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OgreChubbs wrote:

 Galas wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:


At least list building is almost a thing in 40k for aos people are to dumb to do it so they have pre made lists you pick.

Wow.

At first I tought you were serious. Good trolling mate

So when you play ironjaws you dont pick a formation? Because I played them and you either ran ard fist
iron fist
or pig fist or what ever it was called.

You never just picked units. You picked a formation and ran those units.

What is 40k Formations & Detachments for 500?

At least you pay for formations in AoS, though you can run without.

Don't try to attack Age of Sigmar with formations, because thats one of the only things that everyone agres its 20 times better in Age of Sigmar than in 40k.

You pay for them, and they need to work with the basic army formation chart.

And you are talking about Ironjawz, a faction that literally has only 3 non hero units.

Galas - good catch, I completely overlooked that one.
I've found that around 90% of the scenarios have no reason for you to be in the middle of the table to begin with.
That is of course ignoring the few where 1 player begins there.

I've found that a good scenario in AoS plays pretty much like 40k.
Just with less issues, less quoting from books and no discussions of rules interpretations.

 Galas wrote:
Don't try to attack Age of Sigmar with formations, because thats one of the only things that everyone agres its 20 times better in Age of Sigmar than in 40k.

You pay for them, and they need to work with the basic army formation chart.

And you are talking about Ironjawz, a faction that literally has only 3 non hero units.

What can I say thats the AoS I spent my money on the real mistake was not playing the poster boys and thinking I would get units.

Also no one I play with said battletomes where a good idea. It killed list building and everything that was good about the game. List building is amazing now I crack open my pamphlet of rules and look at both units in my army and pick a formation place them down and done... yay...

You can't expect to use a fresh new race and have tons of units to pick. Yeah, Ironjawz and Sylvaneth are not the poster boys like Stormasct and Bloodbound.

Genestealer Cults, Skitarii and Tempestus Scions, Sisters of Silence and Custodes, don't have much selection of units either.

Battletomes are the books. I think you are talking about formations.

But I'll concede you that. I don't like Formations either. But if they are here to stay, I like 20 times more the version of AoS that the one in W40K.

 Galas wrote:
You can't expect to use a fresh new race and have tons of units to pick. Yeah, Ironjawz and Sylvaneth are not the poster boys like Stormasct and Bloodbound.

Genestealer Cults, Skitarii and Tempestus Scions, Sisters of Silence and Custodes, don't have much selection of units either.

Battletomes are the books. I think you are talking about formations.

But I'll concede you that. I don't like Formations either. But if they are here to stay, I like 20 times more the version of AoS that the one in W40K.

Thats the thing for me list building is more then half the fun of the game. I play less and less each year I enjoy building armies painting and sculpting. The last little bit of fun I had in 40k was list building and then they made riptide wings and such. There is so little choice now a days you win with your wallet not your skill. You want to win with tau you pick that stupid wing thing play 5 riptides.

AoS will always be lacking due to the lack of list building, also they burnt some bridges when ironjaws got 2 units poster boys got 60 and vampire counts got head swaps that where already in the kits....

Not every game its for everybody!

In a personal level, my time for mourning the death of Fantasy as a universe (Not as a game, because I still play it) past the past year.

Just look for games that offer you a good list building experience (And I'm saying this serious).

But I recomend to don't go bashing other games because they don't adapt to your likes.

I don't go to Warlords Forums and bash that in Hail Caesar! I can't use my Orcs!

 koooaei wrote:
Here's the link if anyone's interested.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/03/23/warhammer-40000-news-from-adepticon/

That video was surprisingly kinda funny. The deep strike part made me laugh.

New transport actually holds 10 marines too with the improved design!

usmcmidn wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Here's the link if anyone's interested.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/03/23/warhammer-40000-news-from-adepticon/

That video was surprisingly kinda funny. The deep strike part made me laugh.

I hope that the orks get drop pods so I can scratch build some. This is the design I'm thinking of going with:

buffalozap wrote:
no ballistic skill chart, no strength vs toughness chart, armor save modifiers listed on weapon profile, special rules listed on the unit warscroll.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've never found the number of stats on a model's profile to a source of complication.

It's how those stats interact that causes complication, and in that area 40k just sucks donkey balls.

I can deal with a model having 10 stats as long as the interactions are simple enough. In fact I prefer it because it allows more variety between different units. I've never found tables complicated (especially since after a few games you just remember the interactions anyway).

