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.

p5freak wrote:


20 Orc boyz are Power level 9.

My mistake.

I did the math, your math is wrong. 20 Orc boyz have 4 attacks each, thats 80 attacks, hitting on 3+, thats 53 hits, wounding on 5+, thats 18 wounds, Dreadnought has 3+ save, so it suffers 6 wounds. In the next round its dead. With a bit of luck its gone in one round. Thats excluding two Boss Nobs with Power klaws. One Power klaw is S10, AP-3 and D3 wounds. Power level remains 9 with the Boss nobs and Power Klaws. With 2 Nobs and 18 Orc boyz the Dreadnought is killed in one round.

How do they get 4 attacks? It's two attacks base +1 for choppers. Are you giving them a boss pole?

Also, even if they do destroy the dread in 1 - 2 rounds the points are balanced (with the PK Nobs the Ork unit is more points) so what's the problem with the dread dying to the boys?

 mrhappyface wrote:

How do they get 4 attacks? It's two attacks base +1 for choppers. Are you giving them a boss pole?

No. Ability of Boyz : Green Tide, if there are at least 20 models in this unit, add +1 attack.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Also, even if they do destroy the dread in 1 - 2 rounds the points are balanced (with the PK Nobs the Ork unit is more points) so what's the problem with the dread dying to the boys?

The Power Level remains the same, still 9, with two Nobs, with PKs. Do the math how many rounds the Dreadnought would need to kill 20 Boyz. It cant do it in one round. The problem is thats the Dread is an armored unit, and Boyz can kill it with basic melee weapons. In 7th ed. they couldnt even scratch the paint of it.

Now do the math against a Tactical squad of 10 Space Marines. 80 attacks, 53 hits, 26 wounds, 8-9 Marines die. Only 1-2 Space marines remain. Thats a loss of 80-90%. Can a Tactical squad kill 80-90% of 20 Orc boyz in one round ? No, they cant.

Points are balanced ? No way.

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

How do they get 4 attacks? It's two attacks base +1 for choppers. Are you giving them a boss pole?

No. Ability of Boyz : Green Tide, if there are at least 20 models in this unit, add +1 attack.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Also, even if they do destroy the dread in 1 - 2 rounds the points are balanced (with the PK Nobs the Ork unit is more points) so what's the problem with the dread dying to the boys?

The Power Level remains the same, still 9, with two Nobs, with PKs. Do the math how many rounds the Dreadnought would need to kill 20 Boyz. It cant do it in one round. The problem is thats the Dread is an armored unit, and Boyz can kill it with basic melee weapons. In 7th ed. they couldnt even scratch the paint of it.

Now do the math against a Tactical squad of 10 Space Marines. 80 attacks, 53 hits, 26 wounds, 8-9 Marines die. Only 1-2 Space marines remain. Thats a loss of 80-90%. Can a Tactical squad kill 80-90% of 20 Orc boyz in one round ? No, they cant.

Points are balanced ? No way.

As per usual with mathhammer, this doesn't hold in in real games. 20 boys reaching a 10 man tactical squad or dread unmaimed? Do they teleport now? The dreadnought not killing orks left and right with it's flamer overwatch and claws?

Not to mention ork boys are literally made for close combat. Who knew that meant they would better in close combat than tactical marines, the Jack-of-all-trades? Ork boys are vunerable to anti-infantry weapons like all light infantry.

Intruder wrote:

As per usual with mathhammer, this doesn't hold in in real games. 20 boys reaching a 10 man tactical squad or dread unmaimed? Do they teleport now? The dreadnought not killing orks left and right with it's flamer overwatch and claws?

Yes, they do teleport now. A Psyker can teleport them anywhere on the battlefield, at least 9 inches away from any enemy unit. That places them out of range of the Dreadnoughts flamer. When they charge they can re-roll failed charges. Chances are not to bad that they can charge the Dreadnought without getting fried by its Flamer. 1-2 Boyz may die because of Overwatch, which would increase the Dreadnoughts chances of not dying in the same round. Less than 20 Boyz dont get the additional attack from Green Tide.

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

How do they get 4 attacks? It's two attacks base +1 for choppers. Are you giving them a boss pole?

No. Ability of Boyz : Green Tide, if there are at least 20 models in this unit, add +1 attack.

