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I personally think walkers are pointless. With everything becoming a monstrous creature walkers seem a little inept.
I personally think a dreadnought should probably be an MC or they should really consider realigning things.

Like a dread knight is obviously a walker. It has a little dude sat on the front of it much like a war walker, whilst a dreadnought is the extension of the marine inside who now can't survive without it. There are obviously some thinks which is harder to define.

I also think tank damage is stupid. A glancing hit should do nothing like 50% of the time where the bolter round harmlessly pings on the armour, and any damage roll that ends up being less than 2 should fail to damage it.

And they shall know no fear should not exist or be on chaos marines too (they hang out with daemons often enough not to be too worried).
If it does have to exist it should not stop sweeping advance.

Anyone have any thoughts on things that should be better/different?

Boniface wrote:
And they shall know no fear should not exist or be on chaos marines too (they hang out with daemons often enough not to be too worried).
If it does have to exist it should not stop sweeping advance.

Disagree with this, Marines are expensive and die easily enough as it is. Chaos Marines should get something to compensate I agree, but if anything ATSKNF should be changed back to the way it was in 5th, because currently it's ridiculously good.

I can not think of ONE game mechanic or resolution that I would keep in the game of 40k.
Why use WHFB game mechanics and resolution methods for 40k?

So the rules that could be better is ALL of them!

There are 3 things now that are monsterous creatures that makes since for logical progression.
Wraitguard=infantry, Wraithlord+MC, Wraithknight=MC
Xv8=Infantry, Xv108=MC.
The only thing that is slightly odd is the dread knight, and you could make a case for it because the pilot is still alive.
Walkers still have a place.

The entire Faith system for the SoB. Doesn't scale at all, really hamstrings the army in higher point games. The randomness of it is also pretty dumb. Why would the faith of an army of fanatics be random?


Apparently it used to be better before, with SoB units generating faith and faith carrying over through turns. Not too familiar with it though, since I wasn't playing at the time.

To be fair, both the Riptide and Wraithknight have precedents in battlesuits and the Wraithlord for them not being walkers. It doesn't *have* to be a trend as such for new codicies.
That said, I agree that vehicles are a bit flimsy this edition. I think giving all vehicles an armor save would be a nice improvement and help solidify some weapons as definite anti-tank and others as more anti-heavy infantry/light vehicles. Giving tanks a 3+ save would mean you'd have to bring missile launchers and lascannons for example, while an autocannon would be sufficient for lighter vehicles with 4+ saves that in turn would be a little sturdier against boltguns/pulse rifles/what have you.

Clarification for timing on IC and infiltrators

till then i wont be infiltrating things in with shadowsun.

Ya, I dont think Chaos should get ATSKNF. With Marks, they already get some awesome abilities.

Boniface wrote:
I also think tank damage is stupid. A glancing hit should do nothing like 50% of the time where the bolter round harmlessly pings on the armour, and any damage roll that ends up being less than 2 should fail to damage it.

This is already represented by having to roll for armour penetration. If you hit AV10 with a S8 weapon but you roll a 1, that shot bounced off.

And they shall know no fear should not exist or be on chaos marines too (they hang out with daemons often enough not to be too worried).
If it does have to exist it should not stop sweeping advance.

Chaos Marines definitely need something to keep Leadership in check, but it should not be ATSKNF. That difference has been in place since 2nd ed and it's one of the few things that keeps Chaos Marines from just being "vanilla Marines with spikes". I think the Fearless aspect that comes with Icons, and the +1Ld from VotLW covers this nicely.
Remember that not all Chaos Marines are 10,000 years old, some are more recent renegades who AREN'T used to Daemons and the like.


Personally I would like to see a change to the wording of several rules, if not the way they work. Snap Shots would be a lot clearer if we were told that the shot is resolved as BS1 regardless of the model's BS, that would have removed the need for a lot of FAQs. A strictly defined order of pre- and post- deployment events would be nice too (things like rolling for psychic powers, Warlord traits etc) - at the moment we have a summary list but it's not part of the core rules, so parts of its order can be argued going by the wording in each step.

