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ERJAK wrote:


40k doesn't want rules that are universal and consistent. It does, and always has wanted to do wacky gak. 40k wants to have 20 different versions of deepstrike because it wants the option to have one where the ork misses and self destructs, and the one where they're actually warp entities and can land perfectly, the one where every model is now left handed, etc.

This argument would be a lot more convincing if there were any examples of it in practice. GW simply isn't using this freedom to provide more options as you state. AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason. Tau are a great example. I completely missed the fact Crisis Suits get to Deep Strike at first because the ability is called Manta Strike, which actually sounds to me like some sort of offensive buff. I have to read through everything just to get some really basic information about a unit. It's clunky, archaic and deeply stupid. I want to spend my time playing the game, not reading the rules. Remembering a dozen or so USRs is much easier than a million bespoke ones.

At the moment I need to read the entire rules to understand what it does, rather than being able to instantly parse the effects from a standardised rule name. That's bad. It's bad for learning the game and it's bad for structuring the game from a design perspective. Explosion rules are a great example. We need 3 numbers to use them (the roll to see if you explode, the distance and the number of wounds) but these are buried in a paragraph of text rather than presented usefully for use in the actual game. It's infuriating. Also, some vehicles and monsters don't explode but we have to read through every last rule on their datasheet to see if that's the case because there are no USRs so we can't just quickly scan to confirm the Explodes rule isn't present.

What exactly is wrong with having to read the rules to play the game?

In GW's mind, Warhammer 40,000 is not a game where you roll up to a table against a random opponent and toss down a game. It is an experience to plan and savor. Their rules reflect that.

Well it takes more time, you get fewer game per hour, or worse you don't fit a whole game wihin an hour and have to pay for the next hour too. It isn't very fun to have to play double for a game, just because checking of different rules made you play 75min, instead of the normal 50+.

Slipspace wrote:

ERJAK wrote:


40k doesn't want rules that are universal and consistent. It does, and always has wanted to do wacky gak. 40k wants to have 20 different versions of deepstrike because it wants the option to have one where the ork misses and self destructs, and the one where they're actually warp entities and can land perfectly, the one where every model is now left handed, etc.

This argument would be a lot more convincing if there were any examples of it in practice. GW simply isn't using this freedom to provide more options as you state. AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason. Tau are a great example. I completely missed the fact Crisis Suits get to Deep Strike at first because the ability is called Manta Strike, which actually sounds to me like some sort of offensive buff. I have to read through everything just to get some really basic information about a unit. It's clunky, archaic and deeply stupid. I want to spend my time playing the game, not reading the rules. Remembering a dozen or so USRs is much easier than a million bespoke ones.

At the moment I need to read the entire rules to understand what it does, rather than being able to instantly parse the effects from a standardised rule name. That's bad. It's bad for learning the game and it's bad for structuring the game from a design perspective. Explosion rules are a great example. We need 3 numbers to use them (the roll to see if you explode, the distance and the number of wounds) but these are buried in a paragraph of text rather than presented usefully for use in the actual game. It's infuriating. Also, some vehicles and monsters don't explode but we have to read through every last rule on their datasheet to see if that's the case because there are no USRs so we can't just quickly scan to confirm the Explodes rule isn't present.

Loyalist marines drop pods rules are different in that they can deep strike turn one. Meanwhile csm dreadclaws are slower for some reason.....

 alextroy wrote:
What exactly is wrong with having to read the rules to play the game?

In GW's mind, Warhammer 40,000 is not a game where you roll up to a table against a random opponent and toss down a game. It is an experience to plan and savor. Their rules reflect that.

That's a load of rubbish. To use an analogy of food:

Clear and concise rules are a meal where each component is carefully planned out and prepared and plated effectively. You see a piece of steak on the plate and at a glance you can be "yup, that is steak".

Gws approach where you have to read everything to understand how it works as nothing has standardised naming conventions or language is akin to everything from the previous meal example being blended together and slopped onto the plate. Sure, it has all of the same ingredients but at a glance you can't tell. You have to taste it to tell if there is steak in there.

