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Yeah, funny how rules dip into the "realism" discussions.

For wargames playing a historical setting you get the strategists as well as the historians so the rules need to cater to an almost simulator means of play.
Some nod of the head to realism or you can lose a large potential audience.

For a fantasy or Sci-Fi setting I think it needs to be a literature enabler.
If you read that a marine can do this cool thing, it is a failure in the game if he cannot do the same.
Some concessions to be made on how detailed (skirmish vs company based) the game tries to be.
Worse still, when you watch a movie or video game and you want to re-create the same scenario it can be a challenge.

I find I place certain models on the table to get a certain job done.
Being able to pick-out the special weapon or heavy weapon out of a group and essentially "neuter" that unit is a bit of a letdown.
I find people get most upset in a game when they are prevented from doing things they wanted in a game.

I think it should be possible to hit what you want with the right enemy fire (sniper or spray so with all the hits you have high odds of hitting the one you want) just not in all conditions.
I did like that wound allocation where say I have a squad of 10 guys, 20 shots hit, 2 wounds per guy allocated (not all on "closest" till he fails), I usually switched to coloured dice to represent the special characters.

Things like Maelstrom is good to a point for changing of battlefield objectives but I think the list needs to be more tailored to the type of game being played and made to suit.
Say it is a raid mission and the defender could have objectives like "hold the line!" or "take it to them!" with appropriate victory points the more challenging the objective.
I am trying to remember some game had objectives where only you know what they are, not your opponent OR you could reveal it to them at the beginning and double their worth since it should be harder.

I really love games where you pick out the losing dice and keep rolling the winners: Roll to hit, clear the bad, Roll to wound, clear the bad, Roll to save, count your dead.
It makes for an exciting and fast game.
Killing the closest model starts getting into rolling one die at a time.

I plan to change the missions to be more like our 5th edition tournament scanarios.

Primary is either a scanario Mission (for both the same) or a hidden mission card (different for all players)

Primary victory gives 30 points, draw 20 points, defeat 10 points

Secondary are Maelstrom points. The maelstrom point difference add +/- 10 points.

So a primary draw and maelstrom victory would be a 30:10, a primary defeat and maelstrom victory a 20:20 etc.

 megatrons2nd wrote:

1) Closest first is better than defender picking. Doing Defenders choice makes some weapons/gear/characters almost invulnerable. There needs to be a way to allow for the special model to be targeted/destroyed.

There was. It was called "Precise Shots" and certain characters and weapons with the "Sniper" ability had it in 6th Edition. There were also additional rules or psychic abilities that could target individual models. I think that ability, combined with 5th Edition wound allocation (defender chooses who dies) is perfectly viable.

I'll give you a great example of how "closest dies" hurts the game. Flamers. In order to even USE flame weapons, your guys with flamers have to be in the front. However, by being in the front, your flamer guys die before they can use their weapons. So this results in pretty much nobody using flamers in squads anymore because your two choices are both terrible. You're better off simply not bothering to upgrade anyone to use a flamer.

Then lets add in the "Fun" factor. Let me tell you about my Orks and their Power Klaws. I NEED my Power Klaws. Love it or hate it, it's how GW designed Orks to WORK. So it's not really fun for me as an Ork player to be constantly worried about my Nob getting killed, because if he's killed my whole Boys squad might be useless against what I want them to charge and hurt. In 6th Edition it was so bad I'd simply stopped putting Power Klaws on my models. I never got to use them. How is that fun? If a rule ruins part of the game, it's probably a crappy rule.

Lets add to the mix by talking about barrage and blast weapons. You can fire a missile launcher into the middle of a squad and get 3-5 wounds because you hit a lot of models, but the soldiers in FRONT die. But if you fire a BARRAGE weapon suddenly magically the wounds are allocated to where the blast hits. So Barrage Weapons are the best character sniper in the game. Land the large blast on a Sergeant's head, cause 5 wounds, and the Sergeant has to take all 5. Hit that same Sergeant with a normal blast, and for some reason all the guys in the front die, even if they're much more spaced out.

Defender should remove casualties.
Barrage should go back to the way it was, and simply cause Pinning, not allow intervening terrain (area terrain only), hit vehicles on side armor, and be able to be fired out of LoS.

While we're at it, let's fix the idiocy that Blast weapons can't be fired as Snap Shots. It makes ZERO sense that I can load and fire a Krak Missile as a snap-shot but not a Frag missile, and if you're talking about firing missiles at fliers, it makes even LESS sense that you can't hit a flying unit AT ALL with a large blast of shrapnel, but you CAN hit it with one precise shot. Just make it such that Barrage weapons can't shoot at Fliers, and call it done. Allow Blast weapons to be fired as Snap Shots, except that they cannot "Hit" and scatter as if BS1.