The only rule I would actually like to *change* outright is the 50% Reserves rule. It's fine as a standard for most armies but there are specific forces that I feel should be able to override it - Blood Angels, Deathwing and all forms of Biker lists for example. This could easily be rectified by including it as an extra rule or automatic Warlord trait for specific special characters like Khan or Dante, but for some (Sammael, Belial) that ship has already sailed.

Fear, as it is right now, half the armies out there are immune to it, half of that remaining half have good enough Ld to have a good chance at negating it, so it's a special rule that works on like 1/4 of the armies... Even as the non-fearless DE(hard to get that 3rd PT, you know) and necrons, I'm hardly ... fearful(hehehe) of Fear.

Forced morale test wargears, again, some armies out there just don't care about morale tests, and some of these wargears cost a lot for what little they could do...

But I guess all of this goes back to: ATSKNF...

-Overwatch: I'm cool with 40k having an automatic reactions mechanic, but I was hoping it was going to be expanded beyond the defensive fire at reduced BS against charging units we finally got. Like, forfeiting movement for a chance of firing at full BS at targets that move/shoot against the unit on the enemy turn. It would only need a token or counter to keep track.

- LoS: I'd go for abstract over true LoS anytime.

Forfeiting movement to bump your Overwatch up to 5+ would be kick ass!

Baronyu wrote:
Fear, as it is right now, half the armies out there are immune to it, half of that remaining half have good enough Ld to have a good chance at negating it, so it's a special rule that works on like 1/4 of the armies... Even as the non-fearless DE(hard to get that 3rd PT, you know) and necrons, I'm hardly ... fearful(hehehe) of Fear.

Forced morale test wargears, again, some armies out there just don't care about morale tests, and some of these wargears cost a lot for what little they could do...

But I guess all of this goes back to: ATSKNF...

ATSKNF should at most only allow a re-roll of a failed Fear test - not offer outright 100% immunity to it.

I'd also like to see a rule brought in that MC's inflict an automatic -1Ld penalty to any Fear tests they cause...
OR
...give them a new Terror rule whereby they cause moral tests against nearby units within 6" and if failed, that unit can only make snap shots during their next shooting phase as they're too busy pooping themselves!

That would honestly make ground-based MC's worthwhile since right now the only foot-based MC's worth taking either have a 2+ save and/or access to Biomancy.

Experiment 626 wrote:
ATSKNF should at most only allow a re-roll of a failed Fear test - not offer outright 100% immunity to it.

I'd also like to see a rule brought in that MC's inflict an automatic -1Ld penalty to any Fear tests they cause...
OR
...give them a new Terror rule whereby they cause moral tests against nearby units within 6" and if failed, that unit can only make snap shots during their next shooting phase as they're too busy pooping themselves!

That would honestly make ground-based MC's worthwhile since right now the only foot-based MC's worth taking either have a 2+ save and/or access to Biomancy.

Oh I like those ideas. I'm not against the idea of marines needing ATSKNF to survive, but I just wish it isn't the way it is now.

Also, not related to quote, I'd say grenades could use some work as well, assault grenade should work for an entire unit and not just model-per-model basis, am I to believe the enemy unit is going to ignore that one charging crazy man because he tossed a grenade, yet is fine at shooting at his mates? What is that grenade? Ticket to not getting shot while charging? Defensive grenades should be able to stop overwatch from happening for the target unit, so Tau, for example, could still overwatch with their special rules(Supporting fire?), but give the few assault units that can afford defensive grenades a better chance to get in combat at the same time.

Soulblaze is so, so terrible, and requires entirely too much record keeping for how little it really does. It's thematically added to a few units where it should be cool (Thousand Sons, for one) but it doesn't really do anything.

Baronyu wrote:
assault grenade should work for an entire unit and not just model-per-model basis, am I to believe the enemy unit is going to ignore that one charging crazy man because he tossed a grenade, yet is fine at shooting at his mates? What is that grenade? Ticket to not getting shot while charging? Defensive grenades should be able to stop overwatch from happening for the target unit, so Tau, for example, could still overwatch with their special rules(Supporting fire?), but give the few assault units that can afford defensive grenades a better chance to get in combat at the same time.

