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 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

Again this is another strawman. You've conjured something that likely does not exist to prove a point that isn't really a problem.

Oh man, the Vindicare and Deathmarks just became pretty scary. It's one thing if they can allocate hits on a 6; it's another being able to target characters which can't look out sir away wounds. It makes a bit more sense too. I do wonder if that means they lose the ability to snipe out special weapons though - I could understand the loss, and they don't do it very well currently anyway, but man was it fun when that happened. If they don't though, they'll be disgusting. I am sort of assuming you can just pick a target now and not have to roll a 6 just due to the wording, which might be a flawed assumption.

I won't argue with anyone this time on the character rules; they've been made simpler and less exploitable but yes, that also means you might not want them to lead from the front which is a shame. Personally, I think it's a good change, but if others disagree that's fine too. I'd wait to try it before getting too irate, but it's understandable why people liked the whole "here is my cool dude" thing, even if it was 90% used just to game away wounds with a superior save - it did look good.

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

This returns to the issues of TLoS, model conversions, poses, ect. If the game wasn't built around the concept of conversions and reposing models to make them look cooler, I'd agree that the only metric should be model height. But force it is way and we'll see RG crawlingnon the ground like he was trying to be a Ripper.

Wounds, while just as abitrary as keywords, and likely even more so than model scale, at least provide a measure of consistancy that people can't try to take advantage of like they do their models.

 Formerly Wu wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

The only "new" units for the Guard of late have been the two Taurox variants as far as I recall. Most of the rest has been split offs(Bullgryn from Ogryn, Armored Sentinels from the general Sentinel profile, etc), dredging stuff up from Epic(Deathstrikes), or renames(Scions).

I feel like your criteria for what counts as a "new" unit is a bit selective. Is the Wyvern a new unit, or just a Chimera chassis variant in your book?

In any case, a lot of that has come around with updating older units to plastic multibuild kits, and I don't see what Rough Riders have to do with them.

There's a reason I said "as far as I recall" and "Most of the rest".

Also, it has a lot to do with Rough Riders. Very little actually new has been put forth for the Guard from GW proper. They've been coasting by with nostalgia and the general "meh, I have what I need" attitude for the most part from Guard players.

I mean cripes, I mention removing Rough Riders or not liking them and we get people blasting me when probably a quarter of them didn't even realize the models haven't been on sale for almost four years?!

Which is, to an extent, why I think it needs to go as a name. Elysia isn't raising Rough Rider Squads for their armies. Cadia isn't doing that. Vitria isn't doing that. Harakoni, Catachan, Valhalla, etc etc.

It's always been that specific kinds of world were generally talked about raising Rough Riders(feudal worlds, feral/death worlds, or for whatever reason...Krieg?). By doing a "Feral World Cavalry Auxiliary" that opens the door for expanding it a bit more later on.

Start with Feral World Cavalry ala Attilla's horse troops then build up to things like the ornithids that got mentioned in "Straight Silver"(a kind of velociraptor chicken mount native to a basically World War One tech level planet) or even stuff like the xenos mounts we saw in WD back in the day.

Again, I don't know why we have to drop the name Rough Riders for that, but agree to disagree, I suppose.

Because it's a generic name that doesn't actually reflect the unit?

I mean, you're talking to a guy who is all for "Deathworld Veterans" becoming an actual unit type with specialized scenery rules.

I kind of feel that calling Rough Riders a "classic unit" is a bit overselling it. It's a unit that's been around for awhile.
Same with "invalidating armies". Have we ever been able to take a purely Cavalry mounted army? HWTs, SWS, Ratlings, Stormtroopers, yadda yadda yadda?

I'd say if your army includes a particular unit, and they get rid of that unit, your army's been invalidated.

One of the reasons I like the idea of RR platoons is that it opens the door to all-cavalry armies, which is a pretty cool idea in my book.

That's a bit of a leap there.

Rough Rider Platoons would just mean you could take more Rough Rider Squads. Scion Platoons didn't give us Scion Heavy Weapon or Scion Special Weapon teams.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

Again this is another strawman. You've conjured something that likely does not exist to prove a point that isn't really a problem.

