Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Someone should ask them how void shields will work, if it will just be extra wounds that regenerate or what.

Personally I hope certain results on the Vehicle degradation chart reduce their toughness or armor save, to represent chunks of armor being blown off.

As far as weapons with D6 wounds, tha makes plenty of sense with antitank weaponry versus vehicles. No two penetrating hits on a vehicle will have the same result. Some take out tracks, some plink harmlessly off armor, some take out crucial crew or systems, and some ignite ammunition and take out half the vehicle in a glorious fireball. D6 damage and the degradation table seem like a less random way to show the unpredictable nature of things beating the crap out of a tank.

 Kirasu wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
In a d6 based game, I don't think I like the 'everything can would anything' approach here.

I didn't have a problem with the "N" designation on the old S vs. T charts...

Same, I dislike the lack of variation and decision making that causes. Just more about letting people not worry as much about list building or tactical decisions imo when a bolter has the same probability to NOT wound a cardboard box as it does to wound a battle titan...

It works exactly the same. If you don't bring weapons specialized to kill large models you straight up won't. Look at the morkanaut, how many bolter shots do you need to kill it? 18 wounds 3+ save 3s to hit, 6s to wound is 485 bolter shots. You would have to dedicate and ENTIRE gladius of bolter fire to JUST the morkanaut for 4 turns(you're not getting rapid fire first turn) and meanwhile pray that the rest of your opponents army sucks enough that you can afford to shoot for 4 turns without reducing incoming firepower.

Basically if you think that basic infantry weapon is a catch all against everything now I pray we meet in a tournament because it's a free win for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
It also feels too abstract and game-y, for an admittedly sci-fantasy unrealistic setting, I know!

Yeah, Knights should be totally inmune to a horde of grots, orks boyzs with flamers and anti light-infantry weapons

Should they be? They're not fast enough to stomp out a swarm of goblins that can crawl up the legs and break stuff or suicide themselves on joints.

Guy in another thread did the math on it, you literally cannot pack enough grots into the 12" range of their pistol to kill a knight in less than three turns and then you still need the knight to sit there and take it the whole time.

edit: maths, it's actually worse, I was doing 5 up save

 rollawaythestone wrote:
Just wanted to also throw my opinion on Galas' side: LotR is one of the most balanced (and fun!) games i've tried.

Yeah well guess even GW can do it if they cut lots of stuff. Doesn't excuse them for not being able to do with more complex game like others can do.

Galas brings up a good point - some amount of 'realism' (Ha!) probably has to be sacrificed for the greater good balance!

 Badablack wrote:
Someone should ask them how void shields will work, if it will just be extra wounds that regenerate or what.

Personally I hope certain results on the Vehicle degradation chart reduce their toughness or armor save, to represent chunks of armor being blown off.

As far as weapons with D6 wounds, tha makes plenty of sense with antitank weaponry versus vehicles. No two penetrating hits on a vehicle will have the same result. Some take out tracks, some plink harmlessly off armor, some take out crucial crew or systems, and some ignite ammunition and take out half the vehicle in a glorious fireball. D6 damage and the degradation table seem like a less random way to show the unpredictable nature of things beating the crap out of a tank.

I'm sure the fantasy or role-playing element of it can be explained in a number of ways, but (all other things remaining constant) this would still be a huge net loss for vehicle durability overall.

The problem is that all other things will not remain equal. We don't yet know how many wounds our vehicles will have. Will rhinos have the same W value as Predators? (same chasis) or as demolishers? How will they compare to land speeders and dreadnaughts, or land raiders.

Perhaps more importantly, since they have already stated that vehicles will suffer reduced performance as they drop wounds, what will that look like? Will a dreadnaught with only half its wounds remaining move slower? Fire one less weapon? Will it hit or wound with penalties to the roll? How will that work for tanks?

Too many unknowns at the moment.

 Badablack wrote:
Someone should ask them how void shields will work, if it will just be extra wounds that regenerate or what.

I'm going to guess their response:

"Good question! Stay tuned to this space, and you might learn what they do soon!"

Personally I hope certain results on the Vehicle degradation chart reduce their toughness or armor save, to represent chunks of armor being blown off.

While that may happen for some of the larger critters, we know for a fact that that doesn't happen to the Morkanaut. Its degradation chart is released, and its armor doesn't get reduced at all.