^ thank you. That was the long version of why "closest first" sucks.

Speaking of Snap Shots, it's kinda ridiculous that a highly-trained BS10 super marksman snap shots just as poorly as a BS2 Ork. The correct rule would be to re-roll successful hits, rather than hit on 6s...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
^ thank you. That was the long version of why "closest first" sucks.

Speaking of Snap Shots, it's kinda ridiculous that a highly-trained BS10 super marksman snap shots just as poorly as a BS2 Ork. The correct rule would be to re-roll successful hits, rather than hit on 6s...

That is an excellent suggestion.

 Matthew wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
^ thank you. That was the long version of why "closest first" sucks.

Speaking of Snap Shots, it's kinda ridiculous that a highly-trained BS10 super marksman snap shots just as poorly as a BS2 Ork. The correct rule would be to re-roll successful hits, rather than hit on 6s...

That is an excellent suggestion.

It is, but honestly, I'd rather simply remove Overwatch from the game as a whole. The game is shooty enough as it is, isn't it?

I feel like when the designers built 6th Edition of 40k, they started with the PREMISE of making Assault a random 2D6 dice number. I feel like they did this because a) it brought it a little more in line with Warhammer Fantasy, and b) because they were adding pre-measuring to the game. Before you could pre-measure, there would be those "iffy" moments where you could declare an assault, only to find that you're outside of 6" and you fail. I feel like they wanted to KEEP that in the game somehow. So they added the 2D6 assault move.

"BUT!" The designers say, that means we're making Assault overall easier to perform than before! On average, people will roll 7" instead of 6", and could possibly roll as high as 12"! This will imbalance the game in favor of Assault.

"NO," says the other designer. We'll allow the unit who is getting assaulted a free shot during the Assault phase! Since we are removing models from the front, if successful this means the person assaulting will lose a couple of inches on his assault move, since each dead model at the front probably increases your successful assault distance by an inch or so.

"GREAT IDEA!" They all agree, and we got 6th Edition rules.

However, I would say that their thinking here was flawed. Assault in 40k is bad. It was horrible in 6th, and slightly better in 7th, but Shooting is where the game happens. Assault is BAD, even with the 2D6 Assault range. So do we really need Overwatch to keep 2D6 Assaults from being too powerful?

I say no. Take Overwatch out of the game entirely. ANY improvements to Overwatch, such as allowing firing at a penalty to BS instead of BS1 would just exacerbate the problem even worse. No-one would assault anyone.

Overwatch is a 2E concept that got sidelined because the pure killing scoring of 2E caused games to devolve into something approximating a deer hunt from concealed blinds than a game of armies moving against each other.

Pre-measuring is a good idea, and randomizing assualt isn't terrible. It's just that shooting is will pretty much always be better until you've created a game that strongly incentivizes assault.

 kodos wrote:
this +1
choose when reserves should come at the beginning of the game

remove most random dice roles (traits, powers, movement)

Me and some guys from Germany worked a year ago on small tweaks for 40k, but skipped it because no one was interested in (seems like 40k is perfect as it is....).

Some ideas were to streamline the rules (remove not necessary differences between walkers, tanks, monstrous creatures), remove random roles and take the wound allocation from starship troopers (very complicated written down but much faster in game).
Than there was the idea to remove additional saves and rerolls and rework the armour system (tanks should be wounded like everything else to avoid not necessary differences of "to wound")


PS:
The other question is, is there a 40k community out there which want to be ready and has a working LRB, if 40k makes the "AoS"?

We play a house rule where if you have three units in reserve, you roll three dice then if, lets say, you only pass on two, you get to apply those two dice to whichever units in reserve you choose. Still random a bit, but gives you more control. Also we let psykers pick their own spells, instead of rolling for them. With the new rules of psyker phase, they're random enough as it is.

It always makes me laugh how troops partly lobotomized to be fearless, and aggressive. Would care about their own safety. Surely Khorne berserkers would consider any vehicle an assault vehicle.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Overwatch is a 2E concept that got sidelined because the pure killing scoring of 2E caused games to devolve into something approximating a deer hunt from concealed blinds than a game of armies moving against each other.

Pre-measuring is a good idea, and randomizing assualt isn't terrible. It's just that shooting is will pretty much always be better until you've created a game that strongly incentivizes assault.

Previously the game was so assault oriented that taking a shooty army was suicide. I do agree that they have gone to far in altering the balance between the two. Shooting should be a bit more powerful than assault, but not as much as it is currently.

