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I keep reading about people annoyed with random charge distances, random mission cards etc. I'm not sure I really understand the mentality. We are playing a game with a D6 system, the randomness if pretty well controlled. If you hate it, what about to hit values? To wound? To pass an armour save? Not much different. There are only so many variations of results with a D6 so adjust accordingly. If you have to charge a unit, you should know the probabilities of success and plan accordingly. Sure, you may roll snake-eyes, but how is that different from being 2" away from a huge Imperial knight and miss with your meltagun? If you pull up 10" away from a unit and expect to make the assault, well, nobody else to blame. The same can be said with the Mission cards (although I haven't seen them yet...how many are there, and are they all different?). You know what you have, what's been played and therefore what you can expect to come up during the game. No big deal.
Can someone explain to m why certain aspects of randomness bother them so much?
I usually play with FOW which has fixed movement distances etc, but I also don't mind the randomness of 40K.

There's good random, and bad random.

Generally speaking, wargame players of all types accept a certain amount of randomness through using some combination of dice or other system to determine outcomes (cards, for example).

Therefore, things like shooting (generally, could be cleaned and simplified) are acceptable levels of random. They're predictable and you generally shoot enough of these weapons over the course of the game for the results to fall in the realm of statistical probability.

Bad randomness are things like random charts you roll on that have wildly variable effects that affect each player very differently. Warlord traits and psyker powers spring to mind. Why aren't these things just pick and play? At the very least makes them cost points and you buy them, ranging from budget options to strong ones that cost a lot. Randomly rolling 'Warlord gets Fear' for your Guard CCS while your opponent's Hive Tyrant rolls something that boosts CC ability is not anyone's idea of a good, fair time.

Further, the continued usage of 'D3 this', and 'D3 that' everywhere (seriously, rolling a random amount of VP for objective cards is just lazy) is not good randomness. Things like that should have predictable outcomes so that player actions feel like they mean something, rather than the outcome of a game decided on a select few key dice rolls.

The dice will always sway the direction of the game, but when its down to less than a dozen important rolls (how well your warlord trait is for your army, how many VP you rolled compared to your opponent, how many objectives you rolled and placed on your side) are not good for any game.

It isn't randomness, it is arbitrary randomness for no good reason.

For example.

If I have a squad of Tactical Marines, and in the movement phase, I ensure they are all within 7" of my target, I know, with utter certainty, that when the shooting phase occurs, I will be able to shoot.

Substitute those Tac Marines with an ASM squad looking to charge though...

Or,

My Warlord, who could be anything from a grizzled army veteran to a genetically engineered superhero to a supernatural being from another dimension, can, on one occasion, turn up to a fight somewhere that makes the forest moon of Endor look like a National Park, and know everything there is to know about sneaking through ruined buildings, and the next battle, in a bombed out Cityscape, forget completely everything he apparently knew.

Or

Your top wizard/psychic/mystic could potentially have everything in his locker to be instrumental to a crushing victory with minimal casualties, but decide to have a few beers with the lads the night before rather than learn his spells, and cram any old crap at the last minute.

Basically, random rolls to help determine uncertain outcomes are fine (to hit, to wound etc) and can be calculated, estimated and incorporated into your plan for the turn.

Other random rolls "just cause" take decisions out of the player's hands, therefore making their input into he game less important and the result less about skill and good play and more about luck.

Heres the thing - In a dice game, a certain amount of randomness is a given, and is a good thing in this sort of game for keeping things a little unpredictable. Rolling to hit creates a much more entertaining shooting round than just consulting a chart of average probabilities.

However, the more random elements you shove into the game, the less the game becomes about player skill and the more it just becomes about the luck of the draw. Winning becomes less about who was the better player, and more about who got better dice rolls, or who drew better cards.

I play a strategy wargame to match my skills against an opponents'. If I just wanted to play a random dice game, I could play Yahtzee instead.



There's also the fact that the randomness being injected into 40K is so poorly balanced. Warlord Traits, for example, are an awesome idea... but they all need to be around the same level of effectiveness to be fair. I should never find myself in a situation where my Wolf Lord is rolling up Counter Attack from the Trait table while my opponent gets something useful... Or (as happened to me at Adepticon this year) where I win a game because my opponent rolled badly on the Mysterious Terrain chart, while my guys got to tromp around through the peaceful garden...



