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Herzlos wrote:

As for balanced and "narrative" games; I'd say that Malifaux and Flames Of War are better than GW in every way.

Malifaux seems to have pretty decent internal/external balance, with a decent mix of craziness, plenty of story line and a reasonable chance of victory. I've played in 2 Tournaments so far and almost all of the games have been pretty close. There was even one where my master and henchment were being ragdolled by a giant teddy bear and somehow I still won the game on points. It's a very small scale game though, with a few characters per side (I think my 40ss crew runs to 9 minis).

Flames Of War seems pretty balanced; equivalent points armies usually stand a reasonable chance, and the rules allow some advantages to an infantry army against a tank army (making them defenders). Most of the balance issues I've encountered have been down to not bringing suitable options like not bringing any AA weapons when your opponent has aircraft, or not bringing any A/T guns when your opponent fields a tank army. I've never played a game where I didn't feel I had a chance of winning somehow. It's a lot more complex than 40K rules wise though, but it's all very clear so you don't need to refer to the rules often.
I've had plenty narrative games too, where the victory has come down to a single die roll. In one large game we got to the last turn with the enemy holding more objectives, and I had a unit of paras within charging range of contesting one to make it a draw. I charged, did quite well but ultimately failed, to the cheering of the victors.

Whereas in 40K, I've got a pretty casual mostly infantry IG army (PCS, 2 infantry squads, HWT team [Lascannon, HB, Missile Launcher], Ogryns, Squats, 2 Chimeras, 2 Russes, 2 Sentinels), and of my latest games I've done alright against a casual Marines army, but have been regularly tabled by everything else. Including a turn 2 victory by a Tau force with a riptide. Every deploying Marbo with a successful demo charge taking out a unit or something had no effect. The only reason I wasn't wiped out in turn 1 was because he ran out of dice. I'll still play it by my personal objectives have moved from "maybe I can win this" to "maybe I can hold out or 4 turns, or at least take out that ___ at the same time". I've no interest in spamming up my army to make winning possible. Whereas with the other 2 games I rarely see any game as a foregone conclusion at the deployment stage.

I'd say this exactly has been my experience over the last six months. It seems every game, but 40k, you have a good chance at a close game no matter how the forces go on the table. With 40k, a close game is actually a rarity and most games end up being one side getting tabled. This is the part that GW most needs to fix yet, with this coming edition, this glaring problem is going to get worse, not better.

Yeah, if I play a game of Infinity, it's pretty clear that the winner, every time, is either the player who made fewest mistakes in game, or the player who best capitalised on his/her opponent's mistakes. Winning and losing both happen due to player agency.

In 40K it's much more likely that you come away from a game thinking that there was pretty much nothing you could have done to change the outcome. Not always, but often enough to be dissatisfying.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Barrogh wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The game designers want people to fight challenges.

A simple question: why on earth would they want it considering that not all factions are built around such idea? In fact, even from "narrative" point of view it makes little (even less than from gameplay standpoint, actually) sense.

In the fluff (Codex and BL) :

Orks are more than happy to fight challenges, show them who's boss and all that.
Astartes are more than happy to fight in challenges.
Dark Elder are more than happy to fight in challenges.
Eldar are more than happy to fight in challenges.
Sororitas are more than happy to fight in challenges.
Astra Millitarium are either happy to do so or don't want to be seen to be refusing.

The only ones that are not are:
'Nids - they don't really see the point except maybe the SC Hive Tyrant?
Tau - Its close combat - not something they seek out - although Farsight would be up for it.

So IMO most factions it would make perfect sense and like Skaven in WFB you make a rule for those that don't....................

Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

More than the randomness, I object to the way that the vast majority of playing time seems to have no effect on the outcome. By the end of turn two it seems that most games have been settled.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
More than the randomness, I object to the way that the vast majority of playing time seems to have no effect on the outcome. By the end of turn two it seems that most games have been settled.