I suspect we might see that sort of degradation for the more heavily-armored large critters like Riptides, Dreadknights, Landraiders, and the like.

As far as weapons with D6 wounds, tha makes plenty of sense with antitank weaponry versus vehicles. No two penetrating hits on a vehicle will have the same result. Some take out tracks, some plink harmlessly off armor, some take out crucial crew or systems, and some ignite ammunition and take out half the vehicle in a glorious fireball. D6 damage and the degradation table seem like a less random way to show the unpredictable nature of things beating the crap out of a tank.

I'm with you on that. Drastically increasing wound counts gives GW the design space to allow EVERYTHING the chance to do SOME damage, while still retaining the specialized role (and efficiency of use) for anti-tank weapons to do their thing.

ERJAK wrote:

Basically if you think that basic infantry weapon is a catch all against everything now I pray we meet in a tournament because it's a free win for me..

I agree with this over all, but I can't help but notice how much this makes mid-strength high rate of fire weapons a good "catch all" Especially if those weapons have an AP of at least -1.
I think the best TAC armies will have loads of low-mid strength shots will a few Lascannon-like weapons that either do D3/D6 wounds or even do Mortal Wounds
I anticipate Eldar to continue to be a strong army as Shuiken weapons are likely to be AP -1 (or cause Mortal wounds on a 6 to wound) and Distort weapons will very likely cause D3/D6 Mortal Wounds (as a replacement of D).

-

The degradation chart might also have interesting twists for certain models as well that don't just have to do with reductions in Attacks, Move, and BS/WS. Imagine a Riptide that gets damage to their Nova Reactor as they take wounds - making it harder or more dangerous to use.

 Alpharius wrote:
Galas brings up a good point - some amount of 'realism' (Ha!) probably has to be sacrificed for the greater good balance!

In a game where all of this can fight at the same time, yeah.



And thats why I said months ago that the biggest reason why 40k is so unbalanced, is that it has lost his scale. You can't have infantry that you count in 1:1 basis (Not platoons like Epic) fighting Titans without a very game-y sistem to achieve some kind of balance.

You're clearly seeing fewer "hard choices". You don't have to worry too much about what you shoot at - you can hurt everything at least some, and you can divide your fire. You don't really have to sweat choosing between moving and firing unless you're a Loota. Vehicle facing? Shrug. List building? Take what you want mostly (I see this as a good thing).

40K's never been that deep a tactical game, and many things that were meant to add a depth (like psychic dice pools) never worked very well. Still, I'd rather they kept some depth beyond - "Hey, you might be able to jimmy your model placement in assault to consolidate into other units".

On the up side, it should help them with game balance. But if they still manage to screw up game balance it will be really, really awful, because there are no rock paper scissors elements to counteract OP stuff. At least now Landraiders counter Scat bikes, for example.

 Galef wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Basically if you think that basic infantry weapon is a catch all against everything now I pray we meet in a tournament because it's a free win for me..

I agree with this over all, but I can't help but notice how much this makes mid-strength high rate of fire weapons a good "catch all" Especially if those weapons have an AP of at least -1.
I think the best TAC armies will have loads of low-mid strength shots will a few Lascannon-like weapons that either do D3/D6 wounds or even do Mortal Wounds
I anticipate Eldar to continue to be a strong army as Shuiken weapons are likely to be AP -1 (or cause Mortal wounds on a 6 to wound) and Distort weapons will very likely cause D3/D6 Mortal Wounds (as a replacement of D).

-

I wouldn't jumpt the gun there. If bikes also have -1 penalty to hit when moving and shooting heavy weapons, and scat lasers remain s6, they would be hitting marines on 4's and wounding on 3's. Same with shurikan canons, but not catapults which makes all the options worthy now. That would make those weapons much more balanced.

tneva82 wrote:

 rollawaythestone wrote:
Just wanted to also throw my opinion on Galas' side: LotR is one of the most balanced (and fun!) games i've tried.

Yeah well guess even GW can do it if they cut lots of stuff. Doesn't excuse them for not being able to do with more complex game like others can do.

