guardsmen is the measure we're using, they'd need to be S5, which mathematically would make them the same thing as S6 AP3 against marines.

S5 sounds nice. Fire Warriors have proven that S5 infantry weapons need not be broken. Other adjustments would also be needed of course but it's a step in the right decision.

If your immersion is broken because you can't just literally sweep guardsmen off a table with a broom, I'm sorry, this game has never, ever been that way.

Tradition is not a justification.

If you must see marines the way some of the more absurd BL writers portray them, well, you're never going to get a workable game out of that, and a lot of those tales are difficult to take in the first place. The game stats work just fine, a squad of marines will utterly ruin a squad of guardsmen with very little return threat. That works for me. We don't need recreations of Brothers of the Snake where a single tactical squad takes on 47,000pts worth of Dark Eldar and comes out just fine. Take Black Library as overblown propaganda stuff and that's a lot more accurate.

Besides, if we're going to get into actual fluff and what should be reflected on a table, there should be several hundred million guardsmen and hundreds of thousands of Leman Russ tanks for every Space Marine in existence. When you get your S5 Assault 6 Rending bolters, I'll take take entireTank Divisions as individual troops choices

...Where did I say all this?

It's sort of funny how it's gakky writing when Marines do impressive feats, and when Straken punches at the strength of a Dreadknight it's cool. When Yarrick stands up again after being downed several times by overcharged Plasma Blastguns it's perfectly immersive, but if a Marine has anything more than a very minor chance of surviving a hit from a plasma pistol it's mary sue childwriting bullgak.

Funnily enough, I have seen far far more of the type of fanboyism SM-fans are usually accused for among IG fans than I have among SM fans. But there's less stigma for IGhammer 40k, I guess, which the current 40k pretty much is in terms if who comes off best statwise compared to the fluff.

Btw, call BL absurd as much as you like, but I'd argue the exact other way around. Can't say a lot about Brothers of the Snake as I have not read it yet, but it sounds like it might be a tad OTT given that DE soldiers are a bit more threatening.

I am aware it's difficult ro change much of the game structure by now (which would be necessary to bring me back, at least) but that does not make the status quo anywhere near good.

I second the approval of the FFG books fwiw.

This whole situation with IG fans reminds me of my WoW RP server, where there's gritty realistic grimdark RPers who ignore the prevalence of magic and monsters in favour of dirty, bloody military RP.

40k is a setting where part of its charm is that humans are on the bottom rung, and the ladder has a LOT of rungs. Part of the grimderp, maaan!

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To get kill rates to what you would deem acceptable, if kiling guardsmen is the measure we're using, they'd need to be S5, which mathematically would make them the same thing as S6 AP3 against marines.

S5 sounds nice. Fire Warriors have proven that S5 infantry weapons need not be broken. Other adjustments would also be needed of course but it's a step in the right decision.

If your immersion is broken because you can't just literally sweep guardsmen off a table with a broom, I'm sorry, this game has never, ever been that way.

Tradition is not a justification.

If you must see marines the way some of the more absurd BL writers portray them, well, you're never going to get a workable game out of that, and a lot of those tales are difficult to take in the first place. The game stats work just fine, a squad of marines will utterly ruin a squad of guardsmen with very little return threat. That works for me. We don't need recreations of Brothers of the Snake where a single tactical squad takes on 47,000pts worth of Dark Eldar and comes out just fine. Take Black Library as overblown propaganda stuff and that's a lot more accurate.

Besides, if we're going to get into actual fluff and what should be reflected on a table, there should be several hundred million guardsmen and hundreds of thousands of Leman Russ tanks for every Space Marine in existence. When you get your S5 Assault 6 Rending bolters, I'll take take entireTank Divisions as individual troops choices

...Where did I say all this?

It's sort of funny how it's gakky writing when Marines do impressive feats, and when Straken punches at the strength of a Dreadknight it's cool. When Yarrick stands up again after being downed several times by overcharged Plasma Blastguns it's perfectly immersive, but if a Marine has anything more than a very minor chance of surviving a hit from a plasma pistol it's mary sue childwriting bullgak.