I saw a game where white scars relying on their jink lost the initiative. That was pretty much settled with that dice roll lol.

Maybe it's my meta, but 80% of our games can be called as 'close', 1 or 2 VP apart, most are actually draws etc.

Most of my good games of 40k come down to 3-4 individual rolls at the end of the game. The problem comes when I play against people who dont know the rules, or are bad at making lists. If that is the kind of game they want to play, thats fine, however I need to know in advance so I can have the right list ready. I am not going to have that list ready in a tournament, I am going in assuming that I am facing competition.

 Leth wrote:
Most of my good games of 40k come down to 3-4 individual rolls at the end of the game. The problem comes when I play against people who dont know the rules, or are bad at making lists. If that is the kind of game they want to play, thats fine, however I need to know in advance so I can have the right list ready. I am not going to have that list ready in a tournament, I am going in assuming that I am facing competition.

I know what you mean, I often find it's difficult to find the balance between curbstomping your opponent and losing... but I often learn more from a game when I lose, so I don't mind.
It is indeed incredibly fun when the game comes down to a few rolls though. Like my friend failing 3 saves and losing 3 wounds on his 2+ armour save by rolling 3 ones, and despite the odds being heavily stacked in his favour up to that point, he lost. Stuff like that is legendary and won't be forgotten.

 Barrogh wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The game designers want people to fight challenges.

A simple question: why on earth would they want it considering that not all factions are built around such idea? In fact, even from "narrative" point of view it makes little (even less than from gameplay standpoint, actually) sense.

Good question. That's a question a game developer is supposed to ask the game designer. At least up till now, Warhammer 40k had no such development workflow, so no one asked the designers what they were thinking.

At least they seem to have gotten that challenges were bastardized as defense mechanism against close combat characters, and are trying to fix that. Better than nothing, I guess.

 Nem wrote:


Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

That said, accepting and issuing Challenges makes no sense for Nids. Nids have no concept of honor or pride. They don't want to show off their skill in combat to anyone be they friend or foe. With the exception of the Swarmlord and specially grown creatures, their solution to -every- problem is "throw more bodies at it".

Tyranids issuing challenges is wierd because it's inefficient; why religate your four armed, bio-plasma puking, hulking Hive Tyrant to dueling one human a quarter of his size when he could just slaughter the whole dozen of them just as fast? Not to mention that (so far as I know) there's no examples of Nids ever speaking any real languages. They hiss, but it doesn't really mean anything. With regards to accepting challenges, I'd argue that Nids wouldn't even understand what was going on (again, Swarmlord not withstanding). Even if they did they wouldn't care; they've no concept of honor or showmanship. Again, why fight one little humie when you can slaughter the whole group? Lastly, it would be dangerous. Synapse creatures are extremely important to the Nids, and they know full-well that the best way to beat them is to hurt the web. Discounting every above point made, the mere act of risking something as critical as a higher synapse life-form is so horribly far from what the Tyranids are supposed to do.

>_> Sorry, got kind of off topic there.

morganfreeman wrote:

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

Just because the biomass is recovered, doesn't mean there is no loss in (a) growing these organisms in the first place, (b) breaking it down again (digesting things is one of the most energy-draining things an organism can do, hence why you get tired after eating a lot), and (c) re-growing these organisms again.

Quite a few animals consume many times their bodyweight on a daily or near-daily basis just to keep active. It certainly takes many hundred-times the body weight of any given creature to grow a new version of it.

Recovering biomass of slain Nids mitigates the loss a little bit, but it's still only a drop in the bucket and possibly not always the most efficient way to fight.

morganfreeman wrote:

 Nem wrote:


Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

That said, accepting and issuing Challenges makes no sense for Nids. Nids have no concept of honor or pride. They don't want to show off their skill in combat to anyone be they friend or foe. With the exception of the Swarmlord and specially grown creatures, their solution to -every- problem is "throw more bodies at it".

