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WayneTheGame wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
None. Everything that is added is just that, added. Nothing is taken away, and nothing is forced on you. Should you want, you get the option to expand or alter your games, and if you don't want to, no one can make you.

Nothing is compulsory, nothing is removed, so if you liked 40k pre-escalation/pre-fliers/pre-whatever, you can just keep playing at that level. If someone brings something you're not happy with, you aren't forced into playing.

Until GW revises the rules and makes Escalation/LoW baseline in the rulebook (as the rumor states they will do for 6.5/7th edition). Then it's no longer an option, and you can turn up for a random game with somebody who decides to play a Titan just because they can and you can't say anything about it other than refuse to play, because it's now no longer an addition but as ingrained as Flyers.

Imperial Knights already basically did that. Strength D and Super Heavies all in a pretty little codex package.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
None. Everything that is added is just that, added. Nothing is taken away, and nothing is forced on you. Should you want, you get the option to expand or alter your games, and if you don't want to, no one can make you.

Nothing is compulsory, nothing is removed, so if you liked 40k pre-escalation/pre-fliers/pre-whatever, you can just keep playing at that level. If someone brings something you're not happy with, you aren't forced into playing.

Until GW revises the rules and makes Escalation/LoW baseline in the rulebook (as the rumor states they will do for 6.5/7th edition). Then it's no longer an option, and you can turn up for a random game with somebody who decides to play a Titan just because they can and you can't say anything about it other than refuse to play, because it's now no longer an addition but as ingrained as Flyers.

But the point is, outside of a tournament, you CAN refuse to play it, even if it's in the core rulebook. I don't, but if I wanted to I could just as legitimately refuse to play against Triptides or even someone bringing a flier... hell, nothing even forces me to play against any particular army if I don't want to. This is a game between two people, where both have to cooperate to make it work.

If someone does bring a titan (or whatever), and no one wants to play it, they'll either change to suit the group's wishes or just play somewhere else. If there are people prepared to play it, he'll play against them while non-titan players can play amongst themselves. The internet likes to forget that this game is played by human beings, not robots that automatically default to the most OP option and force you to play against it. There is always a choice.

 Gitsmasher wrote:
Do we need 6 negative threads on the front page?

General discussion has been a bonafide complaint thread for some time now...

Super heavies, they obliviously don't belong to standard (2k or less) games.
Allies, they might've been good idea to give weaker armies handicap but is now abused brutally. Fething hate that table.

I dislike fortifications but they've been good for game.
Can't say anything about knights since I have yet to meet one on battlefield.

Most dataslates are good, Helbrute one was a gift from the gods (pun intended).

Morrslieb wrote:
Super heavies, they obliviously don't belong to standard (2k or less) games.
Allies, they might've been good idea to give weaker armies handicap but is now abused brutally. Fething hate that table.

I dislike fortifications but they've been good for game.
Can't say anything about knights since I have yet to meet one on battlefield.

Most dataslates are good, Helbrute one was a gift from the gods (pun intended).

^yuuuupppp

Morrslieb wrote:
Super heavies, they obliviously don't belong to standard (2k or less) games.
Allies, they might've been good idea to give weaker armies handicap but is now abused brutally. Fething hate that table.

I dislike fortifications but they've been good for game.
Can't say anything about knights since I have yet to meet one on battlefield.

Most dataslates are good, Helbrute one was a gift from the gods (pun intended).

+1, why not just add AoD's LoW restriction (2000+ and no more than 25% of total army cost).

I personally don't even play the game anymore, and it's getting more and more difficult to even consider getting back into. There is just too much going on I find it difficult to keep track of. It really was allies that started it, along with the near complete elimination of the assault armies.

I started as a tournament/competitive player in 4th ed.
Then I kept up with tournaments but really put a lot of effort into having well painted armies.
Then took a little break, started coming back but then 6th hit.
With 6th and allies the idea of me attempting tourneys went out the window, so I focused more on improving painting skills.
Now with the deluge of rules and oversized models, I don't even bother writing lists for fun anymore, I can't keep track of everything. So I don't buy armybooks or rules or supplements.
Now I'm at the point where I just paint, which freed me up to buy models from other companies (I probably paint more non-GW stuff now than GW stuff).

So for me 40k isn't even a game anymore, as I can't imagine trying to play it with how complicated and lopsided it is now. I still skim stuff to see if it will revert back to a game I want to play again, so we'll see. GW kept insisting they're a model company not a gaming company, and that's kind of where I went with it too. At least the models are consistently improving.