So kill one Ork Boy in shooting and the entire unit loses one attack each?

 mrhappyface wrote:

Also, even if they do destroy the dread in 1 - 2 rounds the points are balanced (with the PK Nobs the Ork unit is more points) so what's the problem with the dread dying to the boys?

The Power Level remains the same, still 9, with two Nobs, with PKs. Do the math how many rounds the Dreadnought would need to kill 20 Boyz. It cant do it in one round. The problem is thats the Dread is an armored unit, and Boyz can kill it with basic melee weapons. In 7th ed. they couldnt even scratch the paint of it.

Now do the math against a Tactical squad of 10 Space Marines. 80 attacks, 53 hits, 26 wounds, 8-9 Marines die. Only 1-2 Space marines remain. Thats a loss of 80-90%. Can a Tactical squad kill 80-90% of 20 Orc boyz in one round ? No, they cant.

Points are balanced ? No way.

Balanced? Yes way!

Dreadnoughts can no longer be used to tarpit Ork boy units, balanced.
Chopper Orks, a dedicated cc unit, kill a 10 man tactical squad in cc, balanced.

You fail to realise that this is what they are supposed to do: dominate things in cc. Orks are also very squishy, T4 1W Sv6+, any dedicated infantry killer is going to chew through Orks, i.e. Havoc squad with 4xFlamers kills 6 Ork boys in the shooting phase and another 6 in cc, (but that's so short ranged!) what about Havocs with 4xHeavy Bolters? They kill 6 Ork boys per shooting phase (so two rounds of shooting with good placement) and another 1 in overwatch.

Ork Boys are not OP because they are really good at what they are supposed to do, they'd be OP if they were also really tough, had good saves and could fire good ranged weapons with BS3+.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

p5freak wrote:

Intruder wrote:

As per usual with mathhammer, this doesn't hold in in real games. 20 boys reaching a 10 man tactical squad or dread unmaimed? Do they teleport now? The dreadnought not killing orks left and right with it's flamer overwatch and claws?

Yes, they do teleport now. A Psyker can teleport them anywhere on the battlefield, at least 9 inches away from any enemy unit. That places them out of range of the Dreadnoughts flamer. When they charge they can re-roll failed charges. Chances are not to bad that they can charge the Dreadnought without getting fried by its Flamer. 1-2 Boyz may die because of Overwatch, which would increase the Dreadnoughts chances of not dying in the same round. Less than 20 Boyz dont get the additional attack from Green Tide.

It is still a 9" charge and a smart opponent will set up so that you can only charge chaff units so that when it comes around to their turn they can fall back and vaporise your Boy unit.

 mrhappyface wrote:

You fail to realise that this is what they are supposed to do: dominate things in cc.

Agreed. They are deadly in CC, against other infantry. Im ok with that. But its so wrong that they (or any other infantry unit in the game) can kill armored units, without AP weapons.

 mrhappyface wrote:

It is still a 9" charge and a smart opponent will set up so that you can only charge chaff units so that when it comes around to their turn they can fall back and vaporise your Boy unit.

Yes, it is a 9" charge. Usually, chances are not good. But, depending on what i rolled for the charge, i can re-roll both dice with Ere we go, or i can re-roll one dice with a command point. I doubt anyone can set up so that none of multiple Orc boyz units can charge.

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

20 man Ork Boy unit: Power level 10.
Dreadnought: Power level 8.
I don't see the problem here.

20 Orc boyz are Power level 9.

 mrhappyface wrote:

EDIT: Also you didn't do the math at all, an Ork boy unit would take 3 rounds to destroy a Dreadnought IF no Ork boys die from the Dread's return attacks.

I did the math, your math is wrong. 20 Orc boyz have 4 attacks each, thats 80 attacks, hitting on 3+, thats 53 hits, wounding on 5+, thats 18 wounds, Dreadnought has 3+ save, so it suffers 6 wounds. In the next round its dead. With a bit of luck its gone in one round. Thats excluding two Boss Nobs with Power klaws. One Power klaw is S10, AP-3 and D3 wounds. Power level remains 9 with the Boss nobs and Power Klaws. With 2 Nobs and 18 Orc boyz the Dreadnought is killed in one round.

