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 Sir Arun wrote:
I sincerely hope that 7th edition wont be like what 3rd edition was to 2nd edition, i.e. stripping the game off all its complexity and starting from scratch with an oversimplified ruleset that robbed a lot of fun from the game

At this stage starting from scratch may well be the only thing that can save 40k.

 Sir Arun wrote:
I sincerely hope that 7th edition wont be like what 3rd edition was to 2nd edition, i.e. stripping the game off all its complexity and starting from scratch with an oversimplified ruleset that robbed a lot of fun from the game

I hope it's exactly like that because I think most of the complexity in the game at the moment is unnecessary bloat rather than genuine depth.

 Bull0 wrote:

 Lockark wrote:

It's actully the fact wounds are removed from the front rank that hurts the most for any assault based army that is't wearing power armour.
Overwatch is just the iceing on the cake.

Man, the whole wounds removed from the front thing can feth off completely. I don't go in for the "6th is too complicated and random" "I hate mysterious objectives" stuff but that particular change is horrible. Look at my cowardly sergeant hiding at the back of his squad. I feel heroic.

I wouldn't mind the randomness if it wasn't for wounds off the front. =/

walking places on foot as orks has been suicide for me in 6th, since by the time you get anywhere you have lost all your srgs. and special weapons you needed to be effective at doing anything. I legit feel 6th has been a broken edition.

Basically we are getting debugged 6th edition, with hopefully all the Escalation and Stronghold rules, and please all the Dataslates, and all the races renamed to their pseudo-latin titles to avoid more Chapterhouse madness.

Zweischneid wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:
Assaulting after deep strike never existed in prior 40k editions, save for the old Vanguard Vets rules.

Old 4th Edition CSM Codex "generic" Daemons could assault after Deepstrike, no?

Technically it was not Deep striking, but Summoning.

Major differences, since wargears and powers that affected DS units din't affect Summoned Deamons, and also the fact that if you din't have any Icon on the table when the Deamons would come from reserves, they couldn't be deployed.

Had an adversary rage quit the game when he saw my 8 Bloodletters be Summoned, scatter, then assault and kill a whole Termi sqaud, he called me a cheater because DSing units could'nt assault, when on to show him the Summonings rules and explain to him the difference, packed his army and left the room.

The only time in my life that i saw someone ragequit when playing Vs Chaos...

 Allod wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Allies are fantastic from the perspective of fluffy gaming

I've never understood this reasoning to keep the allies rule. If allies are fluffy, why do you need a rule telling you you're allowed to take them, just ask your opponent and take them. I had heaps of allied games with friends before the allies rules existed.

Allies, IMO, should be a house rule. By default they do not exist, but if you want them, discuss it with your opponent and decide what are fluffy and/or fair allies to take.

What AllSeeingSkink said. I could see ally rules being an optional guideline, like in the WHFB rulebook, just to give you something to work off IF you want to incorporate them into a casual game, but as core mechanic, they suck.

I have frequently played with or against allies pre-6th edition (houseruled) and initially tought they were a neat addition, but it turned out horrible.

In retrospective, I hated pretty much everything about 6th edition (not that 5th was perfect, but IMO all the "fixes" just made the game less enjoyable on the whole) and would be happy if 7th really was a new game instead of an update to 6th.

Maybe GW was studying market trends and found that they had milked the 'allies' as much as they could (the market that didn't have Riptides have made their purchases, and the market that had Tau, Eldar, Chaos, Orks have supplemented their armies with another). Now, they're going to pull allies from 7th, leaving people with an army and a fraction of another army, forcing them to fill out their former allies into a second army, doubling their profits!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I hope it's exactly like that because I think most of the complexity in the game at the moment is unnecessary bloat rather than genuine depth.

That is a great way to put it: bloated. That is the perfect adjective for 6th Edition, imo.

 puma713 wrote:
Now, they're going to pull allies from 7th, leaving people with an army and a fraction of another army, forcing them to fill out their former allies into a second army, doubling their profits!

