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I love 40k, I think it's a blast. However, it has huge problems mentioned above: price (mitigated some by the new Start Collecting boxes), balance, superheavies, and formations.

Remedy these problems as much as possible, and I think it'd be back to being king of the tabletops.

Nah, its a pretty big freaking mess right now.

Bloated rules, syntax errors and lots of room for cheese, massive amount of imbalance is codexes, an awful ham fisted pyker phase, models power level based on price tag not actual points, see riptide.

Its a freaking mess right now.

Am I the only one who thinks 40K is fine?

Yes, pretty much, and you practically contradicted yourself.

You are in the minority of players. At least judging by my limited personal experience and that on DakkaDakka. I think 40k is a mediocre at best wargame with ancient design philosophies combined with a schizophrenic dev team who seems to switch tracks every 6 months. The result is an incoherent mess where a player has to remember dozens of special rules to resolve any action in the game. As a wargame 40k is complex but shallow that is won more often in the list building phase than not. It's why I think competitive 40k is an oxymoron.

But I love the models and the universe. If I could find a group that focuses on fully painted narrative play on well done terrain that would be gravy.

You're not in the minority of players; you're in a minority of people who spend a considerable amount of time discussing 40k on Internet message boards.

The problem with 40k is that the rules seem to be written with no relation to other rules. as if they have 10 writers, who never read another rule book, who don't communicate with one another, and who don't play the game or have a common director above them.

They're so scattered and there's no overall direction. "let's do formations those are cool and if we make it so you need one of every unit people will buy more, but let's have them not get objec sec to balance it against cad"
"ok i'm going to give space marines obj sec in theirs, that can't be a big deal right?"



that's just one example, but overall there's no cohesion. A book will be written and weeks later another book completely contradicts it. A release will come out that's totally bonkers compared to the other releases, codecies come out right before edition changes that are broken in the new edition as if the writers weren't privy to the new edition at all. books languish years old while others get updated what seems like every 3 months. They'll establish a precedent in one book, then completely disregard it in the next, as if everyone writes in a vacuum and no one knows what rules will be changing or what other rules are being concurrently written elsewhere.

They need a rules team that sets boundaries, codifies do-s and do-nots and reviews every book prior to release to assure they follow the same direction.

*as thecustomlime said, i also stick with 40k because it has hands down the best lore and universe of any IP. And from a more subjective standpoint at least for me the best models in the business. but their rules, god their rules are all over the place.

 Nazrak wrote:
You're not in the minority of players; you're in a minority of people who spend a considerable amount of time discussing 40k on Internet message boards.

Quite a bold claim. Do you have any evidence for this assertion or is it a case of one person's anecdotal evidence trumping anothers?

 Nazrak wrote:
You're not in the minority of players; you're in a minority of people who spend a considerable amount of time discussing 40k on Internet message boards.

Nearly every single person I've met in person has shared similar thoughts to the ones expressed here; a poorly balanced, poorly written game with great models and a great background that keeps chugging forward because its one common game you can almost guarantee a wargamer will play.

That's several stores worth of people from sea to shining sea.

There are degrees, of course, of dislike for the game, but I've rarely met a person who's looked me in the eye and told me 40k is amazing because its a well written, enjoyable game out of the box. Then again, most of the people I play with have experience with other games, and therefore have a real frame of reference to judge 40k against. If you've only ever played 40k, I'm sure it seems fine. But once you step outside that box, a whole new world awaits.

As stated, 40k seems alright if you only play 40k.

The rules are terribly bloated, there is seriously too much to keep track of (I play Tzeentch daemons though) and games take twice as long as they need to.

Why shouldn't orks survive a nuke? They kinda survive an asteroid crash. That's how they land on planets. Yep, more than 50% die but what's exactly preventing orks from building bunkers vs your nuclear weaponry that they know umiez are gona use. And, well, there are just too many of them to bomb everyone. And orks wouldn't care about radiation too much with their mushroom physique.

So, it's kinda more harmful to people than orks to nuke orks.
If you do nuke them, you can't roll there to completely anihilate the remains cause of radiation. And by the time you can, the area is full of orks that are larger, meaner and more resilient to radiation than before.

 koooaei wrote:
Why shouldn't orks survive a nuke? They kinda survive an asteroid crash. That's how they land on planets. Yep, more than 50% die but what's exactly preventing orks from building bunkers vs your nuclear weaponry that they know umiez are gona use. And, well, there are just too many of them to bomb everyone. And orks wouldn't care about radiation too much with their mushroom physique.

So, it's kinda more harmful to people than orks to nuke orks.
If you do nuke them, you can't roll there to completely anihilate the remains cause of radiation. And by the time you can, the area is full of orks that are larger, meaner and more resilient to radiation than before.

Orks aren't Tyranids.

And yet they do manage to survive on asteroids in open space. Nuked place ain't too bad after that. At least it's warmer.

 koooaei wrote:
And yet they do manage to survive on asteroids in open space. Nuked place ain't too bad after that. At least it's warmer.

They aren't crawling around on the surface. Roks are modified space hulks that have interior accommodations jury-rigged by the Orks themselves.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
And yet they do manage to survive on asteroids in open space. Nuked place ain't too bad after that. At least it's warmer.