And again, this is not a strawman, since it shows a possible limitation of the rule

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Some juicy updates today
Notably Rough Riders are still a thing

Gross...

That, to me, is one of the biggest downfalls of them doing the whole "No model left behind!" thing. I hate Rough Riders. I've ranted/raved about it elsewhere so I'll refrain from doing it too much here, but man. I'm not happy to see that.

Also really bummed to STILL not have an answer as to whether or not Guard Sergeants can take a flipping Lasgun. ARGH!
Marine Sergeants can take Boltguns, Tau squad leaders don't upgrade, etc. Why the frig do Guard have mandatory ones?

Why do you care? It doesn't really affect you if I mount my little men on horses. It's not like people are forcing you to play rough riders.

Breng77 wrote:

The issue with that is when those choices are close, or exclude certain armies etc. More models also means expensive molds that they need to recoup and investment on. I mostly play casually these days, and I'd still opt for better rules as most of my games are of the pick-up nature, and so having poorly balanced rules leads to a lot of so-so games. I would argue that rules are only unimportant when both players are familiar with one another and modify those rules to produce games they enjoy. Personally I have little issue with GW on the updating models front, for the most part they do a great job (like I said few horrid out of date models), and if they did produce say new space marine models I am not likely to replace the ones I currently own just because they look cool, I simply lack the funds for that. New units, sure. I think those are great, updates of old sculpts are also good, but for me would take a back seat to good rules for all models. I would put updating bad models ahead of creating new units etc. For things like expanded product lines, I think something like Forgeworld is fine for that purpose.

If I only played one army and I had already 'completed' that collection, I would probably agree. I'm not going to go out and replace my existing ASM just because they released a new kit with a bigger, fancier sword somewhere on the sprue.

My worry is that game has already been pretty much relegated to SM (really just Ultramarines), Tau, and the occasional black sheep in the community who wants to play something like Orkz or Tyranids. It may sell more units if they release new molds for existing models like ASM, but that's a trifle amount compared to the potential profits in reviving an entire product line such as SoB.

Look at what happened when they released the last run of Dark Eldar... the old models had long fallen out of interest among players and had almost no shelf space at local stores. They improved that and sales picked up instantly. Interest in DE as a faction picked up quite a lot and for a short while they were turning all the heads at tournaments and other events. I'm certain GW recovered more than just the cost of developing those molds.

Now look at the cost of recreating the entire ruleset and how likely GW is to lose as many or more players than it attracts. Seems like a pretty safe bet to me

Daedalus81 wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


As I said, it is a minor issue, but the GW can do no wrong crowd just can't admit it that i this case they didn't chose the optimal choice

Is it that? Or are people trying to over complicate the issue to prove a point that doesn't exist?

What point that doesn'ty exist? That the current rules make it impossible to create a character that has more than 11 wounds or vice versa without introducing a bespoken rule (hence more bloat)?

I guess you,ll keep dancing around the issue

No one has yet to provide a reason why this arbitrary character should not be targetable at 11 wounds. Or why a 15 wound character should not be. All you say is they can't make one. Why should we care?

You do realize there are other ways to impart durability outside of wounds and far more ways to make varied characters, yes?

Tip tap tippity tap tap!

So, think about it the other way. What if they want to create a big unit that isn't as durable as a tank? Like a giant. It should probably have 10 wounds or fewer, if a Leman Russ has 12. But should also be large enough to target over intervening infantry. So why not have a "Large" keyword, which only really large non-vehicle units would have. Then instead of the rules saying "Character models with 10 or fewer wounds can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest", it says "Character models can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest target or have the Large keyword".

That seems like a better solution. But honestly, does it make much difference? For everything that currently exists it probably works out the same either way, so why get upset about it?

The AM focus article, I think, is vastly superior to the CSM article. CSM gave little hints, but no usable information. From AM, we know the new exact T, W, and Sv of the Leman Russ, and that sniper weapons will have some way to target otherwise safely hidden characters. Commissars limiting Morale losse, automatic orders, and potentially *4* shots per FRFSRF guardsman are all nice, too.

