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 Swastakowey wrote:
I agree, I hope I am wrong and you are right. If 8th is the overhaul then yea I was just crying falling sky. If not then I am fairly sure unbound will start going the flyers route.

Ok, the Warp was calm and I passed my perils check, so here are my predictions for 8th: Simplified rules for vehicles (Vehicles having wounds and toughness values), streamlined shooting rules (like, heavy weapons adding extra punch to a squad's firepower, but no longer having separate profiles), simpler morale, leadership and equipment, redefined units (i.e. units being comprised of two or more infantry squads and their transports) and minor changes to the I-go-u-go system (by introducing things like defensive fire and supression).

In all, a mixture of Epic and those lean 1-page rulebooks, sacrificing micromanagement to better accomodate larger battles and a wider variety of unit types.

Swastakowey showed a moment of doubt in GW? Whoa! That's bigger news than 7th ed.

haha, just shows how reasonable I can be

But in all honesty, despite liking a majority of the rules this time round, I see myself slowly loosing faith in GW. I had a line, and they smudged it, if they take it further, my line will be lost and they will lose me support.

actually I think the rules allow a heavier themed possibility by giving the player freedom to use creativity.
For example, I want my Iyanden to be supported by Dark Eldar appearing out of nowhere to support them. Now I can represent this by summoning daemons (wyches as dameonettes, Hellions as seekers etc). On the battlefield it will look like they are appearing through warp gates to assist my Iyanden even though summoning Slaaneshi daemons in an eldar army is soooooo against the fluff. But with a little imagination and creativity, it can work.

Wasn't rogue trader and 2nd ed pretty much a sandbox where you could take anything?

Edited for rudeness - MT11

Orktavius wrote:
Wasn't rogue trader and 2nd ed pretty much a sandbox where you could take anything?

Yet again, read the OP.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Hmmm I feel like some people arent reading the whole thing first. Sky is falling people should read the original post. I dont think I mentioned anything like the sky is falling really. Simply worried as to how lists will be made in the future.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Anyone else not looking forward to this dystopian gaming future of a dystopian game?

'Dystopian future' sounds pretty much 'help the sky is falling' to me
Though a dystopian game is far from bad, actually. Dystopian Wars is a great game.

I like to win. I would not call myself a WAAC player. But I was tempted to go Tau when I heard how powerful they were. But you know what won me out? How AWESOME the Orks looked to me. Nothing even compared to the Orks in terms of coolness. I don't play a whole lot but I love to model things.

If newer players are ANYTHING like me they won't like the look of said army.

I started out with Ultramarines, which is what a lot of players do in the beginning. After a while, i thought Marines in general were rubbish (this is before the latest edition codex) but that was me just not being veru knowledgable still being a relatively new player. I look around for a new army that i can get behind. I'm thinking of an army with lots of firepower and less melee. I see Tau as a possibility. But I look around the interwebz, and see that playing them is an uphill battle considering they haven't had an update in a loooong time. Just to check, i search for new Tau codex rumours. And lo and behold, the new Tau Empire codex is due out soon. I wait until it's out, to see if it's a good codex. The early reviews were favourable, so i went for it. Not because it was a top tier codex (I don't think it was known how good the codex was during the early stages), but because it fitted what I was looking for, and it had multiple viable lists that could be played.

That should be the reason people start an army (besides collecting just for the building/painting aspect). All these players that look for ways to break the system, buy into powerful codices because they are always looking for a one-up on their opponent, and overall just try and flaunt their money around as they buy the most powerful Lord of War they can, these people just don't get it. While the 40K ruleset does provide the chance to provide some fantastic, down to the wire, games, there are gaps that allow certain gamers to take ridiculous advantage, and this is when the competitive aspect is removed.

Yes, I can take 3 Riptides in a 1500pt game. Will I ? No. Why not ? Because 1-2 MC's are enough for any 1500pt army that isn't Tyranids. I can take 7+ Riptides in a 1500pt unbound army. Will I ? No. Why not ? Because it's bloody expensive, and after a few games (if i can get them) of "lol look at what i've got" it becomes boring as hell.

People that spam units that aren't meant to be spammed are either tournament gamers that think that exploiting the generous system makes them good players that deserve the wins they get, or they are players that obsolutely suck at the game, and use them as a crutch to beat more strategic players that just aren't sad as they are to build a stupid list.

