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This is all due to the horrible, horrible decision when GW switched gears late 4th edition/ early 5th edition, where they started prioritizing their bottom line over the Customer.

While I won't get into the details of this slow transition over the course of almost a decade now, it should be pretty obvious the game is trying to be something it's not. The one fact I keep repeating is that D-Weapons, Superheavies and Gargantuan Creatures shouldn't exist in the core rulebook. Those rules, by their very definition, exists to break the system 40k was set for (with D-Weapons being the literal definition of "up to 11", since it's quite literally a "Strength 11" weapon).

I blame Apocalypse for all of this, since that's when most of this stuff started leaking into "mainstream" 40k; before that the casual players I know of didn't even know what superheavy rules were or what vehicles had that rule. The concept of fielding an army composed of more than one faction was also alien (not unheard of, but it was usually done as a special-occasion thing, not the norm). And of course formations didn't exist at all.

What followed was GW's own pricing issues pushing newbies away; with them clamping down on cheap retailers, raising prices and making their store managers aggressively push product instead of doing intro games and events, it made the game extremely inaccessible to newbies. With no newbies joining in, they only had one source of revenue: the oldbloods. But you can't sell an oldblood the same tank he already has probably 9 copies of, so the only solution is to lower the point cost, nerf what he has while buffing the newest kit no one can possibly have before the next codex update, and allowing you to legitimately field multiple factions within an army. This means that existing players who wanted to use their collection will HAVE to pay each edition to keep up or be left in the dust. And of course any existing unit of use generally are only useful because they're cheap, so now you have incentive to go buy more of those models to fill up the points that one of them use to. Necron Immortals and warriors are the biggest offenders here; while Immortals lost one point of toughness and warriors got a weaker save, they got dramatically cheaper (Immortals use to be 28 points a piece, while Warriors were 18. That's about a 1/3rd of a price drop. And Immortals weren't overcosted at the time either).

This ended up not being enough to prop up the company, as it's unsustainable; the same people can only pay so much before they leave, so GW was trying to squeeze the same profit out of a slowly depleting fanbase. Which is why we have price hikes; they first started with incremental price hikes each year on existing product. When that backfired, they started updating products with higher prices instead, which is why they had even more incentive to push newer sets. Which are generally big vehicles (like flyers) or monsters because even if they're the same point-to-dollar ratio as any other set, the actual amount of money you drop on one is substantial (Yes, people plan out their purchases so in theory this shouldn't matter, but when the only option you have is to drop a huge amount or drop none at all, it pushes up your overall planned purchases as well.).

Scale in the game was smashed to sell bigger and better miniatures and models. So units that suited a 6mm or 10mm game were shoehorned into a 28mm game. Losing Epic didn't help as players now had no outlet for lots of cool units they knew existed in the setting.

Take Battletech. For a standard Assault Mech rocking in at 2000 BV (battle value) an opponent could field in the region of twenty 30-man platoons - such platoons could be mechanised or on bikes as well. So one Mech in points cost is equal to in the region of 600 infantry with heavy weapons support and organic transport for all those men. Mech sized/power units in 40K are worth a fraction of that. It simply isn't possible to counter their power level with ordinary units in a 28mm scale game.

 Elbows wrote:
I find this odd when you have a game which is based on a stat-line, which offers up a silver platter of creating a formula for unit costs.

RT had that, waayyy back, being an RPG crossover game.
If you wanted to give a costed model an extra point in WS, it would cost X amount. There were points for almost every stat, ability and every piece of wargear.

Since then, it has been the finger-in-the-air method of costing models and units. 25 points for any Imperial model to get a power fist, despite the model's S value, the wargear being swapped out, or the reasons why the character being represented should have it.
Oh, and to boost sales of that kit.

niall78 wrote:
--snip--Mech sized/power units in 40K are worth a fraction of that. It simply isn't possible to counter their power level with ordinary units in a 28mm scale game.

That does depend significantly on what you call 'ordinary' units, haywire skitarii/warp spiders do appear as core troops in many arrangements, but the gist of your statement is correct. Equivalent point of Guardsmen and in some cases marines don't really stand a chance in a 1-1 comparison.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If people want to bring an IG infantry squad, then play KT.

Wow. So 40K has basically reached the point of "oh you old guys want to use your old models, well this isn't your game anymore". This is why I will stick with 5th at least back then nobody told us to take our models an play a different game.

 malamis wrote:

niall78 wrote:
--snip--Mech sized/power units in 40K are worth a fraction of that. It simply isn't possible to counter their power level with ordinary units in a 28mm scale game.

That does depend significantly on what you call 'ordinary' units, haywire skitarii/warp spiders do appear as core troops in many arrangements, but the gist of your statement is correct. Equivalent point of Guardsmen and in some cases marines don't really stand a chance in a 1-1 comparison.

Again scale plays a part - in 6mm Battletech any platoon of infantry can potentially damage a Mech. In 40K many basic units can't touch the big stuff. Their 28mm personal weapons can't take on 6mm city killing units. Many Epic players would remember the power of some of the units that have creeped into 40K - many of these could kill half a company of grunts or level a 20 story tower block in one turn. You can't represent that power level in a 28mm game - especially a D6 game like 40K - and expect any form of balance to remain.

What can be done? Frankly I don't know at this stage. Players have spent millions between them on these units over the years and will want to play them. Maybe a complete rewrite of the rules based on 2D6 or D100 to add more granularity to the rules. Even then - in my opinion - gigantic 6mm scale units have no place on a 28mm board.

40K these days is trying for Battletech or Dropzone Commander scale fights in 28mm. Madness for everyone involved.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Limiting flyers I can see for the same reasons as super heavies.

They promote rock/paper/scissor play.

One of anything is OK. A TAC should be able to handle it. I have no problems with a single flyer, or a single Imperial knight/baneblade/etc. (just talking about the "reasonable” LoW type stuff here.) But once the spamming starts, even if you have the tools to deal with one of something, can you deal with 3+? Especially when some of the tools you need work poorly vs. everything else (AA).

I’m not saying we need to rigidly enforce WD battle report style army lists (One of everything!), but as the game drifts towards the extremes, the RPS-style of game play become more evident. I’d rather see battle determined on the table, then at the list building stage.

Once, both WHFB and 40k had units, for balance and flavour, that had a "0-1" tag (rarely 0-2). This gave you tools and avoided spamming.

But people complained. And GW did see a way to sell more models, and the evil limitations started to have exceptions, generally for flavour, again.

An example of this is the night lords in 3.5 CSM: they did lose a lot of stuff compared to Black Legion, but removed the 0-1 for the raptors.

