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Some stratagems are a straight bad idea. Like, you wouldn't need to test play or anything to tell someone that it's stupid. Mainly the "fire twice" stratagems, or extra shots stratagems. Anything that substantially increases your fire power, and can combo with other stratagems and auras, will be easily abused. I think it's this kind of comboing that results in the issues we see now.

I have a foot dar type list. I really don't like playing it anymore because I have to take off like 2-3 squads off the board T1. It feels like I might as well not bothered putting the models down or painting them..
I remember days of 4th ed. It was rare for entire unit to get deleted outright let alone 3. And that was with playing nids.

The no superheavies below 2k is a good plan but everything has tools to deals with superheavies at this point so you'd still be left with the firepower.

I remember seeing a rare Land raider(because they were expensive...) being like "ooooohhh dang that thing has like 4 guns and an all around top tier armour!" It just does not seem impressive anymore lol. Nothing does when you have Things like the castellan...

I don't know what the fix is. Previous edition rules were slow but the result was more immersion and more meaningful gameplay.

I think strategems in general feel very cheap... About 80% are just plain useless. 10% are used all the time and 10% just being game/list defining.

Step 1: Stop playing ITC where you can entirely focus on killing
Step 2: Play CA 2018 missions
Step 3: Profit

Yeah, strategems aren't a terrible idea in theory, as long as their effects are limited and mostly add flavor or are used to tip something barely successful over the edge. But super-powered strategems like those that let you move, shoot, or fight twice are just game-breaking--and yes, this should have been noticed during the first draft. These strategems pump the level of lethality up to 11 in a way that's just not fun to play against, and require that everyone chase the metagame just to stay alive until turn three.

 Argive wrote:
I don't know what the fix is. Previous edition rules were slow but the result was more immersion and more meaningful gameplay.

I'd imagine it's difficult to roll things back at this point short of splitting the game into apoc (current rules) and skirmish... but then people will just complain until they have all their apoc stuff in skirmish and around it goes. And I doubt GW has any interest in a revised oldhammer game.

A.T. wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I don't know what the fix is. Previous edition rules were slow but the result was more immersion and more meaningful gameplay.

I'd imagine it's difficult to roll things back at this point short of splitting the game into apoc (current rules) and skirmish... but then people will just complain until they have all their apoc stuff in skirmish and around it goes. And I doubt GW has any interest in a revised oldhammer game.

Vehicle facings were for sure my favourite thing from the past. Had to run gene stealers toward the back of the tank in order to try and rip through it to deal some damage... Fire arcs, difficult terrain, templates etc... I get are an annoyance but these days you can get a laser pen that draws target lock line for your. Army painter sells em for like £6-7. Could easily make one that cross sections your vehicle into 4 quarters. Just need t o have a centre point designated for every model and youre golden.. Oopps tere I go wishlisting again..

The stupidest thing is auras... Everything is just conga lining and it looks so dumb... Everything bunching together to get all the -+ modifiers and rerolls.. Lack of templates has seriously removed any need to think tacticaly about where your dudes go. They just need to be within 6" to get this cool buff. That's all.

Re-rolls everything should not be a thing.

Has anyone played a game of 8th without modifiers or re-rolls btw?
I want to do an experiment if ignoring anything that allows for re-rolls or modifiers apart from cover.

Auras annoy me. The most effective way to play Space Marines is in a big bubble of dudes, marching up the table. Boring.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Auras annoy me. The most effective way to play Space Marines is in a big bubble of dudes, marching up the table. Boring.

Well night lords can shake that up now at least.

Don't know about any other factions.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
It's in large parts the game overcompensating for unkillable death stars in 7th.

7th kinda went off the deep end with things you couldn't reasonably hurt, thus in reverse 8th went off the deep end on the other side with everything dying, usually long before the game is even half done.

I dunno. I still have issues with triple riptide spam with freaking tau. They do a lot of damage and just don't die regardless of what I hit them with. You can't actually bog them down because they fly. They also shoot a lot from a long distance with a weapon that's effective against most things and then they have drones all over the place to bodyguard them. Absolutely un-fun and the only anti-infantry shooting weapons dark eldar have worth a crap beyond like 12" range are poison and disintegrators and poison is honestly not that effective in many situations.

It's not as bad as 7th by any means with an absolute delete all gun-line of tau that never dies and wipes out fragile dark eldar. However it's not as shooty as it used to be and that's a good thing. Still needs the nerf bat somewhat with drones and riptides.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Auras annoy me. The most effective way to play Space Marines is in a big bubble of dudes, marching up the table. Boring.