In my experience, I've met these two types of gamers, incedentally, both were using Prince/Greater Deamon spam. I played the first player at my local GW, and the table was 4x4 (i think, it had 4 realm of battle tiles). It was a 1000pt game. I put down a Riptide, 2 sniper Kroot squads, and a couple of Devilfishes with troops and a Fireblade in one of them. He puts down 2 Bloodthirsters and 1 Daemon Prince, all with wings, with minimal troops. For the whole game, he's harrying all my forces off the board, Sweeping basically everything. The small board meant i had no chance of using range in my favour. I had no chance. I doubt many lists would have had a chance.

The second type of player now plays 2 Daemon Princes and 1 Bloodthirster, i believe. His strategic knowledge is basically zero, he has never had a 40K army wider than his MC's, bar his troops and a Soul Grinder, he even used to proxy a Fateweaver and take get himself a 2+ rerollable invun. He probably still proxies his Bloodthirster. And it wins him games when the opposing player hasn't optimised their list. He likes to boast about his wins, about "how easily he tables people".

Well what goes around, comes around, and now both these players have to deal with the nerfs to FMC's, just because it's players like them that abused the system which is probably why the 7th edition hit them with the nerf bat.

This all just shows its the player behind the army that's more important than the army itself. If the player appreciates a competitive game, and not just the "steamroller" approach, they and their opponents will have fun games, and when a win is acheived, it's more exhilirating because it wasn't so one-sided.

And if i have to face any player that continues to use MC's because they have fun steamrollering helpless opponents in a one-sided game ? Well, i won't bring out my Tau. No, i think i'll just bring out my White Scars and see how my opponent likes losing a one sided game to my Grav-guns.

So, ignoring all the crazy going on, I will agree that the idea of armies is going away.

Not that this is new, by any means. Chapter approved has been around since forever, which spent a decade planting the seeds of the idea that you have units at your disposal outside of your codex. This was greatly accelerated as forgeworld printed more stuff, and the price gap between it and citadel decreased, and the spontaneous hysteria that FW was just as legal as anything literally printed in your codex.

Once you started with the idea that your army isn't your army, but your army is something cobbled together from a variety of sources, the slope was already slipperied up. Once 6th ed's allies came in, it found easy purchase with people used to supplements. Especially among those people who were already WAAC that were using chapter approved and forgeworld to spam extra cheese. Of course, apocalypse also has become more and more of a thing, which further reinforced this idea that was driven almost all the way home recently with rulebook supplements from the black library, not just forgeworld.

It's not really much further out to go from "take mostly whatever you want without too many restrictions" to just "take whatever you want, with virtually no restrictions". One step follows the next in a series that has moved us away from armies and towards collections of minis that you happen to play with.

The reason why I'm not going crazy doom and gloom, though, is that one way of doing it isn't strictly better than the other. It's more of a game philosophy. If anything, I'm glad that they're making their stance more and more clear on the subject. To push towards easily identifiable extremes, rather than the sort of putrid soup we've had in the middle for the past four years or so.

I guess the one thing that will make it difficult is that it will be harder to come up with "what army should I play?" threads, when there isn't really the idea of an army. The ability to easily and simply self-identify will be somewhat harmed.

I agree with your earlier comments that an unbound army of a single race would be great but unbound where anything goes is leaving a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Your whole first post kinda screams the sky is falling....your just being a little less HOLY S*** THE SKY IS FALLING!!! about it.

 Ailaros wrote:
So, ignoring all the crazy going on, I will agree that the idea of armies is going away.

Not that this is new, by any means. Chapter approved has been around since forever, which spent a decade planting the seeds of the idea that you have units at your disposal outside of your codex. This was greatly accelerated as forgeworld printed more stuff, and the price gap between it and citadel decreased, and the spontaneous hysteria that FW was just as legal as anything literally printed in your codex.

Once you started with the idea that your army isn't your army, but your army is something cobbled together from a variety of sources, the slope was already slipperied up. Once 6th ed's allies came in, it found easy purchase with people used to supplements. Especially among those people who were already WAAC that were using chapter approved and forgeworld to spam extra cheese. Of course, apocalypse also has become more and more of a thing, which further reinforced this idea that was driven almost all the way home recently with rulebook supplements from the black library, not just forgeworld.

