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 TheLumberJack wrote:
So does this mean the end of the codex? All we need are these data sheets?

Only for open and narrative play.

Codecies or General Handbooks or whatever will still be needed for matched play.

 TheLumberJack wrote:
So does this mean the end of the codex? All we need are these data sheets?

In AOS the army books (codex) contain artefacts, spells, etc that you can't get without the army book. So yes you can play without the codex, but you'll be missing the extras. The army books (codex) also contain the points whereas the free sheets don't contain any points so if you want matched play (99% of the community) you will need them still.

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

Guys/Gals/Whatevers.

Go read pages 148 - 152 of this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/4410/724730.page

The differences between points and power are spelled out very well.

It's a war scroll, so it's pretty much spot on for what I was expecting. Also, I think we are being shown half of something nifty, I think these kind of profiles are exactly what will appear in the books, and to get competitive points you'll have to go online.This is so they can balance competitive on the fly without invalidating the hardcopy books because the hard copy books only contain points for narrative. It's actually a clever way to have their cake and eat it as well.

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

And really, if you're worried about creating an optimal list, narrative isn't for you. That's the point. People who struggle with list building in the first place will benefit from this change. Lascannons versus Missile launchers is a silly example. How about when you have 70 points and you're deciding what marks to apply, and if you can afford veterans of the long war, or if you're left with enough point to add a dedicated transport, or if you want to buy another psyker mastery level perhaps? maybe you want to add power armor to your daemon prince.

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Yeah I'm really happy with this too. It's like playing Open Play in AoS except the players have an indication of loose balance. I really like the idea and will most likely be using it all the time with friends

 Grimgold wrote:
It's a war scroll, so it's pretty much spot on for what I was expecting. Also, I think we are being shown half of something nifty, I think these kind of profiles are exactly what will appear in the books, and to get competitive points you'll have to go online.This is so they can balance competitive on the fly without invalidating the hardcopy books because the hard copy books only contain points for narrative. It's actually a clever way to have their cake and eat it as well.

Matched points arent free. Those arein pay for books


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

Think that was example, not literal.


Points will always be inaccurate but less granularity the more inaccurate they are.


Replace example with the rubrics but one player takes reaper and one doesn't. Same price.

tneva82 wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
It's a war scroll, so it's pretty much spot on for what I was expecting. Also, I think we are being shown half of something nifty, I think these kind of profiles are exactly what will appear in the books, and to get competitive points you'll have to go online.This is so they can balance competitive on the fly without invalidating the hardcopy books because the hard copy books only contain points for narrative. It's actually a clever way to have their cake and eat it as well.

Matched points arent free. Those arein pay for books

If it's anything like AoS, the book you need for points costs and matched play will be, like, $20. Won't be anywhere near the crazy wall of money you need to go through currently, I'm pretty certain.

 Marmatag wrote:

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

True most weapons have a slight difference which makes them situationally not comparable, but they are often generally comparable anyway, and in a game as massive as 40k there will be places where objective superiority is mathematically provable to be true, and embracing removal of points from these things, is embracing removal of our current best balancing mechanic, in favour of a worse one. Heck even with granular points, we cant get balance, the more abstract this becomes, the less balance we have access to.

 Marmatag wrote:

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

the point isnt necessarily about those two specific weapons, they're just an example, but that there often are clearly superior weapons options or that elevate the ability of the unit to effectively engage a far greater array of foes, and that's not accounted for in "power level", but is in Points.

We can take a more extreme example of the heavy bolter vs the lascannon. Sure the HB can potentially hit more targets, but the Lascannon brings an entirely differet level of firepower to the unit, able to engage a far broader array of foes and be dramatically more effective against against most targets, while the HB is only more effective against basic infantry where you already have a bunch of weapons in the unit for that purpose anyway. That great leap of capability should havr a method of being accounted for.

Guys. Matched Play will have points for wargear.