Assault has comparable(weapons have an edge on the range, but lose an attack at the longer range) ranges to the most common weapon ranges, has penalties to morale checks based on casualties caused, has more attacks than the average ranged weapon(ranged gets an average of 2, while melee gets an average of 4) and Melee can wipe out a full sized unit on a single dice roll.

I would have rather had overwatch cause a penalty to the charge distance than causing casualties. (someone else's suggestion, just can't remember whose)

I've occasionally wondered if ordinance weapons and tau rail weaponry should take two wounds off of monstrous creatures. It would bring those weapons back into the meta with a definitive role, I believe.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I've occasionally wondered if ordinance weapons and tau rail weaponry should take two wounds off of monstrous creatures. It would bring those weapons back into the meta with a definitive role, I believe.

It's only a matter of time. Games Workshop neutered vehicles and made Monstrous Creatures obscenely powerful by comparison, and they keep upping the ante with every release. First your typical Monstrous Creature had 4 wounds, that was considered "big". Then 6 wounds became the norm. Now 6 wounds isn't enough anymore and you're starting to see more Gargantuan Creatures with more than 6.

There's already some Mechanicum weapons that can take multiple wounds off creatures, in addition to D weapons. It's only a matter of time before Games Workshop decides to make multi-wound weapons a normal feature in most codexes.

I am OK with that so long as the prerequisite is that the extra wounds only come off of monstrous creatures. Most of them are balanced out points wise with vehicles, the issue is that there are a lot more weapons that kill vehicles more effectively and aren't bad at killing monstrous creatures either.

With ordinance and the rail weapons the single shot big bores and the artillery blasts wouldn't be totally wasted if you fired it at a carnifex.

I personally love the inclusion of super units, they allow me to get a 2000 point game in in under 3 hours. I will say that my local meta is completely devoid of waac players or cheaters. We have some competitive types, but they are good dudes too.

Murrdox wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I've occasionally wondered if ordinance weapons and tau rail weaponry should take two wounds off of monstrous creatures. It would bring those weapons back into the meta with a definitive role, I believe.

It's only a matter of time. Games Workshop neutered vehicles and made Monstrous Creatures obscenely powerful by comparison, and they keep upping the ante with every release. First your typical Monstrous Creature had 4 wounds, that was considered "big". Then 6 wounds became the norm. Now 6 wounds isn't enough anymore and you're starting to see more Gargantuan Creatures with more than 6.

That's because everyone already had a bunch of vehicles. Then they pushed MCs. Now they're pushing vehicles again with the super-heavies. And a few MCs with Gargantuans.

Man , some of these house rules are brutal.

Charge d6+6??? Really??? Why not just make charge range 52 inches? Coz people don't get increased running speed just from wanting to clang swords. If anything , the average assault range would be 7 inches , because that's the average of 2d6. so perhaps making it less random without greatly increase their assault range would be better , d6+3? and i play green tide lol

Psychic spells go off on 3+. Weak , why not let psykers auto win? 4+ , with 10 dice cant fail. I'm assuming you guys are trying to cast 40 spells a turn and wonder why they wont cast. Because I have no problem at all.

Picking your own warlord traits would lead to interesting builds , i think this can work. But picking your own psychic spells is gak. Some units can pick thier own spells. This is what distinguishes them. If all psykers can pick what spells they want , you would see a lot more invisible and a lot less primaris.

Wound allocation is great in this edition , are you all smoking pot? I remember when people used to split their wounds , and make it that each 2 wound model had 1 wound because they were dressed differently. THAT'S INSANE! Closest model takes the wound , whats wrong with this?

I'll give you a great example of how "closest dies" hurts the game. Flamers. In order to even USE flame weapons, your guys with flamers have to be in the front. However, by being in the front, your flamer guys die before they can use their weapons. So this results in pretty much nobody using flamers in squads anymore because your two choices are both terrible. You're better off simply not bothering to upgrade anyone to use a flamer.

If you don't mind them dying , leave them in the front. If you want them to live so that they can use thier flamers , put them in the front only when they are about to shoot. It is not hard to do. And the realism of it is that people in the front of armies die first. You don't shoot into a crowd and expect the people in the back to drop. Are you mad?

Then lets add in the "Fun" factor. Let me tell you about my Orks and their Power Klaws. I NEED my Power Klaws. Love it or hate it, it's how GW designed Orks to WORK. So it's not really fun for me as an Ork player to be constantly worried about my Nob getting killed, because if he's killed my whole Boys squad might be useless against what I want them to charge and hurt. In 6th Edition it was so bad I'd simply stopped putting Power Klaws on my models. I never got to use them. How is that fun? If a rule ruins part of the game, it's probably a crappy rule.