They aren't crawling around on the surface. Roks are modified space hulks that have interior accommodations jury-rigged by the Orks themselves.

There's fluff about them surviving on the surface of asteroids drifting in open space.

 koooaei wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
And yet they do manage to survive on asteroids in open space. Nuked place ain't too bad after that. At least it's warmer.

They aren't crawling around on the surface. Roks are modified space hulks that have interior accommodations jury-rigged by the Orks themselves.

There's fluff about them surviving on the surface of asteroids drifting in open space.

Really now? Odd. But science fantasy writers can be forgiven for not understanding that open space is actually an extremely harmful place to be beyond the lack of atmosphere. Regardless, radioactive weapons can and do kill Orks in the fluff. But it's not the fallout that would kill the Orks but rather the massive explosive yield. An Ork army out in the open would be trivial to wipe out with something like the Tsar Bomba or even whatever the twisted minds of future humanity could cook up.

Nuclear weapons generate massive explosive forces and temperatures around 15,000,000° F. It is physically impossible for any living thing to survive that.

Roll in to annihilate remains? No need for that. Aircraft and massed artillery.

 Verviedi wrote:
Nuclear weapons generate massive explosive forces and temperatures around 15,000,000° F. It is physically impossible for any living thing to survive that.

Roll in to annihilate remains? No need for that. Aircraft and massed artillery.

Who actually cares? People want to play a game of armies fighting each other, not of one side placing models on the table and the other side saying "I nuke them".

 Verviedi wrote:
Nuclear weapons generate massive explosive forces and temperatures around 15,000,000° F. It is physically impossible for any living thing to survive that.

Roll in to annihilate remains? No need for that. Aircraft and massed artillery.

Yes, there is no way an Ork would survive that. They can survive in deep space though, and can tolerate high amounts of radiation.

Aircraft can be shot down with ground to air weaponry, and artillery can be knocked out by fast moving units. In order to win, you really need a combination of everything, or at least a combination of weapons that can theoretically deal with any threat you may face. It's one big game of rock paper scissors in essence.

Wait, are you saying the disoriented survivors of a nuclear blast would be able to set up anti-artillery and anti-aircraft weapons in time to avoid a bombardment that occurs immediately after a nuclear weapon explodes in the middle of them?

Here's my combination, in temporal order.
Nuke, significant artillery bombardment, saturation bombing, send in the Death Korps.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Who actually cares? People want to play a game of armies fighting each other, not of one side placing models on the table and the other side saying "I nuke them".

I'm poking holes in stupid fluff, not attacking the way people play the game.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Nuclear weapons generate massive explosive forces and temperatures around 15,000,000° F. It is physically impossible for any living thing to survive that.

Roll in to annihilate remains? No need for that. Aircraft and massed artillery.

Who actually cares? People want to play a game of armies fighting each other, not of one side placing models on the table and the other side saying "I nuke them".

That's basically the game Eldar and Tau are playing. "I nuke them with scatbikes".

 koooaei wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The guys with the guns should always win. History proved that

ww2 had plenty bayonet charges trumping shooty defences.

Not nearly as many as you think. Unless your definition of "plenty" is "perhaps a dozen by Allied forces in Europe". The Japanese did the only true mass bayonet charge in WW2, and that was Saipan. Lost 4500 troops doing it while only inflicting 600 casualties against a force they outnumbered. Hand to hand combat in WW2 was nearly always a thing of necessity or desperation, not a designed strategy. The Chinese used it against the Japanese, for example, because pre-industrialized China always struggled to manufacture enough ammunition. They used massed charges because they had no better options.

WW1 taught Europeans the futility of massed charges in the era of machineguns.

And we're talking about a fictional universe with lots of things capable of withstanding a gunshot. Not just puny humans.

I think, like you overestimate the use of the bayonet in WW2, you're massively underestimating how many times you can be shot while running across open ground.

Sure, 40K has things that can withstand gunshots. 40K also has bigger guns, and enough shots from smaller guns will put the bigger things down. Melee charges would only be effective by armies that didn't care about losing lots of guys, and who also had lots of guys to lose. So, Tyranids. Maybe Orks, but they seem to be too easily routed to sustain those kinds of casualties.

I mean, we can discuss the "flavor" of 40K all we want. But my statement remains true. The gun made the sword obsolete. Making better swords won't change that, unless you can negate the distance advantage of the gun (which 40K does by increasing movement speeds and decreasing rate of fire, lol). Or absorb hideous casualties. The muzzle energy of your average rifle is around 1800-4000 joules. A heavy machinegun can be in the 15,000 joule range. A well-prepared axe swing (say, to split a log), might be 800 joules. Thus, under most circumstances, anything that withstands a gunshot will withstand an awe swing. You can not only hit harder with a gun, you can do it from further away and more rapidly. And without fear of retribution from the guy with a sword, lol.

Just make assault units cheaper, then.

 Verviedi wrote:
Wait, are you saying the disoriented survivors of a nuclear blast would be able to set up anti-artillery and anti-aircraft weapons in time to avoid a bombardment that occurs immediately after a nuclear weapon explodes in the middle of them?

