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Every time I look at the 40k rules, I find myself saying , WHY ????

A straight forward wargame for new players SHOULD BE written with CLARITY and BREVITY.

EG Learn all the rules in less than an hour, and spend a lifetime mastering the tactial nuances of well balanced and designed game play.
All the other companies that are doing well (growing their fan base.)Seem to follow this aproach.
As the complexity of the game play grows with the experiance of the players...And this doesnt alienate veteran players.


The annoying thing is I can see what the GW dev team were aiming for , but the excecution always seems to fall short of the mark....
What could be straightforward and intuitive , elegant implementation .Ends up an abstract and counter intuiitive.

Eg Rather than replace a simple to hit dice modifer with;-
're roll 6's to hit if target is in in 'Cover'.''
're roll 6's to hit if target is in 'Heavy Cover',AND re roll 6's to wound/damage too.'
(All units keep thier armour saves , and cover just makes hitiing targets in 'Cover' harder.And units in 'Hard Cover' are harder to hit and damage.)

They ADDED an extra set of saves , that make players have to make a counter intuitive chioce between cover and thier natural armour .(I am going to take off my armour to hide behind this bush... )

And they could have made the AP system an actual elegant alternative to armour modifeirs.(With a fraction more effort.)
The AP value ignores armour save rolls of the same or higher value.

EG 3+ sve ONLY saves on a roll of 3 or 4 IF hit by a AP 5 weapon.(As rolls of 5 and 6 are ignored.)

Instead they make it soo restrictive as save /no save.Causing massive jumps in effectivness.

There are many examples of how slightly different implimentation/choices of resolution would make the rules less complicated, and allow more complex game play.

Rule sets ARE SUPPOSED TO BE instructions to play the game.
Written with clarity and brevity, and deliver intuitive and rewarding game play experiance .

40k rules are a collections of cool ideas to inspire product purchases ,that fail to deliver synergy with a coherance develpment decision on game play.

Concidering the great game play in the SGs , and games developed outside GW plc corperate managment influence .
I can only assume the game devs are capable of writing much better* rule sets for 40k and WHFB.But are not allowed to for some reason.
(Better* in terms of less complication in the rule set and more complexity in the game play.)

Your definition of 'cinematic' may be differnt to mine.
I belive 'cinematic' means fast flowing and intiutve .

And MOST good rule sets allow this sort of game play.

GW plc seem to think 'cinematic' means leaving it up the the gamers to TRY to make sense of lots of random elements in an abstract and counterintuitive rule set.

The current game play of 40k COULD be delivered in less than 50 pages of well defined and implemented rules.
But in its current incarnation, it just too much effort for so little reward.IMO.
(Compared to Tommorows War, StargruntII, Fast and Dirty, Urban War, Dust Warfare, etc etc...)

 TheAvengingKnee wrote:
I actually like 6th edition more than 5th, I haven't played a lot of games yet, but they have all been pretty good games. I have mostly just played Necrons in 6th so far because I have been to lazy to finish up some of my blood angels models.

Over all I like 6th much better than 5th.

If I played Necrons I probably would not bother painting other models either, they are pretty dominant in 6th edition. The hit to mechanized armies put Necrons up at the top of the list in terms of competing, their only flaw is melee and if you are a strategic Necron player you can make a melee unit pay before it manages to get to you (if it even can).

I think that is the dividing line for players, some armies got exponentially better with 6th ed while others just kind of fell off (see Dante/Astorath who were COMPLETELY ruined as an example of one army who had 2 of its primary HQs ruined).

Aside from that the overwatch, snap shots, and various other mechanics are great but some of the other changes just make the game a big headache.

GW is not interested in making "improvements", they'd rather make "changes".

Personally I think it's the best edition I've played. It's the most fun I've had with 40k for a while. The random objectives can jump off a bridge, and I'd rather not need a huge FAQ about 2 months after the release of an expensive rulebook just to clear up the mistakes, but I've grown to accept that from GW. However I always end up coming back like the absued spouse that I am.