Random needs to be confined to those parts of the game where it actually adds value instead of needless complication, and it needs to be implemented in a way that is fair to both players and doesn't skew the game,

It's the type of game you want.

You have two variants on one axis. There's no random, such as Chess, to complete random, such as chutes and ladders.

Games Workshop is billed a miniatures war game, one that relies on many levels of pregame strategy and in game tactics.

To have you pregame strategies invalidated by "random" events, meaning out of control of either player, is counter to what most war games are these days. To have your tactics suddenly invalidated by "random" events, such as the new mission cards, is counter to what most war games are these days.

We all accept a degree of variability in war games as the unknown has a flare to it. This variability in dice rolls, depending on the game, gives the opportunity to "forge narratives". I have watched many intense Infinity games that, which has a critical based dice mechanic with reaction elements, that have created more excitement and run with this level of random. The same goes with Warmachine, Malifaux, and Battletech.

Dice are generally used in games as a weighted average modifier. In other games, you have a set skill and you modify that skill with a dice roll and game circumstances that you can control. Something like charging in Warmachine is a known value of model speed + 3", halve any movement through terrain. Games Workshop enjoys making it set 2d6 for everyone with a straight -2 modifier no matter if you're going through a shrub or a forest. You can now also utterly fail a 1" charge, which was impossible in 6E.

Much of the "random" in this new edition is solely based upon random for random's sake. Things like the warp storm table can make or break a game and involves no strategy outside of taking Fateweaver. The mission cards can make a game stacked against each other as one person draws objectives they have no hope or means of achieving where as your opponent gets all the "perfect" ones and wins. Also, the bonus mission points are even random. You go out of your way to succeed the second tier on a mission card and you could still get just 1 victory point.

When these sort of variable exist that can undermine both strategy and tactics of a game, it's bad design. It's why the death stars of 6E, and the soon death stars/builds of 7E, are successful. They abuse the design flaws of the game that mitigate all random variables to a negligible percent. You can control going first. You can have nearly invulnerable units. You can do so many things to ensure that tactics are moot on your opponents part and that they are just simply going through the motions.

A good game this does not make. The random of 40k is random for "CYA" reasons versus actual balance.

Good random is things like dice and modifiers, maybe things like the mission type (I liked 2nd edition's mission cards). 40k doesn't have that, though. 40k has random for the sake of random: Random charge range (makes no sense, charges should honestly be like how they are in Warmahordes - movement + 3", you move that amount regardless of if you get into contact or not, maybe add some kind of leadership test if you're fired that can stop your movement), random charts that exist because certain designers (i.e. JJ) think that random charts spice things up, the Chaos boons that are basically the Deck of Many Things, random psyker powers and warlord traits (makes absolutely no sense) and the like. To compound this, the randomness is a poor substitute for actual balance with the rules, and clutter things up. 40ks randomness is seemingly to remove the application of strategy and tactics, which is the antithesis of how a wargame is meant to play.

I wouldn't have an issue with it if the randomness was entirely optional, with a disclaimer that said "For a more cinematic game, you can use these optional rules to add more randomness", which would be fine because sometimes the randomness can make things more cinematic. However, like most of what GW does they pick one way and just say "The game is meant to be done this way" even when that way should be a choice and not the default.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't reintroduced the random weapons/equipment charts from Rogue Trader, where instead of buying a squad with 10 bolters or whatever you rolled randomly to see what each guy had. Or random chaos warbands from Realm of Chaos. That's the kind of random the game doesn't need.

Simply put the difference is the amount of control the player has over the randomness. When rolling dice to hit/wound I've made a decision knowing the risk/rewards associated with that decision. A lot of the randomness that GW is throwing into the game now is beyond the control of the player.

The entirety of the Daemons codex is the best example of this. Wargear is no longer chosen but rolled for at the start of each game and the warp table is the worst example of this. Simply by playing a daemons army a random table is introduced that can destroy a players army through no fault of their own.

I'm also just going to copy a part of my post from ages ago about the daemons codex which covers my feelings on this issue.

A lot of people seem to be using the excuse that you shouldn't complain about randomness in a game based around dice rolling. This ofcourse ignores the fact that every other roll in a game I make is because on decisions I have made. I can increase or decrease my chance of success by the decisions I make while playing game. This warpstorm table I have no power over.