Funnily enough, I have seen far far more of the type of fanboyism SM-fans are usually accused for among IG fans than I have among SM fans. But there's less stigma for IGhammer 40k, I guess, which the current 40k pretty much is in terms if who comes off best statwise compared to the fluff.

Btw, call BL absurd as much as you like, but I'd argue the exact other way around. Can't say a lot about Brothers of the Snake as I have not read it yet, but it sounds like it might be a tad OTT given that DE soldiers are a bit more threatening.

I am aware it's difficult ro change much of the game structure by now (which would be necessary to bring me back, at least) but that does not make the status quo anywhere near good.

I second the approval of the FFG books fwiw.

This whole situation with IG fans reminds me of my WoW RP server, where there's gritty realistic grimdark RPers who ignore the prevalence of magic and monsters in favour of dirty, bloody military RP.

40k is a setting where part of its charm is that humans are on the bottom rung, and the ladder has a LOT of rungs. Part of the grimderp, maaan!

Guard players accept that for every few hundred thousand of men that die, 1 may be special enough to be the hero.

Space Marine extreme fans want all their soldiers to be special enough to be the hero.

The difference is when space marines do nutty things, its always stupid. When yarrick has a chance at brushing off his wounds we recognize he is such an exception that his name in a force of billions is recognized.

Us Guard players dont like an army of exceptions, so when Marine fans want an army of exceptions we naturally get annoyed. In my opinion

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To get kill rates to what you would deem acceptable, if kiling guardsmen is the measure we're using, they'd need to be S5, which mathematically would make them the same thing as S6 AP3 against marines.

S5 sounds nice. Fire Warriors have proven that S5 infantry weapons need not be broken. Other adjustments would also be needed of course but it's a step in the right decision.

And there's your problem right there. You know why pulse rifles are S5 30"? So that they would be better than bolters. Bolters are used as a baseline when comparing infantry weapons. Lasguns are less powerful than bolters. Shuriken are the same as bolters, just more shots at a shorter range*. ect. Not only that we only have a limited range to work with. The difference between low and high powered weapons of the same type is usually within 1 point of strength. If we had up to strength 25 or something, than it could be done, but it's the limitations of the medium. Not only that, balance and game issues.


*although now that have psudo rending as well.

 Ashiraya wrote:
It's sort of funny how it's gakky writing when Marines do impressive feats, and when Straken punches at the strength of a Dreadknight it's cool. When Yarrick stands up again after being downed several times by overcharged Plasma Blastguns it's perfectly immersive, but if a Marine has anything more than a very minor chance of surviving a hit from a plasma pistol it's mary sue childwriting bullgak.

The thing is, the non-marine examples are great heroes in their Codex. Unmatched by any normal trooper. Once-in-a-lifetime deals. Everyone around them dies in droves when anything looks sternly in their direction.

The bad SM writing has every Joe Schmoe battle-brother be an unstoppable tank moving at the speed of the wind, killing one more of an endless horde of enemies with every shot or strike. Even with the best armor and weapons marines shouldn't be in situations where they have to engage vastly superior numbers to begin with. But ofc, a story about a perfect drop pod assault where every marine guns down 2-3 guys and goes home would just be... Boring. Just as it would be boring to read about the guys who drag in more ammo and cart out the wounded.

StarHunter25 wrote:
Heh, play the FFG40k RPG and you'll see what true-to-fluff bolters are like. On average I think it takes around 6 hits to kill a marine in power armour. Eldar turn to a fine red mist if they take a hit or two. Honestly, if I could figure out how, I'd just use Black Crusade/Only War/Dark Heresy instead of the current tabletop rules.

Keep in mind even within that system there has been a lot of changing of weapons and differing stats between different systems. The stats for a vehicle mounted Heavy Bolter or a Plasma Gun were significantly less impressive than SM bolters in the first release of Deathwatch, which got subsequently way toned down. I haven't read the new Dark Heresy rules, but the first rules put out for Space Marines when Dark Heresy was the only system were far less impressive than the Deathwatch Marines, which are supposed to be singular heroes and more capable than NPC marines.