But this was not enough for the greedy GW - because this mindset, still rooted in the concept that a list is interesting not only for what has access to, but even for what has not access to, still limits the impulse buy.

Flash forward now.

It's not just greed. 0-1 have bad side effect of being UNSCALABLE. You have one unit whether it's 500, 1000, 1500 or 5000 pts game. That's bad game design. It basically leads to game only really working at one point level.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


I think this is the motivation behind the Killteam release.

I think there should be a middle ground behind Kill Team and Apocalypse.

Agreed, imo, killteam is garbage (40k ruleset just doesn't work well for a skirmish game) and I don't want to play godzila vs megatron. My idea of 40k is armies composed mostly of troops units. Sadly, it seems like it's less and less the case.

The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

EDIT: Going to expand this thought a bit more. Warhammer has always been a "social game". Now by virtue of requiring an opponent, all wargames are social games to some extent, but Warhammer has always been much more. It's never been the type of game where you just go down to a game store and play, even when that was more feasible than now (i.e. prior editions) it was never really the intention. Warhammer has always been the type of social game more akin to historical gaming, where you actually talk about a specific scenario/mission with a "narrative" story (never had to be complex, could have been as simple as "Space Marines are assaulting an Ork stronghold" or "Eldar are attacking an Imperial Guard convoy") and then make decisions on army construction and the like based on that, with an eye towards having an enjoyable game. For evidence of this just look at basically any White Dwarf battle report ever, but especially the older issues. There almost always was a little fluff blurb about a battle, and often the choices taken were because they made thematic sense to the battle not because they were the most optimal choices. The army lists were always designed to be as unrestrictive as possible (this is part of the reason we no longer see 0-1 choices in the actual army lists) to allow for the most of potential scenarios (and the studio has even said on occasion that it can be fun sometimes to do something like an entire army versus a superheavy as a scenario), and then shift the onus of what's acceptable or not to the players. But the issue here comes when you have competitive-minded players that immediately look for what is "best" without regard for the army background or theme for their force (and often don't even bother with such things) because they are approaching it as a competition and not a collaborative experience.

Again, I'm not trying to defend this. I think it's absolutely gakky game design to not do any balance and then say it's on the players, but I honestly feel that Warhammer requires a completely different approach to gaming than virtually any other wargame (for good or ill) short of oldschool historical wargaming (i.e. not the modern ones like Bolt Action that are still made to be fairly balanced for competitive games, I mean like old 70s-80s Napoleonic type games that had little or no balance and required forethought) in how you approach it. Points and balance are essentially a bone thrown; look at General's Handbook as an example of this. The points are clearly intended as a rough estimate/guideline, yet some take it as gospel when GW doesn't even bother with it; the latest White Dwarf has a AoS batrep using a special scenario, and they basically say they both agreed to take like 4-5 heroes, about 10 units but the Chaos guy can take a couple more because he's defending a fortress. Yet you don't really see min-maxed armies among them, even though if you ask players here you'll get the answer of well without points, what's to stop you from taking nothing but X and Y because they are better? The answer is because you're not playing a game just to win, you're playing to have an interesting game that can tell a story, so you purposely don't take nothing but X and Y.

That's always been how Warhammer is meant to be played and I will be completely honest I do feel that some of the responsibility (not necessarily "blame") falls on the players for not wanting to engage in fostering a community, but basically want what is the real life equivalent to a matchmaking service you see in MOBAs and other online gaming, where it matches you with a random opponent to simply have a game, rather than immerse yourself in the story and background. When I see people who play armies with only the "best" units, or who decry what should be basic choices as a "tax" to get the good stuff, or who really don't care one lick why they are fighting their opponent or why the battlefield is set up the way it is, I can't help but feel that they are doing something wrong and not enjoying the game, because Warhammer can and should be so much more than simply making the "best" 1850 point list you can and playing it against a random person who also just happens to have an 1850 point army.

And that makes me sad because I know I'll never get to experience the game the way it's meant to be :(

tneva82 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Limiting flyers I can see for the same reasons as super heavies.

They promote rock/paper/scissor play.

One of anything is OK. A TAC should be able to handle it. I have no problems with a single flyer, or a single Imperial knight/baneblade/etc. (just talking about the "reasonable” LoW type stuff here.) But once the spamming starts, even if you have the tools to deal with one of something, can you deal with 3+? Especially when some of the tools you need work poorly vs. everything else (AA).

I’m not saying we need to rigidly enforce WD battle report style army lists (One of everything!), but as the game drifts towards the extremes, the RPS-style of game play become more evident. I’d rather see battle determined on the table, then at the list building stage.

Once, both WHFB and 40k had units, for balance and flavour, that had a "0-1" tag (rarely 0-2). This gave you tools and avoided spamming.

But people complained. And GW did see a way to sell more models, and the evil limitations started to have exceptions, generally for flavour, again.

An example of this is the night lords in 3.5 CSM: they did lose a lot of stuff compared to Black Legion, but removed the 0-1 for the raptors.

But this was not enough for the greedy GW - because this mindset, still rooted in the concept that a list is interesting not only for what has access to, but even for what has not access to, still limits the impulse buy.

Flash forward now.

It's not just greed. 0-1 have bad side effect of being UNSCALABLE. You have one unit whether it's 500, 1000, 1500 or 5000 pts game. That's bad game design. It basically leads to game only really working at one point level.

This is a fair point - but for that, is enough to scale in the way 6th introduced (1 FOC every 2000) and say that a 0-1 can be taken per FOC. Leave heavy stuff like LOW 0-1.

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

I quite agree with what your saying but the issue sometimes becomes less about players trying to break the game by exploiting rules (wolf star and super friends lists in general) but just outright the way they write their rules. Decurion alone is extremely strong as is Canoptek Harvest which is 100% following the rules as written and not even trying to power game. The rules/points for the Wraithknight are incredibly undercosted and yet GW published it (along with all the potentially OP Eldar rules) while being fully aware that this codex is replacing the 6th edition Eldar codex that was basically defined by broken gak like Wave Serpent spam. GW's rules writing is so laughably bad that its amazing that a company who's entire business model is to produce content for a game is unable to have a shred of common sense when it comes to making rules or even learn from their past mistakes. I don't expect StarCraft level of game balance but the spectrum of rules power is so wide that it feels like the different ends are playing entirely different games.

