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 nurgle5 wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:I'm at a loss for whit whole fuss about mortal wounds.

Likewise. I mean, sure losing a wound without saves on that terminator or captain is nasty, but I haven't yet seen any particularly egregious examples of Mortal Wounds on the table top. I'm happy to be illuminated if anyone can elaborate on this,

The most damage done to me by mortal wounds was a Land Raider exploding and doing D6 to a Penitent Engine, Immolator, and 2 squads of Dominions.

Personally, my views on 8th are the same as when the rules were first announced: 7th but worse.

No templates + defender chooses casualties + flatlined damage + a wonky Deepstrike mechanic = a game where quantity really has a quality of its own, and the game becomes ultimately even less about outmaneuvering your foe and more about just out-dicing your foe. Speaking of which, this is a game where you can just cause the game to crawl under a sheer mountain of dice for little effect. Remember Razorwings prior to the FAQ? 7 points for 8 S2 attacks that hit on 5. Get a Beastmaster, and they reroll to hit. Get Doom on a target and reroll to wound. You could easily have an 80-point unit *potentially* roll 320 dice (200 or so being a more common amount) to resolve a single round of close combat attacks. Conscripts aren't that much different, especially if given a "reroll 1" bonus. You can just force the game to jam to a halt under sheer dice fatigue. Granted, this issue could exist in 7th: one of the most painful Battle Reports I read was Matt Root's second game at LVO 2014, since the game was a Green Tide versus a second Green Tide. Either way, it would be an interesting experiment to log the average amount of dice thrown per 40k game from edition to edition, as I imagine 5th threw *far* less than most, given how that game revolved more around "hi-strength" weapons like Lasplas Razorbacks, Long Fangs, Psyflemen, etc.

Were formations a problem? Yes, only a small number of them felt "just right" and many were flat upgrades rather than "hey, at least it's interesting" sidegrades. By contrast. The 8e Detachments have functionally made every game "Not Unbound" and armies are amazingly even spammier than ever before. Both systems ultimately result in a system where "best unit=only unit."

USRs or qualifying tags for rules? I like USRs done competently, as they could allow for non-ambiguous future-proofing. Alas, GW didn't use them competently as in many cases they weren't Universal (Only one weapon in the entire game used Missile Lock, when there were so many weapons that were fluffed as missiles that lock-on targets), Special ("Soul Blaze. Ooooooooh, scary"), or even rules ("Relentless lets you count as stationary for purposes of shooting...but Gitfindas do not work with Relentless because you actually have to be stationary to benefit from a Gitfinda."). In other cases, they just didn't care. Perhaps the most notable example of this sort of debate was the Haemotrope Plasma Reactor, and "what *is* a Plasma weapon anyway?" By RAW, a Plasma Culverin was not a Plasma Weapon, since it was "not a Plasma Weapon as defined in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook." (Wheras Skorchas, Flamespurts, etc were "Flamers as defined in the 40,000 Rulebook" so yay for consistency). 8th Keywords could have been interesting, and yet there were holes in the system that required immediate FAQs, such as "A Wolf Guard in Terminator Armor attached to a unit of Grey Hunters is treated as having the Terminator Keyword." And then you have Stratagems like "Flamecraft", granting "+1 to wound for any Flamers, Heavy Flamers, Flamestorm Cannons, or any other weapon with 'Flame' in its name." So by this system, Brayarth Ashmantle, a Salamander with a unique weapon called "Burning Wrath," which is clearly a Hand Flamer, cannot use Flamecraft because the weapon does not have "Flame" in its name, nor does it "count as a Hand Flamer." And "Flaming Wrath" would also not be a match, since it still doesn't have "Flame" in the name. And were the Marines to get an Inferno Cannon for a narrative or future mission? Haha, nope. And it's not like they could say "any weapon with Flame or Inferno" because the Inferno Pistol...is a Melta weapon.

8th is fine.

Infinity better than 7th. but has problems of its own.

 Desubot wrote:
8th is fine.

Infinity better than 7th. but has problems of its own.