Complex=/=Good. In fact, I would argue that complexity is something that should be used sparingly. You want a game with DEPTH, and game that gives you plenty of decisions to make, but is relatively simple to pick up. 7th failed at booth;it was largely impenetrable for new players and at the same time had very little in the way of strategic content(largely due to poor balance)

And while other games can get away with more 'complexity' in their rules, they limit flexibility in exchange. Malifaux puts most of an armies power on 1 or 2 models and uses keywords to limit what interacts with each other ON TOP of being a <10 model skirmish game. Infinity limits the variation between weapons and factions and is, again, a skirmish game. Warmahordes has somewhat comparable amount of options as 40k does but has to shed the narrative aspect almost entirely for sake of balance. They use 2d terrain.

Every game has to give something up for balance whether it's scale, narrative, freedom of choice, etc. With 7th GW chose to give nothing up and make the problems progressively worse, with 8th it looks like they're making small concession in the part of the game that LEAST applies to 40k realism. (If realism in 40k ever mattered to you...I feel like you wouldn't of stuck around this long.)

While I'm somewhat more concerned for the safety of my dreadnoughts now that bolters can wound them on a 5... I think that the return of split fire will actually help this somewhat. Because while small arms can potentially wound vehicles now, allowing units to split fire means that there should generally be better targets for them.


So while I'm still not entirely sold on the 'everything can wound everything' system, in actual practice I think the situations where you're actually going to be chipping away at vehicles with lasguns are likely to be fairly rare, or at the very least will be just the bit towards the end of the game where all of the better targets are gone and you're throwing the dice because you might as well...

 Alpharius wrote:
Galas brings up a good point - some amount of 'realism' (Ha!) probably has to be sacrificed for the greater good balance!

Realism of giant stompy robots! It's real, man!

 kodos wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 Ratius wrote:

Q: Dose this mean that each weapon type effectively has split fire or is it for the entire squad? Ie, can I fire 4 Lasguns at one unit and another 4 at another.
A: You can indeed! It's done by models, not by weapon type.

Hmmm, I like the idea but that could get a bit micro managment-y.

It works much better in practice than you may think.

if someone know how to speed things up
for other it will be time consuming and slow the game unnecessary down
split by weapon groups would be faster

Not really even in the worst possible scenario I can think of with a combined guard squad of 5 squads. My 5 lascannons go into the MC at the other end of the board, my 5 melta guns go into the transport in range, my 35-40ish lasgun guardsmen shoot into at most the 1-2 infantry squads in range and I choose to split them between them both and risk removing neither or shot them into one. I doubt there will be more then 2 targets in range and worth splitting up my lasguns shots further as it risks removing nothing.

Hmm not sure I'm over keen on the new infantry shooting rules allowing individual models to pick their target. That could really bog the game down if someone decides to roll for each model individually to maximise damage especially if you wanted to draw out for a long winded draw.
I think I would have preferred that models with the same weapons all have to shoot at the same target

 Galef wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Basically if you think that basic infantry weapon is a catch all against everything now I pray we meet in a tournament because it's a free win for me..

I agree with this over all, but I can't help but notice how much this makes mid-strength high rate of fire weapons a good "catch all" Especially if those weapons have an AP of at least -1.
I think the best TAC armies will have loads of low-mid strength shots will a few Lascannon-like weapons that either do D3/D6 wounds or even do Mortal Wounds
I anticipate Eldar to continue to be a strong army as Shuiken weapons are likely to be AP -1 (or cause Mortal wounds on a 6 to wound) and Distort weapons will very likely cause D3/D6 Mortal Wounds (as a replacement of D).

-

I would put money on shuriken weapons being ap0 with rend -1 on 6s. And actually I think we'll see S5 and S6 weapons be much less useful than they are now. Keep in mind a scatterlaser as it is now would be wounding a dread on a 5+ and bouncing off the 3+ save, and who's to say those profiles even look like that anymore? A scatter laser could be a single shot, or a lower strength, or be much more expensive.

The power of mid-strength shooting is something that became problematic in 7th and could definitely be an issue in 8th but is also something that could be solved by unit side balancing.

I just to be sure that anyone else saw a complaint about Matt Ward as being part of the issue of the current game a few pages back.

gungo wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 Ratius wrote:

Q: Dose this mean that each weapon type effectively has split fire or is it for the entire squad? Ie, can I fire 4 Lasguns at one unit and another 4 at another.
A: You can indeed! It's done by models, not by weapon type.

