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It's not so much that it's complicated, but needlessly complicated. In my post above, what unit couldn't be covered even if you simply used the default movement values for Movement Stat, and assigned -1" to "light" terrain, -2 to "medium terrain" and -3 to "hard terrain"? Anything that moves through the air gets aerial. Jump Packs, Jet Packs, and Jet Bikes, FMC, and skimmers / flyers. Anything with a movement boosting effect like MTC, Fleet, or being a Beast, gets Agile.

I mean, Warp Spiders, yes. But everything else? You'd lose Jump-Shoot-Jump with is a good thing. Even if it's a powerful ability that people pay points for, it leads to non-interactive gaming, which prevents at least one player from making meaningful interactions with that unit.

This doesn't need to be a "everything needs to be a special snowflake" movement game. The rules could be quite simple, and still be equally tactical, while providing a more predictable / strategic / meaningful choice to the player, rather than hope all my rolls are good this phase, and that for no reason a couple of my dudes slammed into a wall too hard. Now will they slip and fall off the building, and then not jump far enough to get into assault? Random dice rolling instead of meaningful decisions hurts the game, and makes it seem complex without adding any gaming value.

Imo, It should be that you need one CAD variant, and you get another one per 2000 points. You may take 1 Formation OR Allies per CAD you have.

Decurion types need to go. They are an unbalanced attempt by GW to sell you more crap. Like Tomb Blades, which are arse ugly designs.

Each army should only have 3 Formations associated with them.
Like in early apoc, formations should have a base cost in addition to their composition.

That should bring back a semblance of order.

I think 7th edition can be understood... it carries many elements that have been around for many editions.

The main #1 problem is the ability to combine forces that were meant to have advantages and disadvantages that balanced them out.
Being able to mix and match units with psychic abilities makes for too many variables to even try to balance.

But we are discussing "complication" here, I would say it could benefit from a reduction of rules.
The warlord traits should be selected / paid-for or removed completely I would agree.

Random for random sake that takes away from choices is an irritant that makes some of the rules not "make sense" which can give an impression of complication.

I am a huge fan of "Bolt Action" which the rules were made by the same folk who made earlier editions of 40k.
They removed armor saves altogether and it does not seem to be missed.

I would LOVE activation like BA pulling a die for each unit (each army with a colour and number of dice equal to number of units): the I-go/you-go method is too punishing.

I would say 7th is suffering from bloat trying to shoe-horn old rules into new rules as they try to update old codexes which makes for a mess.

I feel that if they CAREFULLY balanced each formation they release with rules that only pertain to the formation could some complication be avoided.
Then ensuring ALL special rules reside only in the big rule book can some of the mess be cleaned up.

AH! #2 main reason for "complication": too many sources of rules.
I used to buy ALL the codexes, pretty much impossible now (or just insanely expensive).
You pretty much have to depend on your opponent to keep track of their rules... read into that how you will.

So, not too complicated but it sure makes it hard to get all the information and make sense of it all... core rules are not so bad, just all the special case rules thrown out there with each new formation release.

In my opinion, GW should publish in WD a bunch of formations mini-codex info as their main army updates.
It makes printings of prior publications relevant and wanted (makes a subscription a wanted thing) so that is how I would handle timely rules as new models get released in batches and we can all be on the same page.

 Galef wrote:
While I love the idea of formations (take x units for bonus), they are where 7th got complicated. And unlimited detachments, and recently the increasing number of Psychic powers.
Back in 6th, everyone was only allows 1 Force Organization Chart, or 2 at 2000+ pts. You could also have 1 Allied chart per FOC
In 7th, that became the CAD and you could have as many as you want.

Then GW did something they hadn't done before. They rapid-fired releases, each with more rules than every before. It soon became impossible to keep track of every new rule for every army.

-

Nothing wrong with unlimited FOCs, I think the bad thing is turning every game into an Apoc game.

IGOUGO needs to go die a silent death in some forgotten corner, the battle brother ally mechanic needs to be tweaked slightly and there are several things that feel clunky and could do with a little streamlining. There are also several glaring balance issues (most importantly the relative weakness of vehicle and assault mechanics) but apart from that 7th seems mostly fine.

But yeah, I wouldn't mind a big general overhaul and streamlining of everything at all. Imo, 7th edition is not too complicated (as in being so complicated it is no longer fun), but it is complicatted enough to slow down games to a crawl at many times. I would love getting faster games.

I know that occasionally people pop up on here and mention the number of special rules currently in 40K (I think it was around 70-80 the last time I saw someone mention it).

I wonder how many of them are special rules aimed at ignoring a basic game rule. I don't play 7th, but I know you have some...

-Ignore leadership or pscyhology tests.
-Ignore pinning.
-Ignore instant death
-Ignore armour saves
-Ignore cover
etc.