Be glad your auras actually get a chance to work. Much of a dark eldar army is mounted in transports meaning none of the guys inside want to be inspired by auras. The issue with auras is even if you have a leader mounted in a transport with their buddies they don't want to all be inspired for some reason....not even the hq themselves. Oh and in one of the most mobile factions in the game we only have HQ's on foot. I find this all absolutely Eff'ing stupid.

Darsath wrote:
Some stratagems are a straight bad idea. Like, you wouldn't need to test play or anything to tell someone that it's stupid. Mainly the "fire twice" stratagems, or extra shots stratagems. Anything that substantially increases your fire power, and can combo with other stratagems and auras, will be easily abused. I think it's this kind of comboing that results in the issues we see now.

They've started to catch on a little by tying the cost to unit size. I'd love it if Cacophony cost varyied CP based on the PL or size of the unit

I mean, as much as I too hate 8th ed (moral, vehicle facings, everything can kill everything, psychology in general) I played a game of 8th last weekend and it wasn't so bad. Would I rather be playing 6th? Hell yes, but unfortunately noone else at my club does.

 Blackie wrote:
I honestly have no idea why a 5th edition ork army (when the standard format was 1500 points, but I can ask the same question even if it was 1750) can't fit into 2000 points of an 8th edition game.

Even in 5th 2000 was a very commonly played format, and those don't fit into today's 2000. I was running a typical battlewagon bash back then, so 3-4 battlewagons, lootas, burnas, boyz, 1-2 trukks, koptas, thrakka, kff mek, nob bikers, painboy on bike. Almost all models stayed the same price or got more expensive.


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 Daedalus81 wrote:

Darsath wrote:
Some stratagems are a straight bad idea. Like, you wouldn't need to test play or anything to tell someone that it's stupid. Mainly the "fire twice" stratagems, or extra shots stratagems. Anything that substantially increases your fire power, and can combo with other stratagems and auras, will be easily abused. I think it's this kind of comboing that results in the issues we see now.

They've started to catch on a little by tying the cost to unit size. I'd love it if Cacophony cost varyied CP based on the PL or size of the unit

IMO all shoot twice stratagems need to go - and yes, that includes the two ork stratagems. How do you properly balance anything when you have to account for it doubling its output?

re-roll everything bubbles needs to go. It needs to go now for everyone.

Guide, doom, chapter masters, etc. It needs to go.

An occasional very situational re-roll one strat for like 3CP might be acceptable.

Get rid of that and modifiers and I think we have a half-decent game.

 Argive wrote:
re-roll everything bubbles needs to go. It needs to go now for everyone.

Guide, doom, chapter masters, etc. It needs to go.

An occasional very situational re-roll one strat for like 3CP might be acceptable.

Get rid of that and modifiers and I think we have a half-decent game.

remove stratagems, and make the actual units have interesting rules again for gods sake

 Eonfuzz wrote:

remove stratagems, and make the actual units have interesting rules again for gods sake

Not really. Stratagems could be a good tool to make 1x unit X in an army list interesting and "competitive", without making it spamable, as only one unit benefits from that key stratagem in a given turn. It's an interesting way to get a soft 0-1 limit into the Codex, combined with the "named character" tag and the "relic" tag, that appear to be more socially accepted by players than a straight mechanical 0-1 limitation in the unit rules.

Daedalus81 wrote:I think nostalgia has colored your glasses. Leaf Blower's aim was to totally remove your army from the table. You can't hold objectives if you don't have models.

There's nothing really wrong with the game being front loaded into the first 3 turns and the remaining turns are making the best of bad situations to outmaneuver with what is left. The missions you play have a lot to do with how you approach things.

Note that I'm not suggesting the game is currently balance or that IGOUGO is without issues.

Leaf Blower?

You know, one of the things I absolutely DETEST about netlist garbage is the pet names that you damn near need a WIKI to keep track of.

The Newman wrote:Pthth, I remember lists with a Captain, Librarian, two Terminator squads and a Dreadnaught coming in at 2000 points. I also remember turn 2 or 3 tablings being incredibly common in 2nd and 3rd.

The only times I ever saw tablings that fast in 3rd is if someone faced a BA player and wasn't smart enough to put distance between them. Lethality was only really an issue in 3rd if you were caught in a crossfire or a Sweeping Advance.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

remove stratagems, and make the actual units have interesting rules again for gods sake

Not really. Stratagems could be a good tool to make 1x unit X in an army list interesting and "competitive", without making it spamable, as only one unit benefits from that key stratagem in a given turn. It's an interesting way to get a soft 0-1 limit into the Codex, combined with the "named character" tag and the "relic" tag, that appear to be more socially accepted by players than a straight mechanical 0-1 limitation in the unit rules.