This is a good idea. Not only does it make sense fluff-wise (I know, not exactly a requirement) but it promotes finding units that synergise well together.I can only assume there's some major abuse this would allow that I'm not seeing right now.

Barrage, Snipers, And they Shall Know no Fear, Overwatch, the Allies System, Fear, True Line of Sight, removing from the front, Leadership test checks in general, random charge distance, Soulblaze.... I could go on four hours about every bad rule in the game... Oh and random psyker powers.

Barrage is a better version of sniping guns
Snipers for the most part tend to be rather pointless (pinning being rather meaningless against most armies)

And they Shall Know no Fear is currently far too good. And it is disgustingly priced. Apparently having a good characteristic/trait (combat tac, counter,etc) is being counted as .5 points and And they Shall Know no Fear costs .5. Because Chaos Space Marines cost only a single point less than Dark Angels. Worst yet CSM only start getting cheaper than Dark Angels in groups of 11 or more thanks to the mandatory "sergeant" that every squad must have. So you say, let us improve them. Oh you mean giving them a fearless stick that can be sniped or lost by a single unit dying, or fnp etc that does the same, or marks that are either worthless (6+ invuln) or phenominal (+1T etc). And then it brings up one last complication. No matter how much you spend, even if you give them +1 ld, that doesnt' deny the fact that they will likely get swept (their champion even if upgraded to be a vet will now have a ld of 10 but will soon die off and then your ld9 dudes will begin to try to retreat bbecause they lost whilst Space Marines laugh at you trying to sweep them). And that doesn't even include the fact that all of these things make Chaos Space Marines vastly more expensive than their loyalist brothers. Anyways onto the next ones...

Overwatch and Snapshots. My gosh this makes no sense. It slaps elite armies in the face whilst giving orks and Tau a way to stroak their stache and laugh maniacly at the enemy as your marines get crippled to the point their assault ends in a spectacular failure. This, along with multiple other rules, then cripples assault even more. Also how is it that orks and tau and guardsman are better at overwatch than elites such as Marines? (at the very least inititative could have been an interesting modifier)

The Allies System. Battlebrothers and allies of convenience for the Imperium yay! Oh what is that? Space Marines Battlebrothers with Tau? Complete logic. Necrons allying with GK? Truth! Chaos Space Marines battlebrothers with IG to represent the traitor guard? Naw you get allies of convenience... for no real reason! Oh and are you playing a Nid? Well NO ALLIES FOR YOU!

Fear. As previously noted, very few armies even need to roll for this. Even less have to worry about failing the ttest with their ld9 and 10 being rather frequent or capable of re-rolling such things

True Line of Sight. Brings in waaay too many arguments, restricts modelling styles. I like the fact you cannot kill units that are inside of buildings due to one or two guys standing outside but this is a game of abstraction.

Removing from the front. Want to assault? Have fun not advancing. The fluffy greentide of orks? I've seen Tau shoot Orks so that the movements the orks made meant nothing. Infact they have frequently looked like they have been pushed back. Now don't get me wrong. The shenanigans of 5th edition were utter nonsense but removing from the front doesn't even make sense if we think of it "cinematically" (which GW apparently loves so much) and it favours shooting armies honestly. I am fine with it being a front unit but.... something about the execution seems like it batched up (and how is it that overwatching blindly always hits the closest dude when the bullets are splayed about?)

Random Charge Distances. Good lord what where they smoking!? This is one of the worst implementations ever. So have fun getting shot in the face for free. Oh yeah you can roll 12.... but most people aren't going to assault 12 inches away. In fact, I have seen people avoid assaulting until at most they are 8 inches away and that was free units spawned by the tervigon. Most of the time assaults are even closer.