Until just recently , Ive run just orks for years. I know this problem well. And you know what , it makes sense. Don't leave your nob in front to get shot at. And if your enemy sneaks up on you and kills your back nob , good for him , he played it smart and strategic. It doesn't make sense for him to sneak behind you to get your nob if you can just allocate wounds in a nonsensical manner.

Nothing wrong with devestator weapons. Those weapons are supposed to be the deadliest thing conceivable. I assume a starship would get one shotted by a sun being shot at it. I dont care what you say.

Allies? Yes allies are a good idea. What good is a game with out a fluffy story to it. Tyranids don't team up with space marines. Get over it.

Who ever goes first wins? Smells like more pot. Is there any reasoning to this at all? Meh...It reminds me of those chess noobs that say white has a significant advantage by going first. obviously this has been proven wrong. Whats gained in tempo is lost by countering.

Its a tank , made of Tonnes of material you have never heard of , It SHOULD NOT , MUST NOT be treated like a guy wearing a bulletproof vest. The game mechanics of wounding vehicles is fine.

There are some good ideas;
-Like managing the objective cards that cant be used.
-Maybe choosing reserves.

You have to remember , when you are changing things that seem slight , your changing the particular strengths and weaknesses of armies , making the game unbalanced all over again. For example , making psyker spells easier to cast means you get more bang for the point cost. If you change assault range to a less random variable , assault type armies get a huge boost in effectiveness , due to rarely failing an assault , which gives assault armies a buff , which means the whole game and point system would have to be reworked to not let the assault type armies be overpowered.

The House rules we use do not change the balance of units.

-losing player gets to knit pick rules only. If you are winning , don't argue if you're tank is 25% obscured.
-We sometimes like to make all objectives mysterious. For more flavour , tang and randomness. Yes , some people do like randomness. This might not be for everyone.
-Mysterious objectives change every player turn. The fluff behind this is that the warp is never still. Well actually , it can be still one moment , and not the next.


Randomness is good. It may make the better army lose a game to a weaker army , but not consistently. This is a lot of fun. It adds that david versus goliath aspect. "I just beat my buddies unbeatable army for the first time ever"

What I don't like is the random effects that make 1 die break half your army. Most common i think is my 10 pack of termis and libbrarian deepstriking off the table , mishap , 500 points gone, slay the warlord , firstblood lost. It is not possible to come back from this bad die. "GOOD GAME , wanna play again?"

jonman_t wrote:
Charge d6+6??? Really??? Why not just make charge range 52 inches? Coz people don't get increased running speed just from wanting to clang swords. If anything , the average assault range would be 7 inches , because that's the average of 2d6. so perhaps making it less random without greatly increase their assault range would be better , d6+3? and i play green tide lol Calm down m8. Bit of an overreaction. It's not like assault is powerful these days.

Picking your own warlord traits would lead to interesting builds , i think this can work. But picking your own psychic spells is gak. Some units can pick thier own spells. This is what distinguishes them. If all psykers can pick what spells they want , you would see a lot more invisible and a lot less primaris. Yes, I'm sure the likes of Tigurius, Be'lakor and Eldrad all go into battle thnking, "I wonder what psychic gak will happen today. Am I a going to know offensive or defensive powers? Am I going to be of any use this battle?"

Wound allocation is great in this edition , are you all smoking pot? I remember when people used to split their wounds , and make it that each 2 wound model had 1 wound because they were dressed differently. THAT'S INSANE! Closest model takes the wound , whats wrong with this? Wound allocation this edition involves an unholy amount of micromanaging, and is not even fun. 5E was far better at it, despite the Nob Bikerz fethery.

I'll give you a great example of how "closest dies" hurts the game. Flamers. In order to even USE flame weapons, your guys with flamers have to be in the front. However, by being in the front, your flamer guys die before they can use their weapons. So this results in pretty much nobody using flamers in squads anymore because your two choices are both terrible. You're better off simply not bothering to upgrade anyone to use a flamer.

If you don't mind them dying , leave them in the front. If you want them to live so that they can use thier flamers , put them in the front only when they are about to shoot. It is not hard to do. And the realism of it is that people in the front of armies die first. You don't shoot into a crowd and expect the people in the back to drop. Are you mad? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that Barry was unable to pick up Gerald's sniper to continue shooting stuff.