For me personally this warpstorm table and a lot of the other randomness in the daemons codex breaks a personal game design philosophy that a game should never take control of the game away from the player. If I lose/win a game I want it to be because I made the right/wrong decisions at the time not because I got lucky/unlucky on a random table that I have no control over. The CSM codex and their forced challenges is another example of taking control away from the played and I have seen many a player (and not beardy WAAC players before you say it) complain about things not going their way because they were forced to issue the challenge.

To add to that the siliness of warpstorm, I watched a game of SM Vs Daemons. After turn two the SM player was utterly demoralised and pretty much gave up because the warpstorm table killed their warlord. Through no fault of their own their warlord was killed, where was the risk Vs. reward in that scenario?

But that's all good right because a narative was forged.

Blacksails wrote:Generally speaking, wargame players of all types accept a certain amount of randomness.

I think accept is too harsh of a word. Wargammers outright embrace randomness. There are plenty of strategy games that don't have any randomness at all, which means if you're playing 40k, you have to really want a game where things could change drastically as the result of just a few die rolls, or else you'd go and play one of those games that doesn't include random elements. At least, instead of a game that involves hundreds of die rolls and randomness soaked through absolutely everything.

insaniak wrote:However, the more random elements you shove into the game, the less the game becomes about player skill and the more it just becomes about the luck of the draw. Winning becomes less about who was the better player, and more about who got better dice rolls, or who drew better cards.

I play a strategy wargame to match my skills against an opponents'. If I just wanted to play a random dice game, I could play Yahtzee instead.

Certainly, but this is 40k we're talking about here. It's nowhere near a strategy game that tests player skill.

And there's a third category between serious strategy game and completely random, and that is games where you play odds. Games like backgammon or blackjack or craps. Just because a game isn't a serious strategy game doesn't mean it instantly devolves to the level of candyland. But neither is removing a few bits of randomness from the game going to turn 40k into chess.

Anyways, the only thing that sort of annoys me about randomness is when it's randomness that's not going to make much of an impact on the game (like the old mysterious objectives. It didn't take long for us to just stop using them as they added time, but not content), or the randomness that doesn't seem to make very much sense. Random charge ranges, for example, aren't just bad because they unduly hurt a still-ultranerfed style, but because it really just doesn't make any sense. Especially in a world where you're always magically equally accurate with shooting a gun at any distance until it reaches a magic binary range. It's really the inconsistency of randomness that I find annoying here. I also agree that the warlord trait thing is annoying. You can get around that with special characters, but really it should be like the rest of everything - different warlord traits of different quality that you have to spend points on to get as an upgrade. Once again, the inconsistency paired with the seeming randomness of the randomness is what's annoying.

Thankfully there isn't TOO much of this in the game, and there are ways to get around most of it (like how you could just agree not to use mysterious objectives, or take special characters with set warlord traits, or just not run demons).

There's a difference between randomness in the form of statistics and probability, such as with shot accuracy or chance to wound, over randomness like objective cards that change the very goal of the game from turn to turn.

Things like charge distance are at least explained in the rulebook as we're only simulating war games and sometimes unexpected things occur that have your men decide charging is a bad idea. You're only playing the army commander and sometimes your troops won't listen to you. Tyranids know that feeling extremely well with all the mindless troops who literally disobey their commands according to the roll of the die. Heck, morale failure is another example of the fact that you are not in control of your units so much as giving them orders.

Those kinds of randomness are okay. There's valid reasons for their existence.

But now look at something like Psyker powers being randomly generated, Warlord powers being randomly generated, or even the very objective you are going after to win the game being randomly generated. Aren't these things your army would know ahead of time? Wouldn't your forces ensure they are sending appropriate troops and generals with suitable psyker support after a predetermined obstacle? Instead you play each game hoping that you roll or draw the very card/ability that you need for your army to function well.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are plenty of strategy games that don't have any randomness at all, which means if you're playing 40k, you have to really want a game where things could change drastically as the result of just a few die rolls, or else you'd go and play one of those games that doesn't include random elements. At least, instead of a game that involves hundreds of die rolls and randomness soaked through absolutely everything.