Tyranids issuing challenges is wierd because it's inefficient; why religate your four armed, bio-plasma puking, hulking Hive Tyrant to dueling one human a quarter of his size when he could just slaughter the whole dozen of them just as fast? Not to mention that (so far as I know) there's no examples of Nids ever speaking any real languages. They hiss, but it doesn't really mean anything. With regards to accepting challenges, I'd argue that Nids wouldn't even understand what was going on (again, Swarmlord not withstanding). Even if they did they wouldn't care; they've no concept of honor or showmanship. Again, why fight one little humie when you can slaughter the whole group? Lastly, it would be dangerous. Synapse creatures are extremely important to the Nids, and they know full-well that the best way to beat them is to hurt the web. Discounting every above point made, the mere act of risking something as critical as a higher synapse life-form is so horribly far from what the Tyranids are supposed to do.

>_> Sorry, got kind of off topic there.

You are actually incorrect, the hive mind cares only about victory, if they think the best way to do that is throw bodies at it then they will do that, if they sense some sort of psychological weakness in their prey they can exploit they will do that as well. To behead the beast is all that matters.

@morganfreeman ..wait, morgan freeman? wow.
Anyway, Largely agree with everything you've said there. It's a shame that GW show nids no love these days..
Tyranids should have their own ruleset for challenges. BUT - That said, let's see what the new edition has in store.

morganfreeman wrote:

 Nem wrote:


Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

That said, accepting and issuing Challenges makes no sense for Nids. Nids have no concept of honor or pride. They don't want to show off their skill in combat to anyone be they friend or foe. With the exception of the Swarmlord and specially grown creatures, their solution to -every- problem is "throw more bodies at it".

Tyranids issuing challenges is wierd because it's inefficient; why religate your four armed, bio-plasma puking, hulking Hive Tyrant to dueling one human a quarter of his size when he could just slaughter the whole dozen of them just as fast? Not to mention that (so far as I know) there's no examples of Nids ever speaking any real languages. They hiss, but it doesn't really mean anything. With regards to accepting challenges, I'd argue that Nids wouldn't even understand what was going on (again, Swarmlord not withstanding). Even if they did they wouldn't care; they've no concept of honor or showmanship. Again, why fight one little humie when you can slaughter the whole group? Lastly, it would be dangerous. Synapse creatures are extremely important to the Nids, and they know full-well that the best way to beat them is to hurt the web. Discounting every above point made, the mere act of risking something as critical as a higher synapse life-form is so horribly far from what the Tyranids are supposed to do.

>_> Sorry, got kind of off topic there.

Bowing to the will of the hive mind does not mean they, nor the Hive mind are stupid. The hive fleets operate in a strategic manner, it prioritizes and adapts to threats. See that one guy organizing the enemy troops? No reason to think the hive mind wouldn't priorities and put wanted posters directly to his head.

I get mad when people suggest 'Nids are too stupid to understand things. They accidentally made Doom, not in relation to their enemy or anything. Genestealers drop first out of luck. Yeah... no. While most will default to omnom programming, many of them are independent, and while influenced by the Hive mind the army is anything but stupid.

Even animals recognize a challenge.

Who says challenges rely on speaking? Many will simply be meeting on the battlefield look at each other and go 'yeah, he's mine' or 'I'll handle this', 'For glory!' etc etc. There are many reasons people choose to fight 1 to 1. You watch movies? Not always asking if they want to challenge.

I consider the challenged issued by nids to be just the critter laying claim to his meal. The Alpha lion always gets the largest and best share of the meat after all.

In this case, the lion is a Hive Tyrant and the meat is some poor commander who just happened to be within smelling distance.

 Nem wrote:

morganfreeman wrote:

 Nem wrote:


Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

That said, accepting and issuing Challenges makes no sense for Nids. Nids have no concept of honor or pride. They don't want to show off their skill in combat to anyone be they friend or foe. With the exception of the Swarmlord and specially grown creatures, their solution to -every- problem is "throw more bodies at it".