I'm just curious what the percentage is. When you have a whole heap of special rules which negate your main rulebook...the rulebook needs to go.

7th Ed. is far from too complicated. It's simply an incoherent mess that, fortunately, could be fixed rapidly given GW ample resources. The main issues about 7th Ed. are balance and formations. The former meaning you need to basically hold a summit with your opponent before every game to have an enjoyable experience, the latter adding ( on top of putting a further layer of balancing issues ) too many (mostly stupid) rules and micromanagement on an already heavy game. Sadly, with the current GW game designers, I won't hold my breath expecting to see any improvement soon. In fact, I kind of expect 8th Ed. to be similar to AoS (which is a major pos in my opinion).

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Imo, It should be that you need one CAD variant, and you get another one per 2000 points. You may take 1 Formation OR Allies per CAD you have.

Decurion types need to go. They are an unbalanced attempt by GW to sell you more crap. Like Tomb Blades, which are arse ugly designs.

Each army should only have 3 Formations associated with them.
Like in early apoc, formations should have a base cost in addition to their composition.

That should bring back a semblance of order.

That's just old man talk.

If you want to simplify, everybody unbound and remove all formations, including CAD.

The thing I don't hear people talking about is the relative cost for units. The imbalance between different armies seems to be the biggest problem with 7th edition, power creep has reached an all time high. Were there one thing I could change, it would be to impose some kind of mathematical formula for the cost of units.

I realize there are a lot of variables that go into the game, and that a mathematical model would not necessarily fix everything. But basing the cost of units around some simple mechanics could go a long way towards ensuring every army could be at least somewhat competitive.

The mechanics that seem to matter are as follows:

- Character - stats
- Offense - ranged
- Offense - assault
- Defense - saves (armor / invulnerable)
- Vehicles - hull points
- USRs
- Psychic - mastery levels

Were there a universal way to measure the cost of units in these areas, the game would be more enjoyable for everyone.

 techsoldaten wrote:
The thing I don't hear people talking about is the relative cost for units. The imbalance between different armies seems to be the biggest problem with 7th edition, power creep has reached an all time high.

Err... no.

1) this is talking about complexity
2) 40K has never been as balanced - other editions were vastly worse.

 techsoldaten wrote:
The thing I don't hear people talking about is the relative cost for units.

Because this thread is discussing complexity, not balance.


But for what it's worth, a mathematical formula for what you want doesn't work. A lascannon is not worth the same amount to an assault marine as it is to a devastator, or a gretchin. The formula required to cover all of the relevant variables would be insane.

morgoth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Imo, It should be that you need one CAD variant, and you get another one per 2000 points. You may take 1 Formation OR Allies per CAD you have.

Decurion types need to go. They are an unbalanced attempt by GW to sell you more crap. Like Tomb Blades, which are arse ugly designs.

Each army should only have 3 Formations associated with them.
Like in early apoc, formations should have a base cost in addition to their composition.

That should bring back a semblance of order.

That's just old man talk.

If you want to simplify, everybody unbound and remove all formations, including CAD.

But then it would cease being a wargame and more of a contest of "who can spam the most OP stuff without getting hard countered"
You might as well play rock paper scissors or tik tac toe instead.

 insaniak wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
The thing I don't hear people talking about is the relative cost for units.

Because this thread is discussing complexity, not balance.


But for what it's worth, a mathematical formula for what you want doesn't work. A lascannon is not worth the same amount to an assault marine as it is to a devastator, or a gretchin. The formula required to cover all of the relevant variables would be insane.

Sure it would work. No it wouldn't be perfect and yes it would require some $$$ to get going (thankfully, GW is a multi-million company so hiring some statisticians wouldn't cripple them) but it would be worlds better than the imbalanced mess we have now.

It really wouldn't. There are too many variables, and you'd need to be a math genius to come up with something workable. Even then it will take a while to process all of the different combinations, which are subject to change.

What one could do is price the equipment based on who needs it. So heavy weapons squads get heavy weapons for cheap, CC specialists gets assault and cc weapons for cheap.
Armies who don't have many sources of anti-tank weapons don't pay as much as those who have lots of sources of anti-tank weapons, you get the idea.

In many ways the current state of 40k is quite similar to how it was at the end of 2nd edition.

At that time the game had outgrown its original design as some sort of RPG/skirmish/wargame hybrid and moved towards being a wargame dealing with company level combat. The rules were extremely clunky for 2000 point games with detailed rules for all types of weapons, vehicle damage etc.

Now we have a company-level game that's had a whole bunch of extra elements added on top that don't really fit with the basic rules (SHV, GMC being the main ones). I've always thought you can tell a lot about the suitability of a class of units for a game system by looking at how many of the core rules they have to ignore in order to work. SHV and GMC fall into this category with the way they interact with damage, shooting and movement. Incidentally this is also a problem is other systems like X-Wing with its Epic ships and WH/H with Colossals (though I'm not too familiar with how they work in the new version of the game).