I would rather play Infinity than 8th

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
8th is fine.

Infinity better than 7th. but has problems of its own.

I would rather play Infinity than 8th

Heh i rather not. seems like a wild cheer leader mess.

i get you like 7th and feel like it had some kinda tactical depth that 8th is lacking but really 7th boiled down to a kirby cash grabapalooza, and the whole game came down to breaking one or more aspect of the game to win.

how many people actually used actual classical movement tactics to win the day rather than just deep striking in grav devs or wraithknights or just moving forwarded with bike guns and just shooting forward.

 Desubot wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
8th is fine.

Infinity better than 7th. but has problems of its own.

I would rather play Infinity than 8th

Heh i rather not. seems like a wild cheer leader mess.

i get you like 7th and feel like it had some kinda tactical depth that 8th is lacking but really 7th boiled down to a kirby cash grabapalooza, and the whole game came down to breaking one or more aspect of the game to win.

how many people actually used actual classical movement tactics to win the day rather than just deep striking in grav devs or wraithknights or just moving forwarded with bike guns and just shooting forward.

Sean Nayden's Lictorshame, or Jon Camacho's Monolith Necrons?

I admit there are a lot of problems with 7th (and mentioned quite a lot of them), but I feel like most the issues were with "individual powers" (meaning Invisibility, rerollable 2++s, and D/Stomp tables) rather than many assorted core rules. As a notable example, *squad coherency* did not need a FAQ in 7th because it had actual diagrams that got the point across, while in 8th, "as a single group" versus "within 2" of at least one other model" led to the "2-man buddy system" of squad coherency.

And for every story of that one person slowplaying spacing out to avoid blasts, there is now the potential for that one person slowplayiny spacing out Conscripts exactly 18" away from the units they are protecting from Deepstrike, while keeping exactly one model exactly within 6" of the Commissar. If anything, the cynic in me wouldn't doubt if a "real reason" 8th got rid of templates and AOEs is they cost money to produce, yet you can only sell *one* set to a player (and arguably even less if the FLGS had a copy you could use).

Honestly, I'm sitting out of 40k now. And spending more time trying to write another game altogether :(

No doubt 8th has issues of its own. and it appears to primarily be a an issue with basically one book.

it so far feels like everyone would of had equal footing if everyone had access to unique strats and chapter tactics. but i wont know if we are going back to age of kirby until everything is released.

except iron hands feth those guys apparently.

I had hopes for 8th until they made imperial guard even more broken.

Gameplay speed, rules bloat, etc, all that is secondary to game balance.

I do find that this edition fits narrative and casual play FAR better than 7th, and in that regard, i'm content. Just don't let AM players, or people abusing "Imperium Soup" to bring mad cheese into your casual/narrative campaigns and you're fine.

Cheaper is almost always better until you get down to grots. GW will eventually realize that they screwed over their poster boys again.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
I had hopes for 8th until they made imperial guard even more broken.

Gameplay speed, rules bloat, etc, all that is secondary to game balance.

I do find that this edition fits narrative and casual play FAR better than 7th, and in that regard, i'm content. Just don't let AM players, or people abusing "Imperium Soup" to bring mad cheese into your casual/narrative campaigns and you're fine.

How do you justify outlawing a legal build?

Why not just say lets play 1 battlaion as a standard size.

you can still bring soop but you start losing out on tactics,

you cant spam out certain slots

everyone has near equal command points.

8E appears to be developing its own issues, and it's filled with typical stupid GW D6 mechanics for everything that make the variability insane. It's a step up from 7th, but given how garbage 7E was, I'm not sure thats saying much, but 7E needed to go either way, there was no salvaging that mess. 8E's better, but it continues the trend of 40k never quite managing anything better than a marginally functional ruleset fails to work well as a narrative sandbox and utterly craps itself as a tactical and competitive wargaming ruleset.

The continuation of the "bring anything you like" lists composed to multifaction armies hasnt helped, that was a bad issue with 7E that they should have killed with 8E.

 Marmatag wrote:
I had hopes for 8th until they made imperial guard even more broken.