I just hope I can have characters with morale buffs that don't blast the heads off of my Psykers.

 streetsamurai wrote:


which is why it is a bad rule. Wounds shouldn't be perfectly correlated with size

They aren't. We expect a GUO to have more wounds than a LoC even though the new LoC will likely be taller than the new GUO (whenever it gets here).

Bigger model, less wounds - representative of it's overall durability.

 Kanluwen wrote:

There's a reason I said "as far as I recall" and "Most of the rest".

Also, it has a lot to do with Rough Riders. Very little actually new has been put forth for the Guard from GW proper. They've been coasting by with nostalgia and the general "meh, I have what I need" attitude for the most part from Guard players.

I mean cripes, I mention removing Rough Riders or not liking them and we get people blasting me when probably a quarter of them didn't even realize the models haven't been on sale for almost four years?!

I don't follow your logic, nor your emotional response or bizarre ad hominem, so I'm just going to leave this where it lies since it's not new or rumors anyway.

 En Excelsis wrote:

 insaniak wrote:


That's a wonderful example of 'missing the point' right there. Why would you waste time shooting at a single guardsman when there's that great, hulking Primarch standing right behind him?

Why didn't you move your unit to get to a spot where Guilliman is closer?
Why didn't you fire more at the Guardsman unit to begin with?

Because it's a single Guardsman, and there are better targets for the rest of your shooting?

Seems to me like the whole 'characters cannot be the target of attacks' rule is just a method of removing a players ability to apply their own target priority. It's very heavy-handed.

GW has clearly stated that they want close combat to be play a larger role in the game and since they already dug a pretty deep hole for themselves by allowing for multiple overwatch attempts in a single turn, and for units to move and fire heavy weapons, there wasn't much chance that units would ever make it to close combat. I still don't think we'll see mobs of boyz using their choppaz anytime soon. But at least their favorite Ultramarine ICs will get to take a few swings right? They wouldn't want you shooting at them before they had a chance to earn their points back.

Everything can hurt everything... except ICs - you can't hurt those unless they've already hurt you in melee.

What about St Celestine? She probably doesn't have 11 wounds, but it should be pretty easy to distinguish her from the rest of the army, with her flying about and all.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Then instead of the rules saying "Character models with 10 or fewer wounds can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest", it says "Character models can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest target or have the Large keyword".

Because it's much cleaner to just give that model a rule saying "this model ignores the usual rules for targeting characters," rather than incorporate a keyword into the core rules- where it effectively becomes a USR.

 streetsamurai wrote:

Either you are really confused or I'm misinterpreting your argument

I think you are very much misinterpreting my argument....

What I'm saying is that if we have models with numerical values for rules as much as possible then their points costs can be pretty effectively mapped against the value of those rules and if some stat ends up being a bit more important than their spreadsheet or design manual first assumed, they can just go bump the cell that contains its value up by a tick or two. This can be done with a notebook and a pocket calculator, or very efficiently with an excel file that all the designers can have access to.

What you seem to be suggesting is that a small team of war-gamers from Nottingham should build operate and maintain an array of multivariate regression analysis models that they consult when designing new rules...

I bought up regressions because if they REALLY wanted to invest in balance, they could employ some interesting methods to try and figure it out.... But ideally they would have a system that can spit out ballanced models whether the person sitting at the design table is a high school drop out, or William Gosset.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


which is why it is a bad rule. Wounds shouldn't be perfectly correlated with size

They aren't. We expect a GUO to have more wounds than a LoC even though the new LoC will likely be taller than the new GUO (whenever it gets here).

Bigger model, less wounds - representative of it's overall durability.

Stop being pedantic. You know full well that I meant that the rule for being targetable makes it so that the size of a model is directly correlated to its number of wounds.

Daedalus81 wrote:

They aren't. We expect a GUO to have more wounds than a LoC even though the new LoC will likely be taller than the new GUO (whenever it gets here).

Bigger model, less wounds - representative of it's overall durability.