It's not really much further out to go from "take mostly whatever you want without too many restrictions" to just "take whatever you want, with virtually no restrictions". One step follows the next in a series that has moved us away from armies and towards collections of minis that you happen to play with.

The reason why I'm not going crazy doom and gloom, though, is that one way of doing it isn't strictly better than the other. It's more of a game philosophy. If anything, I'm glad that they're making their stance more and more clear on the subject. To push towards easily identifiable extremes, rather than the sort of putrid soup we've had in the middle for the past four years or so.

I guess the one thing that will make it difficult is that it will be harder to come up with "what army should I play?" threads, when there isn't really the idea of an army. The ability to easily and simply self-identify will be somewhat harmed.

This is how I feel, except I think its a bad thing personally. Which is all i wanted to say really. I kinda thought people would have noticed too but it seems most people think I was saying how dead the game was going to be.

I simply think armies will no longer exist as they do now over the years.

If you choose to play an Unbound game. It is the same but a separate game. Most tournaments will likely be Battle forged tournies with the occasional Unbound. When you show up for a pickup game, it will makes things harder as now you have to bring both forces instead of just one army.

Well, I guess you could make an argument for it being a bad thing, regardless.

Firstly, there's the linguistic thing. "I am a CSM player" not making sense makes communication more difficult, it also, of course, makes a person's identity ironically more vague rather than more specific, at least for most people.

Most people can reasonably well play word finds, crosswords, and word scrambles - series of challenges where they are called upon to write down one word at a time. Tell a person to write a 500 word essay, most people will freeze up. It's the "blank canvas" problem, caused by the fact that most people only exhibit creativity as a function of problem solving. They can come up with things that fall within bounds, or find some way to come up with things that fall outside of bounds, but when there are no boundaries? Most people just stare at the limitless, open-ended creative space and just sort of shut down.

To give a more specific example for 40k, a lot of guard players still miss the old 4th ed doctrines, which is crazy because most of the doctrines made it into the subsequent editions (especially since you can now take drop troops thanks to tempestus). Before, you could run your guard army with a specific combination of fluff bits. After, you could still come up with your guard army based on the exact same fluff bits, it's just that you were no longer limited to them. It all became more open-ended without the prompting that the clearly-defined rules gave. Likewise, you can still run a fully fluffy 1ksons list, it's just that you don't have to follow certain specific rules anymore.

It takes a certain kind of crazy to handle open-ended creativity. Someone like me who can sit down in front of a blank word document and write a novel or play minecraft for hours on end can still easily thrive, and like it for all the extra options and the freedom it gives. Some people, and I mean this in no way pejoratively, sort of need to be told what to do. Or at least, rather, given a starting place and gently shoved in one direction or another, just to get started.

And the old army system was sort of like this. This is the army you play. Here are the units you get. These are their upgrades. This is the kind of player you are, and what that means. We'll even throw in a painting guide and some fluff for you as well.

Slowly but surely, this has been getting written away in GW's obvious bid to increase player freedom. It's a good thing for the people who want it, but it's a bad thing for the people who were relying on a little guidance to try and figure out what the hell to make of the vast sea of options. Of the blank canvas.

I guess, just like all the other side-effects of freedom on 40k, it just puts more onus on the player. To put more restrictions on themselves and more clearly develop and stick to their own aesthetic. To play a mono-khorne demon army, for example, because that's what they want their demon army to be, rather than the much looser, these are the models I'm playing this week, we'll see what I bring next time.

Some people, (like WAAC players especially), already have clearly defined reasons for playing, and know what the next proverbial brush stroke is. Everyone else will just sort of have to get a little bit better at knowing what they want from the game as the game itself less and less tells you what you should want.

Col. Dash wrote:
If you choose to play an Unbound game.

You can still get plenty of lore-inexplicable combinations without Unbound, between allies and "everybody now summons daemons!" nonsense.

 Ailaros wrote:
Not that this is new, by any means. Chapter approved has been around since forever, which spent a decade planting the seeds of the idea that you have units at your disposal outside of your codex. This was greatly accelerated as forgeworld printed more stuff, and the price gap between it and citadel decreased, and the spontaneous hysteria that FW was just as legal as anything literally printed in your codex.