Tyranids issuing challenges is wierd because it's inefficient; why religate your four armed, bio-plasma puking, hulking Hive Tyrant to dueling one human a quarter of his size when he could just slaughter the whole dozen of them just as fast? Not to mention that (so far as I know) there's no examples of Nids ever speaking any real languages. They hiss, but it doesn't really mean anything. With regards to accepting challenges, I'd argue that Nids wouldn't even understand what was going on (again, Swarmlord not withstanding). Even if they did they wouldn't care; they've no concept of honor or showmanship. Again, why fight one little humie when you can slaughter the whole group? Lastly, it would be dangerous. Synapse creatures are extremely important to the Nids, and they know full-well that the best way to beat them is to hurt the web. Discounting every above point made, the mere act of risking something as critical as a higher synapse life-form is so horribly far from what the Tyranids are supposed to do.

>_> Sorry, got kind of off topic there.

Bowing to the will of the hive mind does not mean they, nor the Hive mind are stupid. The hive fleets operate in a strategic manner, it prioritizes and adapts to threats. See that one guy organizing the enemy troops? No reason to think the hive mind wouldn't priorities and put wanted posters directly to his head.

I get mad when people suggest 'Nids are too stupid to understand things. They accidentally made Doom, not in relation to their enemy or anything. Genestealers drop first out of luck. Yeah... no. While most will default to omnom programming, many of them are independent, and while influenced by the Hive mind the army is anything but stupid.

Even animals recognize a challenge.

Who says challenges rely on speaking? Many will simply be meeting on the battlefield look at each other and go 'yeah, he's mine' or 'I'll handle this', 'For glory!' etc etc. There are many reasons people choose to fight 1 to 1. You watch movies? Not always asking if they want to challenge.

Would it not make more sense for the entire nearby brood to attack the Commander or leader rather than leaving one (particularly valuable) organism to do it? It seems counter productive for an entire brood of tyranid organisms to standby and watch whilst their hive tyrant is cut in half by thier opponent.

It IS a strange one. But it is also off topic so let's get back on topic.

I hope they change the challenge rules in the new edition, somehow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
In my head-canon, the "challenges" issued by nids are basically just the critter laying claim to his meal. The Alpha lion always gets the largest and best share of the meat after all.

In this case, the lion is a Hive Tyrant and the meat is some poor commander who just happened to be within smelling distance.

I can't see this happening. The hive mind controls the Tyranids movements, decisions, placements, targets etc. The hive tyrant would be moving in for the kill because it was the best possible course of action seen by the hive mind.

 Nem wrote:

morganfreeman wrote:

 Nem wrote:


Why wouldn't Tyranids? Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner. Some are spawned with the explicit purpose of taking down the strongest enemies from among the enemy ranks.

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

The rules for accepting or not either way when issued a challenge make sense to any army, either you stand up and fight, or seek protection / are protected by your men, which is exactly what happens. The rules for Characters also say they must pile in as soon as they are able - they're place is on the front line. Seems GW line of thinking is Characters are the braver, captain goes down with his ship type.

Tyranids are all about wiping everything out in the most efficient and fastest way possible. They're content to hurl massive numbers of fodder at their enemies, happy in the knowledge that it's not actually a waste because the corpses will be consumed and broken down to be used once more. Tyranids also are heavily suggested to lack sentience, even amongst the 'upper' creatures such as Hive Tyrants. There are exceptions (hello Swarmlord).

That said, accepting and issuing Challenges makes no sense for Nids. Nids have no concept of honor or pride. They don't want to show off their skill in combat to anyone be they friend or foe. With the exception of the Swarmlord and specially grown creatures, their solution to -every- problem is "throw more bodies at it".

