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.

The power level seems like a good way to get a game together quickly, and will probably be used for apoc-size games where an extra tactical squad or two makes little difference and for teaching new players the ropes.

Aside from that we didn't actually learn a lot, their than "points exist" and how summoning will work. What's interesting is that tacmarines got cheaper, but the expected point size for a point-based game went up. Will we need to buy more models? Probably.

I do like that they're balancing around whole numbers. 20 point marine /w pistol, 30 point marine /w MM, etc.

There's no reason point totals can't end in 0 or 5.

It's hard to say if the MM is costed appropriately without knowing the cost of its targets.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
The power level seems like a good way to get a game together quickly, and will probably be used for apoc-size games where an extra tactical squad or two makes little difference and for teaching new players the ropes.

Aside from that we didn't actually learn a lot, their than "points exist" and how summoning will work. What's interesting is that tacmarines got cheaper, but the expected point size for a point-based game went up. Will we need to buy more models? Probably.

Well i dont think so. unless you are taking a LOT of them naked

it seems a lot of points will be tied to the equipment people take.

And Skitarii Alphas. And Chaos Champions, both Marine and Cultist.

I'm a little annoyed they didn't take the opportunity to increase the points costs across the board to increase granularity. There's only so much wiggle room between a 4 point guant, a 5 point guardsman, a SoB and a tactical marine. Doubling a space marine to 26 point would allow you to have 7, 8, 9 or 10 point gaunts. Guardsmen between 8 and 11. Sob between 18 and 22. It gives you more ways to dial in the points cost they REALLY needed, especially with the minor upgrades like grenades and things like toxin-sacs.

Make the default game size 3000-4000 points.

Regarding the multi-melta's ability to roll 2d6 and pick the highest:

The expected value of a 6 sided dice is 3.5.
The expected value of 2 6 sided dice, taking the higher roll, is *roughly* 4.5.

So, you have to ask yourself: Is this worth it?

Everything is situational. But let's assume for a moment that a heavy weapons squad can only have 4 devastator marines in 8th edition. This means the expected result of 4 multi-meltas dealing damage - having already hit and wounded - is either 14 (3.5*4), or roughly 18 (~4.5*4).

So you do get some safety if one doesn't wound.

Let's look at the likelihood that 3D6 completely *kills* a Leman Russ (Sorry Russ, I don't mean to pick on you, you're just the tank we have to look at right now).

Need 12+ damage. (this is assuming we've already landed a hit and got the wound roll, and the vehicle failed its save if it got one)

3D6 Not Melta Range = 3/8; which is also the same as Lascannons.

3D6 Melta Range = 7/9; considerably better.

So you have a 37.5% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta/lascannon wounds outside of melta range.

Meanwhile, you have a 77.78% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta shots within melta range.

No more infinite demons is also very welcome. Being able to choose what you need on the fly is a fair compromise, because that can be devastating enough.

Martel732 wrote:
No more infinite demons is also very welcome. Being able to choose what you need on the fly is a fair compromise, because that can be devastating enough.

Yep. Chaining summons was just downright awful.

Chaining wasn't actually legal (can't cast on the turn you're summoned) and Wrath of Magnus removed Horrors getting Daemonology. Plus, coin flip odds for a summon require 5 WC... Mathematically, summon-hammer wasn't exactly a good build so nerfing it is more a way to appease the scrubs rather than attains real balance. Plus now, there's really no reason to run Word Bearers over pretty much any other Legion. (Guess which Legion I run).

...it's like when Gav released the 4e codex all over again. Shame.

 Carnage43 wrote:
I'm a little annoyed they didn't take the opportunity to increase the points costs across the board to increase granularity. There's only so much wiggle room between a 4 point guant, a 5 point guardsman, a SoB and a tactical marine. Doubling a space marine to 26 point would allow you to have 7, 8, 9 or 10 point gaunts. Guardsmen between 8 and 11. Sob between 18 and 22. It gives you more ways to dial in the points cost they REALLY needed, especially with the minor upgrades like grenades and things like toxin-sacs.

Make the default game size 3000-4000 points.

Can't disagree with you on principle. When you consider the psychology of getting thousands of people to embrace a 'new' system, you want to avoid making changes unless you absolutely have to. Right?

I would assume that the models are valuated not relative to one another, but based on a numeric system that takes their upgrades & statlines into consideration.

For instance, if GW is going to ever have a balanced game, the cost of a marine shouldn't be X points so you can have granularity in other factions, it should be X points because when you sum the value of its components it sums to X, or slightly greater than X.

Like building a character in D&D.

Assume the base statline for a 0 point model is 6+hit, 1strength, 1toughness, 1attack, 1wound, 6leadership, etc. Some stats are more expensive than others. Maybe paying 1 point gets you 2 strength. Maybe paying 10 points gets you 1 wound. We don't know what their formula is. Then you have to factor in the value of other abilities, which are probably valued within the faction. ATSKNF might have a cost of 1. Who knows. Maybe you can buy down other stats, like leadership, or movement speed, to get more points to spend in other areas.

