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Interesting to see the results of this poll over a 5 year period, but is it time for a restart?

Much of the people playing from when this poll dropped initially in 2015 likely have different ideas about the 40k of now (good, bad, ect.).

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Interesting to see the results of this poll over a 5 year period, but is it time for a restart?

Much of the people playing from when this poll dropped initially in 2015 likely have different ideas about the 40k of now (good, bad, ect.).

I think that restarting this poll is a very good idea.

Interesting for comparison purposes.

Rob Lee wrote:
My £0.02...

Don't know about a complete re-write but 40k, if not the whole GW hobby, needs something doing...

I must say that you put it out how I feel too. I returned to hobby 2020 May and had a break from 2002. Don't have that much experience about playing now. I feel also that you need too many books and different sources to play. I have a bit mixed feeling about stratagems too. Agree that there's way too much of them. I'm not playing that seriously and shouldn't care that much about them. It feels also that there is un-necessary amount of special rules for the units which are really hard to remember. Actually in the first 9th codexes some are gone, but some are changed to stratagems.

I think the poll is incomplete. I wouldn't say a 'total rewrite', so much as figuring out how to streamline something based off 4th-5th ed, with tournament-unambiguous writing, and a removal of TLOS in exchange for models having a "Height" statistic.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
I think the poll is incomplete. I wouldn't say a 'total rewrite', so much as figuring out how to streamline something based off 4th-5th ed, with tournament-unambiguous writing, and a removal of TLOS in exchange for models having a "Height" statistic.

In fairness, the Poll was made in 2015, when GW were only 99.9% as bad as they are now.

I think it's more interesting that over 5 years 733 people genuinely thought that there was nothing wrong with GW rules.

I'd say the options in your poll are very limited.

I am not qualified to have an opinion having not played the game.

However, from what I can gather, 5th Edition was considered the best, broadly speaking.

How about an option, "Use 5th Edition base rules and spend time cleaning everything and balancing it all out and then stop releasing a new edition and new codexes every three years!!.

The rules are always going to be messy and not quite right while they're doing that. But I guess money talks and bulls--t walks, right?

I personally liked 4th better than 5th, but I am a weird one.

5th with some of the more heinous abuses pruned out (Nob Bikers, the entire Grey Knights Codex, etc) would be my preferred way to play barring some sort of working Alt-Action ruleset.

What a stupidly biased poll. It assumes that the game is either irreparably broken or completely perfect. The OP is bad at polls and should feel bad.

Think I have a favourite Thread!
Oh the hatred for the Authors here....

How about "some changes only" ?
or "reset the stats, get rid of all those, invulnerable saves, fnops and super models"
in short "It's not the rules, but the codices"

I think the biggest issue is that GW is trying to have their cake and eat it too with a single rule set. The problem isn't the people designing the rules, it's the direction they are being told to take them. They are trying to come up with a single system that serves both casual and competitive players, and that's just never going to work. They need to tighten things up much more for competitive play, and relax and simplify things for casual play. What I propose is designing THREE completely different rule sets as follows:

1. Competitive Play: This would be where 90% of game and balance testers would work; tighten the hell out of this. Also, do yearly, or maybe twice a year grand updates rather than constantly rolling out new things, this would allow more time to balance new product. Your shiny new codex may need to wait a little while before seeing tournament play, but at least people with the big wallets and hot new things aren't always blowing everyone out of the water. Also, if multiple new factions became legal at the same time, the meta would shift dramatically enough that there shouldn't really be an obvious frontrunner, and by the time the meta is "solved" it's been about six months and another change is right around the corner.

2. Casual Play: This would be an expansion on the current Crusade system which I think is a step in the right direction, but could be so much more than it is. With it's own rule set you could get a lot more creative with what everything does because it doesn't need to be so tightly balanced, some things are okay to be a little OP here because it won't ruin competitive play. Give the world more flavor, design campaigns for people, or give us much more expansive systems in which to build our own. This would be where new codices could be used right away as balance isn't as big a deal, it would also enable players to give feedback on new units to help the teams balance the next competitive rule set. The general design philosophy for this would be to enable people to make structured army based campaigns.