 Ashiraya wrote:


S5 sounds nice. Fire Warriors have proven that S5 infantry weapons need not be broken. Other adjustments would also be needed of course but it's a step in the right decision.

Fire Warriors also have significant drawbacks and S5 basic guns is their defining and unique characteristic. They're also supposed to be better than bolters, so then *they'd* need a buff of course...

Tradition is not a justification.

Perhaps not, but fluff bloat from a non-gaming related department is much less of a good reason.

...Where did I say all this?

When you began to complain about your immersion being broken because Bolters only killed IG infantry with 80% the efficiency of plasma guns and that just wasn't good enough (which is about close as they can get in a D6 system without being identical)

It's sort of funny how it's gakky writing when Marines do impressive feats, and when Straken punches at the strength of a Dreadknight it's cool. When Yarrick stands up again after being downed several times by overcharged Plasma Blastguns it's perfectly immersive, but if a Marine has anything more than a very minor chance of surviving a hit from a plasma pistol it's mary sue childwriting bullgak.

You're comparing unique individuals, worthy of singling out amongst untold trillions for their heroic deeds and capabilities, to the most commonly seen troops choice in the game, around which almost all other mechanics are built and everything is measured as a baseline.

There's a big difference there, and the comparison is a bit silly in that light. You won't see non-SC IG characters doing any of those things, just as you won't see typical SM captains walking away from Demolisher Cannon wounds the way Lysander can.

That said, I'm not much of a fan of Straken either, nor pretty much anything Catachan.

Funnily enough, I have seen far far more of the type of fanboyism SM-fans are usually accused for among IG fans than I have among SM fans. But there's less stigma for IGhammer 40k, I guess, which the current 40k pretty much is in terms if who comes off best statwise compared to the fluff.

I play many armies. I've got IG, I've got CSM's (which I'll be playing tomorrow in a tournament with three full squads of basic CSM's rocking lots of bolters), I've got Eldar, I've got Tau, I've got Grey Knights, I've got Sisters, and I've even got Tyranids and about 2kpts worth of Orks sitting in a box, and probably 2500pts of loyalist marines that have just appeared over the years. I play just about everything. What I prefer is keeping stuff from jumping the shark too much.

Btw, call BL absurd as much as you like, but I'd argue the exact other way around. Can't say a lot about Brothers of the Snake as I have not read it yet, but it sounds like it might be a tad OTT given that DE soldiers are a bit more threatening.

It literally has a single tactical squad killing thousands (not an exaggeration, they flat out state it) of Dark Eldar at close quarters in a single engagement. I actually couldn't finish the book.

The game has been more or less consistent over twenty seven years, Black Library are the ones who get more and more outlandish. That's not a fault of the game or something it needs to live up to. It's BL that's driving the expansion of SM ridiculousness, and the game doesn't need to cater to that.

I'm not asking for space marines to live up to novelizations or be superheros. I want them to be worth their points. And they still aren't. The really haven't been since 4th, I think.

Than I think the problem here is not bolters, but the price of marines. Just lower that a few points.

The crowd is split on how to handle this. One group doesn't want marines any cheaper, and the others don't want to change the boltgun.

The issue here is that GW, by using D6's and limited the stats to such a narrow range of numbers has made it very difficult to differentiate weapons and troops. I don't see a good fix to this problem.

Martel732 wrote:
The crowd is split on how to handle this. One group doesn't want marines any cheaper, and the others don't want to change the boltgun.

The issue here is that GW, by using D6's and limited the stats to such a narrow range of numbers has made it very difficult to differentiate weapons and troops. I don't see a good fix to this problem.

Maybe change to a D10 System and suck all the money out of everyone by making them buy all new sets of dice? They wouldn't even have to change the stats much, just alter all the charts to incorporate the larger dice. So your S4 weapon won't wound a T8 MC on a 6, but what about on an 8 or 9?

Noc

How much better would you make the bolter without treading into heavy bolter or pulse rifle territory?

Likewise, how much cheaper would you make them? They're already cheaper than they've ever been, how much cheaper do you make them?And then how many other Troops units will need to be adjusted in turn?