Allies? Yes allies are a good idea. What good is a game with out a fluffy story to it. Tyranids don't team up with space marines. Get over it. The allies system is one of the most unbalanced things in the game. If we wanted a particular multi-ary scenario, we'll do what we did in 4E/5E, and houserule it in. I take it you've never played against proper allies abuse?

Who ever goes first wins? Smells like more pot. Is there any reasoning to this at all? Meh...It reminds me of those chess noobs that say white has a significant advantage by going first. obviously this has been proven wrong. Whats gained in tempo is lost by countering. Eldar T1 is liable to wipe out half an army. If both sides take properly good SH units, whomever goes first will take a measurably significant advantage by removing a large proportion of the enemy army, invalidating their ability to strike back. Thus auto-winning. Chess mitigates it by having perfectly matched sides and alternating unit activation. IGOUGO in 40k has serious balance issues.

Its a tank , made of Tonnes of material you have never heard of , It SHOULD NOT , MUST NOT be treated like a guy wearing a bulletproof vest. The game mechanics of wounding vehicles is fine. I'm gonna go ahead and assume you have no idea how tanks work irl or in this game.

You have to remember , when you are changing things that seem slight , your changing the particular strengths and weaknesses of armies , making the game unbalanced all over again. For example , making psyker spells easier to cast means you get more bang for the point cost. That was the point. If you change assault range to a less random variable , assault type armies get a huge boost in effectiveness , due to rarely failing an assault , which gives assault armies a buff which they needed, which means the whole game and point system would have to be reworked to not let the assault type armies be overpowered It really doesn't..

The House rules we use do not change the balance of units. Why the heck not? Adding 100 points to the WK's cost means it gets less bang for its buck. Is that a bad thing?

Randomness is good. It may make the better army lose a game to a weaker army , but not consistently. This is a lot of fun. It adds that david versus goliath aspect. "I just beat my buddies unbeatable army for the first time ever" Randomness is untactical and nonsensical. Random =/= balance or fun or comedy.

I'd rather beat my buddy's unbeatable army using tactics and strategy after losing 1000 times than beat it thanks to sheer luck after losing 100 times.

Don't bring a list with an other power lv then your opponents.
Done


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We all know what you should bring to win, the fun is playing with an army that is not guaranteed to table / overpower your opponent.

Unwritten houserule used by me and my friends:

Da Rool of Kool is King. (DRKK)

>Only bring cool stuff. If it ain't cool, it ain't fun. (Shotgun Scouts? Judge Dredd Scousers!)

>Be cool. Dick moves aren't cool.

>Fun is cool. Have lots of it. Play for laughs.

 Selym wrote:
Unwritten houserule used by me and my friends:

Da Rool of Kool is King. (DRKK)

>Only bring cool stuff. If it ain't cool, it ain't fun. (Shotgun Scouts? Judge Dredd Scousers!)

>Be cool. Dick moves aren't cool.

>Fun is cool. Have lots of it. Play for laughs.

Jup these kind of house rules you need. House rules trying to balance 40k will horrible fail, not only because 40k isn't that balanced at all but also because players always tend to balance other armies in context to their own army / play style.
Ban rocks paper is fine kinds of house rules are way to common sadly (even on tournaments).

Calm down m8. Bit of an overreaction. It's not like assault is powerful these days.

I agree. It seems that it's harder then ever to get an assault off nowadays. You cannot assault out of deepstrike , you cannot assault out of vehicles unless they are assault type. You can't seem to assault in any sneaky manner. That being said , it's not the randomness of the assault that is making assault weak. It's these rules that are at fault. If you could deepstrike and assault , for example , people would be really scared. And it would add another element of tactical play. And help give the power back to assault type armies.

Yes, I'm sure the likes of Tigurius, Be'lakor and Eldrad all go into battle thnking, "I wonder what psychic gak will happen today. Am I a going to know offensive or defensive powers? Am I going to be of any use this battle?"

Not really sure what you mean here. But the warp isn't intended to be like clockwork. It's not a science , and the game rules support this.

Wound allocation this edition involves an unholy amount of micromanaging, and is not even fun. 5E was far better at it, despite the Nob Bikerz fethery.

To be honest , I find it simple. And its not just me , been watching a lot of battles on youtube. Maybe YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that Barry was unable to pick up Gerald's sniper to continue shooting stuff.

Not really sure how this pertains to what you were replying to. Care to elaborate?

The allies system is one of the most unbalanced things in the game. If we wanted a particular multi-ary scenario, we'll do what we did in 4E/5E, and houserule it in. I take it you've never played against proper allies abuse?