One thing that strikes me when watching a game of 40k is the number of dice rolls involved. At its core the game seems to just be about 3 dice rolls per attack: hit, wound, save. In reality you need to add on to that rolling for extra saves like FNP and rolling dice in batches because the first 2 guys have a SS and the next one is a character who wants to LOS, or the first 4 models are in cover but the next 2 aren't. Just looking at how wound allocation and casualty removal works the game would seem to be about skirmish-level combat but at the same time we have regular games with mini-Titans involved. It's a complete mess.

There are also a lot of re-rolls and extra randomness that doesn't achieve much other than extend the game. Preferred Enemy, various other "re-roll 1s" rules, formation extra rules that add re-rolls to certain things...the list goes on.

Army building is a problem too. I don't mind formations and Decurion-style meta formations but the spread of rules is now so vast it's almost impossible to stay on top of it all. I found out the other day there are about 6 or 7 formations for my Blood Angels army that I didn't even know existed. It's got to the point now that someone could show up with an army and claim it all got 2+ FNP saves in the first 2 turns of the game due to the interaction of special formation rules spread across 8 different sources and I'd probably just shrug and say "seems legit".

I think the problem is 40k has no overall guiding hand. There doesn't seem to be a design bible or set of basic rules to follow when creating new units. There also doesn't seem to be enough clarity on what an army's strength and weaknesses should be and how that is reflected in game. But that's straying into design and balance territory, which is a little off topic.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Imo, It should be that you need one CAD variant, and you get another one per 2000 points. You may take 1 Formation OR Allies per CAD you have.

Decurion types need to go. They are an unbalanced attempt by GW to sell you more crap. Like Tomb Blades, which are arse ugly designs.

Each army should only have 3 Formations associated with them.
Like in early apoc, formations should have a base cost in addition to their composition.

That should bring back a semblance of order.

That's just old man talk.

If you want to simplify, everybody unbound and remove all formations, including CAD.

But then it would cease being a wargame and more of a contest of "who can spam the most OP stuff without getting hard countered"
You might as well play rock paper scissors or tik tac toe instead.

I dare you to find something unbound that is more fethed up than what is played in current tournaments.

morgoth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Imo, It should be that you need one CAD variant, and you get another one per 2000 points. You may take 1 Formation OR Allies per CAD you have.

Decurion types need to go. They are an unbalanced attempt by GW to sell you more crap. Like Tomb Blades, which are arse ugly designs.

Each army should only have 3 Formations associated with them.
Like in early apoc, formations should have a base cost in addition to their composition.

That should bring back a semblance of order.

That's just old man talk.

If you want to simplify, everybody unbound and remove all formations, including CAD.

But then it would cease being a wargame and more of a contest of "who can spam the most OP stuff without getting hard countered"
You might as well play rock paper scissors or tik tac toe instead.

I dare you to find something unbound that is more fethed up than what is played in current tournaments.

Agreed. When Unbound was first revealed as a thing I remember people going crazy. "We'll have nothing but armies of Wraithlords", "It'll be 5 superheavies and nothing else" they'd say. Now we're almost worse than that because there are formations that let you do these sort of things but provide additional bonuses on top too!

Unbound is only bearable because Formations are the greater evil in comparison. They are both terrible concepts.

The game itself is wonderful and even balanced, also not complicated at all as you can learn 90% of the general rules in less than an hour and in just a single small game. Learning and understanding the game is very easy, is thinking about a competitive list and run it efficiently that is difficult and requires time and experience, but i think it's fair and this is a game focused on the hobby so a beginner should only think in learning how to play and painting his/her models, not to win games. Also it's not difficult to choose an army, pick the one you like the most and you can afford, as some armies are much more expensive than other ones, dont' think about the strenght of some race or the supplements, those are for experienced players. Having hundreds of different units and many possible upgrades among 20ish armies means that something is better than something else, too many possible choices to make the game 100% balanced. I mean, the real issue is not the game and its rules, but the possibility to take some units that are way better than the average. Avoid D weapons, superheavies, T7/8 models and some decurions (necrons and SM mostly), reduce some super effective psychic phase, and the game would be much more balanced. AOS really sucks, don't make 40k like that thing.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Unbound is only bearable because Formations are the greater evil in comparison. They are both terrible concepts.

Again, that's just conservative talk.

You stick to FOC because you've known it the longer, but if another concept was there in its place, you'd just stick to that instead.

No, I would go to a system that actually has an army structure.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
No, I would go to a system that actually has an army structure.

That serves no purpose except to annoy the vast majority of players and hobby enthusiasts looking to field either the best combo they can think of or the miniatures they like most.