Bolters are the best now that they have ever been due to the Rapid Fire rules in 6th/7th

 Desubot wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Man it makes no sense really.

Listening to the audio book for unremembered empire and apparently 10 doods with boltguns can nearly take out a primarch. and these things hitting a basicily 2+ armor save will T5+ are able to nearly put girlyman down.

From a fluff standpoint it should be shred and rending since the things are mini frag missiles shot out of a heavy machine gun.

To be fair, with that sort of a weapon, they also should only have an effective range of about 9-12" and be fired at BS2.

Such weaponry has been attempted, "rocket guns" exist, have for a while actually (since the 60's at least), they've been tried.

The problem is that they take time to build up speed. A normal bullet leaves the muzzle at the highest velocity it's ever going to have, it's effectively at its most stable at that point. Something like a bolter is exactly the opposite, its actually travelling very slowly at the point it leaves the muzzle and is still accelerating, and thus not particularly ballistically stable, and as such have trouble hitting targets more than a few dozen meters away. That's not even getting into the fact that they'd also have a minimum range, as they're still accelerating when they leave the barrel, the Gyrojet Rocket Pistol's projectile only traveled at about 10ft/second where it left the barrel, wasn't potentially lethal until about 8-10 feet, and didn't reach max velocity until about 30-50 feet and then decreased in effectiveness from there.

They sound cool, but would actually have lots of basic physics working against their effectiveness.

Thats not what a bolt-gun is. A bolt-gun is essentially a high caliber explosive round. I imagine it would function every bit like a semi auto grenade launcher capable of knocking through a small wall before launching molten metal into it's target. So in relation to human weapons today. It would be like a 60 mm HE motar round. Typically these things destroy everything in the room.

It actually is a Rocket bullet grenade gun.....

Its silly.

It's awesome.

Who cares bout bolters - you've got atsknf, 3+, krak nades and rhinos/pods. Best stuff for troops.

 Vaktathi wrote:
How much better would you make the bolter without treading into heavy bolter or pulse rifle territory?

Likewise, how much cheaper would you make them? They're already cheaper than they've ever been, how much cheaper do you make them?And then how many other Troops units will need to be adjusted in turn?

How about just a stock Assault 2 for Marines using Bolters? Granted, I feel Necrons should be adjusted to be the same (because these are super humans or robots wielding giant guns) but I think it is a decent solution. That just means you adjust the Storm Bolter to be better, because Tactical Terminators need the boost anyway.
Bam, done.

Marine with bolter against a Guardsman with a lasgun at rapid fire range, no cover.

Marine, 2/3 x 2/3 P=4/9 Q=1-P Q=5/9
Probability of failing twice, Q² = 25/81 = 0.31 P of killing 0.69

Guardsman, 1/2 x 1/3 x 1/3 = 1/18 Q=17/18
Q²=289/324 = 0.89 P of killing 0.11

Add cover.
Marine, 2/3 x 2/3 x 2/3 = 8/27 Q = 19/27
Q²=361/729 = 0.50 P of killing 0.50

Obviously the cover doesn't change anything for the Marine but survivability of the Guardsman jumps 38%.

The problem with bolters is not to do with math hammer or fluff or ap values or strength.

The problem is about awesomeness. The vast majority of people who play this game are not number crunchers or min maxers, they play for fun and because genetically engineered super warriors from grim dark land are awesome!

Rolling shooting for bolters it does not feel awesome at all :(, it feels weak when you roll the dice. Rapid fire improves things but not by much. It feels like pissing in the sea.

 Ugly Green Trog wrote:
The problem with bolters is not to do with math hammer or fluff or ap values or strength.

The problem is about awesomeness. The vast majority of people who play this game are not number crunchers or min maxers, they play for fun and because genetically engineered super warriors from grim dark land are awesome!

Rolling shooting for bolters it does not feel awesome at all :(, it feels weak when you roll the dice. Rapid fire improves things but not by much. It feels like pissing in the sea.

ya know... I don't totally disagree with that, and with that in mind. assault 2 would proably be better in that regard cause then you're shooting rapidly all the time. thus it feels "more awesome"

BrianDavion wrote:

 Ugly Green Trog wrote:
The problem with bolters is not to do with math hammer or fluff or ap values or strength.