I find having less stats is good in games like Epic 40k, where you want to be able to abstract a whole range of different troops/weapons down to a few simple dice rolls, hence why Epic used "firepower" and I think it worked perfectly well in the context of Epic. 40k has always (or at least the past 20 years) been about having some variety, so more stats doesn't really hurt it.

usmcmidn wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Here's the link if anyone's interested.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/03/23/warhammer-40000-news-from-adepticon/

That video was surprisingly kinda funny. The deep strike part made me laugh.

Vid was great. I had to rewind it back to that part. I was stunned and thought to myself "They totally just did that". GW is killin it.

I'm the opposite - I hate list building and I hate how list building dominates a lot of games. I'd like to actually show up and play against someone and have a game where the game decides the game, not the list.

But I'm old.

Get off my lawn.

List building is a very important and fun part of the game. Tabletop strategy is also a very important and fun part of the game. If either aspect becomes relatively unimportant then it wouldn't be near as fun of a game, IMO.

 Bi'ios wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Here's the link if anyone's interested.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/03/23/warhammer-40000-news-from-adepticon/

That video was surprisingly kinda funny. The deep strike part made me laugh.

Vid was great. I had to rewind it back to that part. I was stunned and thought to myself "They totally just did that". GW is killin it.

I will say I am hopeful for GW's future. I've playing on and off for years, starting when I was a young blood and I have never seen them change for the better like this. I am curious and bet new strategies and the current direction will attract new players.

As for the list building... I field models I like not models that will make me dominate and crush my opponent. I like to think of myself a very friendly gamer, whether I win or lose as long as both my opponent and I have fun in the process it's all good.

OgreChubbs wrote:

Also AoS is not a tactical game it is literally a move to the center and start rolling. People are fighting in the center 99 of your guys vs 1 of theirs shoot him your bolt stormers or storm bolters what ever it is for sigmarines. Do not worry your arrows disappear when they hit your guys they only hurt them "smart fricking arrows".. Try to make your army split nope The magic boss fields make sure your general needs to be in the center for synergy.

]

Except, you know, that part where the more free-form charge and pile-in phases allow you to position units very specifically to counter enemy formations and drag in additional combats/exclude others, with the bulk of the game's combat being around figuring out the best way to net your optimal unit placement in combats while denying your opponent the same.

So from reading the Warhammer World link with the video I couldn't watch because sleeping kidlets, the new edition is shaping up to be 2nd Ed. spliced with AOS. There may be some grognards who are really happy with this.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
There are inherent difficulties in balancing lists when there are so many options. We know this both from game theory and from practical observation of such games, 40K included. It would be sufficiently time-consuming to balance such a game in the initial design process, that it's effectively impossible to do so, even with extensive playtesting. This is why games like Magic: The Gathering, or MOBA games, use ongoing rules tweaks and potentially just outright ban unbalanced options or combos. GW doesn't care about any of that stuff -- they don't even do the initial playtesting, really. So they are better off giving us a simpler ruleset, as long as it has decent rules and deep strategy.

If they move to using freely available online warscrolls and a General's Handbook that is updated yearly like AoS then they'll have the ability to tweak point costs and unit rules on a regular basis. I'm not saying that they couldn't simplify things as well, just that the ability to tweak things without costing the players a lot of money can make fine-tuning a relatively complicated ruleset a lot easier.

Agreed. I think that with a miniatures wargame with multiple factions, online rules and ongoing tweaks is by far the best approach.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


Not even close to GK level's now, got a small boost thanks to Traitor Legions. Orks are the one's where you want to hit rock bottom.

I've won the last local competitive tourney with orks just cause everyone forgot how they look like. So, you can call it an anti-meta list, probably. And it seems that the 1 and 2 places are usually occupied by anti-meta lists than the internet wisdom lists go and the rest are people who play for fun. So, in some sense there is a portion of skill involved but it's mostly used to come up with an anti-meta list and to avoid supid mistakes during games.

As for gk. You've still got the dreadknight and librarians. to loose.

 koooaei wrote:

I've won the last local competitive tourney with orks just cause everyone forgot how they look like. So, you can call it an anti-meta list, probably. And it seems that the 1 and 2 places are usually occupied by anti-meta lists than the internet wisdom lists go and the rest are people who play for fun. So, in some sense there is a portion of skill involved but it's mostly used to come up with an anti-meta list and to avoid supid mistakes during games.

the german masters series put in a money price for the first one who win a masters tournament with orcs because they are now perfect as an anti-meta list faction
no one did it in the last season and the usual orc tournament players (and there are some very good 40k players) quit the masters because they feel frisked by that announcement (win with orcs is easy if you are good enough, while none of the top 3 players risk their season victory by playing a weak faction)

 auticus wrote:
I'm the opposite - I hate list building and I hate how list building dominates a lot of games. I'd like to actually show up and play against someone and have a game where the game decides the game, not the list.