My army had gear choices turned in to stratagems. I would very much like to have weapon upgrades on all units in my army, same way 1ksons or DW has it. There is nothing interesting in to having to pay points for a potential stratagem use all across all the units, when in most ideal situations it will affect one unit in the army.

 Just Tony wrote:


Leaf Blower?

You know, one of the things I absolutely DETEST about netlist garbage is the pet names that you damn near need a WIKI to keep track of.

It's a pre-Grey Knights 5th Edition list that won one of the 'Ard Boyz tournaments at the time.

It's essentially an Imperial Guard gunline (including things like Psyker Battle Squads which throw out large templates, as well as large template artillery tanks) with, at the time, an Inquisitor in there that allowed most of the army to shoot/intercept anything coming from reserves (with things like Drop Pod armies being the counter-of-choice-during-that-time for gunlines and/or avoid having your army in your deployment zone covered in large templates turn 1).


Also, it was a 2500 points army list that had 5 (FIVE!!!!!!!) Imperial Guard Artillery tanks, 2 Valkyries and 2 Chimeras. Man, spam was bad in those days

 Vankraken wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I think implementing the obscurement and range penalty rules from Kill Team would make a huge difference to early-turn lethality, with minimal impact to the overall rules.

It is contingent on players using enough terrain, though. Most tables I see don't have anywhere near the recommended 25%.

In 8th a lot of the problem is that you need meaningful terrain which is large, clunky, or immersion breaking where as in past editions the smaller stuff like wrecks, barracades, rocks, craters, etc where practical because it didn't need to cover a whole unit to have a gameplay effect.

That said the killteam rules seem to punish armies like Orks more due to flat modifiers hurting poor BS armies more than better BS skill armies.

Actually, they're fine, and one of the best short factions. Remember in kill team unlike 'proper' 40k, a '6' is always a hit, and penalties come thick and fast - at 15" range with a target in cover, both a guardsmen and a shoot a boy need a 6....But the ork is firing twice as many shots at higher strength.... in fact he puts out statistically the same firepower as a one-shot-hitting-on-5 bolter-armed marine.
Yes, the ork is much less effective firing at close quarters against targets in the open, but if you can't think of a reason why the enemy being at close quarters in the open in front of ork boyz is a good thing, you have more fundamental problems.


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 Argive wrote:
re-roll everything bubbles needs to go. It needs to go now for everyone.

Guide, doom, chapter masters, etc. It needs to go.

An occasional very situational re-roll one strat for like 3CP might be acceptable.

Get rid of that and modifiers and I think we have a half-decent game.

Again, not to blow kill team's trumpet, but I think they made some very good design choices - most commanders have an aura ability, but they're a tactic you have to pay command points to 'switch on' for the turn... So a captain does give you rerolls a go-to, but only at a cost of not doing something else. And points get drip fed on a per turn basis, so you can't blow 8 on turn 1 on some reroll/double hit/shoot twice battalion-erasing combination rubbish.

 Jidmah wrote:


Even in 5th 2000 was a very commonly played format, and those don't fit into today's 2000. I was running a typical battlewagon bash back then, so 3-4 battlewagons, lootas, burnas, boyz, 1-2 trukks, koptas, thrakka, kff mek, nob bikers, painboy on bike. Almost all models stayed the same price or got more expensive.

But there isn't a huge difference in points for the units you listed betwen these editions. Ghaz is exactly the same, boyz are a bit cheaper (+1ppm but cheaper nobz upgrades), KFF mek is 10 points cheaper, burnas are 2ppm cheaper while lootas are 2ppm more expensive, nob bikers plus painboy where really expensive back then, now certainly cheaper, koptas basically the same price unless you paid for the upgrades like the saw and in that case they were more expensive than now. BWs and trukks were cheaper (3-4 wagons and 1-2 trukks are 100 points of difference) but now you save a lot of points that you had to invest in fielding a nob, bosspole and power klaw; overall you should have basically the same army. Other common units like kanz, dreads, bikes are exactly the same cost, characters are maybe cheaper now as I remember the two biker HQs (warboss and Wazzdakka) were 150ish and 180 points. Buggies were way cheaper but they were also a different unit, now basically phased out. In lower formats armies from 5th edition and 8th can be even closer.