I'm not - I thought you meant that everything else could be fought with aircraft and artillery. In the case of what you're saying, it could easily be a ship with its own capital weaponry that bombards the artillery unit or uses its regular guns on the approaching aircraft.

Here's my combination, in temporal order.
Nuke, significant artillery bombardment, saturation bombing, send in the Death Korps.

But I thought the point of this argument is that ground wars are unnecessary in 40k. Or am I missing the point?

I also think 40k is pretty good. I don't necessarily agree that there's too much rules 'bloat' but slightly decreasing the size of the rule book shouldn't do much harm. The problems I do have with the game are the clarity of the written rules and internal as well as external codex balance. It's getting a bit old playing a weak and unloved faction when (almost) everyone else has got answers to the 7th edition problems - that's not to say there aren't codexes in a worse situation.

I love 40k, been playing since 3rd edition. But me and my group have pretty much stopped playing altogether for several reasons.

Army balance is a big problem for some. My Orks and Dark Eldar really seem to the struggle vs. marines and Eldar (which is what the rest of my friends play).

But in my opinion the larger problem is the game is just bloated and lacks a comprehensive design vision. Games take way too long to play, and virtually all the mechanics are dated to 90's era games (look up tables, charts, oodles of special rules that rarely get used, etc.). Game design has changed a lot in the last 10 years, but 40k hasn't kept up. The game needs an AoS style overhaul and I'm really hoping it happens.

For the record, I took an immediate dislike to AoS when it came out - I was salty after what they did to my beloved Old World and Tomb Kings. But you know, since the General's Handbook came out I've played a few games and had an absolute blast. It's fun, fast, and still a challenging tactical game. It's given me great hope that GW is on the right track.

 General Annoyance wrote:
I'm not - I thought you meant that everything else could be fought with aircraft and artillery. In the case of what you're saying, it could easily be a ship with its own capital weaponry that bombards the artillery unit or uses its regular guns on the approaching aircraft.

Oh, everything? No, some infantry and armour will always be needed to make sure everything's dead. Yes, nuking an area will destroy the vast majority of targets, and so will aerial and artillery bombardment, but it will never kill everything (a nuke, obviously, does not care about this rule) (Source: The Somme)

But I thought the point of this argument is that ground wars are unnecessary in 40k. Or am I missing the point?

No, the point of my argument is that the Imperium is stupid for using massive infantry and armour forces in cases where nukes will be far more effective. Obviously, not every situation calls for nukes, but in a majority of situations, a nuking would make the Imperium's job a LOT easier.

Sources:
Necropolis (in which a mass chaos infantry and tank force with no explicity anti-nuke technology and no aircraft is fought by... camping inside a fortress and shooting at it.(Seriously Dan Abnett, I love you, but those guys were in the middle of uninhabited salt flats. Why not just nuke them when the planet was explicitly stated to have nukes, (and one was ACTUALLY USED, but not on the Chaos forces!?)))

Titanicus (In which a massed Chaos force was discovered in a nice, compact, UNINHABITED area... and they sent incredibly expensive Titans to take it out, instead of just nuking it (keep in mind this is a mined-out, useless, desolate area of forge world))

It wouldn't be too difficult to simply say that the game of 40k represents the times when mass bombardment isn't acceptable or available.

 Verviedi wrote:

But I thought the point of this argument is that ground wars are unnecessary in 40k. Or am I missing the point?

No, the point of my argument is that the Imperium is stupid for using massive infantry and armour forces in cases where nukes will be far more effective. Obviously, not every situation calls for nukes, but in a majority of situations, a nuking would make the Imperium's job a LOT easier.

You're conflating 'effective' and 'quick & easy,' which are two completely different concepts.

If I have dirty bathwater with a baby in it, and I need to clean another baby, it would be more effective to just throw the bath water and the baby out simultaneously, and begin washing the next baby. My task is to wash babies. I care not for anything that happens after I complete my task.

Forget nukes. Thermobarics is where its at. There is no way I'd take on a Riptide or Wraithknight fair and square. I'd use strategic weapons, but they are basically immune to tactical weapons. They passed the Ogre limit.

 Marmatag wrote:
You're conflating 'effective' and 'quick & easy,' which are two completely different concepts.

If I have dirty bathwater with a baby in it, and I need to clean another baby, it would be more effective to just throw the bath water and the baby out simultaneously, and begin washing the next baby. My task is to wash babies. I care not for anything that happens after I complete my task.

This is a false equivalency. Throwing a baby out with the bathwater vs. not throwing a baby out with the bathwater is in no way equivalent to expending significant amounts of money, life (and valuable tanks and guns, this is the Imperium) vs. nuking something and not having to waste all of that valuable manpower, weapons, ammunition, aircraft/tanks, and the risk of failing to contain the threat by waiting to mass your forces instead of nuking the threat immediately.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget nukes. Thermobarics is where its at. There is no way I'd take on a Riptide or Wraithknight fair and square. I'd use strategic weapons, but they are basically immune to tactical weapons. They passed the Ogre limit.

This is true. Why don't the Imperium use these, either?