The issue isn't "having to read the rules". It is having to, in practice, read every rule multiple times as you cannot tell it is the same rule at a glance and you can't assume they are the same as there are a couple of versions of that rule out there that are different.

If every version of the deep strike rule that used the same wording had the same name, then it would actually make the versions that are special stand out as being different.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

ERJAK wrote:


40k doesn't want rules that are universal and consistent. It does, and always has wanted to do wacky gak. 40k wants to have 20 different versions of deepstrike because it wants the option to have one where the ork misses and self destructs, and the one where they're actually warp entities and can land perfectly, the one where every model is now left handed, etc.

This argument would be a lot more convincing if there were any examples of it in practice. GW simply isn't using this freedom to provide more options as you state. AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason. Tau are a great example. I completely missed the fact Crisis Suits get to Deep Strike at first because the ability is called Manta Strike, which actually sounds to me like some sort of offensive buff. I have to read through everything just to get some really basic information about a unit. It's clunky, archaic and deeply stupid. I want to spend my time playing the game, not reading the rules. Remembering a dozen or so USRs is much easier than a million bespoke ones.

At the moment I need to read the entire rules to understand what it does, rather than being able to instantly parse the effects from a standardised rule name. That's bad. It's bad for learning the game and it's bad for structuring the game from a design perspective. Explosion rules are a great example. We need 3 numbers to use them (the roll to see if you explode, the distance and the number of wounds) but these are buried in a paragraph of text rather than presented usefully for use in the actual game. It's infuriating. Also, some vehicles and monsters don't explode but we have to read through every last rule on their datasheet to see if that's the case because there are no USRs so we can't just quickly scan to confirm the Explodes rule isn't present.

Loyalist marines drop pods rules are different in that they can deep strike turn one. Meanwhile csm dreadclaws are slower for some reason.....

To be fair, the FW rules are a little behind and everyone had T1 Deep Strike when those Dreadclaw rules were created.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
What exactly is wrong with having to read the rules to play the game?

In GW's mind, Warhammer 40,000 is not a game where you roll up to a table against a random opponent and toss down a game. It is an experience to plan and savor. Their rules reflect that.

That's a load of rubbish. To use an analogy of food:

Clear and concise rules are a meal where each component is carefully planned out and prepared. You see a piece of steak on the plate and at a glance you can be "yup, that is steak"

Gws approach where you have to read everything to understand how it works as nothing has standardised naming conventions or language is akin to everything from the previous meal example being blended together and slopped onto the plate. Sure, it has all of the same ingredients but at a glance you can't tell. You have to taste it to tell if there is steak in there.

Nah.

To stick with the analogy, GWs rules are a giant buffet with hundreds of different meats, vegetables, deserts, seafoods, whatever.

Its up to the players to pick a selection of things they enjoy to create their favourite meal.

Unfortunately, a toxic minority of people that play that game has taken the weird approach that everything must be on the plate all the time, and that excluding certain aspects of the overall buffet / game and playing without, say, Forge World or Special Characters or Flyers or whatever for a game, to thereby get varied and carefully curated flavours each time is somehow heresy against the game itself.

 alextroy wrote:
What exactly is wrong with having to read the rules to play the game?

I think the point is that having to read the same rule 100 times to make sure that it's the same rule is not good design.

Take the example of Magic the Gathering. I can read the Flying rule ("This creature can't be blocked except by creatures with Flying") once and then I know what it does.

Even if the rule is printed in full on other cards, I don't need to read the entirety of it. I only need to see 'Flying' to know what the rule is. Because it has the same name on all cards and always works the same way.

In contrast, when you have a single rule that is called Manta Strike or Strike from the Shadows or Parachute Jump or Drill Helmets Incoming, it forces me to read the full text every time to make sure that it is actually 'Deep Strike' and not 'Deep Strike but with a Minute Difference'. What is the point? Why not just have a single rule called 'Deep Strike'? That way you only need to learn the rule once.