Allies. It sounds like a cool idea but GW didn't really bother balancing the potential combos so now everyone runs the same half-dozen broken lists at tournaments.

Well, I think its nothing wrong with the changes being made.

But the whole scenery became a bit chaotic since you can have a primary detachment, an ally detachment, detachments from data slates (Inquisition, flyer formation and whatnot), lord of war, fortification.

Sad that there's no option for: "Like ALL of these ideas; dislike ALL of these implementations".

I think that everything on that list is a fantastic idea (in theory) that GW has screwed up (in practice). I want a game where you can play scenarios with fliers, and where the Inquisition can show up, and where your Imperial Guard can receive some help from some allied Space Marines. I don't think any of those concepts are bad or 'out of scale' with 40K.

I just think that, in each and every one of those cases, the designers (and/or the marketing team) has implemented them in ill-considered, poorly thought-out ways. Sigh.

I would say it all depends on your local, or personal, meta. If you routinely just show up at the local store and hope to get a game with someone that happens to also show up, most likely a stranger or at best a casual acquaintance, or you like the tournament scene, then the current rules/codecies are a giant mess.

OTOH, if you're a guy that plays with a small tight group of friends as part of a regular gathering where competition is more like friendly rivalry for bragging rights and poking fun, then the current state of things isn't really a problem.

I'm personally the latter type of player and having been without a regular group since early in 4th ed. I'm now more a hobbiest than a gamer.

Data slates are awful, you get charged for the over priced rules, then for the overpriced codex then for the over priced models then for the over priced data slate.

As others have pointed out, conceptually most of the things on the list were not bad.

Its usually just he implementation of the options, or the unevenness of their application.

Poor editing, lack of timely faq's, balance issues and what is clearly a lack of adequate play testing doom many of them.

Some examples;
Fortifications - overall fine, many of the ones in the new book are good. Needs better rules editing (use examples please) and leave the D weapons out.
Fliers - flyers are fine. What was not fine was the uneven access to them and skyfire. I have to wait for a new codex to get my flyer? Should have been a "flyer book" with a new flyer and skyfire unit for each codex at launch.
Allies - the "concept" of allies is fun, fluffy and adds a lot of diversity. The reality of allies is poor play testing overall and poor balance on some books just made some combos way out of hand.
Inquisition - again, the concept and fluffy part is kind of neat...for that one game in a 100...but now the most broken parts of the book (again poor play testing) are back (really, rad grenades, psy grenades and force weapons? didn't we just leave this party?).
Escalation (super heavies) - Cool idea! Some awesome models, and a lot of fun in fighting some of the giant tanks etc. The biggest problem - D weapons, and their un-even access. I would say 99% of all the complaints I have seen about escalation focus on about 1% of the models (D blasts). Is a baneblade or macharis OP? no. Is a tyranid scythed hierodule going to be "auto win" or a tau orca? Not a chance. Tau don't even have access to a D Blast weapon, and nids dont have ANY. Should you have turbo lasers or revenants in normal games? No. Escalation otherwise....is fine.
Imperial Knights - neat idea. Where is the xenos one? The tyranid one? If this thing didn't have a D weapon, it would really just be a big dred with more hull points. Oh, don't get me wrong, I love the thing...but agian, terrible play testing, and most players can't figure out how the weapon works or how it moves (poor rules).
Dataslates/Legion of the Damned/Formations - I can add another unit to my book? Cool idea. Some have a new rule or two? Awesome! Back to play testing, balance (or the thought of balance...I mean, has anyone ever actually run the tau one?). Bad play testing, bad editing and of course some seem to exist just to boost model sales. Sad.
6th edition - Yeah it has problems, but so did 5th. Some people don't like change. in my opinion, AGAIN, the main issues in 6th were based around poor editing, lack of play testnig and them dropping the ball on FAQ's.

 Greenizbest wrote:
Allies. It sounds like a cool idea but GW didn't really bother balancing the potential combos so now everyone runs the same half-dozen broken lists at tournaments.

In 5th I was the only Tau player to show up to 15 separate tournaments, some regional, many local (but at three different game stores). Until a month before 6th came out I had not seen another Tau army for the entire edition... Some armies just never get used, I don't think allies changed that.