No, it means you really like the 40k universe and the decades of lore that have been developed for it.

Kyutaru wrote:Things like charge distance are at least explained in the rulebook as we're only simulating war games and sometimes unexpected things occur that have your men decide charging is a bad idea. You're only playing the army commander and sometimes your troops won't listen to you.

But why would this only apply to charging? Why not shooting? Why not have to take a leadership test for everything?

The game has a nice way of abstracting things, and then suddenly decides that for one small part realism demands randomness.

Yonan wrote:No, it means you really like the 40k universe and the decades of lore that have been developed for it.

Which you can enjoy without playing the game. If you're playing the game, though, it means you want to play the game. Why you would want to play a game that you don't like doesn't make sense.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kyutaru wrote:Things like charge distance are at least explained in the rulebook as we're only simulating war games and sometimes unexpected things occur that have your men decide charging is a bad idea. You're only playing the army commander and sometimes your troops won't listen to you.

But why would this only apply to charging? Why not shooting? Why not have to take a leadership test for everything?

If you read the rulebook, it actually explains nicely why it applies to charging. Your troops are attempting to rush across a battlefield of live fire with enemies attempting to kill them just because you want them to close into melee and hack their opponents with swords. Sometimes there just isn't an opportunity for that in a battle as rushing out at the exact moment you want them to may result in complete slaughter or because an "event" occurred that made them think twice about charging. Heck, maybe a soldier's shoelaces were untied and he tripped and fell causing the charge to only be 2". Space Marines say never leave a man behind so they go back for the sucker. As for why that and not shooting? It's because you have to draw the line somewhere and start making decisions, regardless of how arbitrarily selected you think they might be. The game has evolved slowly over the last 7 editions, what made sense at the time might seem like random nonsense now.

We've been hearing Forge a Narrative enough times to be sick of it. What did you think it meant? Random stuff happens in war and things don't always go according to plan. The dice just simulates those events without expressly dictating what happened, leaving you to decide with your imagination. I've always thought the game does a decent job of simulating real events like buildings collapsing, tanks exploding, terrain hindering line of sight, even the "true" line of sight where we have to duck down and look through our model's eyes. Random charge ranges are just another part of that, factors that you can't always control interfering with your battle plans.

The problem with 40k's randomness is that it often falls into two categories:

1) Replacing player choices with random tables. Randomness is fine when it answers the question of "do I succeed or not", because the dice effectively act as an impartial third party to determine whether or not, say, your lascannon shot hit its target. But things like random warlord traits are completely different. You aren't resolving the outcome of an action, you'd deciding something that a better game would allow each player to choose. Whether it's based on your character concept for what your leader is good at or just your strategy for winning the game it's a decision with lots of potential options, not a pass/fail test.

2) Unpredictable randomness. Randomness is fine when you're rolling lots of dice and the outcome is fairly predictable. I know that my unit averages X bolter hits per turn, and while it can obviously roll more or less than X I can still make reasonable strategic plans based on getting around that number. But with something like the random objective cards there's no predictability. There's no average between "hold the objective your whole army is already camped on" and "destroy an enemy flyer when your opponent has no flyers in their army". Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get screwed, and there's no consistency to it. Random charge range also falls into this category. It's a standard 2D6 roll, but since the game often depends on a single charge roll it can easily feel like the dice are more of a factor than your strategy.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are plenty of strategy games that don't have any randomness at all, which means if you're playing 40k, you have to really want a game where things could change drastically as the result of just a few die rolls, or else you'd go and play one of those games that doesn't include random elements.

And, as we've pointed out before, you're deliberately ignoring the fact that people play 40k for reasons other than its rules. For example, I hate 40k's badly-designed random elements, but I still play it because I love the fluff and models.

 Ailaros wrote:

Yonan wrote:No, it means you really like the 40k universe and the decades of lore that have been developed for it.

Which you can enjoy without playing the game. If you're playing the game, though, it means you want to play the game. Why you would want to play a game that you don't like doesn't make sense.

The only rules written for use in the setting we like are the rules we are stuck with from GW. We want to use our models in a game, ergo we have to use GWs rules. We can't play a game of 40k with Malifaux, Warmachine, Dropzone Commander etc. rules for a variety of reasons. When the options are play with bad rules in the awesome setting you love or don't play in the awesome setting you love, you'll put up with the bad rules - and bitch and moan about it on the internet and hope they get fixed.