Last night I was flipping through an old copy of White Dwarf from just before the launch of 4th Ed, while looking for a hobby article.

I came across a pre-launch designer's notes written by Andy Chambers, explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes.

One of the big ones was specifically consolidating special rules into USRs. It called out how some charge-related rule was implemented three different ways in different armies in 3rd, and it just made more sense to roll them all under a single umbrella.

Oh, and one of the other big changes that it noted was that units were incentivized too heavily to remain stationary in order to shoot, and the game boiled down to either all melee or all static shooting, so they upped the mobility of tanks and let infantry Rapid Fire at short range even if they moved. Now in 8th we're back to vehicles and Marines remaining static so that they can shoot twice and it's more of a shooting gallery than ever.

GW's biggest problem, IMO, is an inability to learn and then retain that knowledge. Too much churn, too many cooks in the kitchen.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Loyalist marines drop pods rules are different in that they can deep strike turn one. Meanwhile csm dreadclaws are slower for some reason.....

To be fair, the FW rules are a little behind and everyone had T1 Deep Strike when those Dreadclaw rules were created.

True, but the point is that loyalist drop pods have differing deep strike rules from others. That's still not an argument against USRs as rules deviating from the norm could be explained in the units data slate. Just giving an example.

The only compelling reason I can see for the approach GW went with is so you can change X rule but not Y rule, meaning factions can be updated in isolation without adjusting a USR that affects everyone. Now normally that's a bad thing but with the bloat 40k has and how different rules affect things differently since factions are seemingly designed in isolation it's not a bad thing other than adding even more bloat. Part of 40k's problem is that rules affect everyone differently so they aren't consistent effects, therefore having X work one way for one army and Y that's almost X but not quite work differently for another army actually works.

I'm sort of torn because on one hand I like the idea that there's consistency but on the other hand you don't need everything to work the same way. Different things sometimes need to be treated differently even if they are similar.

The TL/DR? 7th had USRs, 7th wasn't great at the time and was awful in hindsight. See also resistance to blast templates, vehicle facings (and vehicle rules in general) and lots of other things. This isn't drinking the GW koolaid, its just not liking how things were, and therefore not seeing why we'd want to to go back.

Anyway:
As I see it the basic clash is between "40k (or whatever) as a game" and "40k as reflecting fluff on the tabletop".

For the former, you could come up with a very restricted set of USRs that described everything a model can ever do on the tabletop, and that's that. For the second, you can't.

Chess is an excellent game - but (at least IMO) its not a very good reflection of what a medieval battle would be like, beyond a conceptual level.

Trying to capture the fluff is why the 7th edition rule book had 89 USRs. You also had about a dozen potential unit types that you needed to know, in order to know what USRs your unit got just from existing. And it wasn't as if units didn't also have special rules on top of this.

Would it hurt the game if "deepstrike" became a keyword? Probably not - as people say, its overwhelmingly the same rule, just with a few fluff based words being changed on the datasheet. Those with exceptions could have those on their datasheet. On the other hand I don't find it difficult to look at the datasheet and go "oh look, its a version of the deep strike rule".

Same for say "feel no pain" - or possibly the bodyguard rule (although in that instance, I feel the differences are due to trying to convey the unit acting in a different way).

Once you move beyond this though I don't think its especially useful. What is the benefit between saying "this unit has the [better charge] rule" versus just writing "this unit can reroll failed charges"? It might stop sloppiness and so rules interpretation questions - for example whether its "failed charges" or "all charges", whether they can reroll one dice or both etc - but really those are different abilities that you might want to convey in the rules. Which means more USRs. Which is how you got so many in 7th edition.

Rather than checking your datasheet, you have to check your datasheet for "Rule" and then look up that rule in the rulebook. People's brains do work differently, but I find it easier to learn the rules on a datasheet than an encyclopedia of unit types and USRs.

This is why printing the USRs in the data sheet should be done as well as in the rule book and codex.