I think that with a little bit of houseruling or a little bit of patience to let rules settle over time, I'm fine with most of the things on the list. I even like some of them (especially the new trend towards micro-transaction-esque dataslates and formations).

There are two that stick out like a sore thumb, though, that I don't have much hope for.

The first is fortifications. We already HAVE rules for terrain. We already have terrain to do the things that terrain does. We don't need another whole force org slot to do what we were already doing. They should have just released a few optional terrain rules and be done with it.

But instead, because of how fortifications are, it screws up the good way we used to do the pre-game setup and necessarily re-rigs it so that it heavily favors gunlines. Just like purchasable terrain itself does. They don't need any help.

Degrading them to nothing more than battlefield debris with special rules attached would instantly fix all of these problems, but I fear that things will only continue to get worse, rather than better.

I'd be happiest if they just sold the terrain boxes as terrain and we just treated them as such, rather than make them special at all.

The second is fliers. Not only are they so grossly out of scale for 40k (even moreso than superheavies), but there's no way to write rules for them that make any kind of sense. GW's attempts have gone from the clumsy to the LSD-induced insane. A flier that moves so fast you can only hit it on 6's, but is going slow enough that it hits everything normally, and flies so high and goes so fast that you can't get into close combat with it, but it moves so slowly and nimbly that it can attack stuff with a close combat attack in the movement phase? What are you smoking? Please. Just stop.

If people wanted a game with ground and air forces, the game needs to be completely redesigned to have it make any sense at all (start by making it epic scale, for example). If you want to keep 40k more or less as is, you basically have two options. The first is to make airpower a game effect, rather than a set of units (so, like orbital bombardment or the MoO's off-board artillery strikes), or to give them rules that make any kind of sense whatsoever in the 40k world. But if you did this, you'd wind up making fliers fast skimmers.

Which is what they were before 6th edition came along, and is what they should become once more. Throw in a blanket cover save for the hard to hit part if you want, but please, they should behave like regular vehicles. Trying to make them both is going to be extremely, extremely awkward, just as it is right now.

Other than that, 40k can eventually absorb the rest relatively well.

Who knows, eventually they might undo some of the changes that made playing horde armies impossible.

I think all should have been implemented, but differently. If there had been rules for vetoing Escalation in the book, it would have actually made a lot of difference, even though it may not seem so since you can technically refuse anyway. Just as an example.

Hull Points, Kill Points, Formation data slates (who-hoo free bonus rules for no points increase!), Allies (in their current incarnation), and the current incarnation of D weapons.

Hull points just make vehicles hilariously easily killed MC's, resulting in the current dichotomy of vehicles either being super easy to kill or ridiculously broken when given abilities to mitigate it (flyers, wave serpents, etc).

Kill points are awful because they take no value of the unit into account, an opponent can win a battle of annihilation even when thoroughly trounced and an opponent left largely intact.

Formation data slates are obvious, free abilities for no investment and no FoC restriction.

Allies are far too abuseable as Battle Brothers, and the current allies matrix makes little sense.

D weapons are...well where to start? Hit a vehicle? 1/12 chance the vehicle lives regardless of type or armor, hit a grot? 1/6 chance it lives, hit an MC? probably better than 50/50 it lives. Heavily stilted.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think that with a little bit of houseruling or a little bit of patience to let rules settle over time, I'm fine with most of the things on the list. I even like some of them (especially the new trend towards micro-transaction-esque dataslates and formations).

There are two that stick out like a sore thumb, though, that I don't have much hope for.

The first is fortifications. We already HAVE rules for terrain. We already have terrain to do the things that terrain does. We don't need another whole force org slot to do what we were already doing. They should have just released a few optional terrain rules and be done with it.

But instead, because of how fortifications are, it screws up the good way we used to do the pre-game setup and necessarily re-rigs it so that it heavily favors gunlines. Just like purchasable terrain itself does. They don't need any help.

Degrading them to nothing more than battlefield debris with special rules attached would instantly fix all of these problems, but I fear that things will only continue to get worse, rather than better.

I'd be happiest if they just sold the terrain boxes as terrain and we just treated them as such, rather than make them special at all.

The second is fliers. Not only are they so grossly out of scale for 40k (even moreso than superheavies), but there's no way to write rules for them that make any kind of sense. GW's attempts have gone from the clumsy to the LSD-induced insane. A flier that moves so fast you can only hit it on 6's, but is going slow enough that it hits everything normally, and flies so high and goes so fast that you can't get into close combat with it, but it moves so slowly and nimbly that it can attack stuff with a close combat attack in the movement phase? What are you smoking? Please. Just stop.