 Carnage43 wrote:
I think what killed it for you, and what Ailaros is getting at, is that you tolerated 5th editon....barely. You knew about the mech spam, the wound allocation abuse, over-powered GKs, etc and thought 6th would be an excellent opportunity for GW to fix all that and make the game we all hoped to see. Instead, they got rid of a lot of the old issues, and just replaced them with new problems. Now we have flyer/skyfire imbalance, challenge oddities, random tables galore and they've just replaced one set of problems with a new set. You are disappointed in a missed opportunity on GWs part really.

The FAQ updates are interesting, but I don't think we will be seeing any more for months, if not years for most armies.

This^ and also a point from Aileros that basically 40K and the way GW operates were always the way they are now hits a nail on the head in regards to myself. It is about expectations and a continuous slew of disappointments. 'The last straw point' with regard to 6th and not fixing the many problems with so many armies also resonates with me.

I vaguely new about warhammer way back but began playing it in 4th edition when my son's friends became interested. They were pumped about the game and had someone representing every army but Tau. They asked me and since the game and models also appealed to me I agreed to play Tau. During my first year of playing some problems were noted in army books. For my Tau I think units like vespid and ethereals were 2 crappy entries if I recall correctly, both of which I liked and wanted to use and as time progressed and other dexes were released I hoped/expected GW would issue erratas fixing such units/characters that were overcosted or didn't work right. The common word from other 40k players was often that GW was getting better, 4th was an improvement over the previous edition, minor problems in your dex will evetually be fixed with a new book and just be glad you weren't playing DE. GWs response to model problems was excellent - my son twice had problems with kits and GW quickly rushed out replacement parts - great customer service. So with the concerns the feeling was that GW was trying to improve and balance the game but with the evolving nature of 40K it was difficult but things were improving.

I started playing tyranid for the last year of 4th as they were the army I liked the most (never played nidzilla). Then came 5th edition. Some improvements over 4th edition stuff but also some new problems. I was also becoming concerned that army errata to correct obvious dex issues seemed slow and inadequate when done. Still, everyone acknowledged there were things to dislike about GW but the feeling was that 40K and dexes were getting better. Then rumours of a nid dex appeared. I was concerned after what happened to the Chaos marine players. Sure enough, IMO, the nid dex was a mess - badly organized (a grade 9 student could have organized it better) with units and biomorphs pointlessly nerfed, some nice new models but also unnecessary units, and poorly worded rules which were painfully obvious from the first read through the book. I bought many of the new models and used lots of the new units but I found I did not really like how nids now played and certainly the poor manner in which GW handled the army. I waited for an errata to fix some of the easily corrected problems. I wanted to use pyrovores and would have bought the model if the rules were decent. The expected 'usual 3 month wait' for the dex FAQ/errata took 6 months for nids and while it did answer some things provided new unnecessary nerfs.

From 5th edition and mainly the release of the nid dex, my motivation and enjoyment of 40K were on a steady slow decline. I hoped that GW would realize the problems with the way they left armies hanging for years and would change and correct things. What happened to the 'GW is getting better and the game is improving' thing. Well many felt that way and still do. 6th edition, for me, was a continuation of the decline. The opportunity was there with a new addition to put out a detailed errata for each army not only to bring things in line with 6th but to fix so many of the poor units/wargear in so many dexes. An opportunity to try to bring more balance in the game after the mess at the end of 5th. This did not happen. I like many things in 6th and dislike others like the increase of random everything, Allies (because badly handled as I expected by GW), challenges (because they are not cinematic - okay maybe a few will be - but are silly. A hive tyrant is insulted by an IG blob Sgt to keep him from killing the squad)(again GWs poor handling of it).

I have played wargames of one type or another for almost 40 years. I have seen great, average and poor games but I have never seen a company so large that disrespects and dumps on its customers so readily with such poor products (sometimes poor kits too). Anyways the clear lack of any desire by GW to try to balance the game or fix their messed up products that customers have spent piles of money on was the last straw. I have shelved everything and will not play for the next few months and then decide if I will end it for good. I don't like walking away as I do like things about the game and the social interaction was important but GW is just too much of lousy, money-grubbing company to tolerate their crap any longer.