And the formula would have to vary based on the type of unit. Vehicles would be fundamentally different than infantry.

 Shadelkan wrote:

The points for units don’t appear on the datasheet but will be elsewhere in the same book. This is because you don’t need them to play if you don’t want, which frees up room to include more rules for weapons on the datasheet. It also means that, in the future, points for units could change without invalidating existing books – so if one unit or weapon starts to dominate tournaments, or certain units don’t seem to be carrying their weight in competitive games, we can address the balance.

OH YEAH!

Sounds plausible.
Ingenuine policy. It's all for the money making.

 Marmatag wrote:
Regarding the multi-melta's ability to roll 2d6 and pick the highest:

The expected value of a 6 sided dice is 3.5.
The expected value of 2 6 sided dice, taking the higher roll, is *roughly* 4.5.

So, you have to ask yourself: Is this worth it?

Everything is situational. But let's assume for a moment that a heavy weapons squad can only have 4 devastator marines in 8th edition. This means the expected result of 4 multi-meltas dealing damage - having already hit and wounded - is either 14 (3.5*4), or roughly 18 (~4.5*4).

So you do get some safety if one doesn't wound.

Let's look at the likelihood that 3D6 completely *kills* a Leman Russ (Sorry Russ, I don't mean to pick on you, you're just the tank we have to look at right now).

Need 12+ damage. (this is assuming we've already landed a hit and got the wound roll, and the vehicle failed its save if it got one)

3D6 Not Melta Range = 3/8; which is also the same as Lascannons.

3D6 Melta Range = 7/9; considerably better.

So you have a 37.5% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta/lascannon wounds outside of melta range.

Meanwhile, you have a 77.78% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta shots within melta range.

I think you are a bit off on your assessment of the 2D6 take the highest. You have only a 25% chance of doing (9/36) 3 or fewer wounds. A 44% chance of doing 4 or fewer wounds (12/36) and a 55% chance of doing 5 or more wounds. So while the "averages" of 3.5 and 4.5 aren't much different the consistency is quite a bit different. On a single die you have the same chance of rolling any number of wounds, whereas that is not true for 2D6 which bell curve around a value of 7. So your chances of say rolling a 5 or higher (meaning at least 3 wounds) on a multi-melta at half range is 83%, where as you only have a 66% chance of at least a 3 on 1 D6. Similarly there is a 30% chance of doing 6 wounds with a multimelta, and only half that with the lascannon.

Tautastic wrote:
Hmm so if MM is 27pts a pop on tacticals...I wonder what the point cost for the other Heavy weapons will be...50pts Lascannons? 40pts fusion blasters? LOL

really hope heavy weapons will have high cost so maybe we will not see spam of them.

Martel732 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Most of this sounds like good stuff, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Increased heavy weapons costs, at least as portrayed by the MM, sounds like it may ameliorate some of the concerns about multidamage weapons and vehicle resiliency.

That said...27pts for an MM? Interesting that we're going back to weird numbers like that, I'd prefer if they had just rounded that off to 25 or 30.

No, no. That decreases granularity. Being enslaved to the multiple of 5 paradigm is not good.

This is absolutely correct. It allows to, at least theoretically, to insert new weapons with fair points if they fall somewhere in between two old ones power wise.
Furthermore, such nuance could help in case of same weapons handled by different, and differently able, users.

 Marmatag wrote:
I would assume that the models are valuated not relative to one another, but based on a numeric system that takes their upgrades & statlines into consideration.

For instance, if GW is going to ever have a balanced game, the cost of a marine shouldn't be X points so you can have granularity in other factions, it should be X points because when you sum the value of its components it sums to X, or slightly greater than X.

Like building a character in D&D.

Assume the base statline for a 0 point model is 6+hit, 1strength, 1toughness, 1attack, 1wound, 6leadership, etc. Some stats are more expensive than others. Maybe paying 1 point gets you 2 strength. Maybe paying 10 points gets you 1 wound. We don't know what their formula is. Then you have to factor in the value of other abilities, which are probably valued within the faction. ATSKNF might have a cost of 1. Who knows. Maybe you can buy down other stats, like leadership, or movement speed, to get more points to spend in other areas.

And the formula would have to vary based on the type of unit. Vehicles would be fundamentally different than infantry.

That is precicely wrong system. Any attemp to make formula to determine point cost is doomed to fail

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Most of this sounds like good stuff, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Increased heavy weapons costs, at least as portrayed by the MM, sounds like it may ameliorate some of the concerns about multidamage weapons and vehicle resiliency.

That said...27pts for an MM? Interesting that we're going back to weird numbers like that, I'd prefer if they had just rounded that off to 25 or 30.