If people wanted a game with ground and air forces, the game needs to be completely redesigned to have it make any sense at all (start by making it epic scale, for example). If you want to keep 40k more or less as is, you basically have two options. The first is to make airpower a game effect, rather than a set of units (so, like orbital bombardment or the MoO's off-board artillery strikes), or to give them rules that make any kind of sense whatsoever in the 40k world. But if you did this, you'd wind up making fliers fast skimmers.

Which is what they were before 6th edition came along, and is what they should become once more. Throw in a blanket cover save for the hard to hit part if you want, but please, they should behave like regular vehicles. Trying to make them both is going to be extremely, extremely awkward, just as it is right now.

Other than that, 40k can eventually absorb the rest relatively well.

Who knows, eventually they might undo some of the changes that made playing horde armies impossible.

I agree with you on fliers actually. They should be hit at normal ballistic skill, and skyfire should simply reduce their cover save. For instance, you hit the flier on normal BS, but they normally get a 3+ cover 2+ if they zoom, and skyfire reduces that to 6+. I would find those rules to make more sense then hitting on a 6 and they still get a 5+ cover save 4+ if they are Eldar or Tau fliers.

Personally, I agree with some of the sentiments already posted. They were all good ideas that were just implemented poorly.

I vote for 6th ed. I say the whole edition because the way I look at it 6th brought all these bad extras with it.

Fliers: I like fliers, but some are broken and some are not. I don’t think this is an issue with the unit but more or less an issue with how they have been implemented. The need to take an AA weapon in a game of this size on a 48” board is wrong. Adding AA to already used units like pintle mounted weapons on tanks would fix that issue.

Allies: I like the idea of allies but should not have been added in. It should be the way it used to be and ask your opponent if he/she is alright if you take a small attachment of IG so you can get your Russ back in your Space Wolves.

Escalation/Imperial Knights: Like everyone else has said. They belong in Apoc and that’s it. D weapons should have never have happened.

Legion of the Damned: Why… Why is this even a thing. Add some of the extras into the SM book that we alrady paid $60 for (if you bought it). No more $20-$30 dollar extras for things that can easily be added into an existing book or can be DLC.

For the most part I like a lot of it. As always some of it will be liked some won't. I feel the biggest issue is that too much of it was just poorly implemented and can easily be fixed with the right amount of effort.

I'm fine with GW's ideas, but I disagree with their execution, so I change it.

Allies were a terrible idea in 2nd edition. Still a terrible idea now.

The problem is, these issues will never stop, and will probably worsen with time.

Too many have drank the kool aid. GW doesn't care about the rules of the game, except as a way to sell models. If this were not the case, we would not have a codex for a *single* super heavy walker. Sadly, the response from the masses was "awesome"...

"They've grown accustomed to the smell, now people love that gak. We're working it" - Don Henley

I feel like allies and formations have a place as one entity.

Imagine the mercenary codex that we originally hoped would come. In it there are units like the Tau Firebase or something like a Bike squadron.

Specific units, specific sizes, and that's it. You get one mercenary slot and go off the standard chart (modified a bit and not allowing IC to join units). That way you can avoid some of the insane things, get some flavorful additions, and GW can keep some nice model/book sales.

It only really gets nuts when you leave it unchecked. Lets see, 202 points to ally in Eldar and get two insanely fast objective claiming jetbike squads AND twin-link two units? Sign me up.

I voted "none".

All these concepts are interesting and I enjoy having more options. But when moving from concept to implementation something was missing. Executive meddling? Excesive greed? Lack of talent and/or professionality in the Studio? Not enough resources to test your product before it hits the market? I don´t know the cause, but the final result is a nearly unplayable mess.

Thankfully we have house rules!

 da001 wrote:
I voted "none".

All these concepts are interesting and I enjoy having more options. But when moving from concept to implementation something was missing.

I've seen this as an answer quite a bit, and I am not sure I agree with the notion that "the ideas are good, but poor implementation" would be an appropriate reason to not select any of them.

Think about it this way, almost any vague concept that a 10 year old comes up with as an addition to 40k would probably be good if the implementation was good. However, the question is, "which changes should never have been made" and the changes are the ones with the specific implementation, not just the generic idea.