3. Narrative Play: This could cross over with casual, or could also be it's own thing. It could even be branded as 40k Classic or whatever. This would be a more RPG style take on 40k, similar to what you'd find in 1st edition. The sky's the limit, go bonkers with anything that sounds cool, balance be damned. You want giant Venus fly trap monsters that can eat your troops? Done! You want to pack some anti-plant grenades for jungle missions? Done! Did someone say Hrud? Get them the hell in here, they don't need competitive rules, just give us some bad ass model for us to mess around with. Multiple D100 upgrade options to units? Sounds like a blast. Units scavenging weapons and tech from other factions? Sure! 40k is such an expansive universe, give us a system where we can do literally ANYTHING we can think of.

Not only would this solve GW's rules issue, but it would expand their business considerably as while most models would be usable in all three modes, you could have various specialty kits only for things like Casual or Narrative. They already do things like this with the board games like Blackstone Fortress, they just need to double down. Kill Team and Apoc could possibly benefit from this as well, but I play them less, so I can't say for certain.

There are a few other things that I think overall would be a huge benefit to the game:
1. Move away from D6 dice. Something like D10 or D12 would give GW a lot more options to scale the power level of their units and tweak things lightly instead of giving massive buffs or nerfs. Moving something up by 1 in anything is a pretty big deal, but by 0.5, that's not so bad.
2. Have a separate points allotment for units and upgrades. This would allow more model crossover as we have so many cool decked out models that just aren't practical to play in competitive. Also, it's just another way to add more variation and strategy to competitive play, not just, minimum amount of base unit required 95% of the time.
3. More games that aren't as objective focused. Objective games are great and all, but not every game needs to be like that. Take a page out of the old Battle Missions book and get creative with win conditions.

Well that's my thought's on the matter, love to hear if anything thinks this is a good idea, or if there's more to be improved on what I've said. Or if you think I'm just out to lunch. XD

I always felt that the game was the most balanced around 5th edition. Just tweak some of the universal special rules, rebalance some point costs and there we go.

Jarms48 wrote:
I always felt that the game was the most balanced around 5th edition. Just tweak some of the universal special rules, rebalance some point costs and there we go.

The core rules for 5th were fine.

The issue 5th edition had was no strong giude to keep the designers in check to stick to 5th edtions core philosophy. At first it was meant to streamline and take out all the fanciful things but they disbanded that idea as was seen in the 5th ed. Loyalist codex. When this occured the codex power levels were divided and not great. Add in some odd innapropriatly costed units (like long fang spam) and people were getting sick of the edition.

5th also suffered from the fact that we only ever got half an edition, externally speaking. In this edition only half the armies got updated which were most Imperium schmucks. Only three, tehcnically 4, other armies were updated for that edition which were Necrons, Tyranids, Dark Eldar and technically Orks.

Then 6th appeared and everything started going really downhill.

40k is a bit crazy at the moment, just like the eras of 7th with the crazy detachment rules. The designers can't help themselves but amp things up all the time, and so whatever rule set we seem to start with, they just end up so crazy that it becomes a game few people want to play.

There needs to be some levels, where level 1 is a handful of troops and perhaps one tank or dread. This is where you can get your auras and strategims and such.
Level 2 is larger, with lots of troops and vehicles where rules need to be on a squad by squad basis. Perhaps a handful of ICs.
Level 3 starts to add superheavies, aircraft and the infantry units tend to be more abstract from a rules perspective, much like what they tried to do with Apocalypse. Infantry ICs are now squad upgrades rather then individual units.
Level 4 is anything can go bring your titans/gargants whatever and throw it on the table. At this level tanks and infantry have really abstract rules and ICs don't matter outside something like a Primarch or command baneblade.

Not voting.

A complete rewrite won't go over well. It did not go over well for WHFB into AoS.
Not changing anything isn't the answer, either.

The solution is more complex than simple firings can accomplish.

I have always seen the rules aspect of 40k very reflective of the actual concept of war. Something on the scale as war in the 40k universe isn't going to be static. There is an ever changing tide of battle that exist in the 40k universe. The ebbs and flows, the dominators and the dominated. Without this constant change everything would end as one force dominates the galaxy, and the meta.