Backfire wrote:

 Hückleberry wrote:

Backfire wrote:

For example, in the 5th what nearly always happened in objective matches was that in the end of turn 5 movement, 2nd player would drive a vehicle to contest the objective. Then dice was rolled, and whole match came down to a dice roll whether game continued so first player had a chance to destroy the vehicle. This was really lame, very random, and it is almost completely gone now.

True, but that was also just one aspect of 5th that was random.

There were many others. Vehicle damage, for starters. It wasn't a problem early in the edition, when vehicles were seldom very plentiful. Then came new Marine books, IG and DE which could put out enormous number of cheap vehicles on the field. It was very frustrating to deal with as if you were unlucky with dice, all you did was shake and stun them over and over. I never understood why they went that way with vehicles, when they already received a buff from core rules.

I'd like to emphasize that it's not like I'm a cheerleader, I am not so hot about some aspects of 6th edition either. However even at worst, I don't think the features make it actively worse than the 5th, and the change is good. There was a distinct feeling that 5th edition was "played through", it was time for something different.

For me, 6th edition feels like new Iron Maiden record, it has many really good parts and it could be really great if they just had polished it in a studio couple of weeks more. As it is, it's somewhat maddeningly incomplete.

I can see your point but I would also like to point out that vehicles became a problem for 5th with the newer books. I can see the new 6th ed books bringing flyers to the same level as vehicles in 5th. Whos to say the next 6th ed book will be the new mech IG army in 5th but instead of mech it will be flyers. If I was GW and just trying to sell models I know I would make those 85 dollar flyers pretty much a necessity. On an off topic note I just saw Iron Maiden in concert in Sacrament, CA a couple weeks ago..was an awesome show!

Deadnight wrote:
GW is not interested in making "improvements", they'd rather make "changes".

This is exactly what I learned over time.
For instance, now its not possible for a unit to charge if mounted in a closed-topped transport even if the transport hasn't moved. The same holds for the WWP in DE armies. There is some sort of logic behind it to move away from the mech armies in the 5th ed to more infantry based armies in the 6th. The driving force of this is clearly money-making.

 Peregrine wrote:
The idea that GW has professional game design is just laughable.

That seems incorrect. GW has an in-house design studio, which obviously professionalizes their process to a certain extent, and GW game designers seem to do quite well for themselves in the field after leaving the organization. After leaving GW, Andy Chambers created several other miniatures games, and now works for Blizzard, whose competitive gaming record should be unquestioned. Alessio Cavatore co-founded his own game company on the strength of his GW experience and has done very well-- he also continues to write rules for other companies as a consultant.

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error. I see GW's designers as quite professional. Now, their design aims often differ from what I would consider to be ideal, but that doesn't mean that I need to attack their professionalism. Different people are looking for different things.

 Kingsley wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The idea that GW has professional game design is just laughable.

That seems incorrect. GW has an in-house design studio, which obviously professionalizes their process to a certain extent, and GW game designers seem to do quite well for themselves in the field after leaving the organization. After leaving GW, Andy Chambers created several other miniatures games, and now works for Blizzard, whose competitive gaming record should be unquestioned. Alessio Cavatore co-founded his own game company on the strength of his GW experience and has done very well-- he also continues to write rules for other companies as a consultant.

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error. I see GW's designers as quite professional. Now, their design aims often differ from what I would consider to be ideal, but that doesn't mean that I need to attack their professionalism. Different people are looking for different things.

I think what he is getting at is the professionals like Chambers have all left and its the slimy old interns that have taken over the studio, ex he who shall not me named.

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error.

How can you explain the fact that they let Thorpe do more then one dex ever or that they let JJ anywhere near design after his chaos flop codex in 3ed ?