The only reason why I can't fit one of my 5th edition list (I also play with wagons, trukks, lootas and bikes) into a 8th one is the format of the current game which favors lists with multiple battallions. I didn't need more than 1 or 2 HQs in 5th (or 7th or 3rd, the other editions that I played) and 3-4 troops were enough. That's the difference, points values are quite close overall.


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 Just Tony wrote:

The Newman wrote:Pthth, I remember lists with a Captain, Librarian, two Terminator squads and a Dreadnaught coming in at 2000 points. I also remember turn 2 or 3 tablings being incredibly common in 2nd and 3rd.

The only times I ever saw tablings that fast in 3rd is if someone faced a BA player and wasn't smart enough to put distance between them. Lethality was only really an issue in 3rd if you were caught in a crossfire or a Sweeping Advance.

Tablings in turn 2 or 3 at competitive levels were not common in 3rd edition. It might have happen only because back then some units didn't have official models or they were super expensive metal blister (just consider that a 69 points unit of 20 gretchins and a runtherd had the same cost of a current gork/morkanaut as you needed to buy 8 blisters) so bringing optimized lists was hard for some armies. With my orks I got a lot of tablings in 3rd, but mostly because I played strictly WYSIWYG and fielding the army I wanted, or even something close to it, was flatout impossible due to ultra-expensive (gretchins, burnaboyz, meganobz, kanz, special weapons which competitive lists spammed and only available by metal models) models and other ones that needed to be scratch built like the cyborks, the KFF big mek, or the battlewagon because GW didn't sell official models. If I play now 3rd editions game I'd have all the models I need for competitive lists and games would be a lot more balanced and with more variety than 8th edition ones.

 Blackie wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


Even in 5th 2000 was a very commonly played format, and those don't fit into today's 2000. I was running a typical battlewagon bash back then, so 3-4 battlewagons, lootas, burnas, boyz, 1-2 trukks, koptas, thrakka, kff mek, nob bikers, painboy on bike. Almost all models stayed the same price or got more expensive.

But there isn't a huge difference in points for the units you listed betwen these editions. Ghaz is exactly the same, boyz are a bit cheaper (+1ppm but cheaper nobz upgrades), KFF mek is 10 points cheaper, burnas are 2ppm cheaper while lootas are 2ppm more expensive, nob bikers plus painboy where really expensive back then, now certainly cheaper, koptas basically the same price unless you paid for the upgrades like the saw and in that case they were more expensive than now. BWs and trukks were cheaper (3-4 wagons and 1-2 trukks are 100 points of difference) but now you save a lot of points that you had to invest in fielding a nob, bosspole and power klaw; overall you should have basically the same army.

All those "basically the same price" things are small point increases, which really add up while the discounts really aren't as big as they seem
- the 15 lootas add 30 points, their move from elite to heavy requires addition HQ tax.
- Thrakka went up by 10
- Runtherd went up by 25
- rokkit koptas used to be 45 and are 54 now, so +9 for each of the three to five I used to run
- Nob bikers were 45 per model and went down to 38, with the three PK in that unit dropping to 13, the deleted Waaagh! banner reducing the cost by 15 and the skorcha went up to 17. Their pain boy went from 75 to 105, for a total of 37 points saved here
- Nobz got 6 points cheaper per model and 36 for the three PKs, the Waaagh! banner went from 35 to 77, pain boy from 50 to 67.
- Battlewagon were 125 (rolla, plates, 1 big shoota) and are 139 now and the removal of dedicated transport status requires additional HQ tax
- Trukk was 35 and is 64 now
- 20 boyz with PK nob were 160 and are 153 now, trukk boyz were 112 and are 97 now. If you include their transport, both units have gotten more expensive despite cheaper PK, nobz and no longer needing boss poles

In general, the armies I used to play in 5th are 100-200 points more expensive than they used to be, even if you drop stuff that's no longer needed like runtherds or shootas to protect wagons from immobilizing and ignore detachment limitations.

For exercise I've recalculated the 1500 points competitive armies I used to play in 5th edition. Yes I still got the lists!



So, list A is just slightly more expensive, but with list B I even get to add new stuff as it's cheaper now, list C is now 80ish points more expensive, list D (and maybe also E) is very close.

Some stuff like bikes and dreads have the same price.

But some units like meganobz were ultra expensive before: 50 in 3rd, 40 in 8th, now 35 and we could get a discount on the pk sooner or later like power fists. Mad dok was 160 points in 5th, now 86. Biker boss 125 without attack squig and cyb bodies (150 with these mandatory updrades), now 99. Kommandos and stormboyz are cheaper. Painboy is a bit more expensive but now you can put it near any unit and he buffs a lot of models, in 5th he was just an upgrade for the nobz unit, same for the banner nob, little meks or the runtherd which are standalone units now, not just part of something else...

