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.

One thing that has bothered me throughout several editions but has become more pronounced in 8th is a general homogenization of unit types and rules. I appreciate simplification as much as the next person ("oh yeah, Beasts are the ones with Hammer of Wrath...no wait they have Move through Cover."), but when it reduces all units to all fundamentally operating off the same rules, it feels like a lot of distinction between unit types disappears, to the point that the "best statistic wins." To use a few limited examples:

* Hordes vs Elites: Generally, hordes have possessed more "raw statistic" per point than elite forces, but elites could more effectively concentrate said power in one area, didn't need to stick to cover, didn't worry worried about blasts/templates/tank shock as much, etc. With the removal of blasts, and defenders allocating all casualties, the only real consideration for Hordes vs Elites now is whether a hyperconcentrated tercio of Conscripts or Shootas or Warriors can out-attrition equivalent points of heavier units in an area before Battleshock settles in/buffers disappear (Assuming your opponent "took snipers" as a "tactic").

* Flyers: In 7th, they were difficult to hit but could be dangerous...provided they were in the right place at the right time. Their limited fire arcs combined with minimum movement distances meant you sacrificed board presence for one or two turns of good shooting, maybe 3 if your opponent's battleline was very spread out. (Disclaimer: Of course Flyrants had 360 sight and became an auto include). Now, flyers are "another unit" that can be shot with relatively minimal BS penalty, but those aircraft now have perfect 360 LOS no matter what.

Round this off with a general removal of "interrupted moves", special abilities, etc, and the end result is you're getting units that are ironically behaving more similarly to one another than ever before, and when you have multiple units in a game that "do the same thing", you will ultimately end up either having one "best" one, or seeing the game devolve into statistical rock paper scissors.

Consider the Wyvern and the Mortar Team. Both units have the exact same role (pummeling the enemy with S4 barrages). In 7th, the Wyvern was clearly the superior choice due to Shred, ignoring Cover, having a vehicle profile with good frontal armor, and being Twin-Linked...for about the same cost as the Mortar Team! In 8th, the Mortar Teams are arguably a lot better due to being a lot cheaper and able to spit out more blasts per point. However, both units are ultimately doing the exact same thing with very little variance in role! At best, point adjustments can make the units near-identical (in which case the choice becomes the illusion of choice). Alternately, the two units could have slightly varied roles: Wyverns should be the unit that's better at "raw" infantry removal (Since Stormshard Mortars are chambered for such a specialized payload), or is able to provide overwatch support vs chargers (due to its improved Machine Spirit warding against surprise attacks), while Mortar Teams are the "utility option", firing smoke shells, illuminator flares, or even the odd Krak round.

By doing this, you can actually differentiate their roles to a limited degree, and give a practical reason to include both in your army without it becoming "best stats for points wins" or "the choice was an illusion, there is no spoon".

Or one is better off against anti infantry fire while the other doesn't suffer from multi wound attacks as bad. (mortar example)

i get that a lot of those special snowflake units got punked but at the same time it caused the GW rules writers to go into one hell of a one ups man game creating more wakkadoo bs every new release.

do you want centurions? because thats how you get centurions.

I have the opposite opinion. I'm fine with different units being equally good at the same job. One might be more mobile, the other more durable etc (things other than damage output). I think what you end up with in an ideal situation is that both units are viable options and thus you can use the models you like to fill that role, rather than making all list decisions based on value. In your argument alone you said Wyverns were way better than Mortars at the same role in 7th. If in 8th they are more similar in damage output but the wyvern is more mobile, and more durable against small arms, then you are making a choice based on those other factors, and perhaps the fact that you like how it looks vs mortars. Or maybe you want an all infantry IG force, and did not want to include wyverns, now this is viable because you are not nerfing yourself.

Disagree - 6th/7th Editions went to eh absoulte extreme in prpoducing units with Special Snowflake rules that were weird, Overpowered, rule breaking or all three.

The new edition seems to be sorting out many of these issues by building ona excellent rules set and allowing minor adjustments to it.