Whilst I agree that rolling Warlord traits and Psychic powers is kinda annoying, I think those are relatively minor parts of the game. "Randomness" of 6th edition compared to previous ones is IMHO rather overblown: in the 5th edition, 80% or so of the charge distances were already rolled (because of difficult terrain). Also, 6th edition also removed some randomness, most notably Vehicle damage, which was extremely random in 5th edition and much more predictable in 6th & 7th.

Life's random. Let's play russian roulette, shall we?

my only issue with allowing people to choose their warlord traits and psyker powers is that the same ones would be used over and over again. It would be another way of gaming your army, finding every combo and trick in the book to give you the advantage. Granted, this may be what you want in a tourny style game but I actually like variety (I did a thread on random generation of units a few weeks ago). I find people will generally play the same thing over and over which gets a little stale. The game already has balance issues, adding points for warlord traits and psychic powers will only make this worse as GW will not take the time to playtest them correctly.
There is nothing stopping a TO (or a group of friends) establishing a system that allows a player to "buy" his warlord trait or psyker powers for x points.
I'm a casual gamer though so like the "forge a narrative" approach that GW currently adopts. I could see this as an issue for competitive players though but I feel the system has way too much imbalance as it stands already. No reason to add more.

I find randomness to be a very tricky subject to make my mind up on. On one hand some level of randomness is needed to actually make 40k (and most other wargames) work as a game but too much and the players have too little impact on the way the game plays. I will note at this point that my thoughts are based on 6th edition and not 7th as I don't have the new rule book yet.

The shooting phase is as previously noted for the most part an example of good randomness. It uses simple probability to determine most things. Rolling to hit using the Ballistic Skill of a unit is an incredibly easy to learn system that make a lot of sense. Wounding on the other hand is a bit clunky in my opinion. Whilst it's easy enough to learn the wounding chart and how it works it can be a confusing thing for a new player to get to grips with initially. However that's really more down to presentation than it is any inherent problem with the rules.

The current charging rules I would also agree are an example of bad randomness. To me it looks to simply be a case of lazy game design. Whoever came up with that rule must have looked at the way charging works in WHFB (Movement + 2d6") and simply ported it over by allowing a unit that wants to charge to move as usual in the movement phase and simply dropping the movement value from the charge distance in the assault phase. This is not good game design as it take a relatively predicable system and makes it considerably less so. Yes rolling 2d6 does produce a bell curve where 6-8" is the most common range of results but it's still a very random system. Personally I'm not really sure how to fix the charging rules as it's fairly obvious that GW wanted to introduce a possibility of failure to it which is no bad thing. There are countless example of failed (and massively successful) charges in history so the game allowing for that is in my mind a good thing.

Perhaps a return to the old fixed charge range but with a leadership test being required to make the charge might work. For most armies it would represent the braver units being more willing to get stuck in. Obviously some armies like Daemons and Tyranids or some individual units like Death Company and Khorne Berserkers would have no hesitation in charging into combat but all that needs is a single special rule that makes then automatically pass the leadership test. This system would definitely work but how well it would work in the context of the current 40k rules I'm not sure.

Another example of bad randomness is the mysterious objectives and terrain system (I'm assuming they're still in 7th), it doesn't make the game more cinematic or exciting it just slows things down under another layer of special rules. Still this is at least something that can be ignored easily (which is what I do). Psychic powers and warlord traits are again an example of bad randomness ideally they should be purchased from an armies points allowance but as others have noted this will simply result in a certain breed of player figuring out which choices are best and spamming them as much as possible. Plus knowing GW the points cost attached to them with have absolutely no bearing on how effective they are.

However all of this pales into insignificance next to the randomness of Daemon armies. Whilst I don't play Daemons in 40k I do play have a sizeable army of them in WHFB. Playing Daemons can be an exercise in futility when you don't get any of the gifts and spells that you want at the start of the game and then during the game itself the realm of comedy chart can continue to make things worse. Equally it's possible to have magnificent highs as a result of the various random systems. Getting a free unit of basic daemons or a boost to the standard 5+ ward save at just the right time can be a huge boost to a flagging army. I completely understand why GW took the direction they did with the current Daemon rules in both systems as they are obviously trying to show how changeable and downright odd a daemonic invasion is. However I do think they went a little bit too far with the randomness. How to fix it I have no idea whatsoever although I will say that 9 times out of 10 I've enjoyed playing with my Daemons simply because every game has been different.