 Vankraken wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

I quite agree with what your saying but the issue sometimes becomes less about players trying to break the game by exploiting rules (wolf star and super friends lists in general) but just outright the way they write their rules. Decurion alone is extremely strong as is Canoptek Harvest which is 100% following the rules as written and not even trying to power game. The rules/points for the Wraithknight are incredibly undercosted and yet GW published it (along with all the potentially OP Eldar rules) while being fully aware that this codex is replacing the 6th edition Eldar codex that was basically defined by broken gak like Wave Serpent spam. GW's rules writing is so laughably bad that its amazing that a company who's entire business model is to produce content for a game is unable to have a shred of common sense when it comes to making rules or even learn from their past mistakes. I don't expect StarCraft level of game balance but the spectrum of rules power is so wide that it feels like the different ends are playing entirely different games.

I think they ARE, that's the thing. I don't think GW realizes it because GW doesn't think like that. I don't doubt the designers costed the Wraithknight lower (that is 100% on them) but I also think they might have felt you'd see only one at best, and only infrequently at that (IIRC the fluff is that they are very rare because you need twins or something?), so it's okay because you aren't always going to take one, especially if your opponent would have trouble facing one. The theme of an army would determine if you took a Wraithknight, not its stats/point cost.

I honestly don't know, but I do agree that they don't seem to really test anything beyond "Is this cool". Their army building, especially in batreps that we've seen, has always been dubious at best and laughably bad at worst.

WayneTheGame wrote:

Spoiler:

 Vankraken wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

I quite agree with what your saying but the issue sometimes becomes less about players trying to break the game by exploiting rules (wolf star and super friends lists in general) but just outright the way they write their rules. Decurion alone is extremely strong as is Canoptek Harvest which is 100% following the rules as written and not even trying to power game. The rules/points for the Wraithknight are incredibly undercosted and yet GW published it (along with all the potentially OP Eldar rules) while being fully aware that this codex is replacing the 6th edition Eldar codex that was basically defined by broken gak like Wave Serpent spam. GW's rules writing is so laughably bad that its amazing that a company who's entire business model is to produce content for a game is unable to have a shred of common sense when it comes to making rules or even learn from their past mistakes. I don't expect StarCraft level of game balance but the spectrum of rules power is so wide that it feels like the different ends are playing entirely different games.

I think they ARE, that's the thing. I don't think GW realizes it because GW doesn't think like that. I don't doubt the designers costed the Wraithknight lower (that is 100% on them) but I also think they might have felt you'd see only one at best, and only infrequently at that (IIRC the fluff is that they are very rare because you need twins or something?), so it's okay because you aren't always going to take one, especially if your opponent would have trouble facing one.

I honestly don't know, but I do agree that they don't seem to really test anything beyond "Is this cool". Their army building, especially in batreps that we've seen, has always been dubious at best and laughably bad at worst.

That sounds about right. I mean, we're talking about the same designers who flat out said they buffed Librarians because everyone in their office only ever played using Chaplains... even though in the real world no one was taking Chaplains competitively because Librarians were so much better for the points cost.

 Elbows wrote:
I wonder if they've made any progress on point-costing units. They freely admitted back in the early editions that there was no mathematical approach to creating the cost of a unit (this article mentioned an Ork vehicle I believe). They said they simply played four or five games and had a discussion on how much they believed the unit should be worth.

Something tells me this is still occurring. I find this odd when you have a game which is based on a stat-line, which offers up a silver platter of creating a formula for unit costs.

I find it shocking that a company as big as GW doesn't have a statistician to balance out points cost. Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but iIt would resolve a lot of the major issues with the game and reduce rage-quit. For example, I was so disgusted by how much superior the wulfen were compared to my nobz (not even counting their buffing abilities and greater mobility) that it made me take a 6 months hiatus from the game (this of course, means less $$$ for them).

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:


That sounds about right. I mean, we're talking about the same designers who flat out said they buffed Librarians because everyone in their office only ever played using Chaplains... even though in the real world no one was taking Chaplains competitively because Librarians were so much better for the points cost.

I want to hear the story about why the 7th edition Ork Codex writers decided that Killa Kans needed to be heavily nerfed. Maybe the Kanz just kept killing those Chaplains they seemed to love over there.

Mr. CyberPunk wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


I think this is the motivation behind the Killteam release.

I think there should be a middle ground behind Kill Team and Apocalypse.

Agreed, imo, killteam is garbage (40k ruleset just doesn't work well for a skirmish game) and I don't want to play godzila vs megatron. My idea of 40k is armies composed mostly of troops units. Sadly, it seems like it's less and less the case.

Kill Team as a concept is good. What GW should have done is gotten the guys who made Heralds of Ruin to consult/give advice (like Heelanhammer did with General's Handbook) and used that as the basis. Squads don't work correctly in Kill Team, there needs to be IMHO like four different sizes:

1) "Kill Team": basically HoR style with individual models (think Deathwatch Codex style applied to everyone). Lots of individual model customization. NOT squad based.
2) "Combat Patrol": Very small skirmish/squad level combat, like 1-2 units and maybe 1 light vehicle or walker. This would basically be like the current version of Kill Team, only slightly larger. Squad based.
3) "Eternal War": The default 40k size, company/platoon level. Handful of units, couple of vehicles, no flyers or anything (Flyers can stay as purchased air support, basically doing like a bombardment or something but don't stay on the battlefield)
4) "Apocalypse": Large scale, Epic-like game. Rules would need to be very abstract, likely incorporating movement trays and basically different statlines for an entire unit, not a model.

And of course the caveat: You can adapt for your own scenarios. So if you want to have like a titan or knight versus a horde of dudes, you can do it, but it's no longer just flat out allowed unless you exclude it. In fact, I think that can sum up the main problem and answer the original question succinctly: 40k used to be about exclusion without explicit inclusion. For instance, in 3rd edition you could not field a special character without your opponent's permission. When Chapter Approved added the IG Armored Company, it was specifically called out as experimental and needed your opponent's permission to field, because it was so unlike anything else at the time (it even needed its own special rule allowing any 6 to glance to give some armies a chance against it). Back in the day when Armorcast made resin superheavies, it needed permission to be used. Now, that's changed to being included by default. Want a titan? You can field it if you have the points. Want to take 2-3 special characters? Go ahead. Want to field all tanks in some crazy formation? Be our guest. It's now on the players to exclude what they don't want, rather than have the person who wants it to ask if it's okay.

This has the psychological effect of shunting responsibility. Before, someone wanting to field an OP superheavy in a game would feel as though they are being unfair by wanting to take it, because the opponent might not have anything to deal with it. Now though, the person who has nothing to deal with sounds like a wimp/whiner for not wanting to play it (because it's now legally allowed by default, so you are instituting a "house rule" for that game by not wanting it), and it puts the veto power on the person who wants to use it, rather than the person who has to play against it. It reverses the power.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
This is all due to the horrible, horrible decision when GW switched gears late 4th edition/ early 5th edition, where they started prioritizing their bottom line over the Customer.

