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 AnomanderRake wrote:
Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.

It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.

Command points - these seem to be around to stay but no bueno from me
Challenges - yeah more often than not they broke the game heavily in one players favour.
Snap shots - hitting on 6s in many situations seemed unfair, when the different base ballistic skills were so varied.
Grav weapons - cheap way to make tanks unplayble. Auto immobilise on 6s? With like a million shots? Yeah.....

 waefre_1 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
...There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges...

Maybe this is me being an IG fanboy, but if I played a dude who had literal protractors on his artillery to work out firing solutions, I think I'd let him.

Also, from what I recall, a lot of the badfeels from Guess ranges was that one guy in the group who worked in carpentry or construction/was preternaturally good about eyeballing ranges/had a forearm exactly 12" long who basically didn't have to play by the rule where everyone else did. I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available), so that's a bit of abstraction that I'm happy to do to keep everyone on a reasonably level field there.

I feel like a lot of the nostalgia for a lot of these old-school mechanics is for the concept, rather than the reality of how they actually practically worked in the game.

People love to compare the powergaming-infested worst case state of the current game edition with a rosy-tinted super duper casual everyone just in it to have fun and care about making sure their opponents are having a good time version of the older game edition.

When I think back to fifth, I make a conscious effort to try and remember the gakky moments of my first donkey-cave opponent screaming and yelling that the charge distance I rolls gets me 0.1" away from BASE TO BASE CONTACT (after he maybe accidentlly slightly put the charging model back down on the board slightly farther back away than it was when I initially measured and moved it) or opponents squatting down and going "Yeaaaaah, no...I can definitely see over 50% of that model, no from my perspective definitely" when looking at things they were targeting and going "hmmm, no, nope I think that if you actually angle your eye here, that rock right there covers the whole left side of my model, I definitely get that cover save vs your lascannon!"

I also remember the good games, too, me and my friends in high school laughing when Ragnar Blackmane ended up the sole survivor of his squad and sweeping advanced the 8 remaining ork boyz away, or when a squad of blood claws died heroically immobilizing a deff dread, which buzz sawed them to pieces and then spent the rest of the battle waving its claws around.

 waefre_1 wrote:
I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available)

IRL there are a ton of ways to measure range and most of them are low-tech. You've got maps and laser rangefinders, but in a defensive position you also have pre-measured and marked positions- this provides a visual reference that helps both artillery and machine gunners. Then there are coincidence rangefinders, of which there even is a model in 40K (a Death Korps artillery crewman has a coincidence rangefinder). On top of that it is very common for rifle scopes to have built-in rangefinders, like the Soviet PSO reticle or the Steyr AUG's donut of death. For anti-tank guns there are also spotting rifles, which allow you to fire successive rifle shots with the same ballistic profile as your 'real' gun, then once you've worked out the range fire the actual anti-tank round.

And even as an infantryman with no rangefinding gear whatsoever, you can observe your shots and use your rifle's range compensation to work out distance. Sights are set to 200m and you're hitting low? Bump it up to 300m. On target now? Cool, you radio in that the target's 300m away, your mortars know they're 500m behind you, they can put two and two together. Fire for effect.

So yeah getting distance is not especially difficult in the real world. I think it's fine to abstract that out to a scatter roll to see if the soldiers get the measurement right, rather than make you, the player, responsible for that with just a bird's-eye view. The range guessing always felt to me like it was just a step removed from old naval wargames where you shot the silhouette of a ship with a BB gun to see where the shells hit.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
...There were some stories (possibly apocryphal) of IG players gluing protractors to their Basilisks to allow them to work out exact ranges...

Maybe this is me being an IG fanboy, but if I played a dude who had literal protractors on his artillery to work out firing solutions, I think I'd let him.

Also, from what I recall, a lot of the badfeels from Guess ranges was that one guy in the group who worked in carpentry or construction/was preternaturally good about eyeballing ranges/had a forearm exactly 12" long who basically didn't have to play by the rule where everyone else did. I can dig the idea of having to guess artillery, but at the same time the actual artillerymen are probably doing a bit more than blind reckoning in the game word (I have to imagine they'd at least have a map and a set of binocs, never mind all the high-tech rangefinders that would be available), so that's a bit of abstraction that I'm happy to do to keep everyone on a reasonably level field there.

I feel like a lot of the nostalgia for a lot of these old-school mechanics is for the concept, rather than the reality of how they actually practically worked in the game.