Breng77 wrote:I have the opposite opinion. I'm fine with different units being equally good at the same job. One might be more mobile, the other more durable etc (things other than damage output). I think what you end up with in an ideal situation is that both units are viable options and thus you can use the models you like to fill that role, rather than making all list decisions based on value. In your argument alone you said Wyverns were way better than Mortars at the same role in 7th. If in 8th they are more similar in damage output but the wyvern is more mobile, and more durable against small arms, then you are making a choice based on those other factors, and perhaps the fact that you like how it looks vs mortars. Or maybe you want an all infantry IG force, and did not want to include wyverns, now this is viable because you are not nerfing yourself.

Realistically, most anti-infantry fire in 40k has historically been shorter-ranged compared to other options, with stuff like the aforementioned Stormshard being the exception rather than the norm (This is ignoring the existence of Scatpacks for now). Frag Missiles weren't worth firing at units in cover, Heavy Bolters weren't taken when one could take Autocannons/Lascannons, etc. Add that the Mortars are more likely to be out of LOS and "anti-infantry vulnerablity" isn't exactly their most glaring weakness.

Inversely, the Wyvern already has long range and ignores LOS, and really has little reason to even move in the first place, especially since in this edition they're penalized identically to infantry for firing on the move.

I used this example because it was a case of both units having extremely overlapping roles, the only differences between both being the statistics-per-point advantage one has over the other.

In 5th edition. I could finish an even 2000-2500 point game in about 2 hours. The Adepticon Team Tournament was across all Saturday.

In 7th edition, we'd be lucky to get one done in 4 hours. The Team Tournament had to span across two days just to be able to fit it in, and there were situations where it still wasn't enough time.

I'd allow that they might have gone a bit too simple. It was the only reasonable direction to take the game, however.

Honestly, the only way I think they could improve from what they're doing already is to re-release 5th edition, with point balances and the new units that have come out added back in.

I'm not saying the game shouldn't have been streamlined (and it's a good thing Soul Blaze is gone!). This is more about an issue that exists in 40k for a really long time: a unit should have a reason to exist, or a realistic niche, or else you get stuff like "Mortars vs Wyverns", or units like the Pyrovore.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Breng77 wrote:I have the opposite opinion. I'm fine with different units being equally good at the same job. One might be more mobile, the other more durable etc (things other than damage output). I think what you end up with in an ideal situation is that both units are viable options and thus you can use the models you like to fill that role, rather than making all list decisions based on value. In your argument alone you said Wyverns were way better than Mortars at the same role in 7th. If in 8th they are more similar in damage output but the wyvern is more mobile, and more durable against small arms, then you are making a choice based on those other factors, and perhaps the fact that you like how it looks vs mortars. Or maybe you want an all infantry IG force, and did not want to include wyverns, now this is viable because you are not nerfing yourself.

Realistically, most anti-infantry fire in 40k has historically been shorter-ranged compared to other options, with stuff like the aforementioned Stormshard being the exception rather than the norm (This is ignoring the existence of Scatpacks for now). Frag Missiles weren't worth firing at units in cover, Heavy Bolters weren't taken when one could take Autocannons/Lascannons, etc. Add that the Mortars are more likely to be out of LOS and "anti-infantry vulnerablity" isn't exactly their most glaring weakness.

Inversely, the Wyvern already has long range and ignores LOS, and really has little reason to even move in the first place, especially since in this edition they're penalized identically to infantry for firing on the move.

I used this example because it was a case of both units having extremely overlapping roles, the only differences between both being the statistics-per-point advantage one has over the other.

So...if you TL: DR down here it looks like you're arguing that 8th is better? Because you don't just take wyverns anymore, you tend to take wyverns in mech lists and HWT in infantry list because they fill sort of the same function but compliment the different lists more. I think the match is that HWT are better point for point but having them be your only infantry is just asking your opponent to heavy-bolter them off the face of the planet. Same with the wyvern and lascannons.