Gameplay speed, rules bloat, etc, all that is secondary to game balance.

Complexity is a nuanced thing however. There's complexity that adds in-game options, versus that which simply drags on the game.

On one hand, you have Tank Shock. This rule confused many a player due to its implementation, since it operated less as a "ram" and more akin to a sumo wrestler finding a landing point to jump on. It had idiosyncratic flaws, such as a Warbuggy stopping a Land Raider, but a Rhino being able to run over a Stormsurge. However, it gave players another tool, one that let their Rhinos act as "crowd control", breaking up bubblewrap or pushing units into "please flame me" formation, and just being a generally annoying form of board control...if you had a sufficient mass of throwaway vehicles to take advantage of it. Either way, the rules were complex but they "could" offer another tool to use.

By contrast, you had Soul Blaze. Place a marker on a unit affected by Soul Blaze, roll a D6, and on a 4+, you inflict D3 S4 hits on the unit Whoop-de-freaking do, an annoyance that took more time to remember was actually in play than would actually have any in-game impact. Oh, but Eldar got the funny version of Soul Blaze via the Firesabre, where 6s on the "does soulblaze work" caused units within 6" of ground zero unit to also get Soul Blaze, like a Virus Grenade of "annoying sneezes." But it was a bunch of rolling that didn't actually impact your choices. Ditto the Chaos Warpstorm table (at least unless running Fateweaver as your Warlord), or other "randumb" options that actually didn't give you in-game choices. Chaos is fickle!

Perhaps the most annoying issue though is when the choice is an illusion. For example, Orks in 7th could Waaagh once per game. However, "when to Waaagh" wasn't even a decision as it was either "always" (running a Green Tide) or "never" (running Zhadsnark). Likewise, the odds of a Nova Reactor boning you over were always less than the potential wounds saved by upgrading from 5++ to 3++.

I definitely like th change to bring back a form of save modifier. I have fond memories of this in 2nd Edition. Much better to have degrading saves than an all or nothing system in recent editions.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
To sum up, you have things backwards. The kitchen counter games are the ones irrelevant for balance. The tourney data, even though they are actually the minority of games overall, are the best tool to use for the balancing process.

The problem with balancing based on tournament lists is that sub-optimal stuff is often never seen.

I mean I think a lot of players thought 7th was awful for balance. At the top tier you had Eldar, Tau, Marines of various flavours, chaos daemons and renegade lists, Imperial Knights and maybe a few others.
Oh and Ynnari. Lets just skip that end of edition insanity.
Anyway that is quite a few lists. If you looked at the top 10 lists in tournaments I'd argue there was considerably more variety than today (where often its variation on an identifiable core be it imperial soup or chaos soup).

So you might ask why given this greater variety did everyone hate it.

The problem was the gap between these armies and everything else had grown to a comic level. Necrons were famously a bit crap when it came to tournaments - but would chew through most casual lists without losing a unit. Your garage games ceased to be fun.

The problem is that for a codex to be viable in a tournament you need one build. You can be a "solved" codex.
Like say the recent Ad Mech codex. I firmly think Cawl & Dakkabots, Stygies Dragoons, fill in the rest as required, is a solid list.
Will anyone discover some other secret build hidden in there? I don't think so. I hope people keep looking and trying stuff - but really its probably over, literally moments after the release.
For a tournament player - that's fine. So half the units in the (relatively tiny) codex are inferior? Oh well. Just won't use them.
For a casual player though its not great.

Really its a question of whether Codexes should be tool boxes or mathhammer equations to solve.

The problem with 40K balance, which I think they were trying to solve, is that too often Unit X is just better than Unit Y in all circumstances and the only reason to take unit Y is if you like the model.

Put another way 40k should have an evolving meta. Historically it hasn't had much of one. I can't think of many units which were bad at the start of an edition and then became top tier later on. It has solved codexes that are good until new content means they are not.

Tyel wrote:
Put another way 40k should have an evolving meta. Historically it hasn't had much of one. I can't think of many units which were bad at the start of an edition and then became top tier later on. It has solved codexes that are good until new content means they are not.