One of the biggest turn offs I’ve seen for new players is the lack of USRs. It leads to a lot of “gotcha” moments.

And where an experienced player might see a rule and see a version of FNP or deep strike, you tell your newbie opponent that your unit has “feel no pain” they will look at you blankly and you have to explain the rule. Similarly with deep strike et al.

The worst part of no USRs for a new player is when you read your units data sheet and get excited about their ubiquitous cool and fluffy rule only to discover that your opponent can do the same thing, they’ve just called it by a different name. This leads to a pretty significant sense of disillusionment in the game and the fluff and I’ve seen it turn players off from the game entirely.

Bespoke rules adds nothing to the game of any value.

All it does is slow things down, make things less organized and make things convoluted.

There are literally no up sides to Bespoke rules over USR's.

7th ed was a stronger rules set than 8th because of USR's. But again GW chose to make useless ones, call them weird names, and created some USR's that were a combination of 2 or more already existing USR's.

USR's are not the enemy here, GW writing is. They never implemented it properly.

People's brains do work differently, but I find it easier to learn the rules on a datasheet than an encyclopedia of unit types and USRs

Again, USR's can also be printed on the datasheet. This is not an argument in favour of Bespoke rules. The bonus of USR's is that they can be in both an encyclopedia (where they should be, because it's the only proper way to organize a game) and on the datasheet.

Sure, 7th had 89 USR's. Wanna take a wild guess at how many bespoke rules 8th has? It's probably in the hundreds if not thousands. Guess what? I can memorize 90 something USR's and use that to speed the game along because I know what each unit does based on the USR's it contains in its profile. I can't do that when everything is different. It makes things way too convoluted, it slows the game down so much and provides literally no benefit to the user.

Again, there should be no exceptions. Everything should follow the core mechanics of the game. Stop making special snowflake rules. USR's to replace literally everything. Nothing exists outside of the main rules.

Aash wrote:
TThe worst part of no USRs for a new player is when you read your units data sheet and get excited about their ubiquitous cool and fluffy rule only to discover that your opponent can do the same thing, they’ve just called it by a different name. This leads to a pretty significant sense of disillusionment in the game and the fluff and I’ve seen it turn players off from the game entirely.

I would agree with this.

It seems like creating the illusion of flavour.

It means that a lot of models look like they have a pile of flavourful rules... until you read what they do and realise that they're all just standard rules with pretentious names.

 catbarf wrote:


One of the big ones was specifically consolidating special rules into USRs. It called out how some charge-related rule was implemented three different ways in different armies in 3rd, and it just made more sense to roll them all under a single umbrella.

That would be True Grit. Which is also a good indicator who has not played this game long enough to experience first hand what a problem it was and why USRs are good. That rule only had 3 different versions (SWs, DG and GKs) but every single one was subtly different. SWs it worked on bolters only, DG included combi weapons (IIRC) and GK one was storm bolters. Every single time someone got it wrong.

Slipspace wrote:
AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason.

And these outliers can be easily fixed wit hproper USR.

Monolith : Deepstrike (12")
Callidus : Deepstrike (9 - D3")

And people mentionned Drop pods, well theres a way to fix them that would also fix the CSM ones.

Precise Deepstrike (9") : This unit can deepstrike on turn 1.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason.

And these outliers can be easily fixed wit hproper USR.

Monolith : Deepstrike (12")
Callidus : Deepstrike (9 - D3")

And people mentionned Drop pods, well theres a way to fix them that would also fix the CSM ones.

Precise Deepstrike (9") : This unit can deepstrike on turn 1.

IMO, a cleaner approach would be something like this:

Monolith Special Rules:
Deep Strike
Monolithic Teleport- When arriving on the battlefield via Deep Strike, this model may not be set up within 12" of enemy units, rather than 9" as normal.

Drop Pod Special Rules:
Deep Strike
Assault Strike- This unit may arrive on the battlefield via Deep Strike during the first Battle Round.