There is a huge difference between guys designing rules [even broken ones like chaos demons in WFB at some time] that work and people who design random stuff , because they were told X unit have to change stats , Y units are new and Z units have to be nerfed.
Wards dex are stupid because of their fluff , but at least they can each make more then one army . Gav , JJ or Crudd doing nids weren't able to even do that. .


But on the other hand I play IG , I got new models [everything sm] for my army , my cheapest units got even better. counter builds got nerfed and so was melee . So in the end I am happy . Ah and my nids love 6th .

Makumba wrote:

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error.

How can you explain the fact that they let Thorpe do more then one dex ever or that they let JJ anywhere near design after his chaos flop codex in 3ed ?

There is a huge difference between guys designing rules [even broken ones like chaos demons in WFB at some time] that work and people who design random stuff , because they were told X unit have to change stats , Y units are new and Z units have to be nerfed.
Wards dex are stupid because of their fluff , but at least they can each make more then one army . Gav , JJ or Crudd doing nids weren't able to even do that. .


But on the other hand I play IG , I got new models [everything sm] for my army , my cheapest units got even better. counter builds got nerfed and so was melee . So in the end I am happy . Ah and my nids love 6th .

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

JJ needs to stop writing DA though to say the least.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error.

How can you explain the fact that they let Thorpe do more then one dex ever or that they let JJ anywhere near design after his chaos flop codex in 3ed ?

There is a huge difference between guys designing rules [even broken ones like chaos demons in WFB at some time] that work and people who design random stuff , because they were told X unit have to change stats , Y units are new and Z units have to be nerfed.
Wards dex are stupid because of their fluff , but at least they can each make more then one army . Gav , JJ or Crudd doing nids weren't able to even do that. .

But on the other hand I play IG , I got new models [everything sm] for my army , my cheapest units got even better. counter builds got nerfed and so was melee . So in the end I am happy . Ah and my nids love 6th .

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

JJ needs to stop writing DA though to say the least.

Third Edition Chaos is the ONLY CSM I will play. Which is why I haven't run my World Eaters, 1K Sons or any combination thereof since that codex was expropriated.

I've been GW-ambivalent for years now, and reading this thread really crystallized some thoughts that have been at the back of my head since 6th came out.

I do think they managed to solve some problems that bugged me in 5th (like the hidden-fist example), while they completely ignored other, equally strange rules (my guardsman can reach out and touch the barn-door sized LR, but only has a 1 in 2 chance of hitting it with his meltagun ). Now part of this can be solved with house-rules, fine, but it wouldn't have hurt GW to produce a "basic" ruleset with only core-rules that make the game playable and as little randomness as possible and then have a section with "optional rules" where they can add in the suicidal farting brain-trees that forces all units within 5" to do the macarena or die horribly, BFF-rules, deep-striking fortresses of redemption and so on.
That way tournies could stick to the core ruleset and you could add as many rules as you want to friendly games.

Right now, I get the sense that someone at GW (Ward, I'm looking at you!) had an epiphany where he felt he needed to educate the whole gaming community on how he believed the game should be "experienced" and proceeded to make *everything* a core rule. In addition it seems that GW has gotten into the habit of using the core rules to balance out individual armies, rather than balancing them where they should be balanced (isn't that what a codex is for?). Balancing using core rules is a pretty heavy-handed approach as any change will affect all armies, and many armies in different ways.
Had GW had a less insane schedule for releasing codices, they could have made sure everyone started of level by releasing coordinated updates in concert with each rulebook, considering how lanky codexes are today they the "professional" games-designers could probably manage that if they wanted.

It also feels like they don't playtest enough before release (or the playtesters do not have enough say), something that likely has to do with what could only be described as the Apple-esque, black-hole, PR-strategy that GW has developed of late.
In case of apple, that strategy kinda works, in case of GW it only serves to piss people off while they are waiting for the next codex that makes your army playable again, that may, or may not be out this year. There is apparently a huge community of players out here that would likely jump at the chance of helping out, beta-testing rules and providing input to the design process, why not use that?