In a system with no structure, you're welcome to add your own. Why do you need everyone else to be constrained by some arbitrary no fun rules ?

 SDFarsight wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 SDFarsight wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So, it hasn't changed then? Because in earlier editions, if you moved you had to double tap, but if you stay still you can choose between double tapping or shooting once at your max range.

I just looked at an old reference sheet and it looks like you're right; but I could have sworn that it was move and fire once at 12" or don't move and fire twice at 12" or once at full range.

But anyway, it has at least changed by the fact that you can fire at full range and move.

Ah, now that rule I remember. That one was introduced in 6th, right? Eh, I'm ok with it. Its a change I would have made.
Keep in mind that I would also use to hit modifiers, so it may be a different case.

Yes, 6th edition when all the stupid started to happen. You could argue that it started in 5th edition with TLOS, but that was merely the seeds of heresy being sown. It wasn't until 6th edition that someone in GW was swayed by a dark apostle.

TLOS has been in every edition of 40k just FYI.

Ruin wrote:
TLOS has been in every edition of 40k just FYI.

I wouldn't be so sure.

I remember something about terrain in 4th edition where people couldn't shoot you if you were more than 2" from the outside of the base, but you could still shoot - or something like that.

Maybe its because the "arbitrary no fun rules" actually imposed a sense of balance and required actual choices to be made during list building, rather than just spamming whatever broken combination you wanted.

I acknowledge that there are those who want to explore new army compositions or trying to follow fluff. That's fine.

What's not fine are those who use that way of list building to spam their most powerful entries, so as to trounce whoever isn't ready. You might see the fun in that, I don't.
Just because Formations exist and are broken, doesn't mean you can't abuse unbound as well.

Also, for rules that are not "fun", having an army structure sure didn't stop people in 3rd, 4th and 5th ed or people playing other systems from having fun.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:

Ruin wrote:
TLOS has been in every edition of 40k just FYI.

I wouldn't be so sure.

I remember something about terrain in 4th edition where people couldn't shoot you if you were more than 2" from the outside of the base, but you could still shoot - or something like that.

Yeah, Area Terrain. You can't shoot more than 6" past Area terrain, iirc. That got removed in 5th.

There was definitely one edition which had a systematic LOS set-up with different troops types and terrain having different heights. Think it was 4th. TLOS as we have it now has not always been a thing.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Just because Formations exist and are broken, doesn't mean you can't abuse unbound as well.
.

Not every formation is broken, i use Bullyboyz and Blitzbrigade with orks, Wyrdstorm bortherhood and Wulfen murderpack with space wolves, Grotesquerie, Dark artisan and Corpsethief claw with dark eldar and none of them seems broken or impossible to defeat in my opinion. But i only play balanced games, i don't care about being the most competitive, a game is fun only if open to any result till the end of the game. I won't even think about playing unbound or against an unbound list, this is a tactical game and every army should have weaknesses and variety of models.

Slipspace wrote:
There was definitely one edition which had a systematic LOS set-up with different troops types and terrain having different heights. Think it was 4th. TLOS as we have it now has not always been a thing.

4th edition when Fish of Fury ruled. I could drive (float?) my devilfish full of firewarriors up the field, drop them out the back and just blast away without fear of being assaulted from the front since the devilfish was in the way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
No, I would go to a system that actually has an army structure.

That serves no purpose except to annoy the vast majority of players and hobby enthusiasts looking to field either the best combo they can think of or the miniatures they like most.

In a system with no structure, you're welcome to add your own. Why do you need everyone else to be constrained by some arbitrary no fun rules ?

My opinion is that you have that backwards. A game best serves a larger audience by presenting a "tight" ruleset which can then be broken by whomever wishes to do so.

 agnosto wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
There was definitely one edition which had a systematic LOS set-up with different troops types and terrain having different heights. Think it was 4th. TLOS as we have it now has not always been a thing.

4th edition when Fish of Fury ruled. I could drive (float?) my devilfish full of firewarriors up the field, drop them out the back and just blast away without fear of being assaulted from the front since the devilfish was in the way.

Yeah, that was pretty goofy. At least vehicles were fragile back then, so you could destroy the fish.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
There was definitely one edition which had a systematic LOS set-up with different troops types and terrain having different heights. Think it was 4th. TLOS as we have it now has not always been a thing.

4th edition when Fish of Fury ruled. I could drive (float?) my devilfish full of firewarriors up the field, drop them out the back and just blast away without fear of being assaulted from the front since the devilfish was in the way.

Yeah, that was pretty goofy. At least vehicles were fragile back then, so you could destroy the fish.

Disruption pods were better back then. I had a 4++ against shooting which made it a pretty durable vehicle so, more often than not, I could wash, rinse, repeat.