ERJAK wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Breng77 wrote:I have the opposite opinion. I'm fine with different units being equally good at the same job. One might be more mobile, the other more durable etc (things other than damage output). I think what you end up with in an ideal situation is that both units are viable options and thus you can use the models you like to fill that role, rather than making all list decisions based on value. In your argument alone you said Wyverns were way better than Mortars at the same role in 7th. If in 8th they are more similar in damage output but the wyvern is more mobile, and more durable against small arms, then you are making a choice based on those other factors, and perhaps the fact that you like how it looks vs mortars. Or maybe you want an all infantry IG force, and did not want to include wyverns, now this is viable because you are not nerfing yourself.

Realistically, most anti-infantry fire in 40k has historically been shorter-ranged compared to other options, with stuff like the aforementioned Stormshard being the exception rather than the norm (This is ignoring the existence of Scatpacks for now). Frag Missiles weren't worth firing at units in cover, Heavy Bolters weren't taken when one could take Autocannons/Lascannons, etc. Add that the Mortars are more likely to be out of LOS and "anti-infantry vulnerablity" isn't exactly their most glaring weakness.

Inversely, the Wyvern already has long range and ignores LOS, and really has little reason to even move in the first place, especially since in this edition they're penalized identically to infantry for firing on the move.

I used this example because it was a case of both units having extremely overlapping roles, the only differences between both being the statistics-per-point advantage one has over the other.

So...if you TL: DR down here it looks like you're arguing that 8th is better? Because you don't just take wyverns anymore, you tend to take wyverns in mech lists and HWT in infantry list because they fill sort of the same function but compliment the different lists more. I think the match is that HWT are better point for point but having them be your only infantry is just asking your opponent to heavy-bolter them off the face of the planet. Same with the wyvern and lascannons.

They don't fill "sort of the same function". They fill the exact same function: Throwing down lots of indirect S4 shots from out of line of sight/relative line of fire. One unit is statistically better point-for-point in both editions, the only difference being which unit has changed (as well as the second unit being easier to hide).

If you really want to bring Heavy Bolters "in case there's Mortar Teams", I don't know what to say.

 MagicJuggler wrote:


If you really want to bring Heavy Bolters "in case there's Mortar Teams", I don't know what to say.

Pin point deepstrike is a thing so i can see people wanting to make a anti infantry drop unit and an anti tank drop unit if they dont have ranged anti tank units.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
I'm not saying the game shouldn't have been streamlined (and it's a good thing Soul Blaze is gone!). This is more about an issue that exists in 40k for a really long time: a unit should have a reason to exist, or a realistic niche, or else you get stuff like "Mortars vs Wyverns", or units like the Pyrovore.

I don't even think your "Mortars vs Wyverns" example is a good example.
The mortar team looses 1d6 shots for every 2 wounds it suffers, while the wyvern lose 1 bs for each tier it drops. However, the mortar team is infinitely less durable than a wyvern. Few wounds and a terrible save to boot.
The wyvern still have shred, which is still a very big boost compared to the normal mortars. It has 3+ save and 11 wounds and twice the toughness of a mortar team so even S10 weapons "only" wounds on 3+, instead of every weapon with S6 and upwards will wound the mortar team on 2+, with only a 5+ save to protect them.
You're creating a false dichotomy between the Mortars and the Wyverns because you're only taking into account the amount of dice you're rolling, without giving any second thought as to why the Wyvern is more expensive.

As for your main topic, yes I also think the game is pretty "bare bones" as of now, but do remember that GW has said from the start that the compendium of armies that have been released so far, is only so every army would be playable from the launch of 8th edition. We still have yet to see the actual codices, containing all the flavour and snowflake rules. Such as relics, special stratagems, warlord traits and many more.
I'm not trying to white knight GW or anything but I'm just saying that the "bleak" condition almost every army is in, in 8th edition, is a temporary state and I think it's perhaps worth reserving judgement for when the actual codices drops.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Breng77 wrote:I have the opposite opinion. I'm fine with different units being equally good at the same job. One might be more mobile, the other more durable etc (things other than damage output). I think what you end up with in an ideal situation is that both units are viable options and thus you can use the models you like to fill that role, rather than making all list decisions based on value. In your argument alone you said Wyverns were way better than Mortars at the same role in 7th. If in 8th they are more similar in damage output but the wyvern is more mobile, and more durable against small arms, then you are making a choice based on those other factors, and perhaps the fact that you like how it looks vs mortars. Or maybe you want an all infantry IG force, and did not want to include wyverns, now this is viable because you are not nerfing yourself.