Where are you getting 2 Boss Nobs with Power Klaws and the bonus for 20 models. You only get 1 Nob per squad.

As for this idea. Dread is power 7 vs Power 9 boyz. Further if we look to actual points. A stock dread is 133 points, 20 boyz with a Power klaw nob is 145, which does not include the price you pay to teleport them. Dread is not a close combat unit (at least not a standard one). chances are not horrible that at least 1 boy dies in overwatch so no extra attack.

So when those 18 boyz do 4 wounds, the Nob likely does 2 more so that is 6 wounds. Dread kills 2 more orks. Assuming he goes first the next round (and nothing bails him out), he kills another 2. then he dies. But this is a close combat unit of more points, against a generalist/shooty unit. It also assumes a charge that is about a 50-50 shot. But why did you let your dread get charged so easily?

If we look at an Ironclad dread if he doesn't get hit with a 9" charge, but instead an 8" charge, he kills 4-5 boyz with flamer overwatch, then they attack (say 4 died so 15 remain) do ~2 wounds, the Nob does another 2, Dread kills 3. Next round Dread kills another 2 (rounding down this time). Now we have 9 boyz, so 18 attacks, which with the nob probably do 3 more wounds. Then it is the next turn, and the dread likely dies. This is much closer. If the dread charges in this situation I think it actually wins. 4 boyz die to overwatch, 2 more to assault launchers, and 3 more to attacks. So that is 9 dead. Orks do 3 wounds (total), then might lose some models to morale (LD 11, 9 losses mean a 3+ loses models so lets say 1, if they are strung out to be near a larger squad they get fewer attacks), The 10 orks go on their turn, doing another 3 wounds, the dread does 2 more wounds. Now only 8 orks remain. Then the dread dies next turn after killing 3 more orks. So The dread takes down 15 orks.

Things to note, this assumes all boyz will always swing, they might not. This assumes that the dread doesn't fall back to allow for a second overwatch etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

You fail to realise that this is what they are supposed to do: dominate things in cc.

Agreed. They are deadly in CC, against other infantry. Im ok with that. But its so wrong that they (or any other infantry unit in the game) can kill armored units, without AP weapons.

 mrhappyface wrote:

It is still a 9" charge and a smart opponent will set up so that you can only charge chaff units so that when it comes around to their turn they can fall back and vaporise your Boy unit.

Yes, it is a 9" charge. Usually, chances are not good. But, depending on what i rolled for the charge, i can re-roll both dice with Ere we go, or i can re-roll one dice with a command point. I doubt anyone can set up so that none of multiple Orc boyz units can charge.

Only one Ork Boy unit will get to teleport, there may be other units that can get close, but they won't be boyz.

Also why should Tanks be immune to non-ap weapons when nothing else is? You are essentially arguing that it is a problem that it takes something 160 attacks to kill something else, vs 2 lascannons.

 Don Savik wrote:
To sum up:

BrianDavion wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

I'm upset that this thing I liked to do before doesn't work anymore.

I thought that thing you liked was dumb.

See I can't really get behind this statement. There was a guy who had 25 drop pods and 25 dreadnoughts to go in them (im not joking) and now he can't play his list. First of all, what the hell kind of 6000 point games is he playing? I can't feel sorry for people who buy models that way and expect them to still be 100% unchanged as editions go forward. As far as 3 terminator squads go, its a lot less severe then 25 drop pod dreads, but again, don't they come in packs of 5?

"but its how I liked to play!" People LOVED taudar and biker deathstars. People loved casting invisibility on their night lords Demon Princes. People loved Tzeentch spam. Where exactly do we draw the line? Certain play styles were bound to change, and I just don't see the point in playing the blame game.

Extremity is one thing. If something is a bit too good relative to other options, you gradually tone it down. Eldar Jetbikes are still quite usable this edition, even if the point costs are a bit off (there's no way that a Shuriken Cannon Jetbike is worth only 2 points more than a base one).

The other thing is preserving the "identity" of units, which is a more soft-and-fast metric. While the Riptide got an appreciable point hike, it still fundamentally remains the same unit: a tanky battlesuit that can cut itself for temporary boosts to its power. The Riptide is still iconically a Riptide.