I saw that coming the minute allies were confirmed for 6th. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't happen because it's just so perfectly greedy and dickish for them not to do it.

 Sidstyler wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
Now, they're going to pull allies from 7th, leaving people with an army and a fraction of another army, forcing them to fill out their former allies into a second army, doubling their profits!

I saw that coming the minute allies were confirmed for 6th. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't happen because it's just so perfectly greedy and dickish for them not to do it.

On the other hand, the only purpose of the ally system as it is seems to be to create additional demand for new kits ("Ally with Tau to get this Riptide!"), so I fear they already decided that this route is more profitable than forcing people to stick with their chosen army.

What I'd love to know is whether they really started penning 7th edition before the ink on 6th was dry or wrote 7th as an unprecedented rush-job in response to some development they didn't anticate. Either would say much about the current mindset at GW.

 Sidstyler wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
Now, they're going to pull allies from 7th, leaving people with an army and a fraction of another army, forcing them to fill out their former allies into a second army, doubling their profits!

I saw that coming the minute allies were confirmed for 6th. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't happen because it's just so perfectly greedy and dickish for them not to do it.

And the best part is that they can bring Allies back to next edition, and thus continue milking the system indefinitely

 Therion wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Allies are fantastic from the perspective of fluffy gaming, and getting rid of them isn't going to suddenly turn 40K into a balanced tournament ruleset the ruthlessly competitive types will just cheesemonger another way, so why take away the options Allies provide?

Fluffy allies? Haven't seen any yet although I don't play very often. I've only seen the power combos of some sort lifted off the internet or units that plug holes for armies with a glaring weakness (like adding in a close combat unit or two to Tau or IG that has no relation to "fluff"... why buy ogryns when you can get assault units that are much better pt for pt from allies? Psychicly weak army like Tau? Throw in a farseer and suddenly you got table wide protection with the old codex). I franky hope allies become an alternative to a second force org in 2000pt games and up instead of standard at all games. I also hope they truly cut back significantly on who is considered a battle brother. Marines disregard guardsmen as unreliable and inferior and IG hold marines in awe or fear them but suddenly they're bro-fisting across every battlefield? Tau and eldar have almost nothing in common yet suddenly they're brothers from another non-human mother? I see both the theoretical and practical reasons why GW introduced allies but in the end they're just a cheese tool for the majority of people I see. I do see the value in having them but I think just like with escalation and stronghold that allies should be reserved for "bigger" games of 2001+ pts.

It's true. As long as allies exist, designing codices is pretty much impossible unless the first special rule is "Cannot ally with anyone". Any intended weakness to balance the obvious strengths will just be avoided by players by going dual or triple codex.

And before those same players would just have avoided those codices which strove for balance and continued to use/waited for the inevitable release/s in every edition which were demonstrably superior on the table, or they'd ignore the "intended weakness" and build ludicrously boring but extremely effective armies around the strengths. If there are no Taudar or Eldarcrons or whatever then we'll just go back to seeing endless waves of Chimeltavets and Long Fang-spam.

You can't stop the cheesemongers unless GW undertake to transform 40K into a tightly-balanced, heavily-playtested set of rules, which we know they're not going to do any time soon, so why advocate for something which merely changes the flavour of cheese you're forced to endure, but takes away a lot of options for those players who do enjoy fluffy combos? I like being able to show up at a club or store and not have to spend part of my increasingly limited time to actually play games bartering a gentleman's agreement, just so I can put some of my armies on the table, not to mention that in my own anecdotal experience a lot of the daft resistance I used to get for "counts as" has melted away now that Allies have made such things commonplace.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Allies are fantastic from the perspective of fluffy gaming

I've never understood this reasoning to keep the allies rule. If allies are fluffy, why do you need a rule telling you you're allowed to take them, just ask your opponent and take them. I had heaps of allied games with friends before the allies rules existed.

Allies, IMO, should be a house rule. By default they do not exist, but if you want them, discuss it with your opponent and decide what are fluffy and/or fair allies to take.