Realistically, most anti-infantry fire in 40k has historically been shorter-ranged compared to other options, with stuff like the aforementioned Stormshard being the exception rather than the norm (This is ignoring the existence of Scatpacks for now). Frag Missiles weren't worth firing at units in cover, Heavy Bolters weren't taken when one could take Autocannons/Lascannons, etc. Add that the Mortars are more likely to be out of LOS and "anti-infantry vulnerablity" isn't exactly their most glaring weakness.

Inversely, the Wyvern already has long range and ignores LOS, and really has little reason to even move in the first place, especially since in this edition they're penalized identically to infantry for firing on the move.

I used this example because it was a case of both units having extremely overlapping roles, the only differences between both being the statistics-per-point advantage one has over the other.

Movement may not be common, but if you need to late turn move to an objective it helps. Another consideration I guess in this edition is that if you are sitting on an objective mortars are better because they have more models. There are more differences than just stats per point, consider it is easier to hide the mortar team because of their size. Wyverns also come with a heavy bolter that you may want to fire in this edition.

Essentially if you just want damage out put the HWT are a better buy because they don't have all the other advantages of the tank (durability, mobility) that you pay points for. This is more of a case of a super specialized unit (just damage output), vs a more all around unit.

I get where the OP is coming from, but I welcome at least a little bit of homogenization. I absolutely hated looking up a unit's special rule in 7th and seeing something like: "Death Nards: This unit has Death Wish and Abhorrent Hygene." so then I would have to go find out what THOSE special rules did. Sometimes there would be a chain where I would be looking up one rule after another, just to be clear on what the original special rule that I was looking up was supposed to do. I'll pass on that.

 Coldhatred wrote:
I get where the OP is coming from, but I welcome at least a little bit of homogenization. I absolutely hated looking up a unit's special rule in 7th and seeing something like: "Death Nards: This unit has Death Wish and Abhorrent Hygene." so then I would have to go find out what THOSE special rules did. Sometimes there would be a chain where I would be looking up one rule after another, just to be clear on what the original special rule that I was looking up was supposed to do. I'll pass on that.

I feel like they could of simplified it a little more

like all the different jump, high above, teleporotrium. all of these things could of been put in as deep strike.

they all do the same thing. BUT i get why they did it as they dont want to clog the base book with 3-30 diffrent USRs.

Homogenisation is the new buzzword of this edition isn't it...

I say this is an issue with the past two editions, not 8th. Because due to the last two editions of needing to push new models, we got a ton of models that had very redundant roles (especially space marines, moreso now that the chapters got merged into one blanket term and can cherrypick stuff).

Like, was there ever really a point for Deathwing Knights or Ravenwing Knights when they were first introduced? Or Centurions? The problem is these units exist now, you can't just un-make them. But they filled a niche that, at the time, another unit already existed but didn't fill it quite as good. This is where a lot of the redundancy comes from.

Another area is the lack of the old FoC. A lot of things use to be that they would mimic something in another portion of the FoC (Mortars, for example) that would have otherwise taken up a slot. Once you use up all of those HS, FA or Elite slots, you can't take any more of those units. So units in other slots that fulfilled a similar purpose have a use; it allows you to spam one strategy and refine it rather than be forced to take units with different roles. Since now you can just take an army of a single type with the different detachments, this restriction becomes less evident; why ever take tacticals when you can just field a bunch of Devastators?

tl;dr version: Basically, it's due to a bunch of units introduced in the last few editions as well as getting rid of the balancing factor of the old FoC itself that caused this, it's not an inherent problem of 8th itself.