While I won't get into the details of this slow transition over the course of almost a decade now, it should be pretty obvious the game is trying to be something it's not. The one fact I keep repeating is that D-Weapons, Superheavies and Gargantuan Creatures shouldn't exist in the core rulebook. Those rules, by their very definition, exists to break the system 40k was set for (with D-Weapons being the literal definition of "up to 11", since it's quite literally a "Strength 11" weapon).

I blame Apocalypse for all of this, since that's when most of this stuff started leaking into "mainstream" 40k; before that the casual players I know of didn't even know what superheavy rules were or what vehicles had that rule. The concept of fielding an army composed of more than one faction was also alien (not unheard of, but it was usually done as a special-occasion thing, not the norm). And of course formations didn't exist at all.

What followed was GW's own pricing issues pushing newbies away; with them clamping down on cheap retailers, raising prices and making their store managers aggressively push product instead of doing intro games and events, it made the game extremely inaccessible to newbies. With no newbies joining in, they only had one source of revenue: the oldbloods. But you can't sell an oldblood the same tank he already has probably 9 copies of, so the only solution is to lower the point cost, nerf what he has while buffing the newest kit no one can possibly have before the next codex update, and allowing you to legitimately field multiple factions within an army. This means that existing players who wanted to use their collection will HAVE to pay each edition to keep up or be left in the dust. And of course any existing unit of use generally are only useful because they're cheap, so now you have incentive to go buy more of those models to fill up the points that one of them use to. Necron Immortals and warriors are the biggest offenders here; while Immortals lost one point of toughness and warriors got a weaker save, they got dramatically cheaper (Immortals use to be 28 points a piece, while Warriors were 18. That's about a 1/3rd of a price drop. And Immortals weren't overcosted at the time either).

This ended up not being enough to prop up the company, as it's unsustainable; the same people can only pay so much before they leave, so GW was trying to squeeze the same profit out of a slowly depleting fanbase. Which is why we have price hikes; they first started with incremental price hikes each year on existing product. When that backfired, they started updating products with higher prices instead, which is why they had even more incentive to push newer sets. Which are generally big vehicles (like flyers) or monsters because even if they're the same point-to-dollar ratio as any other set, the actual amount of money you drop on one is substantial (Yes, people plan out their purchases so in theory this shouldn't matter, but when the only option you have is to drop a huge amount or drop none at all, it pushes up your overall planned purchases as well.).

excellent post

 Vankraken wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:


That sounds about right. I mean, we're talking about the same designers who flat out said they buffed Librarians because everyone in their office only ever played using Chaplains... even though in the real world no one was taking Chaplains competitively because Librarians were so much better for the points cost.

I want to hear the story about why the 7th edition Ork Codex writers decided that Killa Kans needed to be heavily nerfed. Maybe the Kanz just kept killing those Chaplains they seemed to love over there.

I can imagine it now....

[imagination transition sound effect]

They probably routinely found that when they made Chaplains have power mauls that they were good at killing light vehicles... but then found they couldn't kill enough grot kans in the Assault phase to win and were disappointed by that.
They probably also found that the remains kans were able to kill him with ID.

So they made them cowardly so the run away from the Chaplain and removed their ability to ID T4 models so that it's harder for them to kill him in return.

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

EDIT: Going to expand this thought a bit more. Warhammer has always been a "social game". Now by virtue of requiring an opponent, all wargames are social games to some extent, but Warhammer has always been much more. It's never been the type of game where you just go down to a game store and play, even when that was more feasible than now (i.e. prior editions) it was never really the intention. Warhammer has always been the type of social game more akin to historical gaming, where you actually talk about a specific scenario/mission with a "narrative" story (never had to be complex, could have been as simple as "Space Marines are assaulting an Ork stronghold" or "Eldar are attacking an Imperial Guard convoy") and then make decisions on army construction and the like based on that, with an eye towards having an enjoyable game. For evidence of this just look at basically any White Dwarf battle report ever, but especially the older issues. There almost always was a little fluff blurb about a battle, and often the choices taken were because they made thematic sense to the battle not because they were the most optimal choices. The army lists were always designed to be as unrestrictive as possible (this is part of the reason we no longer see 0-1 choices in the actual army lists) to allow for the most of potential scenarios (and the studio has even said on occasion that it can be fun sometimes to do something like an entire army versus a superheavy as a scenario), and then shift the onus of what's acceptable or not to the players. But the issue here comes when you have competitive-minded players that immediately look for what is "best" without regard for the army background or theme for their force (and often don't even bother with such things) because they are approaching it as a competition and not a collaborative experience.

Again, I'm not trying to defend this. I think it's absolutely gakky game design to not do any balance and then say it's on the players, but I honestly feel that Warhammer requires a completely different approach to gaming than virtually any other wargame (for good or ill) short of oldschool historical wargaming (i.e. not the modern ones like Bolt Action that are still made to be fairly balanced for competitive games, I mean like old 70s-80s Napoleonic type games that had little or no balance and required forethought) in how you approach it. Points and balance are essentially a bone thrown; look at General's Handbook as an example of this. The points are clearly intended as a rough estimate/guideline, yet some take it as gospel when GW doesn't even bother with it; the latest White Dwarf has a AoS batrep using a special scenario, and they basically say they both agreed to take like 4-5 heroes, about 10 units but the Chaos guy can take a couple more because he's defending a fortress. Yet you don't really see min-maxed armies among them, even though if you ask players here you'll get the answer of well without points, what's to stop you from taking nothing but X and Y because they are better? The answer is because you're not playing a game just to win, you're playing to have an interesting game that can tell a story, so you purposely don't take nothing but X and Y.

That's always been how Warhammer is meant to be played and I will be completely honest I do feel that some of the responsibility (not necessarily "blame") falls on the players for not wanting to engage in fostering a community, but basically want what is the real life equivalent to a matchmaking service you see in MOBAs and other online gaming, where it matches you with a random opponent to simply have a game, rather than immerse yourself in the story and background. When I see people who play armies with only the "best" units, or who decry what should be basic choices as a "tax" to get the good stuff, or who really don't care one lick why they are fighting their opponent or why the battlefield is set up the way it is, I can't help but feel that they are doing something wrong and not enjoying the game, because Warhammer can and should be so much more than simply making the "best" 1850 point list you can and playing it against a random person who also just happens to have an 1850 point army.