I personally like taking my IG alongside my SW, which is a pretty understandable alliance. However for the sake of having a better core game, I'd rather the core rules didn't have allies and if I want to take them as allies, I just ask my opponent first... kind of like I did before 6th edition, lol.

As I already stated above; not everyone gets to game in a house with their mates, and not everyone enjoys spending a big chunk of their limited play time justifying their army's existence to random opponents and then haggling over specifics. Allies eliminate that nonsense, with no downsides which were not already inherent to 40K.

I'm inclined to agree; take allies away and people will only complain that win-at-all-costs gamers are doing something else they disapprove of. It's a lot easier than admitting you've been fairly beaten.

I think keeping allies in their current form just because things like the Leafblower and Grey Knights spam armies always existed is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I understand that you cannot expect to only meet reasonable people when you are dependant on pick-up games with strangers. And I'm all for fielding Traitor Guard with Chaos Marines, or Genestealer Cults (which ironically still is impossile), or Tau with Gue'vesa allies.

My issue with the ally system of 6th is that nine out of ten people seem to use it to cheese out their army AND drop a pile on the fluff while they do it. Thankfully I rarely do pick-up games with strangers, but if I had to, I would feel my enjoyment of the game assaulted on two fronts, which is a bit naff.

These days, with digital mini-codices, I'd much prefer to have all "fluffy" combos supplied with a mini-dex instead of catch-all ally rules.

 Allod wrote:

These days, with digital mini-codices, I'd much prefer to have all "fluffy" combos supplied with a mini-dex instead of catch-all ally rules.

Well, the problem is that with mini-dexes, you'll only ever be able to play the stuff GW pre-chewed for you Warmachine style. "Catch-all" ally are by default superiour, because they allow people to step outside the example-fluff provided by GW and be creative on their own. That's pretty much a must-have if you want to keep the creative and imaginative people and not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Allod wrote:

These days, with digital mini-codices, I'd much prefer to have all "fluffy" combos supplied with a mini-dex instead of catch-all ally rules.

Well, the problem is that with mini-dexes, you'll only ever be able to play the stuff GW pre-chewed for you Warmachine style. "Catch-all" ally are by default superiour, because they allow people to step outside the example-fluff provided by GW and be creative on their own. That's pretty much a must-have if you want to keep the creative and imaginative people and not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

Talking of fluff sheep, How are you today

 Zweischneid wrote:
not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

Uh ? What is that ? Fluff-sheep ?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

Uh ? What is that ? Fluff-sheep ?

People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Well, the problem is that with mini-dexes, you'll only ever be able to play the stuff GW pre-chewed for you Warmachine style.
<snip>
[...] keep the creative and imaginative people and not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

You mean like from third to sixth edition, 1998-2012? Those 14 years that drove away the creative and imaginative people and made the 40k-community devolve into PP-style fluff-sheep?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

 Zweischneid wrote:
"Catch-all" ally are by default superiour, because they allow people to step outside the example-fluff provided by GW and be creative on their own.

They are superior if you want maximum flexibility for fielding your models in pick-up games. Fair enough, but I wouldn't call that "default". There's plenty of other fields where these rules do more harm than good at the moment.

As one of those "creative and imaginative people" who always had more counts-as stuff than models straight out of the box, I have personally come to the conclusion that it probably was for the best to throw out ally rules with 3rd edition (or, for the same reason, Dogs of War in WHFB, although I loved and used them) because they tend to sabotage the "game" aspect of the hobby.

This thread seems to have captured all of the vocal anti-GW crowd. Please don't make the assumption that the majority of 40k players don't like 6th edition.

I personally much prefer it to 5th, particularly in terms of wound allocation, flyers, hull points, pre-measured range, etc. etc. I also think, from a casual player's perspective, that allies are brilliant. I now have a fluffy, themed Sisters force allied with Inquisition.