You're right , haven't had a problem yet. But you might be misunderstanding me. I am not saying certain combos can be overpowered. I am more of looking at this from a fluffy perspective. Some armies simply cannot ally with each other , they may lack that sort of decision making process in their biology , like the tyranids. While some armies , should mesh together no problem , like any imperial force. I am not saying this could use some balancing. My reply was intended to thwart people from allying armies that should never be allied , hence the comment , no space marines allied with nids...

Eldar T1 is liable to wipe out half an army. If both sides take properly good SH units, whomever goes first will take a measurably significant advantage by removing a large proportion of the enemy army, invalidating their ability to strike back. Thus auto-winning. Chess mitigates it by having perfectly matched sides and alternating unit activation. IGOUGO in 40k has serious balance issues.

Eldar is my main opponent right now. And through experimentation and learning , trun 1 usually results in less than 2 wounds on either side regardless of who goes first. Maybe consider not deploying your army in the open.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume you have no idea how tanks work irl or in this game.

Don't assume , it makes you sound stupid. I know a lot about tanks. Did you know some tanks can survive a nuclear bombing? These are modern day tanks. Not even 41st millenium tanks. If you think that comment was a bit salty , i apologize. I felt you set that tone.

You have to remember , when you are changing things that seem slight , your changing the particular strengths and weaknesses of armies , making the game unbalanced all over again. For example , making psyker spells easier to cast means you get more bang for the point cost. That was the point. If you change assault range to a less random variable , assault type armies get a huge boost in effectiveness , due to rarely failing an assault , which gives assault armies a buff which they needed, which means the whole game and point system would have to be reworked to not let the assault type armies be overpowered It really doesn't..

To your first comment , If I had an opponent that demanded some units in his army have more bang for the same point cost , i would tell him to smarten up. The costs of units are relative to thier ability. I understand that some units are underpowered and require rebalancing , but this isn't for my opponent to choose which ones and how. That would be a little stacked. So it's a good thing that their is a governing authority on this subject. The CODEX. Besides , psykers are the last units that need balancing. A spell on 1 dice has a 50% chance to cast. You guys are acting like you see 1 spell out of your psykers all game. I get d6+7 warp charges a turn. Usually ends up being 4 successfully cast spells , even after deny the witch.

2nd comment. I agree , but this is not your decision or mine , or my opponents.

3rd comment ; It really does. I just explained the whole mechanic of my thought. Why would you even comment without explaining? Instead , you just say no. LOL

Randomness is untactical and nonsensical. Random =/= balance or fun or comedy.

It really isn't. Any computer game you buy has RNG. Any card game you play , you shuffle that deck , any board game has dice rolls. And realism is there too. Rifles jam periodically. Grenades can bounce funny. Unless you want 40k to become tic tac toe. Your argument is unsound , and your just arguing to be right.

jonman_t wrote:

Yes, I'm sure the likes of Tigurius, Be'lakor and Eldrad all go into battle thnking, "I wonder what psychic gak will happen today. Am I a going to know offensive or defensive powers? Am I going to be of any use this battle?"

Not really sure what you mean here. But the warp isn't intended to be like clockwork. It's not a science , and the game rules support this.

Untrained psykers have issues with making the warp do what they want, but the more experienced ones are able to channel it consistently. When someone as experienced as those three says "right, I'm gonna levitate that n00b over there" they, in fluff, are usually able to do it. Put too much effort into it however, and then you get the daemons (perils). You don't just suddenly lose all grasp of your witchcraft every other battle.

jonman_t wrote:

Wound allocation this edition involves an unholy amount of micromanaging, and is not even fun. 5E was far better at it, despite the Nob Bikerz fethery.

To be honest , I find it simple. And its not just me , been watching a lot of battles on youtube. Maybe YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

You need a separate wound pool for every single type of hit. And you need to separate /those/ based on direction of fire. And then you have to roll each one individually. And then on top of that:

jonman_t wrote:

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that Barry was unable to pick up Gerald's sniper to continue shooting stuff.

Not really sure how this pertains to what you were replying to. Care to elaborate?

Tactical Marine 1 has a heavy bolter. Tactical Marine 2 has a boltgun. TM 1 get shot in the face, dying instantly. TM 2 looks at the heavy bolter and goes, "pass". That's what the current wound allocation rules look like. Some houserules do exist to allow the reclamation of wargear, but they are usually way more convoluted than just "owner chooses who dies".

jonman_t wrote:

The allies system is one of the most unbalanced things in the game. If we wanted a particular multi-ary scenario, we'll do what we did in 4E/5E, and houserule it in. I take it you've never played against proper allies abuse?