And that makes me sad because I know I'll never get to experience the game the way it's meant to be :(

Very well written - basically my point of view since 2nd ed. It is trully sad, that such view on WH40k is so rare these days… WH40K in RT, 2nd, 6th and 7th ed is more akin to a RPG game designed for narrative scenarios, than to a competitive wargame. It has been redesigned and functioned more competitive like in between 3rd and 5th editions, but in doing so lost a lot of "feel" and flexibility of previous years of its existence. Current view, that 5th was "the best edition" comes (at least partially) not from rules design, but from demographics of WH40k - by the time 5th came out, most of the "oldschool 2nd ed" players has already quit, so there were less and less raging about how they miss "good old times" and most folks started not earlier than 3rd, so community was more homogenous. Now, as more and more active players have started in 6th or 7th editions and have not experienced WH40K without flyers and gargantuans, we see more people pleased with all those Wraithknights and Riptides. And it is probably a quite natural consequence of WH40K being a game that spans over 30 years and tries to attract different, ever changing generations of players… [One basic example on how "entry point" defines point of view on Warhammer - for old, 2nd ed players, Wraithguard and D-cannons "just finally came back to what they were meant to work like", while for 3rd-and-later-starters are "an abomination that should only be allowed in Apoc".]

And really, at this moment, after 30 years of existence and after a couple of paradigm shifts, it is only a choice between "who to enrage with upcoming changes this time" on GW part - they simply cannot please every player, from every generation simultanously, as the scope of expectations from 40k is so vast and contradictory...

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

I quite agree with what your saying but the issue sometimes becomes less about players trying to break the game by exploiting rules (wolf star and super friends lists in general) but just outright the way they write their rules. Decurion alone is extremely strong as is Canoptek Harvest which is 100% following the rules as written and not even trying to power game. The rules/points for the Wraithknight are incredibly undercosted and yet GW published it (along with all the potentially OP Eldar rules) while being fully aware that this codex is replacing the 6th edition Eldar codex that was basically defined by broken gak like Wave Serpent spam. GW's rules writing is so laughably bad that its amazing that a company who's entire business model is to produce content for a game is unable to have a shred of common sense when it comes to making rules or even learn from their past mistakes. I don't expect StarCraft level of game balance but the spectrum of rules power is so wide that it feels like the different ends are playing entirely different games.

I think they ARE, that's the thing. I don't think GW realizes it because GW doesn't think like that. I don't doubt the designers costed the Wraithknight lower (that is 100% on them) but I also think they might have felt you'd see only one at best, and only infrequently at that (IIRC the fluff is that they are very rare because you need twins or something?), so it's okay because you aren't always going to take one, especially if your opponent would have trouble facing one. The theme of an army would determine if you took a Wraithknight, not its stats/point cost.

I honestly don't know, but I do agree that they don't seem to really test anything beyond "Is this cool". Their army building, especially in batreps that we've seen, has always been dubious at best and laughably bad at worst.

When they were discussing End Times introducing Unbound into WFB, there was a great quote describing gamer mentality when it comes to unit choice from fluff vs. ability. "There are only 7 Steam Tanks in existence? Here, face 12." 40K currently is just as bad.

tneva82 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:


It's not just greed. 0-1 have bad side effect of being UNSCALABLE. You have one unit whether it's 500, 1000, 1500 or 5000 pts game. That's bad game design. It basically leads to game only really working at one point level.

Not true. When this was the case you could agree to play "two force organization charts" etc. Incredibly easy to scale actually if you decided you wanted to do that. Want to play 3-5000 points? Run two force organization charts, or whatever. Problem solved.

nou wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

EDIT: Going to expand this thought a bit more. Warhammer has always been a "social game". Now by virtue of requiring an opponent, all wargames are social games to some extent, but Warhammer has always been much more. It's never been the type of game where you just go down to a game store and play, even when that was more feasible than now (i.e. prior editions) it was never really the intention. Warhammer has always been the type of social game more akin to historical gaming, where you actually talk about a specific scenario/mission with a "narrative" story (never had to be complex, could have been as simple as "Space Marines are assaulting an Ork stronghold" or "Eldar are attacking an Imperial Guard convoy") and then make decisions on army construction and the like based on that, with an eye towards having an enjoyable game. For evidence of this just look at basically any White Dwarf battle report ever, but especially the older issues. There almost always was a little fluff blurb about a battle, and often the choices taken were because they made thematic sense to the battle not because they were the most optimal choices. The army lists were always designed to be as unrestrictive as possible (this is part of the reason we no longer see 0-1 choices in the actual army lists) to allow for the most of potential scenarios (and the studio has even said on occasion that it can be fun sometimes to do something like an entire army versus a superheavy as a scenario), and then shift the onus of what's acceptable or not to the players. But the issue here comes when you have competitive-minded players that immediately look for what is "best" without regard for the army background or theme for their force (and often don't even bother with such things) because they are approaching it as a competition and not a collaborative experience.

Again, I'm not trying to defend this. I think it's absolutely gakky game design to not do any balance and then say it's on the players, but I honestly feel that Warhammer requires a completely different approach to gaming than virtually any other wargame (for good or ill) short of oldschool historical wargaming (i.e. not the modern ones like Bolt Action that are still made to be fairly balanced for competitive games, I mean like old 70s-80s Napoleonic type games that had little or no balance and required forethought) in how you approach it. Points and balance are essentially a bone thrown; look at General's Handbook as an example of this. The points are clearly intended as a rough estimate/guideline, yet some take it as gospel when GW doesn't even bother with it; the latest White Dwarf has a AoS batrep using a special scenario, and they basically say they both agreed to take like 4-5 heroes, about 10 units but the Chaos guy can take a couple more because he's defending a fortress. Yet you don't really see min-maxed armies among them, even though if you ask players here you'll get the answer of well without points, what's to stop you from taking nothing but X and Y because they are better? The answer is because you're not playing a game just to win, you're playing to have an interesting game that can tell a story, so you purposely don't take nothing but X and Y.

That's always been how Warhammer is meant to be played and I will be completely honest I do feel that some of the responsibility (not necessarily "blame") falls on the players for not wanting to engage in fostering a community, but basically want what is the real life equivalent to a matchmaking service you see in MOBAs and other online gaming, where it matches you with a random opponent to simply have a game, rather than immerse yourself in the story and background. When I see people who play armies with only the "best" units, or who decry what should be basic choices as a "tax" to get the good stuff, or who really don't care one lick why they are fighting their opponent or why the battlefield is set up the way it is, I can't help but feel that they are doing something wrong and not enjoying the game, because Warhammer can and should be so much more than simply making the "best" 1850 point list you can and playing it against a random person who also just happens to have an 1850 point army.

