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With all the hassle people have with 40k, there´s always someone saying that Forgeworld did a great job with their HH stuff and there never is anyone argumenting against it.
What makes people view 30k as a better system?

Never played 30k, and I know nothing about it, so maybe

It's fairly well balanced and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Well, it's marines against marines against marines against marines... So just from that I imagine it's a lot easier to balance.

Mechanicus list looks fun though.

I've played against a 30k list with my Necrons. They're REALLY good and it was a blast to face. I can only imagine the internal balance to be solid from what I've read.

They just seem to have put a bit more thought into balance than the GW studio seems to.

For starters you've got Lords of War. Forge World originated the slot with 30k, but with a point limit for any Lord of War of 25% of the army total to make sure they would only be fielded in games against forces large enough to have a decent chance of dealing with them. A rather sensible restriction that GW Central scrapped in order to sell plastic.

On a slightly less quantifiable level you've got the lack of a '40k legal' stamp. 30k is 'broadly compatible' with regular 40k (and in fact, the Word Bearer are allowed to include Codex: Daemons allies) but because the rules haven't been playtested with regular 40k FW have refrained from giving it the 40k legal stamp that the Imperial Armour books get, which shows that balance is something that FW cares about.

changemod wrote:
Well, it's marines against marines against marines against marines... So just from that I imagine it's a lot easier to balance.

Mechanicus list looks fun though.

O.o mechanicus aren't marines..

The books have better internal balance, the rules are based on the fluff instead of selling models, and FW actually seem to care about the player experience. It's not more balanced because it's all marines, there's tons of crazy stuff in the HH books. It's more balanced because the people writing the rules actually give a feth about balance instead of just pushing plastic crack.

No. The cost of the models and rules makes 40k look affordable by comparison.

He just asked if it was a better game system, not a cheaper one.

One thing that always made me scratch my head with 40k's LoW implementation was how simple, effective, and fair the 30k implementation is. The 25% rule is the easiest solution to permitting LoW in normal games, while ensuring the crazy super large powerful ones don't rear their head until 2500+pts.

Other than that, different FoCs and actually making you adhere to one stand out, but its still the same game, just with new units and wargear.

The campaigns are pretty solid too.

Internal balance is decent as well. There isn't much to say about external, seeing as most of it is just marine on marine action. Mechanicum and Solar being fleshed out will change that, but time will tell when we have complete army lists.

Basically, take their FoC and LoW implementation and apply it to 40k, and it would ease some of the issues.

 Jimsolo wrote:
No. The cost of the models and rules makes 40k look affordable by comparison.

Ways round that though, converting from 40k olastic marines, or just using them stock if you arent bothered about 'which armour did the Imperial Fists wear before the heresy' etc. I'm picky like that and I prefer the FW models and yes it's expensive but that just means my army will take longer to build.

I have two HH armies and both are about 50% FW marines, 50% regular marines with FW heads, because really, who notices more than the helmets anyway? The 50% FW is mostly either Raptors and Destroyers or models where there isn't a 40k analogue like Cataphractii. I find its cheaper than a 40k army just because 30k stuff is more expensive once you get away from Tacticals. A ten man jump pack destroyer squad is 400+ points.

As for better, I think so. I love the wide options available. There is no single competitive list for Legion when you have all the Rites or War and the individual legion abilities. My Night Lords look on paper 100% different than my Iron Warriors and play completely different as well. As opposed to 40k marines where there are small list changes but if you have seen one marine army, you have seen most(there are some broad exceptions) of them.

As for rules, all of the equipment makes sense for the most part, there are no "I win" or must take options. I field them only against 40k armies and find they do well simply because my opponents refuse to accept they cant be treated like normal marines. I never field them the same way and rarely use the same line up twice. That and I guess I play mine armies differently than they do and tend to take the offensive early and never let up. Its a small group so they get used to playing against each other but then I show up once a month and throw them for a loop.

Some of the larger disadvantages are lack of ATSKNF with only the tacticals getting something to mitigate it slightly with a reroll, and smaller point games tend to be kind of bland since we don't get our cool stuff realistically until 2k+. Some of the legion rules mitigate the leadership thing as well I might add.

Funny, isn't it? It used to be that GW wrote the good rules and FW wrote the bad rules, and now it's the other way around.

Simply put, 30K can't even come close to the shenanigans that 40K can do. Even a Primarch dies to a Knight or even massed fire from Tau or Eldar.

All i can tell i that i've seen a fight between infantry heavy night lords and big-gunz heavy iron hands. It was over turn 2 for night lords. While iron hands lost 1 bolter guy and 1 plazmacannon guy to overheat. Forgeworld really favors big gunz a lot. Those massed plazma cannons and s6 gunz with quadrillion shots that generate extra shots are brutal. And iron hands basically have +1 toughness across the board for no extra points.

The Iron Hands are the one slightly better legion in 30k. But it's nothing like 40k levels of unbalanced.

It's "balanced" because the game consists of primarily space marines, and it's still the 40k system. It is certainly not 'the better game system'.