Tyranids issuing challenges is wierd because it's inefficient; why religate your four armed, bio-plasma puking, hulking Hive Tyrant to dueling one human a quarter of his size when he could just slaughter the whole dozen of them just as fast? Not to mention that (so far as I know) there's no examples of Nids ever speaking any real languages. They hiss, but it doesn't really mean anything. With regards to accepting challenges, I'd argue that Nids wouldn't even understand what was going on (again, Swarmlord not withstanding). Even if they did they wouldn't care; they've no concept of honor or showmanship. Again, why fight one little humie when you can slaughter the whole group? Lastly, it would be dangerous. Synapse creatures are extremely important to the Nids, and they know full-well that the best way to beat them is to hurt the web. Discounting every above point made, the mere act of risking something as critical as a higher synapse life-form is so horribly far from what the Tyranids are supposed to do.

>_> Sorry, got kind of off topic there.

Bowing to the will of the hive mind does not mean they, nor the Hive mind are stupid. The hive fleets operate in a strategic manner, it prioritizes and adapts to threats. See that one guy organizing the enemy troops? No reason to think the hive mind wouldn't priorities and put wanted posters directly to his head.

I get mad when people suggest 'Nids are too stupid to understand things. They accidentally made Doom, not in relation to their enemy or anything. Genestealers drop first out of luck. Yeah... no. While most will default to omnom programming, many of them are independent, and while influenced by the Hive mind the army is anything but stupid.

Even animals recognize a challenge.

Who says challenges rely on speaking? Many will simply be meeting on the battlefield look at each other and go 'yeah, he's mine' or 'I'll handle this', 'For glory!' etc etc. There are many reasons people choose to fight 1 to 1. You watch movies? Not always asking if they want to challenge.

Don't misunderstand me; I never said Nids are stupid. That's not even remotely what I'm implying.

At the end of the day though, I look at the Nids the same way I'd look at Gigar's alien. A creature / creatures who are very intelligent, easily able at picking out the weaknesses of their foes, and utterly bent on surviving and over-coming. Yet despite that, at the end of the day they are not humans. They do not think like humans and their intelligence is blended with instinct and animal ferocity.

Look at this from another perspective if you will. We've all seen Alien, right? Right. We've also all probably seen Aliens, eh? Hell, most of us have probably all even played (at least) one or two of the various games spawned by that universe?

Now let's imagine a scene in a movie which never happend. Let's imagine that there's a whole room full of marines, with Sergeant Badass xxx leading them. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a lone alien drops into their midst and doesn't attack anyone. Instead it simply hisses at the Sergeant and bares its fangs, clearing saying it wants to 1v1 the human in melee combat.

Yeah no. That bug's gonna get pasted without a second thought.

On the flip side, random sergeant walks into the alien hive, maybe finds the queen. Shouts some challenge to the queen. Subsequently the walls are jam-packed with drones, warriors, what have you.. However none of them help the queen. Instead she alone fights this lone intruder, whilst the entire hive risks its future by letting their beloved matron settle an honor duel.

Neither of those scenarios make much sense do they? And yet the Alien is the -original- hyper intelligent fully organic alien beast. It's what the Nids draw most of their inspiration from.

The bottom-line here is that challenges in their generalized format do not make any sense for Nids what-so-ever (again, swarmlord not included). You want to cut off the head of the beast and leave the army leaderless? Nuke the crap out of him with sporemines. Have a Genestealer brood / a few lictors burst from the foilage and rip him to pieces. Hell, have a Crone dive-bomb from the sky and carry him screaming into the distance. There are plenty of ways which make perfect sense, and are also way more efficient / safer than this challenge nonsense. Can anyone really stomach the image of a Hive Tyrant running upto some random space marine and basically throwing down a gauntlet of challenge? Potentially whilst the -entire- swarm simply sits idle behind them, letting their tyrant fight this lone defender of humanity?

Edit: I spelled Giger wrong. /the worst nerd ever.