I think some things do need to be cleaned up and maybe they are on their way to doing that, who knows? Changes don't happen overnight.

 Peregrine wrote:
The rules need a complete re-write, but first everyone involved in writing GW's rules needs to be fired. If you keep the same incompetent morons in charge of the game then all you'll get out of a re-write is a game that is just as bad but in different ways. Once they're gone the new people can write a decent scifi-focused game in the 40k universe to replace the current bloated mess of special rules and exceptions to special rules and exceptions to the exceptions piled onto the skeleton of a bad 1980s fantasy game.

Unfortunately the only way this will ever happen is if someone else buys the 40k IP.

Bird man called it in 2015

 ProtoClone wrote:
Not voting.

A complete rewrite won't go over well. It did not go over well for WHFB into AoS.
Not changing anything isn't the answer, either.

The solution is more complex than simple firings can accomplish.

I have always seen the rules aspect of 40k very reflective of the actual concept of war. Something on the scale as war in the 40k universe isn't going to be static. There is an ever changing tide of battle that exist in the 40k universe. The ebbs and flows, the dominators and the dominated. Without this constant change everything would end as one force dominates the galaxy, and the meta.

I think some things do need to be cleaned up and maybe they are on their way to doing that, who knows? Changes don't happen overnight.

For the most part I agree. What I think really hampers the game now is the constant scale up of power level, where you add special offensive rules to make people more powerful, then more special defensive rules to combat them, then more offensive rules to combat that, and so on and so on. See a bunch of units getting multiple wounds, to a bunch of weapons getting + damage, to a bunch of units getting -1 to damage taken. A few units getting extra wounds isn't a bad thing, but it's getting pretty out of hand, and you can see this with lots of other rules too.

A constant state of flux is good for the game, but that flux always scaling up is not.

 Tawnis wrote:

 ProtoClone wrote:
Not voting.

A complete rewrite won't go over well. It did not go over well for WHFB into AoS.
Not changing anything isn't the answer, either.

The solution is more complex than simple firings can accomplish.

I have always seen the rules aspect of 40k very reflective of the actual concept of war. Something on the scale as war in the 40k universe isn't going to be static. There is an ever changing tide of battle that exist in the 40k universe. The ebbs and flows, the dominators and the dominated. Without this constant change everything would end as one force dominates the galaxy, and the meta.

I think some things do need to be cleaned up and maybe they are on their way to doing that, who knows? Changes don't happen overnight.

For the most part I agree. What I think really hampers the game now is the constant scale up of power level, where you add special offensive rules to make people more powerful, then more special defensive rules to combat them, then more offensive rules to combat that, and so on and so on. See a bunch of units getting multiple wounds, to a bunch of weapons getting + damage, to a bunch of units getting -1 to damage taken. A few units getting extra wounds isn't a bad thing, but it's getting pretty out of hand, and you can see this with lots of other rules too.

A constant state of flux is good for the game, but that flux always scaling up is not.

Good point. The constant power creep will only end up crushing the game.
No matter what GW does, people will bitch. So maybe they just need to scale back the creep and see what happens?

Casual or competitive, a game shouldn't consist mostly of upkeep. It's just awfully boring, waiting for this looooong resolution to end so that I, player, can do something again (and this something is usually far from exciting).

I can live with a game being dumb, if it's funny. But boring is an instant pass.

Voted for a complete re-write.

Cyel wrote:
Casual or competitive, a game shouldn't consist mostly of upkeep. It's just awfully boring, waiting for this looooong resolution to end so that I, player, can do something again (and this something is usually far from exciting).

I can live with a game being dumb, if it's funny. But boring is an instant pass.

Voted for a complete re-write.

The main problem with 40K being boring is and always was per-model attacks and hit-reroll-wound-reroll-save-reroll-fnp-reroll sequence. That is way, way too many dice rolls for what is a simple damage resolution. >50% of time at the table is dice rolling, 40% is moving minis and only 10% is actually playing a game.

Nou, well said, this is exactly my experience (and my problem) with the game. It's like a card game consisting mostly of shuffling the deck.

Cyel wrote:
Nou, well said, this is exactly my experience (and my problem) with the game. It's like a card game consisting mostly of shuffling the deck.