But I'm old.

Get off my lawn.

Most people I've spoken to over the decades enjoys list building but just dislikes how badly balanced the game is such that winning revolves around list building.

Here's the difference between good list building and bad list building:

Good list building:

"Hmmm, unit A and unit B look nice, unit A is more choppy and I'm building a choppy force and it'll compliment this other unit C I've already chosen, so I'll take A. Oh, and now I equip them, I see option X, Y and Z, X has a short ranged area of effect which would be cool, I'll take that!"

Bad list building (aka 40k)

"Hmm, unit A and unit B look nice"
*does mental calculation*
"Oh, unit A is much better than unit B, I guess I'll take that. Oh and now for the weapon options, X, Y and Z"
*does a mental calculation*
"Hmm, Y is massively overpriced and Z is never going to function as intended, I guess I'll take X"

orks are very mission - dependent. Also, i won a game vs ravenwing magic deathstar just cause the time went out, so luck definitely played part. Magic ravenwing counters bully boyz easilly otherwise. Got batreps in the batrep section.

Anywayz, back to age of primarchs. I'd love the complete rehaul of the game. Not just that it needs it - it's more fun. Like a new game! Exploration.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm the opposite - I hate list building and I hate how list building dominates a lot of games. I'd like to actually show up and play against someone and have a game where the game decides the game, not the list.

But I'm old.

Get off my lawn.

Most people I've spoken to over the decades enjoys list building but just dislikes how badly balanced the game is such that winning revolves around list building.

Here's the difference between good list building and bad list building:

Good list building:

"Hmmm, unit A and unit B look nice, unit A is more choppy and I'm building a choppy force and it'll compliment this other unit C I've already chosen, so I'll take A. Oh, and now I equip them, I see option X, Y and Z, X has a short ranged area of effect which would be cool, I'll take that!"

Bad list building (aka 40k)

"Hmm, unit A and unit B look nice"
*does mental calculation*
"Oh, unit A is much better than unit B, I guess I'll take that. Oh and now for the weapon options, X, Y and Z"
*does a mental calculation*
"Hmm, Y is massively overpriced and Z is never going to function as intended, I guess I'll take X"

If the units all were perfectly balanced in "Points" for the stats and special rules for each unit.

Even if that was the case we would still have niche units that have very odd roles (And this is fine) so you would still have popular units on the table (Again this is fine). Thats why we have 6 troop slots, an Armies troop was suppose to be the Core. Thats why GK's can have terminators as troops, or SW Bikes for troops. This was a good way to have the bulk of an army more fluffy and then you had those niche units in Elites/ Heavies etc...

But when the points per unit are so skewed and they dont give an army viable troops you get "Net lists" like we see in Tau, where its 3 Riptides and Ghostkeels as a staple of the list.

Or Eldar with Warp Spiders, Seer Conceal and WK's, at least Eldar has Bikes but you never see Guardians.
Or Nids with 0 gants........ I mean only Fliers err oh man is Nids book bad :/
There are some Armies that are like this, SM, SGC etc.. even Daemons is a great balanced book if it wasnt for the combos you can do with them



I feel this is what players mean when they dont like List building, They get an Army b.c the aesthetic reasons and Not to power game with numbers. If the Armies like Orcs, Nids etc.. used 4-6 Troops slots as there Bread and Butter, then you could build out the rest of your 500-1k points with units to fill a "role' and sense you know what roll you will want, you can just "buy and take" the models you like,
THIS is were formations comes in to break up the army to fill a different style, If you like MC's there could be MC formations that lets you take more of them, or if you like Lictors, then there is a formation with Lictors etc..
Formations should have been to fill our different army roles, fluff and break up the monotony of an army

Edit: Example: Nids, you want more Psychic? well now you pic what one you like more a Zoanthropes or Malecptors NOT what one is better Points per Point.
Or DE, Wychs vs Kabalite Warriors, The Warrior is 2pts cheap but is dbl the efficiency of a Wych.

Sorry for grammar.

 Grimgold wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Fafnir wrote:

AoS' tactical depth is leagues better than 40k, which is often just won at the list building phase, with armies pretty much playing themselves past that point. Sure, you'll roll a lot of dice and go through a million phases, but most of that is just going through the motions of dice for dice' sake.