Ultimately I think the problem with randomness is that there is simply too much of it at the moment. I suspect this is due to GW wanting to produce a more narrative game but the way they are going about it is somewhat ham fisted. In my opinion a better system would be to produce a good set of balanced core rules that are easy to learn and quick to play. Along side that there should be some optional extra rules for playing both individual narrative games and whole campaigns. This is where you could add varying objectives, weird terrain, basic roleplaying elements or even rules to have a games master. This would allow both tournament and narrative style games without getting the two muddied up. However that would probably require a 3rd edition style total reboot and I seriously doubt that GW would risk something like that again.

Sorry for the wall of text but those are my thoughts on the current situation.

I'll give an example of bad random in 7th. Last night I was playing against demons . He started his first turn was to summon 4 units of horrors on objectives, he played the psyker VP card, the domination and another one that gave him VP for killing 2 of my units units . This gave him 3 objectives controled +3 from the psyker and 3 for domination . I on the other hand had the psyker card , which I couldn't use for he was stoping all of my casting , the destroy through assault card and the challange card. I discarded the assault card and got the take and hold one .0 bonus VP for me , I killed a unit of horrors , a unit of flesh hounds tried to kill a ++2 kairos. On his next turn he charged my line played the challange card, played the kill in assault card and another one that gave extra points for holding objectives . We didn;t know ,what happens if I he calls challanges and If I can play my challange VP card too. We rolled it and I didn't. At the end of turn 2 the game was already at 11vps vs 0 and my infentry being locked in melee.

We played another game and while he never did get an awesome turn 1 like that, he was always better with the extra VPs , just because his army could use all the VP cards and my could only use a few and a more then a few of them are very win more . Like the domination.

If you read Jervis Jhonsons articles in White Dwarf he is constantly droning on about his passion for random charts. I expect that is due to his complete lack of imagination. Overtly random win results which has no basis in any type of skill or tactic do not make a fun game for anyone with half a brain. Jervis Jhonson doesn't have half a bran, it's why he loves his chart/card wins so much.

For example, Saturday I watched a game between an 11 year old and the store manager at the shop I was at. It was an instructional game, both players had their cards face up. The 11 year old won the game turn six by drawing cards. The manager said, "Hey looks like you won!" The 11 year old never even cracked a smile. He read the cards, tried to figure why he won, thanked the manager for the game and packed up his stuff. There is no sense of accomplishment with these types of lazy wins. You have to have the mentality of someone who enjoys winning a skillful game of shoots and ladders to enjoy these types of game mechanics. Shoots and ladders is for ages 3 and up. I'm not sure Jervis Jhonson has the mentality to qualify for the game.

Until Jervis goes away GW games will continue to devolve into games similar to Candy Land.

Maybe part of the problem of bad random is the obvious disparity between good and bad results, and no average outcome around which you can plan. It's only made worse by how significant for victory this type of bad random can be.

I like some of the random elements - others less so.

I really like random charge distance - lots of games we have had at the club have had fun moments on both sides when you have or have not made it. we all know that about 7" is normal , fleet skewing this - I much prefer it to the warmachine version (with its silly can't premeasure but you can sorta) or earlier editions.

I don't think random Warlord tables is a good idea - unless its like the Psyker and you have a default choice........

Things like mysterious objectives / terrain - well I don't know anyone who uses them without agreeing first...............

The purpose of randomness in wargames is to adjudicate variable factors, such as whether a shot hits or your charge comes short due to an unexpected obstacle or morale failure.

I would argue that random objectives that change during the game and give more advantage to one type of army or a different one, make the game more like Snakes and Ladders.

Ailaros wrote:

Blacksails wrote:Generally speaking, wargame players of all types accept a certain amount of randomness.

I think accept is too harsh of a word. Wargammers outright embrace randomness.

Speaking as a wargamer who doesn't, in a thread full of people complaining about excess randomness in the game, I'd say that statement is refuted empirically. Let's discard it as not an argument.