 Desubot wrote:

 Coldhatred wrote:
I get where the OP is coming from, but I welcome at least a little bit of homogenization. I absolutely hated looking up a unit's special rule in 7th and seeing something like: "Death Nards: This unit has Death Wish and Abhorrent Hygene." so then I would have to go find out what THOSE special rules did. Sometimes there would be a chain where I would be looking up one rule after another, just to be clear on what the original special rule that I was looking up was supposed to do. I'll pass on that.

I feel like they could of simplified it a little more

like all the different jump, high above, teleporotrium. all of these things could of been put in as deep strike.

they all do the same thing. BUT i get why they did it as they dont want to clog the base book with 3-30 diffrent USRs.

At least. I've found 28 and I haven't gotten past the 'd's yet. (Then again if these are truly "Universal" special rules I shouldn't find too many more...)

(Sniper, Melta, Supersonic, Airborne, Deep Strike, FNP, Poison, Unwieldy, Repair (Faction), Template, Critical (Thing), Infiltrate, Explodes/(4 variants thereof, by my count), Hard to Hit (-X), Gets Hot, Medic/Lesser Medic, Barrage, Skyfire, Inconsistent-Blast, Haywire, fixed Advance distance, Open-Topped Transport, Mount Attack/bonus attacks (X), Relentless, Auto-Regen (X), Reroll-1s-bubble (keyword), Borrow-Ld-bubble (keyword), Fearless, whatever you want to call "Gives +1 Attack"....)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Coldhatred wrote:
I get where the OP is coming from, but I welcome at least a little bit of homogenization. I absolutely hated looking up a unit's special rule in 7th and seeing something like: "Death Nards: This unit has Death Wish and Abhorrent Hygene." so then I would have to go find out what THOSE special rules did. Sometimes there would be a chain where I would be looking up one rule after another, just to be clear on what the original special rule that I was looking up was supposed to do. I'll pass on that.

I feel like they could of simplified it a little more

like all the different jump, high above, teleporotrium. all of these things could of been put in as deep strike.

they all do the same thing. BUT i get why they did it as they dont want to clog the base book with 3-30 diffrent USRs.

At least. I've found 28 and I haven't gotten past the 'd's yet. (Then again if these are truly "Universal" special rules I shouldn't find too many more...)

(Sniper, Melta, Supersonic, Airborne, Deep Strike, FNP, Poison, Unwieldy, Repair (Faction), Template, Critical (Thing), Infiltrate, Explodes/(4 variants thereof, by my count), Hard to Hit (-X), Gets Hot, Medic/Lesser Medic, Barrage, Skyfire, Inconsistent-Blast, Haywire, fixed Advance distance, Open-Topped Transport, Mount Attack/bonus attacks (X), Relentless, Auto-Regen (X), Reroll-1s-bubble (keyword), Borrow-Ld-bubble (keyword), Fearless, whatever you want to call "Gives +1 Attack"....)

Lol was close with that 30 guestimate

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I say this is an issue with the past two editions, not 8th. Because due to the last two editions of needing to push new models, we got a ton of models that had very redundant roles (especially space marines, moreso now that the chapters got merged into one blanket term and can cherrypick stuff).

Like, was there ever really a point for Deathwing Knights or Ravenwing Knights when they were first introduced? Or Centurions? The problem is these units exist now, you can't just un-make them. But they filled a niche that, at the time, another unit already existed but didn't fill it quite as good. This is where a lot of the redundancy comes from.

Another area is the lack of the old FoC. A lot of things use to be that they would mimic something in another portion of the FoC (Mortars, for example) that would have otherwise taken up a slot. Once you use up all of those HS, FA or Elite slots, you can't take any more of those units. So units in other slots that fulfilled a similar purpose have a use; it allows you to spam one strategy and refine it rather than be forced to take units with different roles. Since now you can just take an army of a single type with the different detachments, this restriction becomes less evident; why ever take tacticals when you can just field a bunch of Devastators?

tl;dr version: Basically, it's due to a bunch of units introduced in the last few editions as well as getting rid of the balancing factor of the old FoC itself that caused this, it's not an inherent problem of 8th itself.