Every single good 40K player disagrees with you.

You can give an electro deathstar to an average player, which isn't even a hard build to play, and he'll get creamed by good players with bottom tier armies.

If the list did most of it, we'd know by now.

So where are the bottom tier armies winning GTs.

Everywhere... just look at actual tournament results and look at the lists, it's quite obvious that most of these aren't your typical netlist like "screamerstar" or Iyanden beaststar were.

Dark Eldar is a bottom tier army, deep bottom tier, yet some good players still manage to pull off decent rankings or even first places.

I also remember some orks placing really fething high, when in your depiction, they shouldn't even be able to enter any kind of top 10 with the weight and power level of most lists in those events.

Bottom line is this: without properly studying tournament results and top players, any talk of balance is irrelevant because you're only discussing your perception of balance, in your local meta, with your local mission package and at your level of skill / your circle's level of skill.


It's like SC2, average players might say that widow mines are completely OP - and even until Platinum / Diamond I deeply believed so, because they placed a solid burden of APM on the opposing players at little cost.
Yet at Masters or GM / competition level, nobody uses them because they're just not that good.
And that's in a game that has 100x more competitive players than 40K and way more balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
There are inherent difficulties in balancing lists when there are so many options. We know this both from game theory and from practical observation of such games, 40K included. It would be sufficiently time-consuming to balance such a game in the initial design process, that it's effectively impossible to do so, even with extensive playtesting. This is why games like Magic: The Gathering, or MOBA games, use ongoing rules tweaks and potentially just outright ban unbalanced options or combos. GW doesn't care about any of that stuff -- they don't even do the initial playtesting, really. So they are better off giving us a simpler ruleset, as long as it has decent rules and deep strategy.

Exactly, and the free rules and ongoing rules tweak will do the rest, which is why even being 100% AoSed would still be a great thing for 40K.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
40k has lots of options, but huge swaths of them are very similar, but differ in easily comparable ways.

Yes, but "easily comparable" doesn't mean "easily playtestable". You get emergent complexity once you start looking at 12 factions, maybe 20 or 30 units each (even if many are similar), 1500+ point games, and optional wargear. It gets worse when you add formations. There is a very high chance that a degenerate strategy will emerge -- the one essentially unbeatable list, unbeatable even by other high-level players. So you might as well not have any options at all...

Exactly this.
The entropy of a system like 40K is way out of control and not comparable to any other system.
This may be a bad thing - it probably is - but that still doesn't make the balance vs entropy compromise objectively bad, especially since we have no point of comparison.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:

The single biggest factor in 40K seems to be skill, followed closely by luck, and then list building.

Wow. I have never tought that this day will come.

Actually, to me, with the most basic guidelines like don't overextend your trops, go for objetives and don't fail in the bait-units, W40k its one of the less skilled heavy wargames or even tabletop games I known. My ranking of "things that are important to win 40k" its literal the inverse of yours.

You can call that Tournament are a small portion of the game and that where you play subpar lists all go rank 1 with good players. But just look at the list of the bigger tournaments and you will se that all the good list are clones and all the broken spams we all know. 80% (Totally accurate percentage) of the games of 40k are decided in the List and Army selection.

And a game so based in dice rolling as 40k can't be really a skill heavy game.

But that's the thing my friend, you haven't studied competitive 40K like I have.

Look at those bigger tournaments, look at who regularly places high and look at their lists.
Many of the top players have atypical lists which are less broken and a lot harder to handle, but which in their hands deliver the value.

Sure, most entrants come in with a copy/paste netbuild, but those people never make it to #1, despite having crazy good lists.

Believe me, take a deeper look at this and you'll see exactly this:

- top players always place high, even with seemingly underpowered lists
- average players with top lists never make it to #1
- when two top players, one with an OP list, and one with an underpowered list face off, sometimes the UP list wins (Nova 2014: Tony Kopach with a crappy list vs Thomas Donslund with Iyanden beaststar - two crazy good players, Iyanden beaststar vastly better list, luck made the difference and Kopach goes home with the trophy).
- matching the list to the mission package makes all the difference in the world (LVO 2015: Sean Nayden with Lictorshame, a build that doesn't deliver outside of the LVO package)


Lastly, I think it would help you a ton if you asked a few 40K champions how they feel about the game and the importance of skill, list building and luck.
Maybe they have a better understanding of all this, who knows.

morgoth wrote:

Look at those bigger tournaments, look at who regularly places high and look at their lists.
Many of the top players have atypical lists which are less broken and a lot harder to handle, but which in their hands deliver the value.
[....]
Lastly, I think it would help you a ton if you asked a few 40K champions how they feel about the game and the importance of skill, list building and luck.
Maybe they have a better understanding of all this, who knows.