WotC called, says to lay off, the Modern format has enough problems without your savage burns

I'd go for "no, it needs about one fewer complete re-write than it's had" if that was an option.

If the rules were re-written from scratch then It wouldn’t come out the other side still being 40K. 40K rules have always been “good enough” to make battles with your cool models happen. And that is not a bad thing. It has made GW a lot of money. But it is never going to be a technical, detailed or firm rule set. If it was GW would loose a very large proportion of its appeal and customer base.

The fun part of this thread is that it was opened during 7th edition. Now we can fairly say that the game was re-written from scratch. And yet there are people demanding for another total re-write.... maybe those people want 40k to be something that it'll never be. It reminds of those who say "football is bad and boring because players don't score enough", while that sport is the most popular one around the world and has billions of (most of the times overly) devoted fans. Football isn't bad, it's simply something different from the idea of entertainment those people has.

40k doesn't need a total re-write, and IMHO it didn't need a total re-write between 7th and 8th either. It can be improved of course and since 7th the game is significantly improved now. But it's still 40k, most of the people complaining about it want it to be some sort of e-sport, something that is purely based on players' skills. Which was never the goal of 40k, and probably any other GW game.

Sunno wrote:
If the rules were re-written from scratch then It wouldn’t come out the other side still being 40K. 40K rules have always been “good enough” to make battles with your cool models happen. And that is not a bad thing. It has made GW a lot of money. But it is never going to be a technical, detailed or firm rule set. If it was GW would loose a very large proportion of its appeal and customer base.

The problem for me is they're not good enough. The basic structure of IGOUGO, the familiar stat line, the hit-wound-save mechanic all of those are good enough. But the layers and layers of custom rules for every weapon, every unit, every army, every army but painted a different color etc...

Just kills any enjoyment for me. I could keep up in the days of 3rd-5th but now... If someone tells me they hit on 2s because it's Tuesday and the moon is full I really would not doubt them.

PieInTheSky wrote:
I'd say the options in your poll are very limited.

At this stage the options should be YES, and YES (but in a different color)

 Blackie wrote:
The fun part of this thread is that it was opened during 7th edition. Now we can fairly say that the game was re-written from scratch. And yet there are people demanding for another total re-write.... maybe those people want 40k to be something that it'll never be. It reminds of those who say "football is bad and boring because players don't score enough", while that sport is the most popular one around the world and has billions of (most of the times overly) devoted fans. Football isn't bad, it's simply something different from the idea of entertainment those people has.

40k doesn't need a total re-write, and IMHO it didn't need a total re-write between 7th and 8th either. It can be improved of course and since 7th the game is significantly improved now. But it's still 40k, most of the people complaining about it want it to be some sort of e-sport, something that is purely based on players' skills. Which was never the goal of 40k, and probably any other GW game.

fun fact, 40k did not have a total re-write yet, just some parts were re-written while other parts still wait for their update to match the re-written new rules

8th changed the core from something very different than 3rd Edition, it was re-written
Army rules and model stat lines are still the same and just slowly changing to match the new core (2+ Armour Save was "tanky" with 3rd, but useless in 8th, were "tanky" is defined by the amount of wounds and toughness above the trash hold of the common weapons)

so we still wait for GW to complete the total re-write that started with 8th, and I guess we won't see it until the end of 10th

 kodos wrote:


fun fact, 40k did not have a total re-write yet, just some parts were re-written while other parts still wait for their update to match the re-written new rules

This is the thing that eventually led me to drop 40k in favor of other systems. They can't just update everything at once, and even then stuff that should be updated doesn't get updated because I guess they just couldn't be bothered?

They completely changed the way Strength and Toughness interacted in 8th edition and then just didn't modify any weapon or model statlines to reflect that change. Now they are finally getting around to it in 9th edition, but sorry if your codex is still a year away from release. You gotta keep using the 7th ed stats we didn't bother during 8th.

Sure the core rules received a total rewrite in 8th, I really liked them. I don't totally hate the changes made in 9th except for the fact that the rules are overly wordy and feel like reading a contract. But the fact they can't release everything at the same time just makes the existence of the rewritten core rules not even matter.