Hmmm, I like the idea but that could get a bit micro managment-y.

It works much better in practice than you may think.

if someone know how to speed things up
for other it will be time consuming and slow the game unnecessary down
split by weapon groups would be faster

Not really even in the worst possible scenario I can think of with a combined guard squad of 5 squads. My 5 lascannons go into the MC at the other end of the board, my 5 melta guns go into the transport in range, my 35-40ish lasgun guardsmen shoot into at most the 1-2 infantry squads in range and I choose to split them between them both and risk removing neither or shot them into one. I doubt there will be more then 2 targets in range and worth splitting up my lasguns shots further as it risks removing nothing.

And that is the worst case scenario. A tac marine squad only splits off the heavy really.

tneva82 wrote:


Yeah well guess even GW can do it if they cut lots of stuff. Doesn't excuse them for not being able to do with more complex game like others can do.

You seem to keep referencing how other companies offer complex, realistic games. Can we get some examples, specifically of the mechanics you're arguing for?

Breng77 wrote:

 lessthanjeff wrote:

 En Excelsis wrote:


I have provided the example of the WL, and then gone on to explain at length why this is, at best a double edged sword, or at worst, even more harmful to the overall balance.

And the only thing I've heard so far in return is 'but it'll be more balanced' with no evidence to support it.

I don't want to sound mean but...

How can evidence be provided when we know nothing about the wraithlord at this point? It could have more wounds, move farther, or cost less now. Even its weapon options may have different rend or damage values associated with them to differentiate. Run a maulerfiend for a few games and come back and say that walkers shouldn't get the same treatment wraithlords have had.

This is a great point in this argument. Using the single Dread as an example ignores the fact that a Wraithknight mauls specific close combat walkers in close combat, despite having access to shooting (like the dread), and it doesn't really need to give up its CC effectiveness to take guns (unlike a dread). But I mean what is the good balance and fluff argument that a Wraithlord (for equal or less points) should trash things like maulerfiends, Deff Dreads etc. While also being more durable against most shooting, being able to shoot etc. These models that have similar roles should be relatively equal if they are costed relatively equally. It shouldn't be that one is clearly superior to the other. Lets take the wraithlord out of the picture, what about the riptide? It is superior/equal to a dread in CC right now and far better at shooting. There is literally no good argument for being upset that some of your units are slightly worse respective to other units. If you in any way hope (like I do) that all units will be good at their combat role for their points cost.

Annnnnddddd a swing and a miss from the peanut gallery, starts ranting about wraithknights and then switches to wrathlords to make his argument fit the facts being discussed. I got to ask show me on the dolly we're the bad elder touched you, also are you a marine player? Do you think Tau should be totally removed from the game? Just checking because I have noticed a correlation.

Ahhh I really give up we know have people arguing that gak game design should be excused because it's hard and that despite the evidence of litterally every other war game made that complex rules/realisim cannot be done in a balanced game. sorry that issue is a GW issue.

I am out I give up ... I know Lord K will have some free time now.

I Sean Drake do fully recant all negative opinions of GW and the parts of 8th shown and humble thank the chosen in this thread for leading my away from my heretical beliefs to promised nirvana of perfection that is 8th.
Further I no longer feel that AoS is the most shallow wargame ever gak out in one weekend on a sheet of a4 with little to no redeeming qualities other than being able to play it while blind drunk, lobotomised or both. Also the fluff in no way is ripped off Planescape,MTG and Numeneria and is both highly original and did not make a good cure for insomnia(except that one that was a knock off of the early wfb it was ok).

Bye

Or... he just mixed it up at the beginning? It's been done before, and here everyone was only talking about the wraithlord until wraithknight was mentioned once, then you swoop in with that commentary.

I think that was a typo for the Wraithknight part.

 insaniak wrote:
While I'm somewhat more concerned for the safety of my dreadnoughts now that bolters can wound them on a 5... I think that the return of split fire will actually help this somewhat. Because while small arms can potentially wound vehicles now, allowing units to split fire means that there should generally be better targets for them.


So while I'm still not entirely sold on the 'everything can wound everything' system, in actual practice I think the situations where you're actually going to be chipping away at vehicles with lasguns are likely to be fairly rare, or at the very least will be just the bit towards the end of the game where all of the better targets are gone and you're throwing the dice because you might as well...