Finally, I'm also a big fan of Escalation, which lets me field my Warhound Titan in non-Apoc games without having to beg, or allow it to be nerfed into the ground through house rules.

If 7th leads to a rulebook with all of the FAQs included, along with supplements, packaged in a cool new starter set, then I, for one, am happy.

It's not even about that, from my perspective; I like the fluff as it's presented(mostly, my 10th Legion bionic gauntlet is now permanently jammed in place flipping GW the bird), but there are many parts of the fluff, even just the fairly mainstream and well-detailed Imperial parts of it, which you simply can't explore properly on the tabletop when limited to a single official Codex.

Would I prefer it if I could rely on getting a game with homebrew rules, either amalgams of existing units from different codices or completely fan-written material? Definitely, but I can't, in fact I can virtually guarantee the opposite outside of my own "gaming group" who now live all over the place and can only get together once or twice a year. Allies mean my Mechanicus and Dark Mechanicus can be more than just "red Imperial Guard" and "Chaos Marines with cogs on", they allow people to create interesting Radical Inquisitorial armies, they allow Arbites to see the table more completely even than you could manage with the old Codex:Witch Hunters, they let people put together minor Xenos factions that are only alluded to in 40K or which have come out of the Heresy-era material in recent years. I and others can do all that without once having to deal with someone whinging about "bu-bu-bu-but it's not official!" or spending twenty minutes haggling over some minor point of WYSIWYG; it's brilliant.

If the price of that flexibility(and while it may technically be possible to have as much flexibility or near to it AND tight balanced rules in a general sense, in the context of 40K and the GW of the day's attitudes it is not) is giving the powergaming types a few new ways of putting together ridiculously unbalanced lists which will tear fluff and casual players apart than they had before, well who cares? Take those away and as I said, you get exactly the same problem but everybody has less options and variety available.

 Bull0 wrote:
It's a lot easier than admitting you've been fairly beaten.

Getting beaten fairly can be suprisingly uncommon in a game as fundamentally broken as 40k.

 Zweischneid wrote:
People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

I have to agree with this statement. How lame are people for liking fluff written by other people?

For the same reason, I look down on anyone who reads novels instead of writing their own. So you read Lord of the Rings? Pffft! Tolkien-sheep! Real fantasy fans write their own interminable, convoluted sagas!

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
not have the 40K-community devolve into mindless PP-style fluff-sheep.

Uh ? What is that ? Fluff-sheep ?

Fluffy sheep. Sheep with lots of wool on them, as opposed to shorn sheep, which are less fluffy but much more pissed.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
If 7th leads to a rulebook with all of the FAQs included, along with supplements, packaged in a cool new starter set, then I, for one, am happy.

That would be a more useful thing if the FAQs were in any way comprehensive.

2 years and we still have no idea how to draw LOS with Artillery, just to pluck an example out of the ether.

 insaniak wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

I have to agree with this statement. How lame are people for liking fluff written by other people?

For the same reason, I look down on anyone who reads novels instead of writing their own. So you read Lord of the Rings? Pffft! Tolkien-sheep! Real fantasy fans write their own interminable, convoluted sagas!

Tolkien totally stole his stuff from WFB...

 insaniak wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

I have to agree with this statement. How lame are people for liking fluff written by other people?

For the same reason, I look down on anyone who reads novels instead of writing their own. So you read Lord of the Rings? Pffft! Tolkien-sheep! Real fantasy fans write their own interminable, convoluted sagas!

There's a difference between enjoying other people's work and copying it.

Sure you can like Tolkien.

But yes, if you write a book yourself, you shouldn't just copy Tolkien (or, at least, it would be considered bad taste in most fields).

Similarly, you can like and enjoy GW/PP studio armies/background.

But if you start building your own army, you might want to do something more than blatant copycatting.

Blatant copying? So... I can't make an Ultramarine army? I should come up with my own force rather than being a sheep and following the written fluff? That's what you're arguing here? I mean really, trust Zwei to think of a new way to attack the community. First it's bleating about WAAC players, now he's attacking people who like the fluff - how dare people like the fluff!