No, no. That decreases granularity. Being enslaved to the multiple of 5 paradigm is not good.

This is absolutely correct. It allows to, at least theoretically, to insert new weapons with fair points if they fall somewhere in between two old ones power wise.

I would posit that, in such a case, that level of granularity is probably irrelevant for balance if we're talking about one weapon at 25, another at 27, and a final at 30pts for weapons options. You're probably just making army construction a little more awkward rather than actually balancing choices at that point, at least in that kind of an example.

Just like when flamers were 6pts instead of 5pts. That extra point didnt really mean anything in terms of balance but made army construction a little more awkward.

Is it bad, that I am more interested in playing using the Power system vs the Points system and I am a tournament player normally?

I could see a tournament run as bring a 200 power level army.

Or my current thoughts for a tournament that I might suggest to my FLGS.

Armies must be Battle Forged for each scenario
Main Deployment: 150 Power Level
Reserve deployment: three 50 Power Level Sidebars.
--- One sidebar may be used per game.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Chaining wasn't actually legal (can't cast on the turn you're summoned) and Wrath of Magnus removed Horrors getting Daemonology. Plus, coin flip odds for a summon require 5 WC... Mathematically, summon-hammer wasn't exactly a good build so nerfing it is more a way to appease the scrubs rather than attains real balance. Plus now, there's really no reason to run Word Bearers over pretty much any other Legion. (Guess which Legion I run).

...it's like when Gav released the 4e codex all over again. Shame.

Lists that used summoning have been incredibly powerful pretty much since 7th edition dropped until now. WoM removed horrors summoning but it added freakin' magnus, who carried whole GTs on his own due in no small part to the fact that depending on the matchup he could poop nigh-unkillable units of pink horrors onto the board.

Breng77 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Regarding the multi-melta's ability to roll 2d6 and pick the highest:

The expected value of a 6 sided dice is 3.5.
The expected value of 2 6 sided dice, taking the higher roll, is *roughly* 4.5.

So, you have to ask yourself: Is this worth it?

Everything is situational. But let's assume for a moment that a heavy weapons squad can only have 4 devastator marines in 8th edition. This means the expected result of 4 multi-meltas dealing damage - having already hit and wounded - is either 14 (3.5*4), or roughly 18 (~4.5*4).

So you do get some safety if one doesn't wound.

Let's look at the likelihood that 3D6 completely *kills* a Leman Russ (Sorry Russ, I don't mean to pick on you, you're just the tank we have to look at right now).

Need 12+ damage. (this is assuming we've already landed a hit and got the wound roll, and the vehicle failed its save if it got one)

3D6 Not Melta Range = 3/8; which is also the same as Lascannons.

3D6 Melta Range = 7/9; considerably better.

So you have a 37.5% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta/lascannon wounds outside of melta range.

Meanwhile, you have a 77.78% chance to blow up a vehicle of 12 wounds with 3 melta shots within melta range.

I think you are a bit off on your assessment of the 2D6 take the highest. You have only a 25% chance of doing (9/36) 3 or fewer wounds. A 44% chance of doing 4 or fewer wounds (12/36) and a 55% chance of doing 5 or more wounds. So while the "averages" of 3.5 and 4.5 aren't much different the consistency is quite a bit different. On a single die you have the same chance of rolling any number of wounds, whereas that is not true for 2D6 which bell curve around a value of 7. So your chances of say rolling a 5 or higher (meaning at least 3 wounds) on a multi-melta at half range is 83%, where as you only have a 66% chance of at least a 3 on 1 D6. Similarly there is a 30% chance of doing 6 wounds with a multimelta, and only half that with the lascannon.

Hey,

the closed form for a specific chance is (2(x-1)+1)/36. It breaks like this:

1 wound = 1/36; (2*(0)+1)/36
2 wounds = 3/36; (2*(1)+1)/36
3 wounds = 5/36; (2*(2)+1)/36
4 wounds = 7/36; (2*(3)+1)/36
5 wounds = 9/36; (2*(4)+1)/36
6 wounds = 11/36; (2*(5) +1)/36

You can verify this by drawing a table, and just counting the number of ways to get a specific number.

From there, we just treat this as a weighted dice, and apply a generating function F = (1/36)x + (3/36)x^2 + (5/36)x^3 + (7/36)x^4 + (9/36)x^5 + (11/36)x^6

F^3 gives us the coefficients we're looking for.

The expected value of this roll can be easily computed by just looking at their possibilities and summing:

((1*1) + (3*2) + (5*3) + (7*4) + (9*5) + (11*6))/36 = 161/36 = ~4.472

Remember, we broke this down in melta range vs non-melta range. Outside of melta range, a lascannon and a MM deal the same amount of damage.