People love to compare the powergaming-infested worst case state of the current game edition with a rosy-tinted super duper casual everyone just in it to have fun and care about making sure their opponents are having a good time version of the older game edition.

Hehe, not me! I definitely recall the powergaming aspects of earlier editions. And I often remember them fondly because I was one of the ones who was finding new ways to powergame them, lol.

When I think back to fifth, I make a conscious effort to try and remember the gakky moments of my first donkey-cave opponent screaming and yelling that the charge distance I rolls gets me 0.1" away from BASE TO BASE CONTACT (after he maybe accidentlly slightly put the charging model back down on the board slightly farther back away than it was when I initially measured and moved it)

I remember those too. DON'T TOUCH THE MODELS before carefully measuring out potentially contentious charges. I remember having to mathematically prove to people that they couldn't make a charge because they had to start the game at least 24" away, and therefore they could only get to my (stationary) model in two turns or whatever by cheating.

*Didn't roll for charge distance in 5th ed though, it was a flat 6". (unless you were charging through difficult terrain).

 Valkyrie wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Back in the before-premeasure days, you could only measure once you declared an attack, so if you were out of range, sucks.

HOWEVER, it allowed for some awesome differentiation - there was a wargear called 'Targeters' that allowed units to premeasure for their shooting before they declared targets. IG stormtroopers had them.

In an edition where you couldn't pre-measure, Targeters were probably the best wargear in the game. They were only 1 point. A single point for your unit to pre-measure. IIRC, only Daemonhunters also had access to them, but seeing as you could take an allied Inquisitor very easily, nothing stopped you from attacking with him first, then using that as a baseline for the guys around you.

Lots of units had access to targeters. It was a good way to differentiate well-equipped units from less well-equipped ones.

Sisters of Battle, for example, had targeters. This was an advantage over Space Marines possessed by a unit typically considered "Marines -1".

Imperial Guard stormtroopers had targeters, which went a good ways to separate them from other 4+ save units like carapace veterans or grenadiers.

I always hated pinning.

4th edition eldar with a bunch of pinning rangers backed up with skimmer grav tanks was miserable.

RandomHeretic wrote:
I always hated pinning.

4th edition eldar with a bunch of pinning rangers backed up with skimmer grav tanks was miserable.

Oh, I miss the whole gamut of morale effects, including pinning. I want a bit more complexity to the game than 'kill everything you can,' and stop once you've mathed out how many more are likely to vanish into the ether later. Which granted, in 9th that number is almost always one, but still.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.

It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.

Eh. When 8e came along and they decided to try and make everyone's free rules of equal value all they've ended up doing is making the sub-faction rules all pretty much the same across factions in the name of making them more 'distinct' and 'characterful'. While also making balancing the game harder, optimizing lists harder, and still putting players in the position of needing to hop sub-factions if they want to use a different unit effectively. I'd rather they just stop it with the free rules entirely.

For my part, on rules I found distasteful in older editions?

Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life.

Skimmer rules: Somehow GW routinely manages to finagle Skimmers into being super-tanks, while making walking/wheeled/tread vehicles garbage or at least decidedly generally less effective.

Hull Points: What if we take vehicles, that have their own unique damage and toughness mechanisms, but also make it so that they're basically W3 Sv "-" models too! Overlapping kill mechanics are the coolest!

5E No Retreat: Yeah, your Orks lost combat by 8 against an elite foe, even though you killed a greater tabletop value of the enemy force, now take 8 6+ armor saves for what's left of the unit.

Formations: "Oh let me turn those 800pts into 1200pts, but you still only gotta pay 800pts"

Nightfight: Stupendously poorly implemented through most editions

Rerollable 2+ saves

3E/4E transport rules: "unless you're a skimmer, don't actually ride in these".

Vehicle movement/shooting rules: particularly 3-5E's, these were wonky and bad.

Challenges: Solid dumb

Wound Allocation is another thing that's been wonky through most editions.

Consolidation into new combats: "oh yeah, I rode up behind area terrain where you could never see me, dove into combat turn 2, and never gave you a chance to shoot at that unit again the whole rest of the game as it ate that whole flank on its own".

Blast/Ordnance weapon rules: These were always wonky until 8E. The change to random shots and not potentially affecting multiple units is definitely a change, but these weapons are generally much more functional in terms of average damage output and performance.

 Vaktathi wrote:
...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...

Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...

Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?