It will be interesting to see what they do which Chapter Approved. Will they nerf AM? Is there time to get the AM nerfs in before the book is printed? Or is AM just a run of the mill 2018 codex?

The very best thing they could do is publish Chapter Approved as a softcover supplement every 3 months or so, adding in all the latest FAQs and point changes. I'm worried that a new codex will come along soon (ahem, Eldar) which will allow utter gak to play for a full year before the 2018 CA fixes it.

Tyel wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
To sum up, you have things backwards. The kitchen counter games are the ones irrelevant for balance. The tourney data, even though they are actually the minority of games overall, are the best tool to use for the balancing process.

The problem with balancing based on tournament lists is that sub-optimal stuff is often never seen.

I mean I think a lot of players thought 7th was awful for balance. At the top tier you had Eldar, Tau, Marines of various flavours, chaos daemons and renegade lists, Imperial Knights and maybe a few others.
Oh and Ynnari. Lets just skip that end of edition insanity.
Anyway that is quite a few lists. If you looked at the top 10 lists in tournaments I'd argue there was considerably more variety than today (where often its variation on an identifiable core be it imperial soup or chaos soup).

So you might ask why given this greater variety did everyone hate it.

The problem was the gap between these armies and everything else had grown to a comic level. Necrons were famously a bit crap when it came to tournaments - but would chew through most casual lists without losing a unit. Your garage games ceased to be fun.

The problem is that for a codex to be viable in a tournament you need one build. You can be a "solved" codex.
Like say the recent Ad Mech codex. I firmly think Cawl & Dakkabots, Stygies Dragoons, fill in the rest as required, is a solid list.
Will anyone discover some other secret build hidden in there? I don't think so. I hope people keep looking and trying stuff - but really its probably over, literally moments after the release.
For a tournament player - that's fine. So half the units in the (relatively tiny) codex are inferior? Oh well. Just won't use them.
For a casual player though its not great.

Really its a question of whether Codexes should be tool boxes or mathhammer equations to solve.

The problem with 40K balance, which I think they were trying to solve, is that too often Unit X is just better than Unit Y in all circumstances and the only reason to take unit Y is if you like the model.

Put another way 40k should have an evolving meta. Historically it hasn't had much of one. I can't think of many units which were bad at the start of an edition and then became top tier later on. It has solved codexes that are good until new content means they are not.

The divide between "good units" and "bad units" I feel is the main issue that plagues 40k in its worst of moments. When the internal balance of an army is off, and choosing options becomes "FINAL DESTINATION", that is. It has almost always been an issue from edition to edition, be it Green Tide for 8e Orks, mass Flyrants for 7e Tyranids, Eldar in 5th needing 2 units of Fire Dragons or else they're doing it wrong!

A lot of what makes units bad is an army has multiple units that do the exact same thing (ex: Wraithblades vs Scorpions vs Banshees) meaning there can only be one best (or Wyverns vs Mortars, or Whirlwinds vs Thunderfires, etc), or the roles are pointless to begin with (alas, poor Pyrovore). 8th Detachments in turn made things "not unbound", which combined with questionable internal balance leads to lists like "all character superfriends" winning a tournament. Gulliman, Celestine, Draigo, a Malleus Inquisitor and Ultramarine Librarian tag-team with 2 Vindicares, 3 Eversor Assassins, and 4 Culexus Assassins, exploiting the "closest target" rules so that the Culexus Assassins (which are only hit on 6, have a 4++ and are immune to Smite) are the only legal targets!

In 7th, Formations were hit-or-miss. Some were, if not gamebreaking, horrific for garage play. The Riptide Wing is the most immediate offender, but Warp Spider Aspect Hosts were similarly nasty, and the Fenrisian Hunting Pack comboed with Azrael for a really wonky experience. Then there were the formations that did absolutely nothing, my personal favorite being Khorne's Bloodstorm. You had to take 2 units of Raptors and a unit of Warp Talons (eww), and in exchange, you got +1 to the strength of your Hammer of Wrath attacks (the punchline being this prevented said Warp Talons/Raptors from using their Jump Packs to move).