The point of Deathwing Knights and Ravenwing Black Knights was to make the "all-Deathwing/all-Ravenwing" army something other than copy-pasting one single unit over and over again; they've got roles distinct from normal Terminators/Bikes (Deathwing Knights were frontline deathstar/elite killers meant to beat down other heavy infantry units and survive retaliatory fire while the normal Terminators got to do things like shoot stuff, Black Knights were a concentrated spearhead unit you couldn't have a lot of because of price and slots but which you pointed at big things to punch holes for the rest of your force to exploit).

The point of Centurions was to counter the 5e wave of 2+/3+-armour MCs/GCs with grav-spam, and to look ridiculous while doing so.

(As for units with redundant roles I suspect the reasoning for allowing it is kind of along the lines of the reason for having Deathwing Knights/Ravenwing Knights, you want to support people playing a variety of sub-themes within the Codex as well as the Codex as a whole. If you only had infantry mortars, no Wyverns, and someone wanted to play an armoured company list, you'd be telling them "No, you can't have any mortars"; if you deleted infantry mortars and left Wyverns in and someone wants to play a non-mechanized infantry army you'd be telling them "No, you can't have any mortars". By letting redundant weapons exist on multiple platforms with distinct keywords you're enabling more diverse flavourful armies, allowing people to take just the healer units that support one sort of stuff instead of needing both medics and techs because they can't have all the weapons they want on just one type of platform, leaving the door open for support abilities, scenario rules, etc. that reward using one over the other, and letting people who think one of the two looks silly still use the weapon. I think Centurions look ridiculous, but since I don't think grav-Devastators look ridiculous I'm still allowed to use grav-weapons without buying ridiculous things.)

See to me the Knights just ended up being one of the two:

Either they were TH/SS terminators with more Smity-ness

OR

They were bikers with more plasma guns at the expense of having worse plasma guns.

Neither of which would have been necessary if Vanilla Marines didn't get Biker armies and everyone else didn't get easy to access Terminator Troops.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
See to me the Knights just ended up being one of the two:

Either they were TH/SS terminators with more Smity-ness

OR

They were bikers with more plasma guns at the expense of having worse plasma guns.

Neither of which would have been necessary if Vanilla Marines didn't get Biker armies and everyone else didn't get easy to access Terminator Troops.

They were specialist Terminators/Bikes. They only really did one thing (get stuck in with hard targets and smoosh/make monsters, deathstars, and light vehicles run screaming for their mothers), but they did it so much better than normal Terminators/Bikes that you could have the specialist units doing their thing and free up your generalist Terminators/Bikes to do more different things.

The problem that led to their creation was the fact that since 4e the Dark Angels have focused so much on supporting all-Deathwing/all-Ravenwing armies (at the expense of the generalist approach) that they've basically hung the Greenwing out to dry and chopped the rest of the book into two mini-Codexes. The Dark Angels need Death/Raven synergy and more toys for the Greenwing, not just an endless parade of bigger and fancier toys for the Deathwing and Ravenwing builds.

To me, they had to add in all those gimmicks to support DW/RW because every other army started having the gimmick of Terminators or Bikes as Troops. Otherwise the Terminators and Bikers on their own would have been enough since, again without the other Terminator/Bike armies, no other army would be able to field such a fast or durable force. I liked the 4th ed version the best since you only had them in the troops slot, without restriction from taking other things to support them.

Then Loganwing and White Scars bikers happened and everything went down the toilet for them.

While I'm optimistic about many of the changes 8th has introduced, it remains to be seen if the new system solves some of the more fundamental issues that have lingered since 3rd edition. I still think that basic infantry will be mostly crap with GW resorting to a 'tax' system or reducing their cost to make them worth taking. Part of the problem lies in a dearth of tactical options so units will still be judged on a handful of parameters. Homogenisation is a good way of evening out the balance but it doesn't necessarily make for a more rewarding game.