SoulBlaze. Honestly I forget about it! I literally forget that it exists on my CSM weapons as it does so little and requires such tract keeping

Aaaand to finish it off.... Psykers and warlord traits in general! First of all, the randomness is terrible. It makes no sense that the hardened psykers (any imperial psyker especially Space Marine and inquisitor psykers, any CSM or Daemon Psyker, any Eldar psyker, any Mastery Level 4 psyker) will have no clue what spells they are using before the battle immediately begins. And our warriors that aren't named seem to not know what they are good at until randomly rolled. Now my biggest problem with the randomness is that it promotes GW being lazy. They can freely throw in broken, balanced, and underpowered spells in the excuse that you have an equal chance of getting any of them. Cool concept for warlord traits, terrible execution.

And then Psykers themself. No offense but it isn't fun for my Pink Horror shooting to be denied 1/6th of the time, 1/3rd of the time, and 1/2 of the time. A Nid gets close enough and they become meaningless, the enemy a Space Marine player with a librarian, useless, GK, well Daemons..... Somehow the assault spells are considered bad and the spells that are good are bufffing spells. The spells decent are debuff spells. I'd rather each be equal and have merit. (also guardsman denied the witch what O.o)

This is at least my opinion. Apologies for this being so long.

 Super Ready wrote:

Baronyu wrote:
assault grenade should work for an entire unit and not just model-per-model basis, am I to believe the enemy unit is going to ignore that one charging crazy man because he tossed a grenade, yet is fine at shooting at his mates? What is that grenade? Ticket to not getting shot while charging? Defensive grenades should be able to stop overwatch from happening for the target unit, so Tau, for example, could still overwatch with their special rules(Supporting fire?), but give the few assault units that can afford defensive grenades a better chance to get in combat at the same time.

This is a good idea. Not only does it make sense fluff-wise (I know, not exactly a requirement) but it promotes finding units that synergise well together.I can only assume there's some major abuse this would allow that I'm not seeing right now.

I would go even further and remove the stupid assault into cover = I1.
Way too often: does not have grenades = do not take this assault unit. It may be kinda fluffy but it does more harm than good to the game.


ATSKNF is a no-brainer. I don't mind it being powerful. Just make it And They Shell Know No Fear and not: "expert at running away" or "I loose so I get bonuses, lol".


Random tables need to go away. Special mention to random psykers.

 Troike wrote:
The entire Faith system for the SoB. Doesn't scale at all, really hamstrings the army in higher point games. The randomness of it is also pretty dumb. Why would the faith of an army of fanatics be random?


Apparently it used to be better before, with SoB units generating faith and faith carrying over through turns. Not too familiar with it though, since I wasn't playing at the time.

I've got a PDF of the old Witchhunters codex, from back when GW had it up for free download on their site, along with Daemonhunters (unfortunately, both were removed when the Grey Knights codex came out, and they moved Kkaramazov over to the GK).

Faith points were generated by 'Faithful' units. Cannoness added 2, the lesser version added 1, etc. Each BSS gave 1 too. Was a far better system, which scaled with the size of the army. Oh, yeah, and Celestine added 3 points.

 StarTrotter wrote:

Aaaand to finish it off.... Psykers and warlord traits in general! First of all, the randomness is terrible. It makes no sense that the hardened psykers (any imperial psyker especially Space Marine and inquisitor psykers, any CSM or Daemon Psyker, any Eldar psyker, any Mastery Level 4 psyker) will have no clue what spells they are using before the battle immediately begins. And our warriors that aren't named seem to not know what they are good at until randomly rolled. Now my biggest problem with the randomness is that it promotes GW being lazy. They can freely throw in broken, balanced, and underpowered spells in the excuse that you have an equal chance of getting any of them. Cool concept for warlord traits, terrible execution.

And then Psykers themself. No offense but it isn't fun for my Pink Horror shooting to be denied 1/6th of the time, 1/3rd of the time, and 1/2 of the time. A Nid gets close enough and they become meaningless, the enemy a Space Marine player with a librarian, useless, GK, well Daemons..... Somehow the assault spells are considered bad and the spells that are good are bufffing spells. The spells decent are debuff spells. I'd rather each be equal and have merit. (also guardsman denied the witch what O.o).