Ailaros wrote:

Yonan wrote:No, it means you really like the 40k universe and the decades of lore that have been developed for it.

Which you can enjoy without playing the game. If you're playing the game, though, it means you want to play the game. Why you would want to play a game that you don't like doesn't make sense.

Again, flawed understanding. It doesn't "make sense" to you because you do not see what people are actually arguing. Which is odd because it's pretty clear - we want the game to be different than it is. Saying "why play it if you don't like it" is (a) simplistic - there's a lot we do like about the game and (b) in no way an actual counter to what people are saying, which is that they want it to be a game they do like.

It also contains an implicit assumption that if the game is not what people like, they should leave rather than the game change. Given that the desired changes for the most part would have no negative impact on anyone else, and given that we want this community to thrive, the smart thing to do is change the game.

As shown many a time, improving the game for competitive players also improves it for those that don't care.

It seems to me sometimes, that GW designers only want the game to be a ride they are taken on, not anything they steer. And that's the generous interpretation. The less generous is to think that a message comes down from the high tower saying: "make people buy lots and lots of deamons" and the game designers jump. I like to believe in the former just for the sake of benefit of the doubt. But you do wonder...

God In Action wrote:
Maybe part of the problem of bad random is the obvious disparity between good and bad results, and no average outcome around which you can plan. It's only made worse by how significant for victory this type of bad random can be.

This is part of the problem. Looking at the new mission cards for example, some of the bonuses are D3 Victory Points. Assuming both players achieve the same goal for the card, they both get to roll. One rolls a '6', the other a '1'. This is bad random along the lines that you posted. To make matters worse, this particular random facet is nestled one layer deep in another random facet that also has no average or predictable outcomes.

Its like Inception, but with none of the cool video effects.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I like some of the random elements - others less so.

I really like random charge distance - lots of games we have had at the club have had fun moments on both sides when you have or have not made it. we all know that about 7" is normal , fleet skewing this - I much prefer it to the warmachine version (with its silly can't premeasure but you can sorta) or earlier editions.

I don't think random Warlord tables is a good idea - unless its like the Psyker and you have a default choice........

Things like mysterious objectives / terrain - well I don't know anyone who uses them without agreeing first...............

Random charge ranges take tactical decisions away from the players and as such is one of the worst random elements of the game. Its basically the same as if every shooting unit in the game had to roll a die before shooting and on a 3- they couldn't shoot...

Randomness = the opposite of deathstars.

It's a spectrum. People hate things being too sure and being too random. They can't accept that it's pretty much one or the other.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
They can't accept that it's pretty much one or the other.

You are referring specifically to 40k here, right? Because you just said its a spectrum, which implies that there is a middle ground in between. Like many other games.

 Ailaros wrote:

But why would this only apply to charging? Why not shooting? Why not have to take a leadership test for everything?

The game has a nice way of abstracting things, and then suddenly decides that for one small part realism demands randomness.

Actually, I grok random charge. They allowed premeasuring, which meant you could be absolutely sure of moving your models to juuuuust outside charge range, should it have been a set value as it had been, and maximising your shooting. By randomising, that 'juuuust outside' becomes a lot further and to get the benefit of most guns requires you it come close enough to risk a charge reaching you.

Without premeasuring, you'd be guessing at how close you got anyway, and a random charge would be unnecessary. You'd be rising a charge if you guessed wrong.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

But why would this only apply to charging? Why not shooting? Why not have to take a leadership test for everything?

The game has a nice way of abstracting things, and then suddenly decides that for one small part realism demands randomness.

Actually, I grok random charge. They allowed premeasuring, which meant you could be absolutely sure of moving your models to juuuuust outside charge range, should it have been a set value as it had been, and maximising your shooting. By randomising, that 'juuuust outside' becomes a lot further and to get the benefit of most guns requires you it come close enough to risk a charge reaching you.

Without premeasuring, you'd be guessing at how close you got anyway, and a random charge would be unnecessary. You'd be rising a charge if you guessed wrong.

The way to fix that is make a rule like WM/H has where you need to be at least 3" away to get the benefits of a charge (so in 40k terms you could still assault from closer, but wouldn't get the bonus attacks or whatever special "During a charge..." ability), and have moving to assault still move you forward regardless of if it succeeds or not.