I get that GW is a business, they want to make money, and game rules isn't where they make it, but I refuse to believe that they make the most money from kids going "ooh, shiny , i don't care that it can't shoot for toffee", if only for the fact that I have much more money than them do to spend and i want rules to go with the shiny.

Ok, that was a long rant.. I think I got it all out of my system now..

 wuestenfux wrote:
This is exactly what I learned over time.
For instance, now its not possible for a unit to charge if mounted in a closed-topped transport even if the transport hasn't moved. The same holds for the WWP in DE armies. There is some sort of logic behind it to move away from the mech armies in the 5th ed to more infantry based armies in the 6th. The driving force of this is clearly money-making.

Yup, clearly money making. It couldn't possibly be due to all of the complaints throughout 5th edition about the rules turning the board into a parking lot (which was also attributed to money making, as I recall...)


You certainly can put that spin on it... argue that 5th edition was purposely designed to get people to buy vehicles, and then 6th edition 'nerfed' vehicles to get people to buy more infantry instead... But the other way to look at it is that in every edition before 5th, people kept clamouring for more vehicles, and more effective vehicles. 5th edition gave that to them... and then everyone complained about vehicles dominating the game. So 6th edition reduced their effectiveness again.

So that 'clearly' actually becomes an 'arguably'... It could be just money-grabbing. It could just be more of the usual trademark GW schizophrenic attempt to give players what they are asking for.

The reason people see it as money grubbing is that they go far overboard. In 5th, tanks were, for the first time, universally useful, every race had a reason to take them routinely unlike 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Codex issues with costing in some areas led to an outcry, and instead of adjusting the costing, they went off and made tanks easier to kill than they've ever been, transports less useful than they've been in several editions, and removed all interactivity with objectives for no discernible reason. They wayyyyy over-corrected in a way just about everyone can see from a 2 second look at the rules.

There's other reasons to see the game as very "marketing" oriented. The way specific terrain kits get rules without actually needing them, and almost every army can work with several other armies it not literally almost every other army, etc.

There is that "feel" to the rules, though I also stick by the saying "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" as well.

Either GW is just perennially incompetent, which is possible, or they're purposefully trying to manipulate sales of certain types of kits with changes to the core rules and intentionally engaging in bad game design, or both.

Peregrine wrote:Why do people play GW games even though the rules are deeply flawed?

(reasons).

Yeah, asking "why is GW popular even though it has crappy stuff?" is like asking the question "why is McDonald's so popular even though it has crappy food?"

You can be a snob, or be a consummate aesthete, or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that McDonalds is everywhere because they make the most people happy compared to their competitors. In the end, that's all that really matters. The specific reasons for why people like GW products is, in a way, merely a matter for marketing executives.

Plus, no matter how good of a cook I am, I will still eat at Mc Donald's once in awhile...

 Vaktathi wrote:
The reason people see it as money grubbing is that they go far overboard. In 5th, tanks were, for the first time, universally useful, every race had a reason to take them routinely unlike 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Codex issues with costing in some areas led to an outcry, and instead of adjusting the costing, they went off and made tanks easier to kill than they've ever been, transports less useful than they've been in several editions, and removed all interactivity with objectives for no discernible reason. They wayyyyy over-corrected in a way just about everyone can see from a 2 second look at the rules.

I thought that at first myself, but after playing many games of 6th edition I can assure you that transports certainly aren't dead. Transports can't contest objectives and are generally less resilient, but are also better for actually transporting, as they move across the table substantially faster than they once did. Transports are certainly much better now than they were in 4th edition.

LordOfTheSloths wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error.

How can you explain the fact that they let Thorpe do more then one dex ever or that they let JJ anywhere near design after his chaos flop codex in 3ed ?

There is a huge difference between guys designing rules [even broken ones like chaos demons in WFB at some time] that work and people who design random stuff , because they were told X unit have to change stats , Y units are new and Z units have to be nerfed.
Wards dex are stupid because of their fluff , but at least they can each make more then one army . Gav , JJ or Crudd doing nids weren't able to even do that. .