If you're playing Open or Narrative, you have already conceded that granular balance is not the goal of the game, because you're adding in scenario-specific effects or setups that can't be accounted for by points anyway. Otherwise you'd just be playing Matched.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

the point isnt necessarily about those two specific weapons, they're just an example, but that there often are clearly superior weapons options or that elevate the ability of the unit to effectively engage a far greater array of foes, and that's not accounted for in "power level", but is in Points.

We can take a more extreme example of the heavy bolter vs the lascannon. Sure the HB can potentially hit more targets, but the Lascannon brings an entirely differet level of firepower to the unit, able to engage a far broader array of foes and be dramatically more effective against against most targets, while the HB is only more effective against basic infantry where you already have a bunch of weapons in the unit for that purpose anyway. That great leap of capability should havr a method of being accounted for.

Except, Heavy Bolters with Heavy 3, S5 and AP-1 seem a lot stronger against mid range infantry than a lascannon or, say, a normal bolter. While a Lascannon is very strong against single targets.
I do know where you're coming from though, and I agree. Tournaments should be played with more accurate point values. But I do really like the idea of this power level thing for pretty much every other match I play.

Guys, again, the Power thing is just for narrative play

GW stated at the end of the article that they're discussing Points tomorrow

So more than likely point costs were left off of this sheet to not distract away from the point of the article, to show an example of the layout of a datasheet

 auticus wrote:
Cross referencing points takes about 20 seconds while constructing my army list. After that I don't need to look at it anymore.

USRs sprinkled through 300 pages of rules-lawyerese rulebook takes several trips to it during a game to spend 5-10 minutes looking up rules every so often.

Most of the USRs that matter are well known and require ZERO rule lawyering and are insanely quick.

What causes the most Rules Referencing is again, not USRs. Since USRs is well known, if I tell you my unit has Relentless. I know what it means, you know what it means. It's instant

What causes the most Rules Referencing is individual special rules. So now if you're using Rubric Marines you will have to say... They have "All is Dust", which means no penalty when they move and shoot. Oh, and it means +1 Saving Throw if the attack has 1 damage.

They could have instead just said... Rubric Marines are Relentless


Also, All is Dust Saves improvement sounds like what Feel No Pain should be in this edition.

So really, instead of having 2 very basic USR, I will instead need to remember an extremely rule that only Rubric Marines... only a SINGLE UNIT IN THE GAME OF 100s OF UNITS HAVE.
Relentless - The -1 Modifier to Hit rolls for moving and shooting with a Heavy Weapon does not apply.
Feel No Pain - Add 1 to the saving throw if the attack has a Damage Characteristic of 1.

I'm gonna die of shock here. The heavy bolter is actually kind of useful now.

I hope they don't erase the possibility to buy squads in sizes of holy numbers. I always fielded my Plague Marines in squads of 7 (and they worked best that way) and also modeled them accordingly.
It seems like you can buy those TS only in squads of 5/10/15/20 though.

 Talamare wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Cross referencing points takes about 20 seconds while constructing my army list. After that I don't need to look at it anymore.

USRs sprinkled through 300 pages of rules-lawyerese rulebook takes several trips to it during a game to spend 5-10 minutes looking up rules every so often.

Most of the USRs that matter are well known and require ZERO rule lawyering and are insanely quick.

What causes the most Rules Referencing is again, not USRs. Since USRs is well known, if I tell you my unit has Relentless. I know what it means, you know what it means. It's instant

What causes the most Rules Referencing is individual special rules. So now if you're using Rubric Marines you will have to say... They have "All is Dust", which means no penalty when they move and shoot. Oh, and it means +1 Saving Throw if the attack has 1 damage.

They could have instead just said... Rubric Marines are Relentless


Also, All is Dust Saves improvement sounds like what Feel No Pain should be in this edition.