I honestly don't get all the massive whining and b****ing over random psyker powers...
Fantasy players have had "random wizard spells" for over 15 years and don't bat an eyelash at it. We just get on with things and plan accordingly once we generate our "random powers" and manage to do just fine.

If you build a list that literally revolved around needing 1 or 2 specific psyker powers to work, then that's your own fault when things don't work out the way you wanted them too.
Random powers at least mean there's now some variety in the game. Player chosen powers were just awful because you only ever saw the most powerful option/s being used. You know what, I was pretty bored of dual Lash after the first 5 games, it was horribad having to put up with it for what, 5 years of always seeing the exact same pairing of CSM psychic powers?! (yay, here's Lash+Breath for the million'th time! It's so amazing that CSM's have 5-6 powers to choose from... oh wait a tick. )


As for Deny the Witch, outside of 2 armies is pretty avoidable with psychic shooting. 1/6 odds of an enemy unit nullifying your potential 4D6 hit-on-4's + 3D6 hit-on-3's with re-rolls/S6 shots is called balance.
Sure, Space Wolves & GK's especially are complete dicks to Daemons & Eldar psykers, but so what? One book is an edition behind and the other was moronically designed to roflstomp all over Daemons!

Libbies are avoidable - don't shoot anything within what, 6" of 'em and you're laughing. SitW is likewise avoidable - especially for Horrors who only have a "poor" 30" threat range and Ld10 for their tests.

The main way to 'fix' psykers would be to simply go full-tilt and bring back the entire Psychic Phase with casting & dispel dice and remove Deny the Witch entirely.
Add in an additional stipulation that you can't have more than 1 copy of a non-Primaris power and you instantly fix the spaming of key 'problem powers' like multiple Ironarm 'Nids/Nurgle MC's.

I run a mm/ccw dread in my list with a drop pod. Every single game I have played (not as many as some), I have dropped him turn one right behind my opponents' biggest tank. They are typically gone within a turn or two. I like my dreadnoughts and how they play. As we say here in 'Murica, "don't tread on me".

I will not change the rule for assault but I will add some rules for special units like the warp talons who cannot charge when they arrived by deep strike.

Because when I play my non-psyker armies, I never know whether my archon is armed with a shoelace or a huskblade, I could never know whether my beast pack has 4 razorwing flocks or 5 plain beastmasters with no "beasts" to be found. I honestly don't get the argument that "well, then you shouldn't plan your list on one or two psychic power then", why is that suddenly a problem? Why is it ok for me to plan my list on one or two special units/wargears/weapons but absolutely a no no for a psyker army to know whether his psyker is making magic muffins with mind butterflies or have Iron Arm? Because they have unique special effects? How about my necron's MSS? The effect is kinda like a psychic power, but the only "risk" I have to take is paying the points and you passing that 3D6 leadership test.

I think psykers have enough going against them, from testing ld for activation or risk taking a wound, deny the witch and various army's anti-psyker rules, that they don't need an additional random table for "balance". If they didn't want everyone to buy Iron Arm or whatever the bestest psychic power is right now, then make it more expensive to buy, or make it less powerful, or make other psychic powers worth taking.

I'm not "white knighting" psykers, I just prefer a game where both myself and my opponent knows what we're bringing, I like to win a game because of my own tactic, not some predetermined factor before the game because my opponent's dice hate him.

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get all the massive whining and b****ing over random psyker powers...
Fantasy players have had "random wizard spells" for over 15 years and don't bat an eyelash at it. We just get on with things and plan accordingly once we generate our "random powers" and manage to do just fine.

If you build a list that literally revolved around needing 1 or 2 specific psyker powers to work, then that's your own fault when things don't work out the way you wanted them too.
Random powers at least mean there's now some variety in the game. Player chosen powers were just awful because you only ever saw the most powerful option/s being used. You know what, I was pretty bored of dual Lash after the first 5 games, it was horribad having to put up with it for what, 5 years of always seeing the exact same pairing of CSM psychic powers?! (yay, here's Lash+Breath for the million'th time! It's so amazing that CSM's have 5-6 powers to choose from... oh wait a tick. )

Indeed, you do not understand.