Meanwhile, the Obliterator was a unit whose entire shtick was that it was "the right gun for the right job." You paid a point premium for a model (or few), trading point efficiency (in 5e, autolas preds were better AT, ane autohavocs were generally better for 6e/7e) for versatility. In exchange, they're now a "discount Devcent", losing most the abilities that recognizably made them Obliterators in the first place. "But you can deep strike them" or "but you can fire while advancing with them" doesn't exactly do them justice either for if the same "how to use them" is the same as using a Land Speeder...something went wrong with the design.

I like to call it the "Han Solo in an X-Wing" phenomenon. Even if you have some good ideas otherwise, some changes are so wrong-headed in their conception that they ruin the whole thing.

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

You fail to realise that this is what they are supposed to do: dominate things in cc.

Agreed. They are deadly in CC, against other infantry. Im ok with that. But its so wrong that they (or any other infantry unit in the game) can kill armored units, without AP weapons.

Gameplay reason for this: means people can't take high toughness vehicles and dominate armies that lack good high strength weapons.
Fluff reason: GW at one time said that most units on the battlefield that are "killed" are in fact just put out of action or have retreated after sustaining heavy damage, this was their explanation as to why SM die in droves on the TT, so if you think of it as the Ork boyz have simply damaged hydrolics in it's legs and have broken connections to it's weapons causing the Dread to retreat.

 mrhappyface wrote:

It is still a 9" charge and a smart opponent will set up so that you can only charge chaff units so that when it comes around to their turn they can fall back and vaporise your Boy unit.

Yes, it is a 9" charge. Usually, chances are not good. But, depending on what i rolled for the charge, i can re-roll both dice with Ere we go, or i can re-roll one dice with a command point. I doubt anyone can set up so that none of multiple Orc boyz units can charge.

I wasn't suggesting you can set up to stop charges all together but it is quiet easy to set up so that important units are shielded from charges, this lets the chaff unit (if it's still alive) fall back next turn letting the more expensive units fire on the Boys/Counter charge them.

Ran into this story:

Vanguard Veterans assault a Venom. The Vanguard lose a few of their dudes of models to Overwatch, then proceed to kill the Venom and everything else nearby. Then the remaining Veterans disappear next turn to a fluffed Battleshock roll, to the relief of a very confused Wych. Presumably they figured they did their job and wandered off to the pub.

But happyface, that would take tactics, planning, and intelligent thought! We can't have THAT!

 Melissia wrote:
But happyface, that would take tactics, planning, and intelligent thought! We can't have THAT!

Damnit! You're right! GW can't make money off of tactical players! We need players to play bad, cry about how bad their units are and buy a new 40k army!

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
But happyface, that would take tactics, planning, and intelligent thought! We can't have THAT!

Damnit! You're right! GW can't make money off of tactical players! We need players to play bad, cry about how bad their units are and buy a new 40k army!

There's also the feeling that winning in a way that goes against "common sense" makes the victory that much cheaper. Be it "flamethrowers as anti-aircraft", an opponent's plasma blowing up more often at night-time, or the "most models wins" + "defender removes all casualties" system allowing for "2 Guardsmen > 1 Tank = I win." Or there's the hilarious case of one guy who played a game of 8th, and his Vanquisher was charged turn 1 by a Valkyrie. Be cause his tank was already in the corner, he couldn't withdraw, so the rest of the game was spent with the Russ and Valkyrie playing Battlebots. (Presumably the Valkyrie was rapidly opening and closing its doors, and the Russ was trying to whack it with its turret). Locking the Russ out of the fight was a good play, especially since the player was able to follow up with some Melta command squads, but the event was a basic violation of common sense.

Not to get simulationist (let's not go "gb2 Advanced Squad Leader" or "gb2 Starfleet Battles" or other drivel), but when it's theoretically possible for a Valkyrie with infinite game turns to crash into an infinite number of Bastions without dying...

It's also always been possible for an infinite number of space marines to fail to kill with their boltguns and chainswords a single scared guardsman. That's simply the nature of the dice.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Or there's the hilarious case of one guy who played a game of 8th, and his Vanquisher was charged turn 1 by a Valkyrie. Be cause his tank was already in the corner, he couldn't withdraw, so the rest of the game was spent with the Russ and Valkyrie playing Battlebots. (Presumably the Valkyrie was rapidly opening and closing its doors, and the Russ was trying to whack it with its turret). Locking the Russ out of the fight was a good play, especially since the player was able to follow up with some Melta command squads, but the event was a basic violation of common sense.