Some formations were redundant, and the bonuses could be inconsistent too. Every Marine army got a variant of the "Techmarine+3 Tanks" formation. On one hand, Space Wolves had their Land Raider grant a POTMS bubble to nearby tanks in the formation, and the Iron Priest (which was viable as a standalone unit due to being able to take a Thunderwolf and Cyberwolf escort) could grant a buff to one of the tanks each turn. *That* is cool, and there is a fun (if not necessarily competitive) appeal in your Predator Annihilator selectively sniping out enemy heavy troopers. On the other hand, Chaos Space Marines...got a 6+ Invulnerable Save for tanks near their footslogging Warpsmith.

And yet there were other ones, like the Helforged Warpack, or the Pinion Demi-Company, or even Ynnead's Net which were an entertaining balance of tax to bonus, sidegrade to tradeoff, Formations that were at least "interesting" and wouldn't automatically preclude you from winning. Alas that more formations didn't adhere to that model.

Personally, I'm loving it. More units than ever are viable. As someone who went deep into comp 7e, its exciting to see varied lists when i show up to a tournament.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I'm at a loss for whit whole fuss about mortal wounds.

It's like 1 whole wound!

How is this a big deal?


Smite is the most common source I've seen, but it only hits the closest unit for D3.

I take it you haven't played against an army that really exploits the mechanic? I play as Tzeentch and have played against Renegades & Heretics, so I've seen the brutality of it from both sides. There's a reason Chaos Soup tournament lists runs a dozen malefic lords.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I'm at a loss for whit whole fuss about mortal wounds.

It's like 1 whole wound!

How is this a big deal?


Smite is the most common source I've seen, but it only hits the closest unit for D3.

I take it you haven't played against an army that really exploits the mechanic? I play as Tzeentch and have played against Renegades & Heretics, so I've seen the brutality of it from both sides. There's a reason Chaos Soup tournament lists runs a dozen malefic lords.

Don't leave out everyone's favorite, bucket-o-brimstones.

Pfff... do you think that the Malefic Lords are bad spamming mortal wounds... you don't know nothing, John Snow...

Tzaangors Skyfires... if you don't have faced that, you don't know what it is Mortal Wound spam...

NickMcMahon wrote:
Good news guys!

So far the clear winner are:

Yes 37%
[ 155 ]
Yes, more than 7th ed 45%
[ 187 ]


and the losers are

No 3%
[ 13 ]
No, and even less than 7th 4%
[ 18 ]

I'd just point out 2 things:
1 - more than 7th is a loaded question. Doesn't mean the respondants necessarily like it, only that they like it more than 7th.
2 - No is a tricky one to gauge. Outside the grognards like me that haunt the forums occaisionally, the average 'no' player has probably moved on and isn't available to answer the question.

But if overall, the 'average' player is enjoying 8th: cool. Good for them. Nothing wrong with that.

 Torga_DW wrote:

I'd just point out 2 things:
1 - more than 7th is a loaded question. Doesn't mean the respondants necessarily like it, only that they like it more than 7th.
2 - No is a tricky one to gauge. Outside the grognards like me that haunt the forums occaisionally, the average 'no' player has probably moved on and isn't available to answer the question.

But if overall, the 'average' player is enjoying 8th: cool. Good for them. Nothing wrong with that.

The question is "Do you enjoy 8th ed ?". To which each answer starts with a yes or a no. There are two "more than 7th" answers, one yes and one no. Presumably, if you don't like 8th, but think 7th was worse, you'd go with "No, but more than 7th".

 Cream Tea wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:

I'd just point out 2 things:
1 - more than 7th is a loaded question. Doesn't mean the respondants necessarily like it, only that they like it more than 7th.
2 - No is a tricky one to gauge. Outside the grognards like me that haunt the forums occaisionally, the average 'no' player has probably moved on and isn't available to answer the question.

But if overall, the 'average' player is enjoying 8th: cool. Good for them. Nothing wrong with that.