And that makes me sad because I know I'll never get to experience the game the way it's meant to be :(

Very well written - basically my point of view since 2nd ed. It is trully sad, that such view on WH40k is so rare these days… WH40K in RT, 2nd, 6th and 7th ed is more akin to a RPG game designed for narrative scenarios, than to a competitive wargame. It has been redesigned and functioned more competitive like in between 3rd and 5th editions, but in doing so lost a lot of "feel" and flexibility of previous years of its existence. Current view, that 5th was "the best edition" comes (at least partially) not from rules design, but from demographics of WH40k - by the time 5th came out, most of the "oldschool 2nd ed" players has already quit, so there were less and less raging about how they miss "good old times" and most folks started not earlier than 3rd, so community was more homogenous. Now, as more and more active players have started in 6th or 7th editions and have not experienced WH40K without flyers and gargantuans, we see more people pleased with all those Wraithknights and Riptides. And it is probably a quite natural consequence of WH40K being a game that spans over 30 years and tries to attract different, ever changing generations of players… [One basic example on how "entry point" defines point of view on Warhammer - for old, 2nd ed players, Wraithguard and D-cannons "just finally came back to what they were meant to work like", while for 3rd-and-later-starters are "an abomination that should only be allowed in Apoc".]

And really, at this moment, after 30 years of existence and after a couple of paradigm shifts, it is only a choice between "who to enrage with upcoming changes this time" on GW part - they simply cannot please every player, from every generation simultanously, as the scope of expectations from 40k is so vast and contradictory...

The problem with viewing things like D-cannons "going back to what they were meant to work like" and other such stuff is that 2E ultimately faced the same problems 7E did, humongous power gaps and and insanely broken capabilities coupled with widely dispersed and rules across a multitude of sources that few could keep up with, and the game started to collapse under its own weight, requiring a radical reboot that ultimately gave us 3E. The people excited about these sorts of things forget that 2E turned into an unholy mess by its end, and GW appears intent on making in some cases literally the exact same mistakes.

2nd ed was more broken than 7th. True story.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem with viewing things like D-cannons "going back to what they were meant to work like" and other such stuff is that 2E ultimately faced the same problems 7E did, humongous power gaps and and insanely broken capabilities coupled with widely dispersed and rules across a multitude of sources that few could keep up with, and the game started to collapse under its own weight, requiring a radical reboot that ultimately gave us 3E. The people excited about these sorts of things forget that 2E turned into an unholy mess by its end, and GW appears intent on making in some cases literally the exact same mistakes.

That is very true from competitive/pickup play point of view. But for more-RPG like aproach 3rd ed reboot was more like castration than "sorting out the bloated mess". And personally, it made me quit WH40k halfway through 3rd ed because 3rd ed Eldar (my army at that time) have lost all their previous character and charm. I have returned only when the gameplay began to at least resemble 2nd ed flexibility. And yours and mine point of views are fine examples of what my post was really about - different mindsets and goals. Preagreed, narrative scenarios can have much more depth in 2nd and 7th editions than in 3rd… And for that role, there is absolutely no problem with "broken capabilities" - quite the opposite really: you can create great scenarios built around those very "broken" things as centerpieces. At the same time, "low power gap" of 3rd ed (internally within codex, between least and most powerfull units. Under 3rd ed mechanics lots of units lost their unique feel and role...) made games more "flat" and quite frankly dull. It was, of course mitigated over time with increasing "bloated mess" of subsequent editions...

And to be clear - I'm just giving an example of one of possible approaches to 40K, not by any means "the only true way". And I'm writing this only because "public debate" here on dakka is so much competitive/pick-up centric, that it is easy to fell into trap of thinking, that deathstars and gargantuans and all this "broken bull gak" is all there is to 40K and nothing else is possible and no one plays this game differently and that absolutely everyone would be happy with return to early 5th ed...

 Just Tony wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
The thing is GW has always written crappie rules and then said it's on the players to take responsibility. While I agree that is the wrong approach to game Design This is the approach they have been doing pretty much forever. I remember white dwarf articles specifically say if you took a minimum of troops and then a lot of the elite choices, this was for Fantasy back in 5th edition I want to say, you were not playing in the correct Spirit of the game even though you were legally allowed to do so by the rules. That is how they operate they will not balance the game because it is assumed by default that you and your opponent are talking about what would make a fun game or as they put it now Forge the narrative, and decide for yourself so you don't have any anti-air I will not bring a flyer because it would unbalance the game or you have nothing that can deal with my Imperial Knight so it's staying out of this. So yes in a way it is on the players because the assumption is that the players are talking among themselves to balance what the rules will not do to allow maximum flexibility.

Warhammer is not and has never been the type of game like war machine or infinity or what-have-you where it's just a question of how many points. It has always been the default assumption that game is going to be as flexible as possible and it is on you to impose restrictions, and the problem with their heads is most players especially in pickup game culture are lazy and don't want to even discuss anything with their opponent Beyond want an1850 point game, ok let's deploy.

Do not get me wrong I do not think their approach to game design is a good thing but I feel that it works if you have people that understand it and this is why gaming clubs and actually having a community rather than a bunch of random people who go to the same game shop is so important for a game like Warhammer.

I quite agree with what your saying but the issue sometimes becomes less about players trying to break the game by exploiting rules (wolf star and super friends lists in general) but just outright the way they write their rules. Decurion alone is extremely strong as is Canoptek Harvest which is 100% following the rules as written and not even trying to power game. The rules/points for the Wraithknight are incredibly undercosted and yet GW published it (along with all the potentially OP Eldar rules) while being fully aware that this codex is replacing the 6th edition Eldar codex that was basically defined by broken gak like Wave Serpent spam. GW's rules writing is so laughably bad that its amazing that a company who's entire business model is to produce content for a game is unable to have a shred of common sense when it comes to making rules or even learn from their past mistakes. I don't expect StarCraft level of game balance but the spectrum of rules power is so wide that it feels like the different ends are playing entirely different games.

I think they ARE, that's the thing. I don't think GW realizes it because GW doesn't think like that. I don't doubt the designers costed the Wraithknight lower (that is 100% on them) but I also think they might have felt you'd see only one at best, and only infrequently at that (IIRC the fluff is that they are very rare because you need twins or something?), so it's okay because you aren't always going to take one, especially if your opponent would have trouble facing one. The theme of an army would determine if you took a Wraithknight, not its stats/point cost.

I honestly don't know, but I do agree that they don't seem to really test anything beyond "Is this cool". Their army building, especially in batreps that we've seen, has always been dubious at best and laughably bad at worst.

When they were discussing End Times introducing Unbound into WFB, there was a great quote describing gamer mentality when it comes to unit choice from fluff vs. ability. "There are only 7 Steam Tanks in existence? Here, face 12." 40K currently is just as bad.