First of all, this is WH40k not WHFB. If we wanted to play WHFB then we would play WHFB. I don't think this is hard to grasp.

As for literally revolving around 1 or 2 specific powers. Two issues:
- Do you happen to buy anti-tank for anti-tank? Are you depending on your anti-infantry to do anti-infantry duty. How is depending on a specific psychic power different than depending on vendettas to do their job? It's not. Psychic powers are not different than wargear, weapons or any other buyable upgrades. You might as well change storm shields to be D6 inv because otherwise it's having TH/SS always revolving around having 3++ save. Should Land Rider be AV11+D3 so you add variety to terminator transport? Should their teleport on 5+ make them walk from their table edge (rolled AFTER you put them into reserves)?
All those do exactly what you want from random psychic powers. It all adds """variety""". Plus TH/SS don't revolve around 1 or 2 means of transportations and armour saves. Now you can have all the tactical depth you want.
Every army has no-brainer units, units with no-brainer upgrades and no-brainer weapons. Psychic powers were nothing special in that regard.
- Why not? Why should a strategy revolving around some gimmick be automatically unplayable? I'm not saying weak, poor, easily destroyed, worst idea ever. Why should a CHOICE of a bad strategy taken away from the player? Should we only get pre-build good armies for certain point levels? Is it really so bad for the hobby that I want a specific build, the one *I* want and not the one dice will determine?

And more variety? Laughable. ( - Orkmoticon for relevance)
If you think variety means: blue prescient-chaplain, red prescient-chaplain, spiky prescient-something, prescient-guide-seer than sure, variety is great in this edition. Oh sorry, I forgot. If beatstick = take biomancy.
Show me a competitive build with Pyromancy. Show me one with Telekinesis. Now show me one with the third sad power table. I'm sure all three chaos tables are equally viable as the big dog.
You know why they do not exist? Because what you say is plain wrong.
- randomization did not help with variety,
- randomization did not help with balance,
- randomization did take away choice from the player.

And at the end the usual: This is a forum dedicated to wh40k. This is a a topic dedicated to things people don't like. If you don't understand why people write here about things they don't like in wh40k then I don't know what to tell you...

 Macok wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get all the massive whining and b****ing over random psyker powers...
Fantasy players have had "random wizard spells" for over 15 years and don't bat an eyelash at it. We just get on with things and plan accordingly once we generate our "random powers" and manage to do just fine.

If you build a list that literally revolved around needing 1 or 2 specific psyker powers to work, then that's your own fault when things don't work out the way you wanted them too.
Random powers at least mean there's now some variety in the game. Player chosen powers were just awful because you only ever saw the most powerful option/s being used. You know what, I was pretty bored of dual Lash after the first 5 games, it was horribad having to put up with it for what, 5 years of always seeing the exact same pairing of CSM psychic powers?! (yay, here's Lash+Breath for the million'th time! It's so amazing that CSM's have 5-6 powers to choose from... oh wait a tick. )

Indeed, you do not understand.

First of all, this is WH40k not WHFB. If we wanted to play WHFB then we would play WHFB. I don't think this is hard to grasp.

As for literally revolving around 1 or 2 specific powers. Two issues:
- Do you happen to buy anti-tank for anti-tank? Are you depending on your anti-infantry to do anti-infantry duty. How is depending on a specific psychic power different than depending on vendettas to do their job? It's not. Psychic powers are not different than wargear, weapons or any other buyable upgrades. You might as well change storm shields to be D6 inv because otherwise it's having TH/SS always revolving around having 3++ save. Should Land Rider be AV11+D3 so you add variety to terminator transport? Should their teleport on 5+ make them walk from their table edge (rolled AFTER you put them into reserves)?
All those do exactly what you want from random psychic powers. It all adds """variety""". Plus TH/SS don't revolve around 1 or 2 means of transportations and armour saves. Now you can have all the tactical depth you want.
Every army has no-brainer units, units with no-brainer upgrades and no-brainer weapons. Psychic powers were nothing special in that regard.
- Why not? Why should a strategy revolving around some gimmick be automatically unplayable? I'm not saying weak, poor, easily destroyed, worst idea ever. Why should a CHOICE of a bad strategy taken away from the player? Should we only get pre-build good armies for certain point levels? Is it really so bad for the hobby that I want a specific build, the one *I* want and not the one dice will determine?