Except it's not at all the same, because before 6th and allies (especially no-FOC allies) all those extra units were just additions to the codex, not really separate rules. A Tau Barracuda wasn't some bizarre new thing that changed how the Tau army worked, FW just effectively said "put this page into your codex". A Tau army with a Barracuda was really no different theme-wise than a Tau army with one of the codex flyers. Same with all of the other FW stuff, take as much of it as you want and your army still feels like the same army. Even the FW variant lists that made major changes to how an army works had their own clear identity, an Elysian drop troops army was clearly different from a C:SM or Eldar army.

All of this changed with allies and 7th edition. Now instead of GW publishing additional rules that add new pages to your codex while staying within the army's identity we have rules that completely destroy the concept of an army being a single unified force. Don't like the fact that your Tau are great at shooting but weak in melee? Take some assault terminators to fix that problem. DA flyer isn't very good? Take an unbound list with some Vendettas, and don't even bother taking the rest of the IG force you'd have to use in 6th. The idea of playing a specific faction is almost entirely gone, now you just have a collection of units that you wanted to use. And since GW sucks at balance we can expect armies to converge on a single list of balance mistakes, with only subtle variations to adapt to the metagame.

You see a similar thing in MTG. In the "only the newest sets are legal" format decks tend to fall into distinct archetypes and have few cards in common with other archetypes. This is because the game is fairly well balanced and WOTC has made a conscious effort to give each color its own identity and avoid crossing those lines too often. However, if you look at the "everything is legal" format, where you can use all of WOTC's balance mistakes from the earliest days of the game (before the internet and the idea of spending more than $50 on the game) you see a lot more similarity between decks. Even different "archetypes" still use the same core of broken cards, and make many of the same plays. The final card that kills you might be different, but the broken cards that set up the kill are all the same. And IMO this is one of the reasons why the format is a lot less popular than the ones with more restrictions and clearer deck differences.

 Swastakowey wrote:
So from here on out armies are gonna slowly die away. No more will someone collect some armies, it will now be I have Insert races/units in my army.

Makes me wonder if GW staffs selling methods have changed. When I first started and purchased my first sets from GW (regrettably) it was all about trying to sell me on an army. What do they do now I wonder?

Allies was the mid step to creating this current situation and now I wonder how far the players (especially new players over the next year) will take this. One day, just like flyers today, we may see most players with demons and anti demons, 1-20 codices and data slates. Maybe people wont look at it too much and it will just be that option some people take.

Not sure what to expect from the over all 40k gaming group, but I think we may be seeing less "themed" armies as a result of GW trying to make the game more themey.

leman russes backing up nurgle demons who are using guardians as meat shields with tau drone flyers zooming over head can exist. One day we may see the dakka gallery full of armies such as this.

Its kind of nuts really, I myself will hold true to my one army army, but in 20 years who knows what the normal lists will be like.

First time I have worried about the 40k game and its future.

Pretty scary huh? Anyone else not looking forward to this dystopian gaming future of a dystopian game?

They had allies in 1st and 2nd. They're just getting back to it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orktavius wrote:
Wasn't rogue trader and 2nd ed pretty much a sandbox where you could take anything?

Edited for rudeness - MT11

Yep. It was actually a means people used to gradually work their way from one army to the next that they had a mind to collect.

Honestly I think the idea that you have a collection that you can field, that can be made up of anything and everything, to be the largest indicator that GW has, in fact, "lost it". 40k used to be a game about armies clashing on the battlefield - a futuristic version of the historicals and napoleonics of yore. You shouldn't be allowed to field a mishmash of rubbish on the tabletop and have it be considered a valid way to play the game.

This new thing isn't anything like that, it's almost literally pretty models with a cobbled together game around them so they don't have to sit on your shelf. The fact that they don't consider you to have an "army" anymore but a "collection" is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
They had allies in 1st and 2nd. They're just getting back to it.