But you are right - rounding 4.472 to 4.5 does cause a bit of a leap when you start multiplying by 3 and 4. But i did not do this with my calculations to determine the chance to blow up a Russ - I only represented it as 4.5 to make the number easy to digest when reading on the forums.

Youn wrote:
Is it bad, that I am more interested in playing using the Power system vs the Points system and I am a tournament player normally?

I could see a tournament run as bring a 200 power level army.

Or my current thoughts for a tournament that I might suggest to my FLGS.

Armies must be Battle Forged for each scenario
Main Deployment: 150 Power Level
Reserve deployment: three 50 Power Level Sidebars.
--- One sidebar may be used per game.

More interested in these asymmetric missions for pickup games.

Anyone else notice that we might have to look at two ratings for your army. Sure, there's the point cost that we've been dealing with since forever, but Power Level of the army will determine if you're the Defender or Attacker in certain missions.

Yeah, some of those missions may be not one that you officially use points in, but let's face it, here in America, we're going to end up using both pretty regularly.

One other thing, that bit about the reason for not putting the point costs on the datasheet was a total and complete and total cop out. The Power Level of the unit will be just as malleable as the Point Cost will be. If it is going to be part of a digital print, changing them should not be any more difficult.

Do remember that the melta is assault whereas the lascannon is heavy, that might be important for the points as well. not just pure damage output.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Power level is meant for generalisation and narrative play, if you want balance you're going to need the matched play system.
I like youn's sidebar idea, prevents hard counters.

Multi-melta isn't a meltagun. One is a heavy and the other is an assault weapon.

I love this FB comment + response:

"Power levels make me think DBZ"

"Yeah that joke's been mentioned 9000 times."

Earth127 wrote:
Power level is meant for generalisation and narrative play, if you want balance you're going to need the matched play system.

Yeah, I did mention that this was in America I was talking about. We always make things competitive. A group of guys can't eat hot dogs without some competition being made out of it somewhere. Warhammer was never once intended to be a competitive game, but here in 'Murica, it's seeruz biznezz.

I have no problem playing a WAAC-game.

But I do like to know beforhand what kind of game I'm playing tends to make things more fun for everyone. There are luckily very few WAAC players out there who enjoy sicking their python lists on a bunny rabbit tough.

Having played Daemons since 5th ed, it will be easy to adjust to not getting free units. I'm only sad that it is just a deployment gimmick now. It has been my experience that having more models on the board is usually better.
It could be nice to pick different units depending on the need though, so that will be fun.

Hopefully Daemon horde-style is still viable. And that they make Pink/Blue/Brimstone horrors worth taking. I bought 2 boxes had have yet to use the Split rule at all.
If you have to pay for the models that split, that rule would be pointless as it would be better just to deploy them all from the beginning.

-

 Charistoph wrote:

Earth127 wrote:
Power level is meant for generalisation and narrative play, if you want balance you're going to need the matched play system.

Yeah, I did mention that this was in America I was talking about. We always make things competitive. A group of guys can't eat hot dogs without some competition being made out of it somewhere. Warhammer was never once intended to be a competitive game, but here in 'Murica, it's seeruz biznezz.

well, I'd argue that it's played as a tactical wargame rather than as a narrative sandbox. And, to be fair, it's because that's how GW organized it for nearly two decades. If you attended a GW run event in 1999 or 2005 or 2009, what they had on offer was...competitive tournament play, and little else besides painting and whatnot. Or, if they had something else, it was a small one off for the event that was stuff like "buy and build one of the new chaos spawn kits, have them all fight at the end of the day and the winner gets a $90 credit".

Earth127 wrote:
I have no problem playing a WAAC-game.

But I do like to know beforhand what kind of game I'm playing tends to make things more fun for everyone. There are luckily very few WAAC players out there who enjoy sicking their python lists on a bunny rabbit tough.

In my area, the WAAC players have literally driven several players (including myself) into other games and doing our own narrative things. They cam and dominated a "casual" tournament that was being hosted by our FLGS with several army building restrictions designed to limit what shenanigans could be had. They showed up and dominated everyone there with the worst lists possible (even had one guy on the verge of tears during and after the last round). Even knowing what the tournament was for (just show up and play 40K all day was the goal), the WAAC players made it something unintended by the host. I mean, the prizes were some old OOP 40K models that the host was trying to get rid of, and the WAAC players returned them to the host since it wasn't store credit.

My point is that even with communication beforehand, certain players will disregard everything and still be WAAC. Sometimes you just have to refuse to play with some players to make a point with them.

Based on the idea that GW will continually update the points costs for units and upgrades over time means that they now recognize the problem that the game has been suffering from for years now, the unbalanced armies, and are trying to keep it curbed. To me, the new points systems in place are excellent, and with 40K copying my favorite part of Age of Sigmar (having Open, Narrative, and Matched Play games), this is looking to be my favorite edition of 40K ever.