Well, it should be noted that the AoS GUO has 10 wounds while the LoC has 14 wounds. I would expect to see those exact same wound levels come into 40k.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:


So, think about it the other way. What if they want to create a big unit that isn't as durable as a tank? Like a giant. It should probably have 10 wounds or fewer, if a Leman Russ has 12. But should also be large enough to target over intervening infantry. So why not have a "Large" keyword, which only really large non-vehicle units would have. Then instead of the rules saying "Character models with 10 or fewer wounds can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest", it says "Character models can't be picked out as target of shooting unless they are the closest target or have the Large keyword".

That seems like a better solution. But honestly, does it make much difference? For everything that currently exists it probably works out the same either way, so why get upset about it?

You've stepped outside the realm of characters and into normal units, which are targeted under standard rules.

I'm not upset about it. I'm belaboring the point, because this is the battle of "those who think GW can do no wrong" vs "those who have to nitpick every single rule to feel good about their game design skills".

Two men enter, one man leaves!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Youn wrote:


Well, it should be noted that the AoS GUO has 10 wounds while the LoC has 14 wounds. I would expect to see those exact same wound levels come into 40k.

LoC got an updated scroll with the new model.

 davou wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

Either you are really confused or I'm misinterpreting your argument

I think you are very much misinterpreting my argument....

What I'm saying is that if we have models with numerical values for rules as much as possible then their points costs can be pretty effectively mapped against the value of those rules and if some stat ends up being a bit more important than their spreadsheet or design manual first assumed, they can just go bump the cell that contains its value up by a tick or two.

What you seem to be suggesting is that a small team of war-gamers from Nottingham should build operate and maintain an array of multivariate regression analysis models that they consult when designing new rules...

I bought up regressions because if they REALLY wanted to invest in balance, they could employ some interesting methods to try and figure it out.... But ideally they would have a system that can spit out ballanced models whether the person sitting at the design table is a high school drop out, or William Gosset.

I think that yes, a multi national like GW, should use such models to determinate the point cost of their models. Probably would insure that we don't get such abomination like scatter bike.

And again, I don't really see how putting a 1 besides a targetable cell make it more complicated than putting an 11 rather than a 10 (and I hope that the game designers would consider that putting 11 rather than 10 make it now targetable)

Daedalus81 wrote:

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

Again this is another strawman. You've conjured something that likely does not exist to prove a point that isn't really a problem.

It proves the point perfectly. Just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean the problem goes away. Wounds do not correlate size and therefore should not make the defining point in hiding or not. Not unless it's something very specific that GW is going to stick to like certain size bases mean guarantee'd X amount of wounds.

 streetsamurai wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

Again this is another strawman. You've conjured something that likely does not exist to prove a point that isn't really a problem.

And again, this is not a strawman, since it shows a possible limitation of the rule

If there are no models like that in the game and they have no intention to release one (primarchs are the strongest "human sized" beings), then adding a keyword is bad design.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

This returns to the issues of TLoS, model conversions, poses, ect. If the game wasn't built around the concept of conversions and reposing models to make them look cooler, I'd agree that the only metric should be model height. But force it is way and we'll see RG crawlingnon the ground like he was trying to be a Ripper.

Wounds, while just as abitrary as keywords, and likely even more so than model scale, at least provide a measure of consistancy that people can't try to take advantage of like they do their models.

Yeah. We have a word for people like that. Cheaters. They get thrown out of tournaments. Or you treat their conversions as the models they are intended to be. "Oh this is my C'tan. Because he can shapeshift, he's a scarab now. But monstrously powerful." Oh really? Cool. He's still getting shot like he's 6" tall.

Spoletta wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 nintura wrote:
The point is, hiding should be based on the size of the model and not how many Wounds it has... You're telling me if you had a super skinny tyranid, as tall as a knight, but only 10 Wounds, it could hide, but if you found a super bug that had 11 wounds but was the size of a Tyrant Guard, it couldn't? Wounds shouldn't have any say in how a model hides. There's literally no connection between them.

Again this is another strawman. You've conjured something that likely does not exist to prove a point that isn't really a problem.

And again, this is not a strawman, since it shows a possible limitation of the rule

If there are no models like that in the game and they have no intention to release one (primarchs are the strongest "human sized" beings), then adding a keyword is bad design.