 Nem wrote:


Bowing to the will of the hive mind does not mean they, nor the Hive mind are stupid. The hive fleets operate in a strategic manner, it prioritizes and adapts to threats. See that one guy organizing the enemy troops? No reason to think the hive mind wouldn't priorities and put wanted posters directly to his head.

I get mad when people suggest 'Nids are too stupid to understand things. They accidentally made Doom, not in relation to their enemy or anything. Genestealers drop first out of luck. Yeah... no. While most will default to omnom programming, many of them are independent, and while influenced by the Hive mind the army is anything but stupid.

Even animals recognize a challenge.

Who says challenges rely on speaking? Many will simply be meeting on the battlefield look at each other and go 'yeah, he's mine' or 'I'll handle this', 'For glory!' etc etc. There are many reasons people choose to fight 1 to 1. You watch movies? Not always asking if they want to challenge.

Now that would imply that 40k players would need to apply logic to understand the mechanics of the game, which clearly noone wants to do. Simply saying that someones army is stupid or less awesome usually does the trick, so lets keep doing that

Tyranids are not people. They should not think like people, they should not have special characters like people, and they should not have unique wargear like people. We are not arguing that Tyranids are stupid, we're arguing that Tyranids would no more fight in a challenge than you would duel an individual ant.

 AlexHolker wrote:
Tyranids are not people. They should not think like people, they should not have special characters like people, and they should not have unique wargear like people. We are not arguing that Tyranids are stupid, we're arguing that Tyranids would no more fight in a challenge than you would duel an individual ant.

Imagine this...

Hive tyrants drops down 20 or so yards front of a Tau squad, Does a funky roar. In relation, it's massive and the squad did not eat their weetabix this morning. they stutter, with a slight back step before readying there weapons. The commander, fueled by snickers, charges through the ranks right up in the HT's face.

The HT isn't going to walk around and dance with the commander to make sure he's hitting everyone. This is an cinematic example of a challenge where the Tau commander is challenging.

Other way around?

Tyranid waves are met by Marines. Marines are bunkered up, have nice multilayer defense line lay, the Tyranid body's pile up and the marines retreat back to the next line - and while some Hormagaunts manage to break through the numbers are not significant enough to make a difference. Awsome Marine, with his Thunder Hammer swinging is organizing the effort, halting the rouge Gants, prior attempts to cut him down with even Warrior talons failing to dink the Halo, Hive mind orders the Tyrant to take down this mighty threat.

The Tyrant descends, and Awesome marine can meet him, or fall back through the ranks.



Issuing a challenge doesn't have to be literal. It's like saying When fighting Tyranid's your HQ's should defect and attacks your own unit as they will have been all Genestealer'd by the time the rest of the Nid threat is in sight. It's called artistic license.

Nice examples, particularly the second one Nem but again, would the marines not be more at an advantage if he stayed to fight along side his brothers rather than cowering behind them?

I can see the marine running in for glory. Fine.. But running away and hiding behind his brothers expecting them to do the work for him? Why MUST he fight the tyrant one on one, or not at all? The challenge system is poor.

Edit: Surely the best course of action at this point would be to fight the Tyrant off with multiple men.. Giving the commander the edge he needs to smash the thing into oblivion...

 Mij'aan wrote:
Nice examples, particularly the second one Nem but again, would the marines not be more at an advantage if he stayed to fight along side his brothers rather than cowering behind them?

I can see the marine running in for glory. Fine.. But running away and hiding behind his brothers expecting them to do the work for him? Why MUST he fight the tyrant one on one, or not at all? The challenge system is poor.

Edit: Surely the best course of action at this point would be to fight the Tyrant off with multiple men.. Giving the commander the edge he needs to smash the thing into oblivion...