Allies in 2nd edition were nothing like allies now, and only allowed for some armies if I recall (IG springs to mind). "Allies" back then was playing a team game, which funnily enough you could do without the ridiculous allies rules that GW introduced.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I think the idea that you have a collection that you can field, that can be made up of anything and everything, to be the largest indicator that GW has, in fact, "lost it". 40k used to be a game about armies clashing on the battlefield - a futuristic version of the historicals and napoleonics of yore. You shouldn't be allowed to field a mishmash of rubbish on the tabletop and have it be considered a valid way to play the game.

This new thing isn't anything like that, it's almost literally pretty models with a cobbled together game around them so they don't have to sit on your shelf. The fact that they don't consider you to have an "army" anymore but a "collection" is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
They had allies in 1st and 2nd. They're just getting back to it.

Allies in 2nd edition were nothing like allies now, and only allowed for some armies if I recall (IG springs to mind). "Allies" back then was playing a team game, which funnily enough you could do without the ridiculous allies rules that GW introduced.

This is from my 2nd edition army books from the army list sections when talking of allies: "You may include allies from a single army or several armies, it is up to you. When choosing allies, there is no restriction on the catagory of troops you may take."

Relapse wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I think the idea that you have a collection that you can field, that can be made up of anything and everything, to be the largest indicator that GW has, in fact, "lost it". 40k used to be a game about armies clashing on the battlefield - a futuristic version of the historicals and napoleonics of yore. You shouldn't be allowed to field a mishmash of rubbish on the tabletop and have it be considered a valid way to play the game.

This new thing isn't anything like that, it's almost literally pretty models with a cobbled together game around them so they don't have to sit on your shelf. The fact that they don't consider you to have an "army" anymore but a "collection" is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
They had allies in 1st and 2nd. They're just getting back to it.

Allies in 2nd edition were nothing like allies now, and only allowed for some armies if I recall (IG springs to mind). "Allies" back then was playing a team game, which funnily enough you could do without the ridiculous allies rules that GW introduced.

This is from my 2nd edition army books from the army list sections when talking of allies: "You may include allies from a single army or several armies, it is up to you. When choosing allies, there is no restriction on the catagory of troops you may take."

Hmm.. I stand corrected then, I could have sworn it was only in some armies; I don't recall it being in the Ultramarines book. Maybe I dismissed it because I never played anyone who fielded allies back then, except maybe IG + Space Marines.

WayneTheGame wrote:

Relapse wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I think the idea that you have a collection that you can field, that can be made up of anything and everything, to be the largest indicator that GW has, in fact, "lost it". 40k used to be a game about armies clashing on the battlefield - a futuristic version of the historicals and napoleonics of yore. You shouldn't be allowed to field a mishmash of rubbish on the tabletop and have it be considered a valid way to play the game.

This new thing isn't anything like that, it's almost literally pretty models with a cobbled together game around them so they don't have to sit on your shelf. The fact that they don't consider you to have an "army" anymore but a "collection" is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
They had allies in 1st and 2nd. They're just getting back to it.

Allies in 2nd edition were nothing like allies now, and only allowed for some armies if I recall (IG springs to mind). "Allies" back then was playing a team game, which funnily enough you could do without the ridiculous allies rules that GW introduced.

This is from my 2nd edition army books from the army list sections when talking of allies: "You may include allies from a single army or several armies, it is up to you. When choosing allies, there is no restriction on the catagory of troops you may take."

Hmm.. I stand corrected then, I could have sworn it was only in some armies; I don't recall it being in the Ultramarines book. Maybe I dismissed it because I never played anyone who fielded allies back then, except maybe IG + Space Marines.

There were some crazy alliances in my area back then. Looks like those times are back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
They had percentages of points that had to be spent on units back then. It went kind of like this:

At least 25% of your points needed to be spent on troops, and up to 50% could be spent on support.

They also had mission cards that gave primary and secondary objectives.

Now I'm wanting to dive into my second edition box to see how much is similar to the current version.

Didnt know that about 1st and 2nd edition. That gives me some hope it may change.

Another rare moment of mine, but what Peregrine said is pretty bang on. Mostly.


If GW succeeds and new players just hodge podge models together on whims and pre meditated combos for armies then I will be very disheartened.

After all most of us joined because we saw thematic and explained forces meeting on the field and it just happened that one of those forces really took our interest. Feels like those days are nearing its end thats all.

The real question is will these new unlimited detachments and unbound lists become common and mainstream really.