The problem is about awesomeness. The vast majority of people who play this game are not number crunchers or min maxers, they play for fun and because genetically engineered super warriors from grim dark land are awesome!

Rolling shooting for bolters it does not feel awesome at all :(, it feels weak when you roll the dice. Rapid fire improves things but not by much. It feels like pissing in the sea.

ya know... I don't totally disagree with that, and with that in mind. assault 2 would proably be better in that regard cause then you're shooting rapidly all the time. thus it feels "more awesome"

Assault 2 and some kind of pseudo rending would help a lot.

Why is Rending needed?

Because Eldar have rending. A xenos army can't have something that Marines don't have.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Because Eldar have rending. A xenos army can't have something that Marines don't have.

Eldar are also T3 and shorter range so if Marine players want that too they can go ahead.

Well, that aside, it just seems like a dubious request.

For a start, Rending seems like a *very* powerful rule to include on basic weapons. You're practically giving them Gauss *and* Bladestorm - both of which are also on models who can't take special weapons of any kind. It just seems like an incredibly potent ability to just hand out to marines. Especially when a lot of already-strong units are also armed with bolters.

Then, one of the main complaints I hear from marine players is that there's too much AP2/3 in the game at the moment, and so their saves are pretty worthless. So, their solution is to add *more* AP2 to the game - on basic weapons, no less. And, basic weapons that are on about a third of all armies as standard (with many others having easy access to them). I just don't see how this will improve the problem of AP2/3 saturation. Or, is more AP2/3 fine as long as it's marines wielding them?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Fire Warriors also have significant drawbacks and S5 basic guns is their defining and unique characteristic. They're also supposed to be better than bolters, so then *they'd* need a buff of course...

In a D6 1-10 system, I do not think there is enough granularity to differentiatiate pulse rifle and bolter strength.

Perhaps not, but fluff bloat from a non-gaming related department is much less of a good reason.

That 'fluff bloat' is the source of most fluff in the setting. What is an 'okay' source then? Studio fluff where a company of BA Terminators killed hundreds of thousands of genestealers on their own (I'd like to see them do that on the tabletop, lol)?

When you began to complain about your immersion being broken because Bolters only killed IG infantry with 80% the efficiency of plasma guns and that just wasn't good enough (which is about close as they can get in a D6 system without being identical)

You know, I don't think there should be a lot of difference there for guardsmen. Either you're hit by several large explosive rounds and turned to a red paste, or you're hit by superheated plasma and melted to red paste. Death is death. It'd also make GEQ a good counter to plasma since plasma would effectively become redundant against them.

You're comparing unique individuals, worthy of singling out amongst untold trillions for their heroic deeds and capabilities, to the most commonly seen troops choice in the game, around which almost all other mechanics are built and everything is measured as a baseline. There's a big difference there, and the comparison is a bit silly in that light. You won't see non-SC IG characters doing any of those things, just as you won't see typical SM captains walking away from Demolisher Cannon wounds the way Lysander can.

That said, I'm not much of a fan of Straken either, nor pretty much anything Catachan.

What about having your officer shout at your guardsmen suddenly lets them penetrate tank plate with their lasguns, something that simply can't happen otherwise? Seems immersive and logical.

Funnily enough, I have seen far far more of the type of fanboyism SM-fans are usually accused for among IG fans than I have among SM fans. But there's less stigma for IGhammer 40k, I guess, which the current 40k pretty much is in terms if who comes off best statwise compared to the fluff.

I play many armies. I've got IG, I've got CSM's (which I'll be playing tomorrow in a tournament with three full squads of basic CSM's rocking lots of bolters), I've got Eldar, I've got Tau, I've got Grey Knights, I've got Sisters, and I've even got Tyranids and about 2kpts worth of Orks sitting in a box, and probably 2500pts of loyalist marines that have just appeared over the years. I play just about everything. What I prefer is keeping stuff from jumping the shark too much.