The question is "Do you enjoy 8th ed ?". To which each answer starts with a yes or a no. There are two "more than 7th" answers, one yes and one no. Presumably, if you don't like 8th, but think 7th was worse, you'd go with "No, but more than 7th".

Depends how much you wanted to keep playing. Again, all the "No" answers require the player to still be active enough to answer the question.

The GW staff could collectively start smoking crack today and maintain the habit until 9th and 8th edition would remain a completely superior product to the utter shitshow that was the 7th edition moneygrab. Does that mean it's perfect? Nope, but in terms of quality it's night vs day.

 Torga_DW wrote:

Depends how much you wanted to keep playing. Again, all the "No" answers require the player to still be active enough to answer the question.

I agree about the problem with "no" being underepresented. That's certainly a problem with any self-selected poll.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Just another travesty in a 10-year streak of complete failures.

You're still a slave, Angron. Enslaved by your past, blind to the future. Too hateful to learn. Too spiteful to prosper.

 MarsNZ wrote:
The GW staff could collectively start smoking crack today and maintain the habit until 9th and 8th edition would remain a completely superior product to the utter shitshow that was the 7th edition moneygrab. Does that mean it's perfect? Nope, but in terms of quality it's night vs day.

I'm not entirely sure how i'd get it (the crack, that is), but if they released the 40k crack edition i'd certainly consider it. As long as it came with a sticker on it - you must be this high to play.

Tycho wrote:

It's good, but I feel it's a bit too random for a "skill test," like tournament games.

What an odd criticism to level. Did you play 6th or 7th? If THIS edition is too random, what did you think of those?

Yeah, I've been playing since 3rd. My comment comes from the fact that in the mere several months of play in this edition, I've seen way more shocking upsets mid-game than ever before. Vehicles blowing up at the perfect time and clearing multiple diminished squads and wounded characters off the table, a psyker managing to get in close to your warlord and rolling 11 on smite and 6 damage. A single twin lascannon dealing 12 wounds, a lot of "6 fishing" effects like sniper MW's, old blast and flamer weapons hitting one guy, but then sometimes hitting 6 or 12, even when there aren't that many to hit...

I mean I get not "getting" me on this, because I'd have to do thesis-level research to really be able to really back up my stance and quantify how much more random than previous editions exactly. And to clarify, I mean during the game proper. 7e had a silly amount of "ran-dumb" stuff like traits and powers that could end the game before it started, like if a star rolled its dozen psychic rolls and managed to never pick up invis, but the inside of the game proper never really felt that random to me. Things went along how they were expected to until RGL rolls decided who won (assuming that was still up for contention.)

I think it really is the existence of several "on a 6, battle-changing event happens!" effects like vehicle explosions. At a GT I judged at recently, I saw a guy get effectively tabled top of t1 by his baneblade exploding in the middle of his forces, even though he tried to cp reroll the explode result, and a table where 3 dreads and 3 immolaters with a couple sister squads were all apparently made out of matchsticks, because once one thing went up, it all went up, and that whole area of the field was suddenly empty. And of course there's the deep strike charges with CP, which are basically coin flips.for an insta-charge. One of the BA characters has an ability where any of his squads nearby could roll a 6 and fight again immediately.

Just feels more random mid-game to me, and some of the random has very extreme effects.

Both 7th and 8th edition are extremely random. 8th has d6 shots, d6 wounds, explodes etc. 7th had vehicle damage table, scatter dice, all or nothing morale tests, deep strike mishaps, dangerous terrain etc. Both have seize the initiative, psychic powers, perils, random charge range, plasma mishaps, "on a 6+" effects etc.

I think it's intended to make the game winnable even if your opponent is more skilled and/or has a better army, as well as to make the game more "beer and pretzels" and less WAAC.

I don't entirely like it, but then again I do play Warmachine as well, where skill, planning and movement all play bigger roles. 40k is more like role-playing, it's about the journey.

 Desubot wrote:
Why not just say lets play 1 battlaion as a standard size.

What if a battallion is literally not big enough?

One can fill the entirety of an infantry-heavy Guard battallion for 750 points, easily.