I think the bigger issue is that the "attack at initiative through cover" mechanic just didn't fit the function. GW apportioned grenades as was appropriate to the lore, but many or even most of the units that could buy or just came with hand grenades didn't really ever have a use for them (guardsmen, sisters, devasator marines, etc) while many units that really could have used that functionality never got access to them. This resulted in grenades being complete window dressing that just bloated cost unnecessarily (or that they just started getting for free) for many units, being critical for certain assault units, and being completely unavailable but desperately needed for others.

Now, there's definitely an argument to be made about their later iterations' functionality and value, but the older 3E-5E paradigm for grenades just really felt like the wrong idea for the way they got distributed. It was also just not terribly intuitive to a first time new player and made their existence feel largely trivial (even if they could be vital on some units). EDIT: It was a weird thing to have one specific weapon type so abstracted in function, particularly when so many other weapons, often much less interesting, got their own differentiations and distinct weapons profiles during that era.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...Grenades: Being just an assault modifier to attack at initiative through cover was pretty dumb for 3 editions and 14 years of the game's life...

Out of curiosity did you find that an extra 3/- small blast in 6th/7th had enough of a meaningful effect to justify slowing down the game to use it? Do you find your units in 8th/9th need their d3 S3/- shots more than they need their normal weapons?

I think the bigger issue is that the "attack at initiative through cover" mechanic just didn't fit the function. GW apportioned grenades as was appropriate to the lore, but many or even most of the units that could buy or just came with hand grenades didn't really ever have a use for them (guardsmen, sisters, devasator marines, etc) while many units that really could have used that functionality never got access to them. This resulted in grenades being complete window dressing that just bloated cost unnecessarily (or that they just started getting for free) for many units, being critical for certain assault units, and being completely unavailable but desperately needed for others.

Now, there's definitely an argument to be made about their later iterations' functionality and value, but the older 3E-5E paradigm for grenades just really felt like the wrong idea for the way they got distributed. It was also just not terribly intuitive to a first time new player and made their existence feel largely trivial (even if they could be vital on some units). EDIT: It was a weird thing to have one specific weapon type so abstracted in function, particularly when so many other weapons, often much less interesting, got their own differentiations and distinct weapons profiles during that era.

^While the Frag-adjusting-Initiative felt a little unintuitive, as a Marine player I loved Grenades. It meant my Tacs/Assaults/Devs could hit vehicles in CC at Strength 6 by planting Krak Grenades on them, and made them feel like absolute bosses once you assaulted a Leman Russ you had spent two turns Stunning as you closed the distance. It gave this whole new dimension to the basic guys, making them feel very capable.

For a little bit of time Frag Grenades could also be used against vehicles in CC, giving a Strength of 4. This allowed Guardsmen to make similar, more desperate attacks in CC against vehicles, which felt really cool.

My ideal system would allow some throwing of Grenades in addition to the CC capability. Imo the ability to set AT grenades on vehicles should be one of the design pillars of the balance between infantry and vehicles/superheavies. (the other being a capability to target sub-sections of superheavies)

Pinning.

As a concept, it was pretty cool. But, as a mechanic it was pretty poorly implemented.

Not only did you need to score a wound for the test to take place, most units had high enough Ld or other ways to largely ignore it.

If they’d just made the test trigger on being hit? It might’ve been enough to make it relevant. But when the weapons typically lacked rate of fire, or had unavoidable scatter, the test just didn’t trigger often enough to build into a plan.

Deleted

Nurglitch wrote:
I could live without all that mucking around with dice.

Ah, Theater of the Mind 40k, eh? Truly you are both a gentleman and a scholar!