This is exactly how it works in practice. The system is meant to always let you do something while punishing you for being inefficient. That way you don't end up with a situation where you're playing a knight army but all you have left are heavy bolters and flamers for specials so you just concede.

So with facings gone, is it fair to assume that those terribly complicated devils we call "weapon mountings and fire arcs" are gone too? Because I can't really see all vehicles shooting effectively function like shooting from an open top transport improving the game. Baby out with the bath water as usual.

gungo wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Requizen wrote:

 Ratius wrote:

Q: Dose this mean that each weapon type effectively has split fire or is it for the entire squad? Ie, can I fire 4 Lasguns at one unit and another 4 at another.
A: You can indeed! It's done by models, not by weapon type.

Hmmm, I like the idea but that could get a bit micro managment-y.

It works much better in practice than you may think.

if someone know how to speed things up
for other it will be time consuming and slow the game unnecessary down
split by weapon groups would be faster

Not really even in the worst possible scenario I can think of with a combined guard squad of 5 squads. My 5 lascannons go into the MC at the other end of the board, my 5 melta guns go into the transport in range, my 35-40ish lasgun guardsmen shoot into at most the 1-2 infantry squads in range and I choose to split them between them both and risk removing neither or shot them into one. I doubt there will be more then 2 targets in range and worth splitting up my lasguns shots further as it risks removing nothing.

this is you
there are players out there that need the same time for moving 20 Bikes as other ones for 100 Orks
if such a player has the possibility to fire each Bolter on a different target he will take his time to maximise the damage as with the battleshock system you can take a lot of time to calculate the best way to split fire

SeanDrake wrote:
Snarky quote removed. --Janthkin

What if you play both? I personally dont think WLs are even that scary. Grav just annihilates them, so do missiles, and plasma. Plenty of things every marine army in the world brings. Yes, they are good in h2h (4 attacks on the charge vs your dreads 5 though), and sure their shooting is good (6 scatter laser shots), but they cost 55 or more points than your dread. What did you expect?

ERJAK wrote:


And that is the worst case scenario. A tac marine squad only splits off the heavy really.

Na man, two combat squads. One with Lazcannon, other with meltagun, captain with combi melta.

Thats two metalguns that can fire at someone, two grenades that can be thrown, a lazcannon that can be fired downrange and te remaining bolters firing at two seperate squads.

Tac squads got usefull AF.

 davou wrote:

Thats two metalguns that can fire at someone, two grenades that can be thrown, a lazcannon that can be fired downrange and te remaining bolters firing at two seperate squads.
.

it is per model not weapon group, a tac squad can fire at 10 different targets if you want to

 Galef wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Basically if you think that basic infantry weapon is a catch all against everything now I pray we meet in a tournament because it's a free win for me..

I agree with this over all, but I can't help but notice how much this makes mid-strength high rate of fire weapons a good "catch all" Especially if those weapons have an AP of at least -1.
I think the best TAC armies will have loads of low-mid strength shots will a few Lascannon-like weapons that either do D3/D6 wounds or even do Mortal Wounds
I anticipate Eldar to continue to be a strong army as Shuiken weapons are likely to be AP -1 (or cause Mortal wounds on a 6 to wound) and Distort weapons will very likely cause D3/D6 Mortal Wounds (as a replacement of D).

-

You're going to need high AP anti-infantry weapons as well - not just for tanks. Marines in cover will ruin your day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:


this is you
there are players out there that need the same time for moving 20 Bikes as other ones for 100 Orks
if such a player has the possibility to fire each Bolter on a different target he will take his time to maximise the damage as with the battleshock system you can take a lot of time to calculate the best way to split fire

The rules will not work that way. You pick your targets, decide how to split, and then resolve the shooting. There is no, "ok is he dead? no. Then I'll shoot one more".

This also means the same unit can't pop a transport and then shoot the occupants.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crablezworth wrote:
So with facings gone, is it fair to assume that those terribly complicated devils we call "weapon mountings and fire arcs" are gone too? Because I can't really see all vehicles shooting effectively function like shooting from an open top transport improving the game. Baby out with the bath water as usual.

I would believe so, yes. The tank could be looking the other way and still shoot behind itself. That's sort of the AoS thing - "don't worry about that stuff". Not that you would face the tank directly away anyway...