Bolters are not fantastic weapons, but they are not that bad. They seem to be in the middle of the crowd when it comes to basic weapon. They are superior to grotblasta, lasguns, fleshborer, guardien shuriken catapult, ork shoota and about as powerful than splinter rifle and kroot rifle. On the other hand they are weaker than avenger shuriken catapult, pulse rifle, warriors and immortal gauss wepons. Fluff wise it makes a lot of sense. Eldars, Taus and Necron have far better technologie and craftsmen than the Imperium, thus there weapons are more powerful. When you read the description of these weapon they also are much more impressive than the mini-rocket launcher that is the boltgun. The problem of improving the boltgun is that it would require to improve the other weapons of these civilisations to represent their superior technologie. Then you find yourself with weapon so powerful that even Space Marines and Necrons (the too most endurent troops in the game by landslide) are unable to stand on the tabletop to even basic firearms. Those two army already have a problem linked to the increase of firepower that we observed since 5th eddition with larger and more powerful vehicule dominating the batttleground. Such a change would be very bad for everybody. Space Marine (and SoB) should still be happy a full round of shooting with their boltguns still cripple most squads of guardsmen, eldars, dark eldar, gaunts, orks, kroots and taus. Not that bad not just destructive...

I haven't read all of this so forgive me if its already been mentioned.

Something that's bothered me is the lack of representation for the exploding bolter round.

Would giving it shred help? Bolter rounds hits target, fails to wound, but re-roll because it explodes after impact giving it a second chance.

Its not a lot better but its fluffy IMO

Nocturus wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The crowd is split on how to handle this. One group doesn't want marines any cheaper, and the others don't want to change the boltgun.

The issue here is that GW, by using D6's and limited the stats to such a narrow range of numbers has made it very difficult to differentiate weapons and troops. I don't see a good fix to this problem.

Maybe change to a D10 System and suck all the money out of everyone by making them buy all new sets of dice? They wouldn't even have to change the stats much, just alter all the charts to incorporate the larger dice. So your S4 weapon won't wound a T8 MC on a 6, but what about on an 8 or 9?

Noc

No, no all the stats would have to change. That would the be whole point of using D10s. D20s would even better. We could have toughnesses that range from 4 to 18 then.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
How much better would you make the bolter without treading into heavy bolter or pulse rifle territory?

Likewise, how much cheaper would you make them? They're already cheaper than they've ever been, how much cheaper do you make them?And then how many other Troops units will need to be adjusted in turn?

As I said, without a D10 system, I don't think this can be fixed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:
Who cares bout bolters - you've got atsknf, 3+, krak nades and rhinos/pods. Best stuff for troops.

Too bad a lot of that stuff doesn't matter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Because Eldar have rending. A xenos army can't have something that Marines don't have.

I don't see anything in the marine list remotely as good as WS or even the scatterlaser. So please stop with the hyperbole.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

epronovost wrote:
Bolters are not fantastic weapons, but they are not that bad. They seem to be in the middle of the crowd when it comes to basic weapon. They are superior to grotblasta, lasguns, fleshborer, guardien shuriken catapult, ork shoota and about as powerful than splinter rifle and kroot rifle. On the other hand they are weaker than avenger shuriken catapult, pulse rifle, warriors and immortal gauss wepons. Fluff wise it makes a lot of sense. Eldars, Taus and Necron have far better technologie and craftsmen than the Imperium, thus there weapons are more powerful. When you read the description of these weapon they also are much more impressive than the mini-rocket launcher that is the boltgun. The problem of improving the boltgun is that it would require to improve the other weapons of these civilisations to represent their superior technologie. Then you find yourself with weapon so powerful that even Space Marines and Necrons (the too most endurent troops in the game by landslide) are unable to stand on the tabletop to even basic firearms. Those two army already have a problem linked to the increase of firepower that we observed since 5th eddition with larger and more powerful vehicule dominating the batttleground. Such a change would be very bad for everybody. Space Marine (and SoB) should still be happy a full round of shooting with their boltguns still cripple most squads of guardsmen, eldars, dark eldar, gaunts, orks, kroots and taus. Not that bad not just destructive...