I honestly don't see any real difference, basically just trukks are now significantly more expensive, but with 8th edition mechanics we don't need as many as before. Something you could never afford before, even in casual games, like the aforementioned meganobz, stormboyz and grotsnik now can actually see the table.

Of course lists must be adapted shitfing from different editions but changing just like 25% of lists that were good 10 years ago to get a game with a long time collection doesn't sound like a big deal to me.

To me the biggest issue of 8th edition is playing at 2000 points as the new standard, I consider it too high, and the need of relying on stratagems to make stuff work. I consider games with no CPs (which means lists optimized on units, not combos) way more fun that current ones.

A.T. wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I don't know what the fix is. Previous edition rules were slow but the result was more immersion and more meaningful gameplay.

I'd imagine it's difficult to roll things back at this point short of splitting the game into apoc (current rules) and skirmish... but then people will just complain until they have all their apoc stuff in skirmish and around it goes. And I doubt GW has any interest in a revised oldhammer game.

Ironically we have apoc and it is far, farrrrrrr less ridiculously lethal.

Play a current 2k sized army in apoc and 1/3 of your force will be alive turn 5 if you lose the game.

Rokkit Warbuggies are 57 points a piece, pushing both of your mech list into the extra 100-200 points needed to play them and thus proving my point.

Chunk of the issue was tackled in last (this? I guess?) year's Chapter Approved, which effectively did away with tabling, as a total wipe out did not equate to an automatic win.

So someone cunning and clever with their objectives can rack up VPs in their favour.

 Blackie wrote:
For exercise I've recalculated the 1500 points competitive armies I used to play in 5th edition. Yes I still got the lists!

Out of curiosity I ran my old 1850 sisters list. A little over 2000 with the beta points, looks like a couple of hundred more on top after the codex releases. High vehicle costs while infantry keep dropping.

If units were expensive points wise then there would be less demand to buy at games workshop..

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Chunk of the issue was tackled in last (this? I guess?) year's Chapter Approved, which effectively did away with tabling, as a total wipe out did not equate to an automatic win.

So someone cunning and clever with their objectives can rack up VPs in their favour.

We had a couple of games where this came up over the course of the year - a turn 3 tabling is almost always a guaranteed win for all CA 2018 missions. Unless you are playing one of the few maelstrom missions which leave you starved for new tactical objectives, catching a 10 point lead is usually doable. However, those missions where you draw only a few cards tend to be extremely reliant on luck, so I don't know whether that's better.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Chunk of the issue was tackled in last (this? I guess?) year's Chapter Approved, which effectively did away with tabling, as a total wipe out did not equate to an automatic win.

So someone cunning and clever with their objectives can rack up VPs in their favour.

If someone cripples you to having 1/3 or even half their points, and specially if he kills the scoring units and the units that are suppose to kill theirs, then no racking of points happens. Instead of a one turn tabling, there is just 2-3 turns of your opponent clearing your stuff from objective while you hope the dice will roll hot on inv, unless they can spam MW or are rolling 60+ attack dice per unit.

 Jidmah wrote:
Rokkit Warbuggies are 57 points a piece, pushing both of your mech list into the extra 100-200 points needed to play them and thus proving my point.

Well buggies are index only, and index units are extremely overpriced, not only ork ones. They are a phased out unit, if they were included in the codex they'd be 35-40 points. Rokkit koptas from index were 83 (!!!) points IIRC.

But your point was biased since the beginning. You played at 2000 points 10 years ago when the standard was way lower. From my perspective I feel like I have to bring +400-500 points of stuff now compared to 5th edition because tournaments usually had the 1500 points format and in 8th edition playing at 1500 points is extremely uncommon. Standard 8th edition games look like old apocalypse ones, with entire collections instead of selected units to fit a list with a restricted budget. No way I would field 150 troops in previous editions while only investing 33% of the list budget.

I also showed you some lists that are basically the same in terms of points and other units that have become cheaper, sometimes even way cheaper.


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A.T. wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
For exercise I've recalculated the 1500 points competitive armies I used to play in 5th edition. Yes I still got the lists!

Out of curiosity I ran my old 1850 sisters list. A little over 2000 with the beta points, looks like a couple of hundred more on top after the codex releases. High vehicle costs while infantry keep dropping.

Again, 1850 wasn't the standard in 5th edition though. To make an honest comparison you should fit that army in a 2250-2500 points one in 8th edition.