And more variety? Laughable. ( - Orkmoticon for relevance)
If you think variety means: blue prescient-chaplain, red prescient-chaplain, spiky prescient-something, prescient-guide-seer than sure, variety is great in this edition. Oh sorry, I forgot. If beatstick = take biomancy.
Show me a competitive build with Pyromancy. Show me one with Telekinesis. Now show me one with the third sad power table. I'm sure all three chaos tables are equally viable as the big dog.
You know why they do not exist? Because what you say is plain wrong.
- randomization did not help with variety,
- randomization did not help with balance,
- randomization did take away choice from the player.

And at the end the usual: This is a forum dedicated to wh40k. This is a a topic dedicated to things people don't like. If you don't understand why people write here about things they don't like in wh40k then I don't know what to tell you...

SHHHHH Stop giving GW more ideas!!!

But seriously even within fantasy does no one complain that there all powerful master wiz cant conjure up a thunder bolt but instead spawn something else?

 Troike wrote:
The entire Faith system for the SoB. Doesn't scale at all, really hamstrings the army in higher point games. The randomness of it is also pretty dumb. Why would the faith of an army of fanatics be random?


Apparently it used to be better before, with SoB units generating faith and faith carrying over through turns. Not too familiar with it though, since I wasn't playing at the time.

Matt Ward hates.. HATES! sisters i think he was raped by a very militant nun at some point in his life. he is the reason for the faith points being strange, or at least so i'm told. also it's hard to deny this when he put that bit in the Grey Knights book.

Edit: it seems i'm one of the few with a hard copy of the old book. it was pretty cool if you ask me. God only knows why they did what they did.

Yeah, the psychic rules are a big pain. In general I don't feel like lots of the randomness in the game actually makes it more tactically interesting. Obviously some people like randomness for randomness' sake, but people who primarily enjoy the skill-based parts of the game have reason to object to the degree of randomness that obtains.

I want to stress that some kinds and degrees of randomness can enhance a skill-based game, but there's a balance that needs to be struck. If some random event is unimportant but very frequent, the law of large numbers kicks in and you might as well not have any randomness at all - imagine if everything had 1000 times as many wounds and all the guns fired 1000 times as many shots (ignore ID). You might as well just use expected values without rolling any dice. On the other end of the spectrum, if the outcomes of particular infrequent random events are too important, then the result of the game ends up being too strongly influenced by chance - player skill isn't important enough. If firing a bolter gave a player a 1/1000 chance of wiping out everything within 12" of the target, that would be terrible randomness. You could price it such that everything was balanced in some sense, but one in every few dozen games would just be stupid. The randomness that obtains for armies of infantry fighting each other right now is pretty good - small skirmishes will resolve in sometimes surprising ways that force the players to react, but there's enough randomness over the course of a game that it's unlikely that the dice will hugely favor one player over another over the whole game.

The problem with psychic powers is that they matter too much. If Eldrad rolls perfectly, the Eldar player is at an enormous advantage for that game. If he rolls terribly, the Eldar player is at a big disadvantage. This can still be balanced across games in the sense that the Eldar player will win only half of them, but it makes particular games much less of a contest of skill. If the games were much bigger - if each Eldar player had 10 Eldrads running around - this would be fine.

Even once you've chosen psychic powers there's a stupid amount of randomness. With typical lists, you are unlikely to score an aimed hit with a focused witchfire power in any particular game. But that makes it basically impossible to balance the ability to focus witchfire powers in a way that makes each game a satisfying contest of skill. The powers themselves often have enormous variance in their damage output. Look at Psychic Shriek - most of the time, and probably in most games, it does absolutely nothing. Sometimes it inflicts a reasonable number of wounds. And very rarely, in very few games, it will utterly annihilate even the toughest deathstars. I don't have a Space Wolves codex, but my understanding is that JotWW is even worse in this way.