And what if they want to make a big but frail model? And what if they decde in a few years that they want such a model. Again this rule is introducing some needless limitation on game design

Anyway, this is getting repetitive

I'm liking everything I see about these new Character rules.

Having played quite a bit of Age of Sigmar, it's pretty funny to read all of the 'sky is falling' type comments. 40k 8th Edition will just be using a modified version of the AoS 'Hero' rules.

Will Characters be able to join units? No.

Will Characters be able to provide benefits/special rules to units like they used to when joining a unit? Yes. We know that some Characters will have "auras" where they give X benefit to certain units within Y".

Will Characters be able to provide benefits/special rules to ANY unit? Nope. Generally speaking, keywords will be used to let you know which units can benefit. Kroot Shapers might only give a benefit to units with the Kroot keyword. This will vary heavily from Character to Character. Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplains probably won't be able to make Space Wolves fight harder. An Inquisitor might be able to inspire or command any unit with the Imperium of Man keyword.

But how will we deal with these newly nigh-immortal Characters? We can't shoot at one if he's standing slightly farther away than another eligible unit, unless...
1. ...you maneuver for a better shot.
2. ...you fire a "sniper" type weapon.
3. ...you use some other rule or effect that we just haven't seen yet.
4. ...you wipe out the unit providing cover.
5. ...you say feth it and assault like Khorne wants you to.

The 10/11 wound threshold seems arbitrary for designating which Characters can "hide" behind another unit, but I'm sure will make sense in practice. Guilliman is taller than a regular Marine, but it's not like he's a clear target. An average dude with a Lasgun is shooting the unit... not him. Magnus is about, what... five times taller than a Rubric Marine? That same Lasgun Dude is shooting Magnus specifically. Using a wound threshold obviates the endless bickering about cover percentages. "He's totally only 49% covered by that unit. I have a clear shot."

Just had to whip this lil guy up:

Um. Most people were just abusing invisible deathstars anyway. So now you can save a few steps in the psychic phase. I think the "invisi-HQs is just fine.

I bet they changed Sniper weapons to something like Str 4, Rend 0, Damage 1 (on a 6+ To Hit use the following profile: Str 8, Rend -2, Damage 2). In other words, it won't be the end of Characters when snipers are on the table. All but garanteed.

zalak wrote:

How is that any different to Robo joining the guardsman squad like he can in 7th? In fact, it's easier to hurt them in 8th then it is in 7th because if you position your units in a way so they can directly shoot at IC.

Can we please stop holding up the current rules as if they're the only possible alternative to what GW have gone with for 8th edition?

The current IC rules making no exception for ICs the size of houses is no less absurd than not being able to target the IC because there's a guy the size of his boot standing just in front of him.

If a unit can ignore intervening infantry in order to shoot at a dreadnought, there is no logical reason for them to not be able to shoot at another similarly sized model just because it's listed as a character on its profile.


Ultimately, Robert is entirely a separate issue to the silliness of the character rule as a whole, because of his size.

 nintura wrote:


It proves the point perfectly. Just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean the problem goes away. Wounds do not correlate size and therefore should not make the defining point in hiding or not. Not unless it's something very specific that GW is going to stick to like certain size bases mean guarantee'd X amount of wounds.

It's merely the inverse of the problem.

If you have a "skinny" tyranid that should be 10 wounds that is targetable then certainly no one would take it unless it was sufficiently durable by some means, right? So you otherwise make it 16 wounds and remove some other protection.

I don't get where you guys think that something bigger shouldn't have more wounds. Certainly bigger things will have variance between them, but if you have something as tall as a knight why in the world wound it have 10 wounds?

I feel like if they designed the system as you guys describe it the complaint would then be "it's so stupid that GW designed such a big model with so few wounds".

 nintura wrote:
Just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean the problem goes away.

I can feel myself getting dumber the longer this argument goes on. Please for the love of god take it somewhere else. There is nothing wrong with the system they are putting into place as long as they stay true to that system. If they deviant from it for a handful of models I don't think it will break the game, however if an entire army starts changing the rules then we have an issue. Until any of that happens there is literally no problem.