Instead of giving every USR a bunch of attached variables (in this case, deployment range), for the ones where 90% of them work the same just have the basic USR, and then bespoke unit-specific rules as needed.

The USR provides the core framework, and then the special rule explicitly defines how the unit deviates from that baseline. No needing to parse the entire block of deep strike rules text to figure out whether this one is the same as all the others or if there's some subtle distinction. It's basically the approach we already have with Rapid Fire and Bolter Discipline- Rapid Fire is a USR that applies to lots of armies, and then Bolter Discipline is a bespoke rule which modifies it.

 catbarf wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith. Now, I could be wrong about that, but this is actually an argument in favour of USRs. We have literally dozens of deep strike rules that are worded identically but named completely differently for no reason.

And these outliers can be easily fixed wit hproper USR.

Monolith : Deepstrike (12")
Callidus : Deepstrike (9 - D3")

And people mentionned Drop pods, well theres a way to fix them that would also fix the CSM ones.

Precise Deepstrike (9") : This unit can deepstrike on turn 1.

IMO, a cleaner approach would be something like this:

Monolith Special Rules:
Deep Strike
Monolithic Teleport- When arriving on the battlefield via Deep Strike, this model may not be set up within 12" of enemy units, rather than 9" as normal.

Drop Pod Special Rules:
Deep Strike
Assault Strike- This unit may arrive on the battlefield via Deep Strike during the first Battle Round.

Instead of giving every USR a bunch of attached variables (in this case, deployment range), for the ones where 90% of them work the same just have the basic USR, and then bespoke unit-specific rules as needed.

The USR provides the core framework, and then the special rule explicitly defines how the unit deviates from that baseline. No needing to parse the entire block of deep strike rules text to figure out whether this one is the same as all the others or if there's some subtle distinction. It's basically the approach we already have with Rapid Fire and Bolter Discipline- Rapid Fire is a USR that applies to lots of armies, and then Bolter Discipline is a bespoke rule which modifies it.

either way works IMO, im just defaulting to having a parameter to dermine what can change because i came from MTG. Bespoke rules that affect a USR have to be used sparingly i find, otherwise you just end up ignoring USRs.

Slipspace wrote:

AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith.

Nonesenes. There are loads of different ones.

GSC, Custodes and Grey Knights have a 3" one.

Dark Angels have a 6" one.

There is a Tau Deepstrike that has no minimal-distance and you could deep strike into close combat, if you wanted to.

Etc.., etc..

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
What exactly is wrong with having to read the rules to play the game?

In GW's mind, Warhammer 40,000 is not a game where you roll up to a table against a random opponent and toss down a game. It is an experience to plan and savor. Their rules reflect that.

That's a load of rubbish. To use an analogy of food:

Clear and concise rules are a meal where each component is carefully planned out and prepared. You see a piece of steak on the plate and at a glance you can be "yup, that is steak"

Gws approach where you have to read everything to understand how it works as nothing has standardised naming conventions or language is akin to everything from the previous meal example being blended together and slopped onto the plate. Sure, it has all of the same ingredients but at a glance you can't tell. You have to taste it to tell if there is steak in there.

Nah.

To stick with the analogy, GWs rules are a giant buffet with hundreds of different meats, vegetables, deserts, seafoods, whatever.

Its up to the players to pick a selection of things they enjoy to create their favourite meal.

Unfortunately, a toxic minority of people that play that game has taken the weird approach that everything must be on the plate all the time, and that excluding certain aspects of the overall buffet / game and playing without, say, Forge World or Special Characters or Flyers or whatever for a game, to thereby get varied and carefully curated flavours each time is somehow heresy against the game itself.