So really, instead of having 2 very basic USR, I will instead need to remember an extremely rule that only Rubric Marines... only a SINGLE UNIT IN THE GAME OF 100s OF UNITS HAVE.
Relentless - The -1 Modifier to Hit rolls for moving and shooting with a Heavy Weapon does not apply.
Feel No Pain - Add 1 to the saving throw if the attack has a Damage Characteristic of 1.

It's not as bad as it sounds. It's how it's handled in AoS and there isn't much confusion. Generally there's just a short moment where you ask what the unit does before it acts or before you act upon it. And as you play the game, you learn the gist of what most armies and their units do. I've played games of AoS mostly against Stormcast, but in the couple of games I've played against other armies, I already understand the kinds of things I'd want to look out for.
It's also a lot easier to look at the free datasheets and check out your opponent's unit real quick, than flicking through a giant rule book.
Also don't forget that, while a lot of people who have gone through the large rulebook and played a lot of games and learned the USR's, some people are trying to get into the game and don't know them yet. This new way of doing it makes it SO much easier for new people to learn their armies and get into games faster.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I hope they don't erase the possibility to buy squads in sizes of holy numbers. I always fielded my Plague Marines in squads of 7 (and they worked best that way) and also modeled them accordingly.
It seems like you can buy those TS only in squads of 5/10/15/20 though.

with the latest stuff It looks like narrative and open play seems to be power points for balance. I bet the competitive rules will allow the numbers to be specific though

It is the first thing I do not like from all shown so far. In AoS you can buy a box and play because unit's warscroll has all info you need. Here we are told that some datasheets will not have stats for all weapons or rules. So basically you still need a codex even if you do not play with points.

 Talamare wrote:

Most of the USRs that matter are well known and require ZERO rule lawyering and are insanely quick.

What causes the most Rules Referencing is again, not USRs. Since USRs is well known, if I tell you my unit has Relentless. I know what it means, you know what it means. It's instant

What causes the most Rules Referencing is individual special rules. So now if you're using Rubric Marines you will have to say... They have "All is Dust", which means no penalty when they move and shoot. Oh, and it means +1 Saving Throw if the attack has 1 damage.

They could have instead just said... Rubric Marines are Relentless

...

So really, instead of having 2 very basic USR, I will instead need to remember an extremely rule that only Rubric Marines... only a SINGLE UNIT IN THE GAME OF 100s OF UNITS HAVE.
Relentless - The -1 Modifier to Hit rolls for moving and shooting with a Heavy Weapon does not apply.
Feel No Pain - Add 1 to the saving throw if the attack has a Damage Characteristic of 1.

The problem with USRs is that they restrict design space. If you want something that can shrug off damage, you give them Feel No Pain. But what if you want to make a unit that can shrug off a lot of damage, or only shrug off damage sometimes? Now you're making exceptions to USRs, so you either have to make bespoke unit rules that act kind-of-but-not-exactly like USRs, or create new USRs just for that unit. Which is exactly the kind of thing that led us to 7th and its rules bloat, and is totally untenable in a system with scaling modifiers like 8th edition.

Now, just look at the datasheet. No cross-referencing, no USR-but-actually, no memorizing required.

Those Rubics look nice and fluffy and relatively well thought out barring one or two of the weapons options.
If all units get such similar love then I'll be happy.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I hope they don't erase the possibility to buy squads in sizes of holy numbers. I always fielded my Plague Marines in squads of 7 (and they worked best that way) and also modeled them accordingly.
It seems like you can buy those TS only in squads of 5/10/15/20 though.

The way this works in AoS is that you pay the points for a "block," but the actual number of models you field doesn't have to match that. So you can field a squad of 6 marines, but you'd still have to pay for 10.

We'll have to wait for tomorrow to see if that's how they handle it in 40k Matched.

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

secretForge wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I love the idea of power.

We don't need to worry about the point difference between a Warpflamer and an inferno pistol. Because the power of the unit is 8, and it tells you what you can take.

