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I have been having some thoughts about the recent codexes and just wonder sometimes how do they write this stuff?

Like I look at some units and I'm like I don't think I'd ever field these guys in a game at all, and it so happens that no one really does unless for fun.

Wouldn't it be nice if they released the codex with designer notes?
Like what was the intention of designing this unit and what was it supposed to work well with?
Instead of just having units that nobody knows really does what...

I feel like they're just like oh here's a bunch of random rules and random stats for random points and lets the community figure out how to actually build an effective list with it...
At least they should write couple of lists that has all the units in and the list is actually somewhat usable first...

Anyway, what do you guys think?

They actually used to have a little article in the back written by the author. It had the different strategies they felt the army could employ and what units they recommended for them.

When they released the old Dark Angels codex, Johnson wrote an article in White Dwarf explaining most of his boneheaded decisions when re-vamping the book. He didn't offer too much advice on how to run the army however.

Anyway... Part of the game is mixing and matching units until one finds a usable combo. Anytime GW suggests an army list, it is either too wide-spread in focus to work (showcase) or it is sometimes illegal (some WD armies). So instead of asking GW to give you the answers, work it out.

Well, it's not really like that, I mean they do do test plays and stuff and posting those lists that they use during the test plays to demonstrate how a unit was sortof designed to work isn't bad.

Like look at the new flamers, like why would you ever bring them?
23 points for essentially a standard flamer on a meh model...
Like what was the reasoning behind these decisions and stuff?

Because.

 Makutsu wrote:

Like look at the new flamers, like why would you ever bring them?
23 points for essentially a standard flamer on a meh model...
Like what was the reasoning behind these decisions and stuff?

That one's easy, the sales were lagging after the massive spike from making them unreasonably powerful in the summer.

That little pamphlet is one of the most egregious examples of cranking up the power level of a unit for sales. At least with other amazing units the players get a couple years out of them. (Vendettas...)

The WD update didn't break Flamers. 6th Edition broke flamers, it's just that no-one noticed until the WD update.

 Eldarain wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

Like look at the new flamers, like why would you ever bring them?
23 points for essentially a standard flamer on a meh model...
Like what was the reasoning behind these decisions and stuff?

That one's easy, the sales were lagging after the massive spike from making them unreasonably powerful in the summer.

That little pamphlet is one of the most egregious examples of cranking up the power level of a unit for sales. At least with other amazing units the players get a couple years out of them. (Vendettas...)

Well if they made a better design for this one, people will still buy them...
Now they are just uber horrible and no one would get them anymore...

There are actually very few games that let us in on the "little secrets". D&D minis actually said there was no formula for points totals on minis, they just guess-timated it. MTG doesn't release too many whys-or-where-fors concerning mana costs or why some cards disappear or reappear. D&D itself rarely revealed the back-end of game design, until now when the brand is faltering and they are crowd-sourcing for ideas.

Our job is to play the game, not dissect it.

 Makutsu wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

Like look at the new flamers, like why would you ever bring them?
23 points for essentially a standard flamer on a meh model...
Like what was the reasoning behind these decisions and stuff?

That one's easy, the sales were lagging after the massive spike from making them unreasonably powerful in the summer.

That little pamphlet is one of the most egregious examples of cranking up the power level of a unit for sales. At least with other amazing units the players get a couple years out of them. (Vendettas...)

Well if they made a better design for this one, people will still buy them...
Now they are just uber horrible and no one would get them anymore...

But that money would be better spent on the units that used to be lacklustre but are now very good. Flesh Hounds, Seekers, Soulgrinders etc.

 Eldarain wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

Like look at the new flamers, like why would you ever bring them?
23 points for essentially a standard flamer on a meh model...
Like what was the reasoning behind these decisions and stuff?

That one's easy, the sales were lagging after the massive spike from making them unreasonably powerful in the summer.

That little pamphlet is one of the most egregious examples of cranking up the power level of a unit for sales. At least with other amazing units the players get a couple years out of them. (Vendettas...)

Well if they made a better design for this one, people will still buy them...
Now they are just uber horrible and no one would get them anymore...

But that money would be better spent on the units that used to be lacklustre but are now very good. Flesh Hounds, Seekers, Soulgrinders etc.