It's the basic weapon of an expensive troop. That's the problem. I constantly ignore bolter-armed marines and tactical squad in general when I play. It's never caused me problems.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Fire Warriors also have significant drawbacks and S5 basic guns is their defining and unique characteristic. They're also supposed to be better than bolters, so then *they'd* need a buff of course...

In a D6 1-10 system, I do not think there is enough granularity to differentiatiate pulse rifle and bolter strength.

GW's been fairly consistent in that pulse rifles are exceedingly powerful weapons, much moreso than bolters. That was the Tau's original claim to fame, their core guns were far and away more powerful than the weapons of any other race, Space Marine or Eldar included. More than enough to justify being differentiated, over 4 editions.

You know, I don't think there should be a lot of difference there for guardsmen. Either you're hit by several large explosive rounds and turned to a red paste, or you're hit by superheated plasma and melted to red paste. Death is death.

One's a superheated ball of plasma that even a near miss can cause fatal injuries on and a direct hit will leave nothing left but smoking boots. While a bolter may leave grisly wounds or tear off limbs in graphic instances, it's possible for a clipping hit to not properly detonate the round or you may get a dud (remarkably common with explosives), a near miss may inflict non-debliitating shrapnel wounds instead of taking off a hand, etc. A "hit" roll int he game doesn't necessarily mean you got a bullseye in the middle of the chest, it means the shot hit it an area where it's possible to do damage.

Autocannons are an excellent example of this kind of abstraction. You have a weapon firing explosive shells capable of penetrating medium tanks. SM's get an armor save against it. This doesn't mean the SM is taking the hit dead center to the chest and shrugging it off, but that near misses which would inflict fearsome concussion damage and shrapnel wounds on lighter armored infantry, shearing off feet or inflicting a dozen nasty shrapnel wounds against something like a basic Guardsmen, is mostly absorbed and deflected by the armor, usually requiring a direct hit to actually put the Marine down (as represented by a failed save).

Bolters are not the most fearsome weapons in the universe, not even close. They're insanely fearsome next to a lasgun or a basic slug-throwing assault rifle. But in general, they share a similar Strength and AP with something akin to a .50cal machinegun (Heavy Stubbers). Such are fearsome weapons as well, but at the same time (contrary to many unfortunate myths) these can fail to decisively put a combatant down depending on where and how they hit (a grazing hit through the top of the shoulder may hurt and bleed a lot and shred a chunk of muscle tissue, may even break or shatter a bone, but the soldier may still be able to move and fight for a little while longer).

It'd also make GEQ a good counter to plasma since plasma would effectively become redundant against them.

There's not a particularly compelling balance need for it, the difference is already very small, most people already consider throwing plasmas at GEQ's to be wasteful overkill.

What about having your officer shout at your guardsmen suddenly lets them penetrate tank plate with their lasguns, something that simply can't happen otherwise? Seems immersive and logical.

If we're going to go off on this unrelated tangent here and get into everything that doesn't make immediate sense, we're going to be here a very long time. You could make the same case for ATSKNF, the "fearless" space marines aren't actually *fearless*, they can be made to run, they just immediately recover from it 5 seconds later and turn right back around to the same position he just ran away from, while there are other, actually Fearless units. Or how shining a laser pointer at an enemy tank from one direction makes unguided munitions from other vectors more accurate.

The game itself works somewhat, although I'd argue that the 'SM ridiculousness' is an inherent part of the setting and part of what makes the common guardsman what he is as well. What the game does compared to the fluff is taking all armies that are not guardsmen, crossbreeding them with guardsmen, and taking the result and calling it an army.

For one, if one lose ~50% of one's SM army even when you win (like you often do in the game, and being tabled is not uncommon), your average chapter would be extinct in a matter of weeks. And this is against 2x their number of guardsmen, where both have somewhat equivalent support. Wow so super-elite. Makes the game so easy to reconcile with studio fluff.

I would say it's a matter of perspective and the types of battles a game is actually representing.