I completely understand part of the notion of as little restrictions as possible, to allow for potential situations. Maybe you're playing a game back when there were more steam tanks, or in your version more have been built. I totally get that. What the problem is, though, is that I find the players absolutely more focused on what's good or bad for the sake of winning a game, not having an enjoyable time and making things cool. Like, I was listening to a podcast the other day with a rather ironic name talk about how the CSM (I think this was pre-Traitor's Hate even) book could make a "better Gladius than Gladius". The reasoning was that in a Gladius you need to take "garbage units" like Assault and Devastators to get free Rhinos. I about facepalmed. That's the problem with the current mentality. A battle company (demi or otherwise) should be fielding assault and devastator and tactical squads because that's what the Codex Astartes says they field, those units should never be considered a "tax" to get the good stuff and IMHO that shows a fundamental issue with the playerbase: The fluff and lore and background of the army is nigh meaningless, it's just about what it brings to the table that counts, and like I said in my lengthy post above that's a problem because the only redeeming quality 40k has to me is the immense breadth and depth of the background material. If you are going to ignore the backstory and lore for armies just to field what is best, then IMHO you aren't playing Warhammer right. Now I'm not one to usually invoke the concept of "badwrongfun" but in this case I have no such qualms because playing to the spirit of the game, taking fluffy armies that match the background is really the only compelling reason to play 40k as a game.

I get some people like competitive minded games, I really do (it's why I initially picked up Warmachine). What I don't get though is why the competitive crowd feel it's okay to essentially bastardize the game by twisting it into a way that it's obviously not intended to be played, simply because they can. I used to rail against a lot of GW's stuff, and I still think a lot of it is boneheaded, but I understand now. I understand the reason for things like Unbound, I understand why AoS didn't have points. I still think that, for example, forcing Apocalypse and Escalation and Flyers into "base" 40k is a mistake, but I understand the reason why, and I'll flat out say with zero regrets that IMHO it's because most (in my experience YMMV) 40k players are unimaginative philistines who don't want to take the time to hash out a quick scenario overview (again as I said before this doesn't have to be anything major, just a rough outline of why this battle is happening), don't want to maybe allow flexibility because it's not in the "rules" (e.g. sure you can field X even though it's technically not allowed, because it makes a lot of sense your force would have X for this fight), and ultimately don't want to think of anything outside of what the books say, when in 40k more than any other wargame (again except maybe some historical games) are a guideline and not a bible.

That right there is your problem. I go to a game (and yes I'm hypothetically speaking since I have yet to actually play 40k) and I have a rough idea for a force, with named characters and a bit of backstory, and when I find an opponent I immediately start to formulate a brief narrative for just why I'm fighting them (which granted as I am building a KDK army can be as as simple as "Hey look, there are people there SKULLS FOR KHORNE!"), and already start to lament the fact we aren't customizing things to suit that narrative, whether that's a custom scenario or special rules or anything to make it more than just a random game versus a random person. I am certain I'm in the minority versus those who roll up with some min/maxed force that barely adheres to the backstory, could care less about names or fluff, and could care less about the whys of the game.

I feel 40k is best played not only as a casual game (no "competitive" list approaches that only take the best performing units) but also one where you are willing to add special rules or come up with your own scenarios to make the game fun.

The backstory doesn't mention Eldar troops being 10X better than marines, so why should anyone adhere to anything.

People aren't rewarded for playing within "the spirit of the game". As such, plenty of the customers for GW might genuinely enjoy tabling someone in 40 minutes and moving on to whatever else they want to do that afternoon. Those people spend money on GW products as much as the rest of us.

What sucks is that some people don't have like-minded friends, or are reliant on pick-up games or want to compete in a tournament without that mentality. That's the shame of it - some people are forced to only play "that guy" etc .if they want to get a game of 40K in. In a perfect world everyone would have 3-4 buddies who agree on the spirit of the game they wish to play (ie. fun/narrative or beat-face etc.). I feel exceptionally fortunate that the folks I normally game with all share the same spirit of gamin that I do.

We have close, hard fought games (not 40K by the way) and we'll frequently agree to bend a rule if it makes sense or not do something because it's gakky. If playing historical games we self-restrict ourselves to not do stuff that's too silly or gamey. No one ever leaves the table mad...simple as that.

 Elbows wrote:
People aren't rewarded for playing within "the spirit of the game". As such, plenty of the customers for GW might genuinely enjoy tabling someone in 40 minutes and moving on to whatever else they want to do that afternoon. Those people spend money on GW products as much as the rest of us.

What sucks is that some people don't have like-minded friends, or are reliant on pick-up games or want to compete in a tournament without that mentality. That's the shame of it - some people are forced to only play "that guy" etc .if they want to get a game of 40K in. In a perfect world everyone would have 3-4 buddies who agree on the spirit of the game they wish to play (ie. fun/narrative or beat-face etc.). I feel exceptionally fortunate that the folks I normally game with all share the same spirit of gamin that I do.

We have close, hard fought games (not 40K by the way) and we'll frequently agree to bend a rule if it makes sense or not do something because it's gakky. If playing historical games we self-restrict ourselves to not do stuff that's too silly or gamey. No one ever leaves the table mad...simple as that.

This is definitely a valid point. The biggest thing 40k encourages is playing with like-minded people, so don't have someone who wants a "competitive style game" come up against the fluff player with a true-to-backstory list only to get demolished. That's again why I state unequivocally that 40k is not in any way intended for pick-up games or tournaments, not because it can't do so naturally (albeit more difficult) but because the very nature of the game seems to want discussion and customization, not just blandly following what's in the book. Again while this is a 40k thread I feel AoS demonstrates this perfectly: The rules themselves were so minor that it all but required agreement, and even then people didn't seem to show interest until GW decided to throw a bone and add point values, and even now you have people who doggedly follow it as though it was gospel, and not a rough estimate and guide even knowing that you can't really fluctuate with them due to purchasing units in fixed sizes. I recall I was talking to someone at my local GW who was saying how they wouldn't have looked at AoS at all until General's Handbook came out, and then I mentioned how the points are really guidelines not intended to be adhered to like in 40k, and cited the example batrep where the Stormcast player had IIRC 2040 points and the Daemon player had 1980 because of inflexible points. The response? "Oh no that's too much difference". Again not meaning to bring AoS up but pointing out that there needs to be more community and discussion about "approximately balanced" instead of striving for something arbitrary that indicates balance even when it's not.