Chiming in with some more dumb rules from days of yore:
-Blast sniping in 6th/7th was so stupid, taking the wound allocation rules of that edition and throwing them out the window at the altar of "less abstraction". Throw that template down above a dude you really want dead and you've got a better than 1/3 chance of making them take every wound first. Wound allocation has been wonky over the years, but I'm much more in favour of allocating how you like vs the sort of silliness this brought about.
-Heavy weapons on infantry - either move or can't shoot, or in later editions only being able to hit on a 6+ was still excessive. The current system is far more interesting in my opinion and makes your heavy weapon infantry units less static, not to mention that taking a heavy weapon in an infantry squad is actually a legitimate option now.
-Vehicle weapons - in addition to the facings and weapon mounts I already mentioned, vehicles were only allowed to shoot a limited number of weapons depending on how far they moved. This makes some sense on the faster vehicles, but it was particularly dumb on Leman Russes who somehow weren't considered Heavy vehicles and couldn't shoot half their guns if they moved at all.
-OMG, Night Fighting! Yeah this was stupid, I liked the idea but it was totally random and only really affects the first turn. Oh and you had to spend points on searchlights to completely negate it, but it wasn't worth it for the 1/6 chance of this happening for 1 turn of the game. Just pointless.
-Can't assault out of reserves in 6th/7th... like, why? Just why? These editions screwed assault units in so many ways. The dumbest part about this is that making putting a counter-charge unit into reserves would now make them effectively useless, whereas if you put a shooting unit in reserves they would walk onto the board at full effectiveness. My poor Wolf Scouts got screwed by this, although I compensated by giving them special weapons and hoping they would kill something expensive or be a distraction for a mere ~115pts.
-Tyranid Instinctive Behaviour has almost always been bad. Oh no, my unit has to shoot at the closest enemy unit? Cool, my guns are only 12" anyway. Oh no, my Hormagaunts have to charge the closest enemy? Cool, was going to do that anyway. In early editions they even cannibalized themselves if I remember correctly. I get that they don't want to make it too unfun, but it's been borderline pointless for as long as I can remember. Give all Nids some sort of buff beyond Fearless while in synapse range? Then we'd be talking.

Deleted

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:
...Can't assault out of reserves in 6th/7th... like, why? Just why? These editions screwed assault units in so many ways. The dumbest part about this is that making putting a counter-charge unit into reserves would now make them effectively useless, whereas if you put a shooting unit in reserves they would walk onto the board at full effectiveness. My poor Wolf Scouts got screwed by this, although I compensated by giving them special weapons and hoping they would kill something expensive or be a distraction for a mere ~115pts...

No counter-play. Reliable, accurate Deep Strike that you can charge out of can only be countered by taking masses of screening units, and in 8th that ended up borking small elite armies pretty badly because they couldn't do anything about the Deep Strikers so they got automatic charges (as long as they were armies with charge distance buffs) on priority targets you couldn't do anything about. To my mind 6th/7th and 8th/9th have both done Deep Strike badly wrong; 6th/7th made it unusable unless you had drop pods and 8th/9th have made it so usable there's very little point not keeping half your army in reserves every game, I'd rather have seen some mechanic based on teleport homers/jammers where you needed table presence to actually deep strike and you could stop the deep strike by killing/shutting down the teleport homers instead.

That said I think lethality creep has done way more to punish melee armies than any core rules changes; 6e/7e pushed firepower too far and instead of backing off on firepower creep 8e/9e have chosen to make reliable Deep Strike charges and move speed creep the answer for melee armies.


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Nurglitch wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
I could live without all that mucking around with dice.

Ah, Theater of the Mind 40k, eh? Truly you are both a gentleman and a scholar!

It's weird that the oldest games like Chess and Go involve neither dice nor role-play.

Or setting/story. Or painting miniatures. It's almost like they're a different style of game for a different audience.

Deleted

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.

It wasn't the free rules as much as what the free rules provided in the long run. For example, the Chaos Terminator one that provided rerolling of hits or something like that when they dropped or the bonus for Annihilation Barges giving the Doomsday Ark their shielding is NOWHERE near the level of getting 10 free transports or BS2+ on all your offensive shooting infantry.

Eh. When 8e came along and they decided to try and make everyone's free rules of equal value all they've ended up doing is making the sub-faction rules all pretty much the same across factions in the name of making them more 'distinct' and 'characterful'. While also making balancing the game harder, optimizing lists harder, and still putting players in the position of needing to hop sub-factions if they want to use a different unit effectively. I'd rather they just stop it with the free rules entirely.

GW hasn't really experimented with the Sub Faction rules, and it's hard to when you have a pretty bad core ruleset. For example, if we actually had any interaction with the LD stat and morale, that'd be an automatic fix to several Sub Factions that like to rely on fear. If you increase the granularity of the wounding chart, a straight up Sub Faction getting T+1 would at least be interesting compared to wanting a FNP or negative modifiers.

Free Sub Faction rules aren't really a problem as much as just making sure they're not all over the place for balance. Even if you wanted to add points for the rules, what the Word Bearers have is laughable regardless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
I could live without all that mucking around with dice.

Ah, Theater of the Mind 40k, eh? Truly you are both a gentleman and a scholar!

It's weird that the oldest games like Chess and Go involve neither dice nor role-play.

Or setting/story. Or painting miniatures. It's almost like they're a different style of game for a different audience.

Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.

Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.

When difficult terrain was random and you could roll to low to even reach the terrain causing the roll.