You're right , haven't had a problem yet. But you might be misunderstanding me. I am not saying certain combos can be overpowered. I am more of looking at this from a fluffy perspective. Some armies simply cannot ally with each other , they may lack that sort of decision making process in their biology , like the tyranids. While some armies , should mesh together no problem , like any imperial force. I am not saying this could use some balancing. My reply was intended to thwart people from allying armies that should never be allied , hence the comment , no space marines allied with nids...

Except that the CtA rules allow for this sort of BS. It would make more sense to remove the allies rules and leave it to player preference. Especially as some things that make perfect sense are disallowed by the allies rules - CSM/Daemons can't be bros with IG. Why?

jonman_t wrote:

Eldar T1 is liable to wipe out half an army. If both sides take properly good SH units, whomever goes first will take a measurably significant advantage by removing a large proportion of the enemy army, invalidating their ability to strike back. Thus auto-winning. Chess mitigates it by having perfectly matched sides and alternating unit activation. IGOUGO in 40k has serious balance issues.

Eldar is my main opponent right now. And through experimentation and learning , trun 1 usually results in less than 2 wounds on either side regardless of who goes first. Maybe consider not deploying your army in the open.

Maybe consider what alpha strike lists are, and that not everyone can cover the board in LoS block. Most games I've seen always allow sight from any board edge to any other. In addition to this, not all 40k battlefields are densely packed urban or jungle arenas.

jonman_t wrote:

Randomness is untactical and nonsensical. Random =/= balance or fun or comedy.

It really isn't. There are no games out there that don't have randomness. Any computer game you buy has RNG. Unless you want 40k to become tic tac toe. And realism is there too. Rifles jam periodically. Grenades can bounce funny. Your argument is unsound , and your just arguing to be right.

Random is a required element, but some things should not be fully random, and more random does not equal more fun. Take the CD codex. We don't even know what army we'll have when we set it on the table. Take the CSM codex. There's too much random to even have fun. The game is taken right out of the player's hands.

jonman_t wrote:
Wound allocation is great in this edition , are you all smoking pot?

I remember when people used to split their wounds , and make it that each 2 wound model had 1 wound because they were dressed differently. THAT'S INSANE!

Closest model takes the wound , whats wrong with this?

No, although I do find that alcohol makes for a far superior gaming experience...

Closest first is stupid because 40k is not a rank-and-fire game. Models are dispersed, and shots can and do hit any model in a unit. Bullets ricochet, and people die from that, too. Closest first also ruins movement because there's all kinds of micropositioning. It makes 40k a per-model game, not a per-unit game. It's pure crap.

That's trivially resolved by changing the rule very slightly to mandate removal of the maximum number of models:
1. resolve Instant Death first, always removing unwounded models before wounded models.
2. resolve no save wounds next, always removing the maximum number of models.
3. mixed saves always use the worst save in the unit, always removing the maximum number of models.
The owner chooses who lives and dies, but has no control over how many die.

This gives the best experience, as all of the fodder drop off rapidly, and all of the awesome killy stuff remains.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

jonman_t wrote:
Wound allocation is great in this edition , are you all smoking pot?

I remember when people used to split their wounds , and make it that each 2 wound model had 1 wound because they were dressed differently. THAT'S INSANE!

Closest model takes the wound , whats wrong with this?

No, although I do find that alcohol makes for a far superior gaming experience...

Closest first is stupid because 40k is not a rank-and-fire game. Models are dispersed, and shots can and do hit any model in a unit. Bullets ricochet, and people die from that, too. Closest first also ruins movement because there's all kinds of micropositioning. It makes 40k a per-model game, not a per-unit game. It's pure crap.

That's trivially resolved by changing the rule very slightly to mandate removal of the maximum number of models:
1. resolve Instant Death first, always removing unwounded models before wounded models.
2. resolve no save wounds next, always removing the maximum number of models.
3. mixed saves always use the worst save in the unit, always removing the maximum number of models.
The owner chooses who lives and dies, but has no control over how many die.

This gives the best experience, as all of the fodder drop off rapidly, and all of the awesome killy stuff remains.

It also means that your awesomesauce hero that you spent 17 hours painting and 5 hours writing fluff for will be likely to make it into combat.

Hell, he can even lead the squad from the front, like the artwork shows!

Imagine an Emprah's Champion who is not cowering behind 20 brothars for once!

40k is a spectacle game. If we can't get the rules to work, we should at least make it look cool.

40k is sold pretty much entirely on its visuals. To the extent that the rules don't support cinematic play, the rules are wrong.