But on the other hand I play IG , I got new models [everything sm] for my army , my cheapest units got even better. counter builds got nerfed and so was melee . So in the end I am happy . Ah and my nids love 6th .

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

JJ needs to stop writing DA though to say the least.

Third Edition Chaos is the ONLY CSM I will play. Which is why I haven't run my World Eaters, 1K Sons or any combination thereof since that codex was expropriated.

So you only play this one?



I feel sorry for you. That was a bland, horrible mess of a codex. The one Jervis did.

This one



Often referred to as the 3.5 ed codex, since it was the second Chaos codex in 3rd edition, was written by Phil Kelly, Andy Hoare, Pete Haines, Andy Chambers and Graham Mcniel, and was much better.

When people say 'the 3rd edition codex was terrible', they're usually referring to the former. It's also wise to make the distinction when you praise 'the 3rd edition Chaos codex', since one was absolutely abysmal.

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

your thinking about the 3.5 chaos dex. there was a 3ed one , it was very bad . So bad that WD started bringing variant lists for chaos because no one was playing them . Saying this abomination [khorn sorcs 0_o] is good is madness.

I suppose in the analogy of the slow boiling frog and the frog dumped in the boiling pot I'm the latter. I hadn't played at all since early 4E, finally got back into it right on the cusp of 6E... it all seems a lot more complex. Even the experienced player I had my first 6E match with was confused and this was his 10th or so 6E game.

I suppose on some level it's making me a hobbyist 40k fan. I love the fluff, I like modeling and painting the minis, I enjoy the community surrounding it... but the game seems hit or miss recently.

Doesn't help that I've been slightly anti-social in general as of late.

I can also relate to the sales driven attitude from GW recently, I'm sure it's always been there and I just didn't notice it but it seems like there's such a massive focus on wallet rape when DFG or others like it will happily provide gorgeous high quality minis for 1/3 the cost or less then GW.

I'm not burning my codexes or tossing my rule book... I still like GW. It's just what I've been observing recently.

Makumba wrote:

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

your thinking about the 3.5 chaos dex. there was a 3ed one , it was very bad . So bad that WD started bringing variant lists for chaos because no one was playing them . Saying this abomination [khorn sorcs 0_o] is good is madness.

I only started chaos with that 3.5 book, so I wasn't aware of the original 3rd book.

Codex issues with costing in some areas led to an outcry, and instead of adjusting the costing, they went off and made tanks easier to kill than they've ever been, transports less useful than they've been in several editions, and removed all interactivity with objectives for no discernible reason. They wayyyyy over-corrected in a way just about everyone can see from a 2 second look at the rules.

4th edition had the worst transports, unless you really think that losing HP then wrecking is bad compared to getting hit by Ordnance weaponry and losing the entire squad without a saving roll

 -Loki- wrote:

LordOfTheSloths wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Claiming that GW's designers are "unprofessional" thus seems to be an error.

How can you explain the fact that they let Thorpe do more then one dex ever or that they let JJ anywhere near design after his chaos flop codex in 3ed ?

There is a huge difference between guys designing rules [even broken ones like chaos demons in WFB at some time] that work and people who design random stuff , because they were told X unit have to change stats , Y units are new and Z units have to be nerfed.
Wards dex are stupid because of their fluff , but at least they can each make more then one army . Gav , JJ or Crudd doing nids weren't able to even do that. .

But on the other hand I play IG , I got new models [everything sm] for my army , my cheapest units got even better. counter builds got nerfed and so was melee . So in the end I am happy . Ah and my nids love 6th .

3rd edition chaos was an actual group effort by four people, and was actually good! (If too good)

JJ needs to stop writing DA though to say the least.

Third Edition Chaos is the ONLY CSM I will play. Which is why I haven't run my World Eaters, 1K Sons or any combination thereof since that codex was expropriated.