Nurglitch wrote:
...Almost, but the point stands that the dice or role-playing dichotomy is a false one. Take Carcassonne as a game involving no dice, but essentially makes a game out of what Warhammer players might consider 'set-up.' They're both games about making a diorama, and Carcassonne really strips it down to the essentials.

Absolutely, but then you're not playing Warhammer, you're playing Carcassonne. Dice aren't somehow metaphysically necessary to every game, no, and you can absolutely make perfectly fine games without them, but I put it to you that if the existence of dice is your problem with Warhammer maybe you ought to be playing a different genre of game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
...Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.

Yes, but if you took the dice out of the game would that improve the RP/narrative aspects?

 warhead01 wrote:
A fearless unit that lots a close combat takes a number of saves based on how badly they lots, something like that. I recall it was devastating to my foot Orks at the time and all the online and other player were all like Orks are amazing because or Nob Bikers.

It was a rule that actively punished units for being Fearless. It was absurd.

Karol wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Haha, no-pre-measuring before declaring targets?! Some of us remember when indirect barrages required you to literally GUESS the range between the firing model and the target, and that's where your shot hit/scattered from. I loved that.

.

Wouldn't you just know the table after 4-5 games and to the math for the triangulation in your head by memory? Plus pre game you could just check what the lenght of terrain is, and with that and Pitagoras you more or less could hit anything with an error of around half an inch, maybe less if you were really good at decimals.

Yes.
On a good day I could put a Basilisk round within a 1/4" (or less) of a target. On a bad day I might be off by a whole 1"

Besides, turn 2+ all you had to was remember how far your unit x shot in the previous turn & adjust you're unit Ys guess based on that. (iirc you declared your "Guess' range weapons 1st, before other types of fire)

 Gnarlly wrote:
Count me as one who "shed a (figurative) tear" and misses taking leadership tests to shoot at a target other than the closest unit. It is a rule that makes logical sense in the chaos of battle, directly impacts model placement and targeting strategies, and further distinguishes more elite armies from less disciplined armies.

Until you remember that that edition was also the edition that saw Marine Captains gain the 'Rites of Battle' rule, giving out Ld10 to all fellow Marines on the entire board simply by existing.

"And They Shall Know No Inconvenient Rules" indeed...

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Free detachment bonuses. The 4e Apocalypse formations required specific models but then made you pay extra points to actually get the special formation bonuses, 7e's free special detachments screwed the game badly.

This is why I disliked the changes to the 2nd Ed Apoc as well.

Formations in Apoc made sense - you paid points for an additional bonus. Making said bonus free was dumbfounding.

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 AnomanderRake wrote:

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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
...Also 40k is fething garbage for any role playing because of the imbalanced core rules. If watching 20-50% of an army die because it didn't go first is role playing, have fun with justifying that. We've seen some of the new AdMech weapons and we just got the Dark Eldar ones. Power Creep is speed ahead again as usual.

Yes, but if you took the dice out of the game would that improve the RP/narrative aspects?

Quite honestly might. For all the people that be all "iT's OnLy ToY SoLdIeRs" they sure get cranky when suggestions to balance are made. Throw the baby out with the bathwater and start over and just use a DM to make the armies clash.

That's a lot better than pretending Crusade is helping Forge The Narrative.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Gnarlly wrote:
Count me as one who "shed a (figurative) tear" and misses taking leadership tests to shoot at a target other than the closest unit. It is a rule that makes logical sense in the chaos of battle, directly impacts model placement and targeting strategies, and further distinguishes more elite armies from less disciplined armies.

Until you remember that that edition was also the edition that saw Marine Captains gain the 'Rites of Battle' rule, giving out Ld10 to all fellow Marines on the entire board simply by existing.

"And They Shall Know No Inconvenient Rules" indeed...

That was a far better mechanic for making elite troops feel more elite than stacking on more wounds, invulns, doctrines and rerolls. I'll take the Ld test paradigm any day.

AND it made a Captain feel like a friggin army leader.

 the_scotsman wrote:

oh, for fun I'll also throw out:

If a necron player ever got below 1/4 of the number of necron models (stuff like wraiths/scarabs/vehicles didnt count) they had at the start, they instantly lose the game because all the necrons disappear.

Brilliant, wonderful rules writing, very fluff, very narrative, very fun and satisfying for everyone.

(shrug) I actually liked it. And I played Necrons then. Still do. I'd not be opposed to using it today in fact.
I just knew how to play around it. in fact? I've lost more games with Necrons here in 9th than I ever did via Phase-Out.