When faced with a significant threat it's not always be better to throw more people at it (Or at least by what were lead to believe), Hive Tyrants armor is strong, and normal marine do not have the weapons to deal with it (Not AP3). Think akin to Ringwraith splattering everyone who comes at it, and Eowyn bossing because she knows she alone can do it (By virtue of not being male... or something) Why get your men slaughtered when they lack the tools to be able to deal with it?

Because even if you can't kill it, maybe you can distract/deflect it enough for your commander to get a killing blow in. Or just to cover their flank (like shieldbearers)

 Mij'aan wrote:
Nice examples, particularly the second one Nem but again, would the marines not be more at an advantage if he stayed to fight along side his brothers rather than cowering behind them?

I can see the marine running in for glory. Fine.. But running away and hiding behind his brothers expecting them to do the work for him? Why MUST he fight the tyrant one on one, or not at all? The challenge system is poor.

Edit: Surely the best course of action at this point would be to fight the Tyrant off with multiple men.. Giving the commander the edge he needs to smash the thing into oblivion...

But then the Commander wont get all the glory, and the rest if his squad is encoraging him and making sure they dont get over run by the rest of the Tyranids?

I dont mind the chalange rule, its the "look out sir" rule i hate.

 Nem wrote:
When faced with a significant threat it's not always be better to throw more people at it (Or at least by what were lead to believe), Hive Tyrants armor is strong, and normal marine do not have the weapons to deal with it (Not AP3). Think akin to Ringwraith splattering everyone who comes at it, and Eowyn bossing because she knows she alone can do it (By virtue of not being male... or something) Why get your men slaughtered when they lack the tools to be able to deal with it?

The rest of the people on pelennor fields were busy fighting. Not standing around in a circle twiddling their thumbs while Eowyn took on the witch king. You will note also that she wins, in part, because merry is a badass and helps her out rather than watching.

There is literally zero reason for a challenge to ever occur unless you're a glory seeking Bretonnian / Marine. Possibly vying for favour from the chaos gods. A sensible captain of a squad will look at the lone man bellowing a challenge, dismiss him as a spanker and have the squad pile in on him.

Yes. When faced with a threat, and given the option of dying one by one or attempting to overwhelm your opponent, the latter is a better idea. Given that there's no voluntary breaking from melee and melee is so broken to begin with.

Ah well, everyone is making very good points but the thread is de railed again. Let's try to keep on topic. Why were we even talking about challenges again?

Are they changing the rules?

Apparently so
wounds are supposed to spill over from challengers, though it is for combat res or if they are actually wounds is unknown.


I'm guessing res because that's how it happens in WHFB

The What's New Today blog goes over the rulebook today. Nothing really we haven't seen yet, except a full spread of the army organization page.

Formations are 100% in - Skyblight Tyranids rejoice! (I'm a fan of Endless Swarm, myself).

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/blog/blog.jsp?_requestid=2155774

 Nem wrote:
Some armies (like Tyranids) have single model (Most of the time...) Unit's which can be specialized in CC, while precision strikes help, single models don't get -that- many attacks in CC, it can take them 3 turns to wipe out rest of a unit if the unit ignores combat res or SA's (Which is the majority of the represented armies), by that time your Hive Tyrants may even be dead from force/power weapons or weight of hits from the unit (I mean.. 4 wounds... just 4 wounds...). Many characters have extra layers of defense themselves, I wouldn't them easy kills even with Challenges, most of the time I'm hoping a Smash wound goes through - And all that is after you've spent time getting shot in the face, ran around the board to catch up just to get there.

Without challenges, the effectiveness of these units against units with other characters are very limited - It also works in favor of CC based armies where a Character is in a unit - Basically it's something that gives CC characters the upper hand.

Well, I understand that "duelist" characters could be a joke before, but you didn't have to introduce general mech in order to fix them, it was enough to make challenges available via special rule given to those specific characters. This way you could achieve the desireable effect where it was needed without disturbing proverbial bee hive of dozens of the rest units.
It could be a USR handed (via errata) to very specific ICs. In fact, challenges kinda-sorta existed in 5e exactly in this shape - as unit-specific special rule (Chapter champions anyone?).