I use the Mechanicus list exclusively against both 40k and 30 foes. So far it's been a blast for everyone involved.

 koooaei wrote:
And iron hands basically have +1 toughness across the board for no extra points.

Do 40K Space Marines pay extra points for their chapter tactics?

Didn't think so.

And, so nobody gets the wrong idea, it isn't +1 toughness. Shooting attacks suffer -1 strength against IH marines.

 Gunzhard wrote:
It's "balanced" because the game consists of primarily space marines, and it's still the 40k system. It is certainly not 'the better game system'.

Each legion does play significantly differently. They also have a Knights army list, a Mechanicum army list, and a Solar Auxilia army list, all of which are balanced and play very differently. It's balanced because they care about the game and took the time to balance everything.

Regarding those who say that 30k is only ballanced because it's largely marine on marine action - the Mechanicus and the Solar Aux armies are bound to be quite different from the usual Legion army. I've not played 30k so can't say if they implemented them right, but so far i heard no complaints along the lines of "Mechanicus OP, Solar aus have bad dex, halp!" so it's probably good.

Mechanicum play very differently to any other army too and they're still balanced.

To be fair, though, a Mechanicum list spamming Castellax can be very difficult for someone unprepared for it.

Yeah I guess so. No more than a lot of things in 40k though I guess.

 koooaei wrote:
All i can tell i that i've seen a fight between infantry heavy night lords and big-gunz heavy iron hands. It was over turn 2 for night lords. While iron hands lost 1 bolter guy and 1 plazmacannon guy to overheat. Forgeworld really favors big gunz a lot. Those massed plazma cannons and s6 gunz with quadrillion shots that generate extra shots are brutal. And iron hands basically have +1 toughness across the board for no extra points.

Its a useless rule against my world eaters who have almost no ranged shooting to speak of, and 60+ tac marines with apothecaries will get to his line and as he has spent all his points in guns, he will die to combat

IMO, 30k still suffers from a lot of the same problems as 40k (IGOUGO, questionable balance, rules that aren't always clear, etc) but it's a better game for three reasons:

1) The attitude behind it is better. "Main GW" stuff is all about milking the cash cow of young kids impulse buying the new releases with their birthday/christmas money. New model releases are thrown together as quickly as possible with no apparent desire to refine the initial concepts, and the rules barely get more effort than the games on the backs of cereal boxes. FW releases, on the other hand, are aimed at older collectors with money and high standards. Obviously the goal is still to sell models, but the starting point is "I have this awesome fluff idea, how do we put it on the table" instead of "kids like big airplane models, the new release needs one".

2) It removes many of the things I (and a lot of other people) hate about 7th. Maelstrom missions are gone, psykers are minimized (and psyker spam is nonexistent), LOW are scaled to the point level of the game, there are no special detachments/formations/etc to break the FOC, and FW openly says "unbound is stupid, don't use it". So even though the core rules aren't all that different it feels like more of a game and less "buy GW™ Products™ and play with them however you like!!!!".

3) Where "main GW" talks a lot about "forge the narrative" but only uses it as an excuse for why the rules suck FW actually puts a lot of work into making 30k a narrative game. The special missions and campaign systems make a cruel joke out of everything "main GW" has published in the past few years, and even things like including art and fluffy unit descriptions on each page of the army list help to put the emphasis on telling a story. And that puts the focus on the strengths of 40k instead of its crippling weaknesses.

for 30k the word bearers always interested me...though i cant afford shehit from forgeworld :\

You don't need shehit from FW aside from the rules which are conveniently in two books. If you can afford regular 40k, you can afford 30k. Head swaps, alternate company parts for some of the oddball weapons, most vehicles are analogues between the two systems and/or can be used in either system.

Col. Dash wrote:
You don't need shehit from FW aside from the rules which are conveniently in two books. If you can afford regular 40k, you can afford 30k. Head swaps, alternate company parts for some of the oddball weapons, most vehicles are analogues between the two systems and/or can be used in either system.

i hardly think anyone will refuse to play you because your marines have mk vi armor instead of mk i-iv

Exactly. I'm doing mine with the proper models but that's my preference, I wouldn't not play you if you had plastic marines or whatever. The plastic space marine vehicles are actually in the books, they're 'Mars pattern' I think, as opposed to the Deimos pattern FW ones.

The rules are a hell of a lot of fun, each legion plays differently, there is an absolute tonne of fun weapons/vehicle upgrades/equipment etc. I love it, price aside.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Exactly. I'm doing mine with the proper models but that's my preference, I wouldn't not play you if you had plastic marines or whatever. The plastic space marine vehicles are actually in the books, they're 'Mars pattern' I think, as opposed to the Deimos pattern FW ones.

The rules are a hell of a lot of fun, each legion plays differently, there is an absolute tonne of fun weapons/vehicle upgrades/equipment etc. I love it, price aside.

That's pretty elitist of you. They are on the same height and bases. Hell I would let someone run a lego army against me as long as it was the same dimensions.