So you only play this one?

Spoiler:

I feel sorry for you. That was a bland, horrible mess of a codex. The one Jervis did.

This one

Spoiler:

Often referred to as the 3.5 ed codex, since it was the second Chaos codex in 3rd edition, was written by Phil Kelly, Andy Hoare, Pete Haines, Andy Chambers and Graham Mcniel, and was much better.

When people say 'the 3rd edition codex was terrible', they're usually referring to the former. It's also wise to make the distinction when you praise 'the 3rd edition Chaos codex', since one was absolutely abysmal.

You are of course right. I meant the one where you could actually run pure cult army lists and where the marks of chaos actually made sense and weren't just boring USR's.

Warhammer and Warhammer 40k has always been this way. Hunting for the latest rules for everything, or trying to figure out which person has the latest edition of the rules. I used to always joke that you have to do as much research to play 40k as you do to write a college term paper. The one good thing about pain is you forget the magnitude of it as time passes.

LordOfTheSloths wrote:

Third Edition Chaos is the ONLY CSM I will play. Which is why I haven't run my World Eaters, 1K Sons or any combination thereof since that codex was expropriated.

You know, I felt the same way. I stopped playing CSM and mothballed all my stuff, because I knew that the game pendulums back and forth. There was noway I was gonna suffer playing a bad codex until a new one came out. When I saw the two armies in the starter: DA and CSM I got really excited cause this could be the time that Chaos gets its swagger back, instead of being space marines' ugly bridesmaid.

I haven't played for two editions. I tried a game or two in both prior to this latest edition. You know what? I think they did a decent job. I think they took a lot of the guesswork out of the game from when I last played, and also got rid of a lot of the silliness that would pop up. For example, a guy with a missle launcher couldn't fire cause someone else in his unit moved. I just remember as I read this edition of rules I kept thinking "ok good at least they have an answer now for that."

 Vaktathi wrote:
The reason people see it as money grubbing is that they go far overboard. In 5th, tanks were, for the first time, universally useful, every race had a reason to take them routinely unlike 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Codex issues with costing in some areas led to an outcry, and instead of adjusting the costing, they went off and made tanks easier to kill than they've ever been, transports less useful than they've been in several editions, and removed all interactivity with objectives for no discernible reason. They wayyyyy over-corrected in a way just about everyone can see from a 2 second look at the rules.

There's other reasons to see the game as very "marketing" oriented. The way specific terrain kits get rules without actually needing them, and almost every army can work with several other armies it not literally almost every other army, etc.

There is that "feel" to the rules, though I also stick by the saying "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" as well.

Either GW is just perennially incompetent, which is possible, or they're purposefully trying to manipulate sales of certain types of kits with changes to the core rules and intentionally engaging in bad game design, or both.

Except that all of those changes are great. Vehicles are fast enough that allowing them to interact with objectives makes them both a must have, and superior in nearly every way to infantry. They are slightly more fragile to shooting, but mostly just more predictable when being shot. That's a good thing in my book. Transports do what transports do, which is get things from A to B, rather than being mobile bunkers that sit on objectives all game. Units should be able to assault out of unmoving vehicles, and I'd probably give vehicles +1 hull point across the board, but overall they handled vehicles just right.

but saying that the problem is "just" not being able to charge out of transports is like saying random charge range is "just" a small buff to shoty armies. I play IG so I shouldnt realy care , we dont have assault builds , but every other army ? It is not even fun to play against BAs or chaos anymore . in the 5th you could at least laugh at them for picking a harder army , now they are just picking up models that die.

Unlike vehicles, I have a good number of problems with their treatment of assault (I do play assault themed armies primarily). But at the end of the day, I've found ways to cope, and I'm still winning. It's nothing that makes me wail and gnash my teeth - the game is sound, I just don't like a few directions it took.

If you want premeasuring in for instance(and apparently they did), random charge length is safer than a set charge anyways - a canny opponent can always avoid a flat x" charge using premeasuring, but a random charge is much harder to predict and most foes won't bother trying. GW have their reasons for doing things like this, even when I don't agree with the result.