So the way I envisioned the responses to be was that you would select the change that was made and HOW it was made (not generic idea) if you think the change should not have been made.

Anyway, just my little comment.

Thank you to everyone who has participated thus-far, I hope you are learning as much as I am.

Superheavies are the only thing that don't belong and work perfectly.

Escalation is an expansion, it even says so right in the White Dwarf that announced its launch. If you don't want to play with it, don't play with it. I personally don't have much interest in it, but I can see the appeal. If local tournaments allow it, don't go to em. That's just voting with your wallet.

I'm not a huge fan of fliers, and the Inquisition and Legion of the Damned codices aren't necessarily things I wish weren't introduced to the game, but rather were just differently handled. I'm cool with allying in either from a fluff/potential ally situation, but I wish there was more content. If "low content codices/supplements" were an option, I'd have ticked that.

 Ryan_A wrote:

 da001 wrote:
I voted "none".

All these concepts are interesting and I enjoy having more options. But when moving from concept to implementation something was missing.

I've seen this as an answer quite a bit, and I am not sure I agree with the notion that "the ideas are good, but poor implementation" would be an appropriate reason to not select any of them.
(...)

To elaborate:
I´d always assumed that this game was supposed to be played against your friends, in a friendly environment. With the players willing to talk to each other about what to use in order to everyone to get "fun". If you want to play with, say, Escalation, it is OK. It is good that the option is there. The way it was implemented was awful, so you talk with your friends and fix it (basic example: we follow the Forgeworld rules about when you can field a superheavy, and you must inform your opponent that you are bringing it). This is a social game. Reach an agreement and have fun. In this regard, most of the changes you listed add variety to the game, and I welcome them. Many of them need house ruling, but I love house ruling. Actually, the worst the official rule is, the easier is to get an agreement about the need of house rules.

From a competitive point of view, this is nonsense: you do not befriend with "the enemy". During the talking, people will push forward trying to get advantages in order to maximize the chances of winning. Cue violent arguments about what should be allowed and what shouldn´t. And all the "options" are a potential source of conflict, so they can be "bad". From this point of view, most (if not all) of the changes you listed are bad. People (ideally, GW) should work on a "w40k redux", with few, well written, balanced rules to play tournaments. I would love to play 40k in such a competitive way, but it is just not possible right now.

Think about it this way, almost any vague concept that a 10 year old comes up with as an addition to 40k would probably be good if the implementation was good. However, the question is, "which changes should never have been made" and the changes are the ones with the specific implementation, not just the generic idea.

I can think of many concepts that would be awful no matter how you implement them.
1) Random tables everywhere. Random powers. Random charges. Random gifts. Random randomness. (This is part of the 6th edition, just like flyers, allies and fortifications, but you didn´t list it.)
2) Increasing the complexity by adding new basic attributes.
3) Changing the d6 system for a d10 or even a d100 system.
4) Allowing a pay-per-win system. Example: you buy re-rolls using real money. I have seen this in a GW event.

 kronk wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
and you can turn up for a random game with somebody who decides to play a Titan just because they can and you can't say anything about it other than refuse to play

I don't have a problem with that at all. Just say no!

But you end up with an army you can't play and with wasted time to go a shop to find people which you may play against. No one who can take a legal option , that makes his army better , will drop it just so your army has a chance . This will soon mean you can only play against people who just started , have unfinished or bad lists , and playing against those isn't much fun .

Escalation in my area turned the game in to a game of who can buy recasts titans or scrach build fortifications.


I voted against escalation/stronghold and inq. Even if I use both .

 Paradigm wrote:
If someone brings something you're not happy with, you aren't forced into playing.

Just waiting for Peregrine to come along and call you "TFG"

But seriously, almost everyone on that list. I don't really mind Imperial Knights, but IMO they should have been made a proper army instead of "take 3-6 of this one model and call them an army!"

I dislike the allies rules, if you wanted to play allies, nothing was stopping you before. I had plenty of games with allies before 6th edition, they didn't need to be made part of the core rules.

Flyer rules are a terrible attempt to get more models in to a game that doesn't suit them. I'd rather have seen a separate "flyer phase", where flyers do their thing then disappear and certain units can shoot at them as they do.

I don't really mind fortifications, but I think along with several other things, they should have just been put in a supplement alongside some missions that are suited to taking fortifications.

Dataslates can be ok, but they're poorly implemented. Formations are just an excuse to break the FOC and are better suited to Apoc IMO.