This is stupid for the same reason that the old vehicle damage chart in 4th edition was stupid. Hull points reduce randomness in a valuable way. It would likewise be a terrible idea to just give every MC only 1 wound but a 2+ or 3+ FNP save. You'd have MCs dying to the first shot in some games and going on unstoppable rampages in others. Both the expected value and the variance in random variables matters. Too much variance means individual games are down to luck. Too little variance and nothing surprising ever happens.

 Hurley wrote:

 Troike wrote:
The entire Faith system for the SoB. Doesn't scale at all, really hamstrings the army in higher point games. The randomness of it is also pretty dumb. Why would the faith of an army of fanatics be random?


Apparently it used to be better before, with SoB units generating faith and faith carrying over through turns. Not too familiar with it though, since I wasn't playing at the time.

Matt Ward hates.. HATES! sisters i think he was raped by a very militant nun at some point in his life. he is the reason for the faith points being strange, or at least so i'm told. also it's hard to deny this when he put that bit in the Grey Knights book.

Edit: it seems i'm one of the few with a hard copy of the old book. it was pretty cool if you ask me. God only knows why they did what they did.

It was apparently Cruddance who wrote the rules, actually. Ward just stuck to the fluff (and did an allright job of it, IMO).

And personally, I'm not so disappointed in the Bloodtide these days. It (perhaps unintentionally) says that some Sisters are pure enough to be more uncorruptible than even the Grey Knights.

Ulcis wrote:

 Troike wrote:
The entire Faith system for the SoB. Doesn't scale at all, really hamstrings the army in higher point games. The randomness of it is also pretty dumb. Why would the faith of an army of fanatics be random?


Apparently it used to be better before, with SoB units generating faith and faith carrying over through turns. Not too familiar with it though, since I wasn't playing at the time.

I've got a PDF of the old Witchhunters codex, from back when GW had it up for free download on their site, along with Daemonhunters (unfortunately, both were removed when the Grey Knights codex came out, and they moved Kkaramazov over to the GK).

Faith points were generated by 'Faithful' units. Cannoness added 2, the lesser version added 1, etc. Each BSS gave 1 too. Was a far better system, which scaled with the size of the army. Oh, yeah, and Celestine added 3 points.

That sounds pretty nice. Hopefully we'll get something like that when a new SoB codex drops, whenever that may be...

-Champion of Chaos & Chaos Boon table: This is a cool idea but implemented so poorly it makes me wonder if it was edited on Opposite Day. Want to encourage more people to do your gimmicky challenges? Make it fun and worth the risk. Champion of Chaos should allow a reroll on the Chaos Boon table if the player was the one to issue the challenge, and the Boon table should let you have a bit of control for tailoring rewards for your guys (so you don't get +'BS on your Possessed with no shooting weapon, or can refuse to go Daemon Prince with your Juggernaut Lord because it defets the point of even having him).

-Fear: It's bad even when it works, because WS1 is not really that bad; High BS stacks so much faster and stronger than high WS in this game, and the same holds for the low scores. Fear should keep units from charging you if they fail the roll and subtract attacks from them if you were the one charging (like an offensive version of defensive grenades and still allows a LD check to avoid).

-Overwatch: Pinned units should not be able to fire overwatch. It really should required you to either not have moved or not have fired in the previous turn to be an option, too. This is not the rule that broke CC in this edition, but it's a big nail in the coffin.

-Grounding Tests: It really should require receiving a wound instead of a hit.

-Variable Charge ranges: Really should start with a fixed number (probably defined by the unit type) with a d6 added. Basic infantry could be 4+d6, cavalry, bikes and beasts 5+d6, jump packs and jetbikes 6+6 and so on. Fleet would apply a bonus to this range. It retains a variable nature but at least gives the player some basis to measure the risk and reward.

Fear needs work. Half the armies in the game being immune to a USR, is stupid.

It'd be nice it ATSKNF just gave a reroll against fear, instead of being immune. The only thing that should be immune to fear, is Fearless.