A giant buffet that are restricted to only allowing certain people to have access to certain things, often times require large amount of money get access to more of it that may not be allowed to be combined with other parts of the buffet, some parts having dishes that are named the same but are different while also some dishes we're told are different but are actually the same. And even if it's different, the "flavor" provided might be a deterrent to the dish than actually an improvement, like trying to eat a steak that's been drenched in garlic salt. All of which has clear differences in effort to put into it, making it at least look not like a "carefully curated flavours " but someone making crap up as they go along and yelling "That was my plan all along!" when it works

More importantly, no one wants to completely remove unique special rules. Those bespoke rules should be actually bespoke and when they are used they should be noted for being different rather than "Wait, is this actually Soba noodles, or is this just the spaghetti again in a different bowl?". Even then, USRs can be done to allow an amount of flexibility.

Also, "toxic"? Really? I know Dakka Dakka is not the nicest place, but you have not been part of a toxic community if this discussion is what you're calling "toxic".

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith.

Nonesenes. There are loads of different ones.

GSC, Custodes and Grey Knights have a 3" one.

Dark Angels have a 6" one.

There is a Tau Deepstrike that has no minimal-distance and you could deep strike into close combat, if you wanted to.

Etc.., etc..

Those are all strategems, not abilities that the unit has inherently, and wouldn't be represented on a data sheet as either a bespoke rule or USR. And strategems typically break the core rules so not really what we're talking about.

Except for the tau one. Don't know what you're talking about there, unless it's "wall of mirrors", which is also a stratagem, isn't true deep strike but just repositioning a unit already on the board, and still is subject to the "no closer than 9 from enemy units" rule. If it's something else I don't know about, please educate me.

The problem with USRs is that they make it hard to get an understanding of what a unit does when they have multiple USRs. When you're trying to see how a model plays, looking at their rulesheet and seeing it just say, "see page 7, then page 43, then page 12" is hard to keep straight and appreciate. Even worse when you rely on published material and add new USRs in expansions.

Now the advantage of USRs is that it makes the game easier to understand as a whole. If your models mostly have the same rules as my models, or even if your rules are familiar to me because they're shared with something else I'm familiar with, it makes the game a lot easier to understand. A good way to do this without a lookup table is just to have consistent, codified wordings and timing structures to your rules and to reuse rules whenever possible.

The challenge in all of this is maintenance. You have to have systems in place to understand the impact of a change and the more printed materials you have the more change invalidates them. I'm much happier with digital solutions because of this personally, but that's a whole new rabbit hole to chase.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Except for the tau one. Don't know what you're talking about there, unless it's "wall of mirrors", which is also a stratagem, isn't true deep strike but just repositioning a unit already on the board, and still is subject to the "no closer than 9 from enemy units" rule. If it's something else I don't know about, please educate me.

I think the Tau one is the Homing Beacon special rule. You place a marker within 1" of a Stealth Suit at the beginning of the movement phase and at the end of the movement phase you can deploy any unit held in reserve wholly within 6" of the marker (no limit on distance to enemy models).

Which is its own thing and the rule specifically calls out that you use it instead of Manta Strike (the Tau name for deep strike). So it would not be affected in the slightest by Deep Strike becoming a USR.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

AFAIK, out of all the deep strike rules only 2 operate differently to the regular 9" distance ones - the Callidus and the Monolith.

Nonesenes. There are loads of different ones.

GSC, Custodes and Grey Knights have a 3" one.

Dark Angels have a 6" one.

There is a Tau Deepstrike that has no minimal-distance and you could deep strike into close combat, if you wanted to.

Etc.., etc..

Those are all strategems, not abilities that the unit has inherently, and wouldn't be represented on a data sheet as either a bespoke rule or USR. And strategems typically break the core rules so not really what we're talking about.

Except for the tau one. Don't know what you're talking about there, unless it's "wall of mirrors", which is also a stratagem, isn't true deep strike but just repositioning a unit already on the board, and still is subject to the "no closer than 9 from enemy units" rule. If it's something else I don't know about, please educate me.

Nah you're correct. That poster is just defending GWs garbage writing as usual.

 LunarSol wrote:
The problem with USRs is that they make it hard to get an understanding of what a unit does when they have multiple USRs. When you're trying to see how a model plays, looking at their rulesheet and seeing it just say, "see page 7, then page 43, then page 12" is hard to keep straight and appreciate. Even worse when you rely on published material and add new USRs in expansions.