I'm afraid that's the way things are done way to often - attempts to fix something via changing general rules although addressing a single problematic unit or creating an exception for some specific result regardless of means used to aquire it would do the trick without breaking the game somewhere else.

Also I should probably specify that I did not mean existing general rules of acquiring Precision shots/hits, rather I'm saying that GW aknowledge that there should be means to pick off specific models which is indicated by them creating precision shots/strkes rule as general BRB rule. But I'm not saying that the way it was implemented is sufficient. Right now it's hard to actually use it on demand (it was never intended to be like that, so yeah). GW could've introduced specific "anti-wargear platforms" for different factions like they once did with Vindicars or recently with DW Knights. Instead of specific tools to counter another specific tool - "hidden" wargear, we've gotten aforementioned "broad strokes treatment" for the issue that possibly does as much harm as good. It could be rather interesting, allowing those tools to be more offensive ("sniper" archetype, dedicated to screwing with strategically important equipment), or more defensive (ex.: it looks like DW Knights' "You shall not hide" was designed specifically to remove weapon that can threaten them once HtH starts - unless it was just another fluffy "get that fallen dude" rule that just happen to accidentally make sense in terms of gameplay). But right now it's random bone that is occasionally thrown to player by the whim of the dice.

What do GW try to achieve? Making their game look more balanced by outsourcing everything that is important to Random Number God and saying, "see, everyone can win in this game"? Yeah, if d6 says so, sure...

 Nem wrote:
Just because they want to nom things does not mean they are all stupid or don't act in a strategic manner.

Exactly. Because of that fighting 1-on-1 when you have entire swarm of different organisms controlled by a single emotionless mind just reeks of the opposite of "non-stupid strategic manner" - yet you may be forced into this kind of thing on tabletop under normal circumstances. Like...

 Nem wrote:

-The the Swarmlord bellowed a challenge to Calgar

...and when they wanted to take down some ork that was less dim than others, they just ambushed him with lictors, like 8 on 1 or so, without bothering to inform him in advance that they recognize him to be the only real threat to their grand scheme he was.

That's what I mean here. There are many ways to handle key crew or gear, and one would think that different factions would go differently about it, from isolating and ambushing important units to a single shot in the head from several kms to going all-out space fantasy and shouting profanities and engaging in duel and whatnot. While it looks like I'm talking fluff here, it's easy to see that different armies have practical means to pull off some of those tricks but not others, but that was disrespected and we've gotten universal rule only for the latter. Which, being universal, got immideately abused to invalidate some units (mostly ones that were supposed to handle multiple models in HtH, but there are other specific victims like Lucas).

To sum it all up, it's fair to say that "devs wanted us to fight challenges" regardless of everything: fluff, existing rules, fighting styles of different factions - as well as common sense, even if it's 40k brand of common sense.

From 'What's New Today' Make sure you click on the images as they expand to show the whole two page spread from the rulebook.

I'd see as an act of heroism: "I think I can slain by myself, so let's kill the beast before it eats some of my brother in arms".

Or just think of a Chaos Warlord. Really. Can you imagine Abaddon, the strongest, baddest and brutal "mortal" being in the whole galaxy hide behind 5 Justaerin Terminators?
Really? And he would expect to run a Black Crusade after that, maybe?

Honestly I believe that the "MUST challenge" rule for Chaos makes perfectly sense, fluss-wise. Yes, from a game perspective is never nice to "lose" control, but how I said, it would be stupid to see a mighty Warlord hide behind his subjects or refuse the opportunity to glorify himself to the eyes of the chaos gods.

Maybe it would be nicer to see the rule valid only for HQ characters (a tactical aspirant champion is not really that powerful/important) and a really bigger malus if you deny, more than being forced. But then we'd be talking about codices, not the BRB