In fact, to bring this back to 40k, it's long established that the points costs don't even do a good job of balancing (e.g. Wraithknights). So why bother with them as a balancing tool? I'm not saying for 40k it should be like Core AOS style of "take whatever until you run out of room" which is just absolutely silly, but I find too many players are too caught up in X points instead of what is being fielded. This is, interestingly enough, one of the reasons I hope that 8th edition goes closer to (but not exactly like) AoS in the sense that upgrades and the like should be just there, not necessarily with a point cost, even down to unit costs being inflexible to eliminate the mathhammer people who are like "Well if you take 7 guys, it's X% better than taking 6 guys". This would, I think, also have the interesting effect of, hopefully, encouraging that sort of rough balance from AoS e.g. I'm fielding a demi-company so 5 units (i.e. 3x Tacticals, 1x Assault, 1x Devastator), with 2-3 vehicles as support, and two HQs, so my opponent can field something similar to that and it's "approximate balance". In fact, I think that the concept of "approximate balance" is something that 40k adheres to but the playerbase constantly ignores.

I apologize if I am getting ranty, I love talking about my thoughts on things

nou wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem with viewing things like D-cannons "going back to what they were meant to work like" and other such stuff is that 2E ultimately faced the same problems 7E did, humongous power gaps and and insanely broken capabilities coupled with widely dispersed and rules across a multitude of sources that few could keep up with, and the game started to collapse under its own weight, requiring a radical reboot that ultimately gave us 3E. The people excited about these sorts of things forget that 2E turned into an unholy mess by its end, and GW appears intent on making in some cases literally the exact same mistakes.

That is very true from competitive/pickup play point of view. But for more-RPG like aproach 3rd ed reboot was more like castration than "sorting out the bloated mess". And personally, it made me quit WH40k halfway through 3rd ed because 3rd ed Eldar (my army at that time) have lost all their previous character and charm. I have returned only when the gameplay began to at least resemble 2nd ed flexibility. And yours and mine point of views are fine examples of what my post was really about - different mindsets and goals. Preagreed, narrative scenarios can have much more depth in 2nd and 7th editions than in 3rd… And for that role, there is absolutely no problem with "broken capabilities" - quite the opposite really: you can create great scenarios built around those very "broken" things as centerpieces. At the same time, "low power gap" of 3rd ed (internally within codex, between least and most powerfull units. Under 3rd ed mechanics lots of units lost their unique feel and role...) made games more "flat" and quite frankly dull. It was, of course mitigated over time with increasing "bloated mess" of subsequent editions...

I can understand a lot of that, but the problem is that 40k doesnt really offer anything to support that kind of gameplay and fundamentally functions as a pickup game. The game is built around two players showing up with army lists constrained by points costs and playing generic missions. The rules for narrative gaming are either nonexistent or phoned in minor modifications to standard missions. There's no mention of prebuilt campaign supplements offering detailed battle scenarios or a 3rd party GM coming up with custom scenarios with prebuilt armies for both sides the way RT did and most other games that ostensibly offer that kind of experience do.

"Narrative" in 40k almost always ends up meaning "play this bloated mess of an RNG simulator where one side is given an arbitrary advantage over a slightly modified standard rulebook pickup mission with whatever you want to bring". The campaign books pretty much just give us a handful of formations that give silly freebies for taking X configuration of units and maybe some missions minorly deviated from the core rulebook, the substance is extremely lacking. It's all just poorly modified pickup play. Contrast this with other games that offer narrative battles and they'll predfine the forces to a far greater level with very purposefully built missions.

One can look at OGRE for instance, a *far* simpler game with *way* more narrative detail missions. Want your superheavy cybertank equipped with micronuke cannons to stomp all over a lightly defended truck convoy? Ok, but your Supertank type Z enters the map at point X, if the trucks make it to point Y they escape, the map and terrain is set up such that you can only really engage at points A, B or C, and the escort contingent is made up of units D, E and F travelling with the convoy. Supertank Z will have a tough time accomplishing its mission and the game becomes interesting at this point. 40k offers literally nothing to support this kind of play.

If people want their insanely overgunned Wraithguard for "flavor", well, ok, but then lets also acknowledge that nothing else about the gameplay is really built to support "flavor" in that way, and it just ends up coming off as a lame excuse for poor balance and to overpower things for its own sake.

Additionally, with the vast issues of scale the game currently suffers from, such as trying to make what type of blade an individual IG sergeants powerweapon a relevant issue in a game where he may literally be incapable of hurting anything either way because they're facing an army of Knights or dealing with individual close combat challenges in a game involving an entire tank company, makes so much of that "flavor" end up just being irrelevant noise except when its ultra powerful (and then that type of "flavor" is what you suspiciously start seeing lots of).

The game is trying to be far too many things and doing none of them well or even merely adequately. It really needs to be broken into 3 or 4 different systems.

And to be clear - I'm just giving an example of one of possible approaches to 40K, not by any means "the only true way". And I'm writing this only because "public debate" here on dakka is so much competitive/pick-up centric, that it is easy to fell into trap of thinking, that deathstars and gargantuans and all this "broken bull gak" is all there is to 40K and nothing else is possible and no one plays this game differently and that absolutely everyone would be happy with return to early 5th ed...

I get that, and most people acknowledge that 5E was far from perfect. I hated it at the time, for some of the reasons you mentioned as well. But compared to what we've gotten since it was far more playable.

I think the reason 40k tries to add more "randumb" is to force those random things/special rules that players are unwilling to include themselves. Now granted they don't do it in any good way, but I feel that was the intention, to take those "generic missions" and add extras to make up for the narrative stuff that isn't being done in its place.

The random objectives, for example, seems like they are meant to capture that sort of narrative scenario that hypothetically speaking two players could decide to play (e.g. I am trying to obtain X and Y, you are trying to stop me but also get Z and W) but generally don't. Sort of "forcing one's hand" similar to the perceived reason why Unbound and Apocalypse/Escalation became a thing; since people were not really wanting to do that themselves, GW changed the rules to "make" them.

What I think, and this is getting slightly offtopic to wishlisting, is a return to the 2nd edition Mission Cards and Strategy Cards (minus Virus Outbreak of course lol). Those were flavorful AND narrative; my mission might be to get units into my opponent's zone and off the table, while his might be to assassinate my commander. That's pretty easy to spin a narrative from, and pairing them up made for awesome ways to string out campaigns. They could even be paired with predetermined narrative approaches to make mission pairs that better flow with each other. The Strategy Cards I always thought were an amazing idea; some were way too strong and needed to be toned down (the aforementioned Virus Outbreak, and Orbital Bombardment could be pretty nasty too) but the concept was cool that you had these little extra things at your disposal.

I think that's meant to be the purpose of the special missions in codexes (Altar of War, I think?) but I don't usually see those used either, it's always a "stock" mission so I think a better approach would be to have each side generating a customized mission for that game, which also makes it better to tie into a campaign, and then have a book combining the altar type missions into like historical campaign scenarios.

That's pure wishlisting though.