"Tactical Marine 1 has a heavy bolter. Tactical Marine 2 has a boltgun. TM 1 get shot in the face, dying instantly. TM 2 looks at the heavy bolter and goes, "pass". That's what the current wound allocation rules look like. Some houserules do exist to allow the reclamation of wargear, but they are usually way more convoluted than just "owner chooses who dies". "

Yes, but then it should look like:

TM 1 w/ heavy bolter dies to a shot in the face, TM 2 looks at heavy bolter, walks over strips off his power pack, unbolts Heavy bolter from dead Battle Brother, and then dies from the other incoming rounds because he was moronic enough to stop in a fire fight to try to strip down a mounted weapon.

Sure he can carry it, but doing this while under fire is.....stupid in the extreme. I will say grabbing that melta gun, plasma pistol, and power sword that is laying next to a guy that is pretty much self contained should be simple enough, but LasCannons, Heavy Bolters, Power Fists, and Plasma Cannons....not so much.

 megatrons2nd wrote:
"Tactical Marine 1 has a heavy bolter. Tactical Marine 2 has a boltgun. TM 1 get shot in the face, dying instantly. TM 2 looks at the heavy bolter and goes, "pass". That's what the current wound allocation rules look like. Some houserules do exist to allow the reclamation of wargear, but they are usually way more convoluted than just "owner chooses who dies". "

Yes, but then it should look like:

TM 1 w/ heavy bolter dies to a shot in the face, TM 2 looks at heavy bolter, walks over strips off his power pack, unbolts Heavy bolter from dead Battle Brother, and then dies from the other incoming rounds because he was moronic enough to stop in a fire fight to try to strip down a mounted weapon.

Sure he can carry it, but doing this while under fire is.....stupid in the extreme. I will say grabbing that melta gun, plasma pistol, and power sword that is laying next to a guy that is pretty much self contained should be simple enough, but LasCannons, Heavy Bolters, Power Fists, and Plasma Cannons....not so much.

Same scenario with scouts (or CSM heavy weapons for that matter):



Or how about Shotguns/Meltaguns/Plasmaguns/Swords?

@ selym. The dataslate for belakor shows he knows all the telepathy powers , so he does pick and choose. Not sure of the others you mentioned. And what youre saying is my point. If all psykers got to choose , then this would unbalance the psykers that can choose. That's what made them good to begin with and now everyone can do it? Why pay so many points for this model now? This is what happens when you balance units in house rules. You mess up other units and their balancing.

You need a separate wound pool for every single type of hit. And you need to separate /those/ based on direction of fire. And then you have to roll each one individually. And then on top of that:

I can maybe agree with some of that. I can see how it can be awkward in rare circumstances. But the last part , you don't have to roll each dice separately.

I understand what you are saying with guy picking up the heavy bolter. That does make sense. But at the same time , this would only work for some weapons , in the midst of battle , I am not gonna start strapping on flamer tanks and lighting that pilot light back up. Perhaps when you get a codex entry that says "1 in 5 marines can have a special weapon" maybe that suggest hes the only 1 trained with it? I know what your thinking , this is getting quite technical. Thats why you just generalize and say , guy with flamer takes wound , flamer is gone. But i do feel you. Kinda just playing devils advocate in order to get the game moving. (EDIT) Pretty much what megatron is saying , but he said it better.

Yes , maybe in a circle that has abuse of allies , you can agree to not use them. If i am not mistaken , this is common enough in the tourny scene? IDK. I think this is a dead point as I was talking about something similar but different.

Maybe consider what alpha strike lists are, and that not everyone can cover the board in LoS block. Most games I've seen always allow sight from any board edge to any other. In addition to this, not all 40k battlefields are densely packed urban or jungle arenas.

Although this is sometimes true , and some players agree to use weak terrain , this shouldn't be common. Rulebook suggest the more terrain the better. I thought it said 25% but that might be out of an older book.

Random is a required element, but some things should not be fully random, and more random does not equal more fun. Take the CD codex. We don't even know what army we'll have when we set it on the table. Take the CSM codex. There's too much random to even have fun. The game is taken right out of the player's hands.

Yip never said everything should be randomized. And it is required like we said. So we both agree that a moderate amount of randomness is essential for both fun and tactics. good.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
40k is sold pretty much entirely on its visuals. To the extent that the rules don't support cinematic play, the rules are wrong.

Perhaps , but its intent is also to keep a parallel to realism. Real battles are fought with fodder. Real fodder usually dies before generals die. I think they have done a fair job. After a couple turns , that's when the cinematics shine. When the squad is all dead except for your hero and he locked in combat with a monster. It's picture worthy. By the way , love your pic.