I wish that GW could somehow reproduce a highly streamlined version of 2nd ed's close combat system because basic infantry excelled where it ought to - taking ground. Your average Guardsman could be useful in an assault role given numerical advantage or if supporting combat specialists. Subsequent editions made it suicidal to assault with non specialists.

I have to say I generally come down on the opposite side of that.

I dislike special rules in general. I'm okay with a unit having maybe one special rule (perhaps an army-wide special rule is fine). Beyond that I'd rather statistics differentiate (that and wargear) units. Even with wargear I think we've gone waaaaay overboard. You can see it in how poorly some weapons have been devised (like 7th ed. grav weapons). GW simply runs out of room and keeps trying to invent stupid new crap. 2nd ed. made use of a lot of similar weaponry and the game didn't suffer for it. Orks had bolters just like space marines...no big deal. Nothing was hurt by that. Eldar lasguns were the same as Imperial Guard lasguns? Who cares. A lascannon was a lascannon regardless of the army that brought it.

Granted the game's rules were more chunky, but you didn't lose any of the feel of the army. Stats were vastly different, and there was just enough fancy vehicles/wargear to separate the characters etc. I think GW has gone far too wide of the mark trying to specialize every single unit in the game, and I don't think it's a positive thing. I see the frustration on new players running 7th ed. when they bring their units and then mid-game realize that their opponents units ignore 56% of the rules in the game. That's confusing and frustrating...and stupid.

Enigma of the Absolute wrote:
While I'm optimistic about many of the changes 8th has introduced, it remains to be seen if the new system solves some of the more fundamental issues that have lingered since 3rd edition. I still think that basic infantry will be mostly crap with GW resorting to a 'tax' system or reducing their cost to make them worth taking. Part of the problem lies in a dearth of tactical options so units will still be judged on a handful of parameters. Homogenisation is a good way of evening out the balance but it doesn't necessarily make for a more rewarding game.

You summed up my issues with the system far better than I did. A lot of the "homogenization" is really "dearth of tactical options". Be it things like overwatch being a game decision rather than an anti-assault "automechanism", having too many units with similar/overlapping roles, etc. Sometimes it's the little things, like letting Scout Bikers lay mines in-game (GW could sell minefield counters. Imagine that) vs it being "this terrain is dangerous for the game because I deployed", etc.

The main thing I don't miss about 2nd was "interrupt move to overwatch", melee in multi-assaults, and the Dark Millennium Psychic Phase. Oh, and Virus Outbreak and Vortex Grenades.

I think that a lot of this stems from GW's ambivalence towards the scale of its system. If you want a fun squad level combat game then something like 2nd ed, which is lower in abstraction, is a reasonable beer and pretzel facsimile of warfare given the scale of the game. If you want a company level game then it's probably best to move up to Epic scale where there the rules are no longer concerned with interactions between man sized individuals. 40k post 2nd is more abstract but still retains the scale of 2nd - it just crams more into the same space. This leads to a quasi abstract system that seems counter intuitive at times because it's trying to abstract interactions which are still taking place at the individual to individual level. Abstraction also leads to a lesser variance in both inputs and outputs of battlefield outcomes (this is also part of homogenisation) which reduces tactical depth. GW won't change the physical scale because it allows for a certain level of modelling detail but GW still requires the game to be sufficiently streamlined to allow for larger armies and larger models to be used.

This is why GW has been referred to as a model company rather than a games company. The models are the tail wagging the game which is the dog.

I think the unit special rules make them unique enough. People need time to get used to the fact that units now no langer have 5-6 USR's a piece (which I could never remember).

I don't mind if two units are similar but have these small differences. Banshees and Scorpions may be similar, so now you can go for the one you like best, instead of having to go with the 'what unit is in that OP formation again'?

I love it.