And the result is no one plays the original 40k.
All tournaments use house rules and it is hard to find a unified system

so all those people can only tell you about the house ruled version which tells you nothing about the current game sold by GW.
ITC uses different missions, so there Dark Eldar with Ynnari formations plays different than in the German TTM series that uses the original Mission has a "2 factions only" limit which ban all the new Ynnari formations.


You can still ask those that play many different series/countries with different house rules and do this since 4th edition.
Most if them will tell you that the original rules are crap and what houserules they prefer to make the game playable

- when two top players, one with an OP list, and one with an underpowered list face off, sometimes the UP list wins (Nova 2014: Tony Kopach with a crappy list vs Thomas Donslund with Iyanden beaststar - two crazy good players, Iyanden beaststar vastly better list, luck made the difference and Kopach goes home with the trophy).
- matching the list to the mission package makes all the difference in the world (LVO 2015: Sean Nayden with Lictorshame, a build that doesn't deliver outside of the LVO package)

Nice examples, but those are not 40k tournaments
they use house rules to balance and adjust the game to make such results possible

Give me an examples of a 30+ player tournaments with the original rules were the good players with bad factions always place high

 kodos wrote:

Give me an examples of a 30+ player tournaments with the original rules were the good players with bad factions always place high

That's a strawman right there.
Not only are there many tournaments which don't alter the rules, unlike ITC.
There are litterally next to 0 tournaments with 30+ players and no specific mission packages.
Good lists are good within a mission package of course, and my argument is that even in that case, having the better list doesn't do 80% of the job.

What we are discussing is what matters most in a game of 40K.
Top players regularly place high irrespective of faction or list, that shows that skill is what matters most.
Then, the top 3 of any event is rarely taken by copy/paste netlists, showing that even the strongest, most broken lists regularly lose to other weaker lists.
Lastly, there is indeed a bit more good lists at the top and more bad lists at the bottom, so list building clearly plays a part.

If the theory of the listbuilding-whiners was correct, what you would see is all good lists on top and all bad lists on the bottom with very little variation.
That's not what we can see.

morgoth wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Give me an examples of a 30+ player tournaments with the original rules were the good players with bad factions always place high

That's a strawman right there.
Not only are there many tournaments which don't alter the rules, unlike ITC.
There are litterally next to 0 tournaments with 30+ players and no specific mission packages.

Which just goes to imply that 40k isn't a good competitive game.

And that's not a strawman.

 kodos wrote:

Give me an examples of a 30+ player tournaments with the original rules were the good players with bad factions always place high

Certain tournaments do favor more than other, but no tournament will use the BRB Missions.

They are just to random. a Player could easily win b.c he was lucky enough to get 3 out of the 12 missions that is army favors and the opponents doesnt.

Imagine a KDK army of 10 soulgrinders and a Barace Scorpion with 2-3 sorcerer to get invis, now he could be extremely luck and get a Kill point game and The Emperors will for his 1st 2 games. The the 3rd one for Malestrom could be Tactical Escalation and wins basically b.c the other players couldnt remove him from the Objectives before he drew good ones.

I know it sounds like it wouldnt happen, but sadly it can, there are literally 100's of players games that lost simple to bad card draw. You cant have tournaments with Malestrom rules from the BRB

Edit: 40k is more of a narrative game, you and your opponent are meant to talk it over before you play. Alot of the tabling problems will stop if pick up games did this. Armies are still very poorly balanced, not saying this would fix balance problems just will make games more fun.

morgoth wrote:

If the theory of the listbuilding-whiners was correct, what you would see is all good lists on top and all bad lists on the bottom with very little variation.
That's not what we can see.

I see it
there are not many tournaments around using original not re-balanced rules and there, lits that reduce the amount of lucky dice rolls or can easy handle all kind of random mission stuff are always on top.

If you are only talking about small tournaments, of course a very good player can always smash the 10 newbies who have no clue about the game.
If you are talking about the re-balanced alternate 40k rules, you are right, but that is the reason to use those alternate rules in the first place.


So the only point you are making is that we need to use an alternative version of 40k, nothing more

 Fafnir wrote:

Which just goes to imply that 40k isn't a good competitive game.

And that's not a strawman.

Says who?

The people and organizers who have rarely if ever played the actual 40K game?
Please... most of these organizations have been house ruling for so long they have no idea what 40K is.