As said many, many times throughout the thread, having USRs does not prevent you from still printing the rules for them on the unit sheet.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Except for the tau one. Don't know what you're talking about there, unless it's "wall of mirrors", which is also a stratagem, isn't true deep strike but just repositioning a unit already on the board, and still is subject to the "no closer than 9 from enemy units" rule. If it's something else I don't know about, please educate me.

I think the Tau one is the Homing Beacon special rule. you place a marker within 1" of a Stealth suit at the beginning of the movement phase and at the end you can deploy any unit held in reserve wholly within 6" of the marker.

Which is its own thing and the rule specifically calls out that you use it instead of Manta Strike (the Tau name for deep strike). So it would not be affected in the slightest by Deep Strike becoming a USR.

Thanks, never saw that one used. I'll have to look it up. Know thy enemy and all that.

Good to know it doesn't affect the whole USR discussion.

 LunarSol wrote:
The problem with USRs is that they make it hard to get an understanding of what a unit does when they have multiple USRs. When you're trying to see how a model plays, looking at their rulesheet and seeing it just say, "see page 7, then page 43, then page 12" is hard to keep straight and appreciate. Even worse when you rely on published material and add new USRs in expansions.

this is not a problem created by USRs and actually it should be the opposite as in a good rulebook, all USRs would be in the same spot

 LunarSol wrote:
The problem with USRs is that they make it hard to get an understanding of what a unit does when they have multiple USRs. When you're trying to see how a model plays, looking at their rulesheet and seeing it just say, "see page 7, then page 43, then page 12" is hard to keep straight and appreciate. Even worse when you rely on published material and add new USRs in expansions.

Now the advantage of USRs is that it makes the game easier to understand as a whole. If your models mostly have the same rules as my models, or even if your rules are familiar to me because they're shared with something else I'm familiar with, it makes the game a lot easier to understand. A good way to do this without a lookup table is just to have consistent, codified wordings and timing structures to your rules and to reuse rules whenever possible.

The challenge in all of this is maintenance. You have to have systems in place to understand the impact of a change and the more printed materials you have the more change invalidates them. I'm much happier with digital solutions because of this personally, but that's a whole new rabbit hole to chase.

No one is saying "Don't print the text of the rule on the datasheet". What I and most others are saying is that we want rules that do the same thing to be written the same way, and have unified mechanical names.

You're arguing against a strawman.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Those are all strategems, not abilities that the unit has inherently, and wouldn't be represented on a data sheet as either a bespoke rule or USR. And strategems typically break the core rules so not really what we're talking about.

Except for the tau one. Don't know what you're talking about there, unless it's "wall of mirrors", which is also a stratagem, isn't true deep strike but just repositioning a unit already on the board, and still is subject to the "no closer than 9 from enemy units" rule. If it's something else I don't know about, please educate me.

I dont see where that distinction between stratagems, abilities, etc.. comes from.

The "ability" of a Space Marine Lieutenant to re-roll 1 to wound is the "stratagem" of an Eldar Farseer. The "ability" of a Khorne Berzerker to fight twice is the "stratagem" of a Sister Repentia unit. The "ability" of a Wulfen to fight-in-death is the "stratagem" of a Grey Knight Paladin. The "ability" of a Plague Marine to shrug wounds on 5+ is the "stratagem" of a Tau Crisis Suit unit. The "ability" of a Leman Russ tank to shoot twice is the "stratagem" of a Slaanesh Obliterator unit. The "ability" for a Terminator to Deep Strike is the "stratagem" of a Wraithblade unit, etc.. Etc.., etc..

They are all rules and abilities that "break the game" (e.g. you dont have to start the game on the board in your deployment zone as is the "default"), whether you gain this ability innately or pay some type of cost, be it CP, WL-traits, relics, force-org slots, etc.., doesnt really affect the nature of where that rules-breaking-ability comes from.

The Tau rule is the basic Homing Beacon rule for Stealth Suits.