 Hollowman wrote:

Except that all of those changes are great. Vehicles are fast enough that allowing them to interact with objectives makes them both a must have, and superior in nearly every way to infantry.

they've got half the lifespan they used to and practically auto-killed in CC by most basic troops units and no ability to hit back, many other units are just as fast or nearly so (jump infantry/ jetbikes/bikes/beasts, etc) and if they're running around making use of that speed they're not shooting.

They are slightly more fragile to shooting,

Significantly more fragile to shooting. It takes less than half the average number of shots from many weapons to kill vehicles compared with 5th. AV13 is as easy to kill through autocannon fire as AV12 was in 5th and AV 10/11/12 require less than half the average number of shots from autocannon shots to destroy for instance.

but mostly just more predictable when being shot. That's a good thing in my book.

Two overlapping kill mechanics is redundant, either the damage table needs to be ditched or the HP's do, as right now tanks are just fast MC's with no armor save that can suffer Instant Death or some other crippling on any to-wound roll that exceeds the minimum roll required to wound them and no ability to interact with objectives and auto-die in CC.

Transports do what transports do, which is get things from A to B, rather than being mobile bunkers that sit on objectives all game.

Except that at least one was explicitly designed to do just that and several were intended to be light/medium tanks and not just taxi's, and many armies that relied on that simply don't have troops that can live through sitting on an objective outside of a transport particularly long.

 insaniak wrote:

You certainly can put that spin on it... argue that 5th edition was purposely designed to get people to buy vehicles, and then 6th edition 'nerfed' vehicles to get people to buy more infantry instead... But the other way to look at it is that in every edition before 5th, people kept clamouring for more vehicles, and more effective vehicles. 5th edition gave that to them... and then everyone complained about vehicles dominating the game. So 6th edition reduced their effectiveness again.

So that 'clearly' actually becomes an 'arguably'... It could be just money-grabbing. It could just be more of the usual trademark GW schizophrenic attempt to give players what they are asking for.

Outside of an outright confession, you can't say anyting is clearly the intent of the game designers.

You can look at the evidence. Because there are other areas where GW has shown a lot more nuance in balance. Look at psychic powers: reduced to almost nothign in 3rd, and slowly became mroe powerful over the editions. Mission design got steadily better (until 6th, maybe). As rough as it is to say, balance between and within codexes became better.

The real question is, "why wouldn't GW tweak rules to sell more?" I mean, is a game with lots of vehicles inherentlly more or less superior to one without? It's well known that GW makes it's money on models, not rules.

And flip it around: people have been wanting fliers in plastic for years. What's wrong with making them good in the game?

Vakathi, as almost always, I agree with you again.

It's for that reason that myself and at least one other friend of mine have given up on 40k, at least for now. There may be a time in the future when 40k will be enjoyable for me to play again, but it likely won't be for a long time, sadly. It's a shame too, having spent so much money and having spent so long on converting and painting so many models, but if the game itself is in no way enjoyable for me to play anymore, there's simply nothing else left for me to do.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Significantly more fragile to shooting. It takes less than half the average number of shots from many weapons to kill vehicles compared with 5th. AV13 is as easy to kill through autocannon fire as AV12 was in 5th and AV 10/11/12 require less than half the average number of shots from autocannon shots to destroy for instance.

Don't see the problem there. In 5th, my AV13 would often survive a whole game of AT fire directed at it (which should not happen) and get off less shots than it does in 6th edition (which also shouldn't happen). 6th is far better for my exorcists than 5th was.

Two overlapping kill mechanics is redundant, either the damage table needs to be ditched or the HP's do, as right now tanks are just fast MC's with no armor save that can suffer Instant Death or some other crippling on any to-wound roll that exceeds the minimum roll required to wound them and no ability to interact with objectives and auto-die in CC.

Yes... which makes them fast MC's. With much better shooting than most MC.