There are quite a few people I play with who hate the points system, but don't want to play unbound.

I'm hoping this is implemented well, because i'm really excited for this. Hopefully in the future it can replace points altogether.

Except when you get some options which are objectively better than others.

Barry is a narrative gamer who really likes the look of missile launchers, he plays against Scott another narative gamer who really likes lascannons. Barry and Scott have a very similar skill level in the game, and yet barry always seems to loose to scott. 'If only there were some mechanic which balanced the power of our favorite weapon upgrades against each other', he says to his friend.

'Yes I heard that a long time ago such a mechanic existed, but people found it too complicated to add up more than the cost of the model, so they decided to abandon it'

There is no evidence to support the conclusion that missile launchers are objectively worse than lascannons in 8th edition. in fact, it could be argued that missile launchers will be more effective against infantry than lascannons, due to their blasts.

True most weapons have a slight difference which makes them situationally not comparable, but they are often generally comparable anyway, and in a game as massive as 40k there will be places where objective superiority is mathematically provable to be true, and embracing removal of points from these things, is embracing removal of our current best balancing mechanic, in favour of a worse one. Heck even with granular points, we cant get balance, the more abstract this becomes, the less balance we have access to.

Except points still exist. This is just a different mode of play.

This entire thread can be boiled down right now to this:

Me: I like Ice Cream.
Everyone else: But how will you repair your roof with ice cream? No one will use ice cream when they have a hammer.

As Marmatag said, if you are worried about X weapon being more powerfull that Y weapon and if it should cost 5-10 points more, you should play Matched Play.

As a Narrative player, I really like this "Power Level" thing. If I want to make a "defensive scenario", I can say "You can choose 100 power level points, and the attacker will have 300".

It offers some short of accountability for your army, but without the precision and effort a proper Point system gives.

 Formerly Wu wrote:

The problem with USRs is that they restrict design space. If you want something that can shrug off damage, you give them Feel No Pain. But what if you want to make a unit that can shrug off a lot of damage, or only shrug off damage sometimes? Now you're making exceptions to USRs, so you either have to make bespoke unit rules that act kind-of-but-not-exactly like USRs, or create new USRs just for that unit. Which is exactly the kind of thing that led us to 7th and its rules bloat, and is totally untenable in a system with scaling modifiers like 8th edition.

Now, just look at the datasheet. No cross-referencing, no USR-but-actually, no memorizing required.

So instead of making a occasional rare exception, we will instead see EVERYTHING turned into an exception.

Again, my stance is that we needed to cut out half the USRs.

Also, don't give me that 'design space' crap, because no it didn't. The USRs existed because they were common. Several units were already seeing the same rules appear over and over again. It was simple logic to simplify by making it consistent.

Oh, and technically USRs still exist. Heavy, Assault, and Rapid Fire still exist. Anyone arguing that USR shouldn't exist is arguing that those keywords shouldn't exist.

Is anyone else wondering if most vehicles will have the +1 armour save against 1 damage weapons?
Would be a decent way to keep small arms from being too threatening for them....

And here I sat, looking at the statistics and just thinking: "Oh my goddess, look at all those AP values".

Of course, this is just the kind of unit to show, when a lot of people were (overly?) affraid to see each and every weapon get a nasty AP value so to make armour saving throws obsolete. I guess all those 'regular' troops such as Imperial Guard Infantry squads or Space Marine Tactical squads or even Ork Boyz squads will have far less frightning load-outs.

They did say all rules would be downloadable for free. Also AOS didn't put rules for all old models in the box, only new ones.

Jbz` wrote:
Is anyone else wondering if most vehicles will have the +1 armour save against 1 damage weapons?
Would be a decent way to keep small arms from being too threatening for them....

Doubtful, Small Arms is already non-threatening to them.

We have already math-ed out that it would take like 1000 Lasgun shots to kill a morkanaut.