In reality, if a 40k board were in actual scale to real life (where hand to hand combat isn't just something that's even a possibility but that occurs usually several times in most games), then several things immediately come up. One, an entire gameboard is really a very small battle area of only a couple hundred feet across and a few hundred wide, these are areas which would be considered point blank overrun engagements in any realistic battle, where even 72" would translate to maybe two or three hundred feet or so, where small arms fire like rifles should have no problems reaching out to very accurately, and in fact so sor short that anti-tank missiles might not even have enough time to arm their warheads. We're talking absurdly short ranged battles, with artificially capped ranges. Even if you want to extrapolated the ranges out logarithmically, we're talking very short ranged battles.

Even more relevant, every one of those short ranged battlse is more or less a frontal, pitched engagement. Such affairs tend to be exceedingly brutal. Ultimately, this is the only way to really make a playable wargame, but are not representative of most battles fought. Going back to your earlier observation, we could take a more real life example to put it into perspective. Something like the SAS or US Navy Seals are obscenely elite troops with incredible morale, training and experience, amongst the best combatants in human history. However, if you throw such troops into a pitched battle, from the front, against an enemy (who knows who they're fighting and generally where they're coming from) that's fielding armor and well equipped with heavy weapons in prepared positions supported by artillery (and who may be able to contest the skies or even dominate them), or expect such elite troops to hold ground in front of such an opponent storming field positions they occupy, even such elite forces are probably going to take casualties which would be unsustainable or even permanently crippling or may wipe them out entirely, even against opposing forces comprised of relatively mediocre troops, and without necessarily inflicting proportionate casualties back at their adversary.

Meanwhile, something like a drop pod assault on an unsuspecting rebel command HQ and killing everyone in the middle of the night may be fluffy and more fitting, but doesn't make for a very fun wargame. Likewise playing an Ork Horde that's rushing across the empty plains of armageddon, 25km from the IG's front lines, and having to sweep your army off the board with a broom as the IG artillery opens up with several hundred big guns and turns the battlefield into a cratered wasteland and never getting to see your opponent isn't much of a fun wargame either, even if fluffy. Nobody would have much fun watching their army get obliterated by the Tau Air Caste from orbit.

If it can't be helped if one wants to have a playable game. That's not even getting into the problems of scope and scale, half the units in the game really have no business being on normal game boards (e.g. a Deathstrike is a strategic weapon, the only purpose one should really have on a game board is as a mission objective to capture or destroy in a raid type scenario ). The game just ultimately has a lot of problems with scale.

That said, the IA books often do a great job of rationalizing what on-table 40k games would really look like. One that sticks out particularly in my mind is the Vraks campaign. Where the SM's show up for just a couple of times in a very long war, they fight a couple of exceedingly short ranged engagements against entrenched opponents and take horrific losses. The Dark Angels show up with half the chapter, and nearly half of those are flat out killed in 4 days of fighting through hab blocks and a spaceport against heretical Vraksian militia and a few Traitor Legionnaires. The Red Scorpions show up just to exploit and hold a breach made in the defenses of the Vraksian Renegades long enough for the DKoK to get into position and consolidate it themselves, and the Red Scorpions take huge losses, with their Commander even being so grievously wounded in attacks by enemy infantry on their position that he had to be dragged from the field by the apothecary (in game terms, this would be akin to losing his last wound). It's almost exclusively engagements like this which a normal 40k game would really be portraying, and in such light 40k games then make much more sense.

Martel732 wrote:


As I said, without a D10 system, I don't think this can be fixed.

A D10 scale would be much better in general, particularly when, in a D6 system built on a statline of 1-10, the first couple gradients are almost entirely ignored (there's nothing in the the game that runs around with Toughness 1 and nearly nothing with Toughness 2 for example) and the overwhelmingly vast majority of non-vehicle units exist within the range of 3-5.

That would require an extensive reboot of the rules however. That said, it would not surprise me if we got an extensive reboot after 7th, this current edition is already so expansive, so wacky, and so hard for most people to simply digest and stay up to date with, that at 6 months in it's already looking like the creaking hull of very late 2nd edition.

I think I can say this as my conclusion:

I do not agree with you that things are fine, far from it, but I see no viable way to fix it in the game's current design.

A shame that the game's current design isn't all that good in terms of gameplay, either.