Gotta get them clicks!!!

 Zweischneid wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

I have to agree with this statement. How lame are people for liking fluff written by other people?

For the same reason, I look down on anyone who reads novels instead of writing their own. So you read Lord of the Rings? Pffft! Tolkien-sheep! Real fantasy fans write their own interminable, convoluted sagas!

There's a difference between enjoying other people's work and copying it.

Sure you can like Tolkien.

But yes, if you write a book yourself, you shouldn't just copy Tolkien (or, at least, it would be considered bad taste in most fields).

Similarly, you can like and enjoy GW/PP studio armies/background.

But if you start building your own army, you might want to do something more than blatant copycatting.

Oh wow, I almost choked on a spoon when I read that. The sheer irony of trying to tell people they shouldn't copy other people's stuff while defending GW

 jonolikespie wrote:


Oh wow, I almost choked on a spoon when I read that. The sheer irony of trying to tell people they shouldn't copy other people's stuff while defending GW

I am not defending GW. They've clearly moved away from promoting creativity nearly as much as PP.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:


Oh wow, I almost choked on a spoon when I read that. The sheer irony of trying to tell people they shouldn't copy other people's stuff while defending GW

I am not defending GW. They've clearly moved away from promoting creativity nearly as much as PP.

Have you ever read into the iron kingdoms? You know, guts n gears, the gavyn Kyle files? How about the iron kingdoms rpg material? Whether it's the d20 material, or the new ikrpg, trust me, pp do a great job on creating a vibrant, gritty, characterful world with thousands of years of history, immense depth and great characters. There are very few 'direct ports' of typical fantasy archetypes.Everything has a bit of a twist to it.

Sure, pp are stricter about conversions than gw, but even there, look at their no quarter magazine. Painting competitions, themed diorama competitions, conversion challenges (yes, they do these too!) , gaming puzzles and so on. And there are some awesome conversions out there. Rico stormwall, storm scorpion, and the baby mammoth (all googleable!) pop into my mind. Heck, in the most recent nq (I think!) I read an article of a poster who had converted a pirate themed Horluk doomshaper, with plans for an army to follow.

Fine. All the army leaders are 'names'. But there is nothing stopping you creating your one regiment/batallion and telling its story. Don't get so shortsighted. Beyond that, you've got theme lists. There are any number if ways to 'anchor' your army in the setting In a very stylish and accurate way. There are any number of ways to place your own footprint in the game. But I'm sure you'll happily ignore this, and keep spouting nonsense as though it's fact.

Creativity? They have it in spades. As do we in the community. Trust you to be blind and ignorant to it though.

 Zweischneid wrote:
People simply re-bleating the prefab fluff they get drip-fed straight from the company... ya know, those without that brains to be creative themselves, test the boundaries and forge their own narratives.

I have no idea what “test the boundaries” is supposed to mean here. Really. As for the rest of the message, the only way that I can see which would make Warmachine/Horde players less likely to write their own fluff than 40k players is the lack of generic Warcasters/Warlocks. But since my 40k faction only allows for one extremely, massively lame generic HQ, and one special character which is just bad/passable and therefore always get picked instead, in every game, I do not feel such a difference. I actually have more specific, creative fluff for my Horde army (Captain Gunnbjorn having recruited rebellious young trollkins into the “1rst Infantry Regiment of the United Kriels of Immoren” with guns all over the place, and a bad attitude. Cartoony mix of action-movie U.S. army and rebellious young) than I do for my 40k army (which is just some random Minor Order, which only originality is on the paint job, because they are all blacks (so very few 40k black models), with blond hair).

Actually I think all the codecies “Color marines” are much bigger offenders against promoting writing a creative fluff for one's army than having pre-set alliances. How can you make any original army within such a restricting canvas as those very very specific chapters ? And giving chapter-specific traits instead of generic traits with some preset traits for official chapters is just one more way of encouraging people to just follow GW fluff rather than write their own chapter.