I don't feel like that's a correct statement, like me for example don't like Khorne at all, so regardless of how good they are I still wouldn't buy them, so essentially they would be losing parts of the market who likes the other factions.
If they made all 4 equally competent then people will buy all 4 sides, now I'm just going to spend some money on some other stuff instead of GW since I feel like there's no point of buying these models that I like now...

For example, Infinity is based on how good the model look and not as heavy on the rules, as long as you "the player" is good it doesn't really matter what you use.

Then just don't worry about why they chose to buff x unit and not y unit and just play.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Then just don't worry about why they chose to buff x unit and not y unit and just play.

I don't mind fielding them if they were average, but everybody to a degree plays to win or at least hope to win.



Anyway, we're kinda getting off topic from what I'm trying to discuss.
I'm trying to talk about why would a designer design X unit unless he test played it and it worked with some other units in the codex itself, and it would be nice to see why they did such a decision.

Because, regardless of everything else in the codex, he thought it would be awesome.

How do you think we ended up with Repentia and Dreadknights?

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Because, regardless of everything else in the codex, he thought it would be awesome.

How do you think we ended up with Repentia and Dreadknights?

That's the thing, how do you know he thought it was awesome instead of some random point value that he just gave to it?
That's why it would be cool to read a designer notes on why it was designed to be this way and how it was during the test play.

Mmh, maybe I'm not explaining myself properly.

A lot of the time, someone writing a codex will be going through the standard allocations - upgraded infantry for Elites, mounted unit for Fast Attack, extra heavy weapons for Support - then think, "Hmm, but what if..?" and then get hit by crazy inspiration. They'll come up with something like "What if instead of self-flaggelating and going back into the normal infantry corps, some Sisters pull a Dwarf Slayer and go into a separate unit of repentants? They want to die, so no armour is a must... what would be a good weapon though? Ooh. Eviscerators are pretty iconic as mad priest weapons, lets give them those. Now how to make them work... well, I guess they need a 4+ save of some kind if they're going to get into combat so we'll just handwave it. How many points though? Well, chainfists are pretty powerful, so it can't be below twenty points for that alone.. .hm. Ah, what the heck, twenty three points sounds fair, lets go with that. Who cares if they don't fit in with the rest of the army's battle style? They're awesome."

Exactly, at least show us some thought process of how they went through to make the decision of creating a unit.

And with such experience like them, they should have an even better concept than we do when designing units.

What you are saying too is as if they don't test play these at all, if they do there are units that clearly don't do anything for the entire game or are just really crappy or really really good.

So it would be cool to see like a battle report of the test play so that people can be like, oh that's how it was meant to work.
And if you want to be creative go ahead and try other builds.


Like I wonder if they actually sat down looked at all the options in a particular slot and went, hmmmm which unit should I take they all seem useful.
To me it's just like they write a bunch of stuff and then let players figure it out.
If they even sat down for a bit they'll see that some options are just insanely hands down I have to choose this, and some are just entirely ignored.
And if they did it would be nice to show how they got to that decision.

Because it doesn't matter how much play-testing you do, it's just like QA for a video game. When your testing group is a handful of people, it's literally impossible for them to try every possible combination (or trick) to break the game, tricks that won't become obvious until it's released into the wild and into a testing group of thousands (the player-base).

There's also the possibility that they created the OP units under the philosophy of "this is badass, it goes in" and the crappy units under "crap, deadline is in three hours, I gotta fill this slot with *something*!"

Codex design notes:

Which models sold the least last codex? Lets pin a bunch of them to a dart board, and decide who gets "OMGSUPERPOWA!"

New models? Lets roll a d6 for how powerful it they be, then another d6 for how much they will cost in points.

But in all seriousness, who knows, money, balance, rule of cool, creativity, insanity, to delve into the minds of the game devs to to open ones mind to the warp and invite chaos in.

I'm calling it now - Chaos Mutilators are gonna see a price rise and be mega-effective come 7th.

Matt Ward "alright, this white die will be for the power of the unit, the black one will be for it's cost"
Editor "but matt, the white die only has 5s and 6s on it, and the black die only has 1s and 2s"
Matt Ward *backhand* "how dare you question me!"