To be more serious for a second (or at least I'll try to be ), I'm afraid that Guard player was cheating: the Valkyrie cannot charge a unit without the fly keyword and it's minimum movement prevents it from staying in combat. Still, destroying a Leman Russ by agressively slapping the Comissar sticking out the top of the turret with the Valkyrie's loading ramp would be an ammusing sight.

xmbk wrote:
I'm also optimistic that a wider variety of models will be able to come off the shelves and actually see the table.

Having seen some of the ideas people are coming up with for "competitive" lists (100+ brimstone horrors for one) I think we are destined to see about the same amount of spam garbage as we always have, just different types. JMO though...

 mrhappyface wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Or there's the hilarious case of one guy who played a game of 8th, and his Vanquisher was charged turn 1 by a Valkyrie. Be cause his tank was already in the corner, he couldn't withdraw, so the rest of the game was spent with the Russ and Valkyrie playing Battlebots. (Presumably the Valkyrie was rapidly opening and closing its doors, and the Russ was trying to whack it with its turret). Locking the Russ out of the fight was a good play, especially since the player was able to follow up with some Melta command squads, but the event was a basic violation of common sense.

To be more serious for a second (or at least I'll try to be ), I'm afraid that Guard player was cheating: the Valkyrie cannot charge a unit without the fly keyword and it's minimum movement prevents it from staying in combat. Still, destroying a Leman Russ by agressively slapping the Comissar sticking out the top of the turret with the Valkyrie's loading ramp would be an ammusing sight.

The Valkyrie has the Hover Jet special rule, which lets it ignore the Airborne (this is the rule that prohibits it from charging non-fly targets), Supersonic and Hard to Hit rules for the turn.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
The Valkyrie has the Hover Jet special rule, which lets it ignore the Airborne (this is the rule that prohibits it from charging non-fly targets), Supersonic and Hard to Hit rules for the turn.

So it does, my bad.

So far I am enjoying 8th overall. I play in a fairly competitive group so our focus has been on finding optimization where we can, trying skew lists, things like that - so far I've enjoyed most of my games.

On a personal army level I'm still enjoying my Eldar and my opponents seem to have more fun playing against them as well so that's a big plus.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Also why should Tanks be immune to non-ap weapons when nothing else is?

Because its a tank, its armored. There are AP weapons for this, in the game. AP weapons against armor, non AP weapons against anything else, not armored. Orcs do have AP weapons, dont they ?

Well, I'm already ready to chuck my Thousand sons at the shelf again and wait for a codex to drop so suffice to say I'm not liking this edition so far.

Psychic phase is a gutted , Rubrics are still not particularly usefull, Scarab occult are laughable now (ML2 psyker turned into a weakened smitecasted, but only 20 points cheaper).

I'll probbably try out some other things first, like having more screening, but at this point I'm really not seeing it.

p5freak wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

Also why should Tanks be immune to non-ap weapons when nothing else is?

Because its a tank, its armored. There are AP weapons for this, in the game. AP weapons against armor, non AP weapons against anything else, not armored. Orcs do have AP weapons, dont they ?

First of all, I wasn't the one who said this. Second of all, in MY reply to you I explain why Ork boyz can destroy Dreads from both a gameplay and fluff stand point.

 MagicJuggler wrote:


Extremity is one thing. If something is a bit too good relative to other options, you gradually tone it down.

GW never as been good at that, its either buff to the point of broken or Nerfed so hard its laughable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DaPino wrote:
Well, I'm already ready to chuck my Thousand sons at the shelf again and wait for a codex to drop so suffice to say I'm not liking this edition so far.

Psychic phase is a gutted , Rubrics are still not particularly usefull, Scarab occult are laughable now (ML2 psyker turned into a weakened smitecasted, but only 20 points cheaper).

I'll probbably try out some other things first, like having more screening, but at this point I'm really not seeing it.

On the other Hand 7th Psy phase was a ridiculous boring mess.

But yeah the Severe Axe to the Disciplines is kinda harsh.

Honestly i don't miss them much, Blood for the Blood God and all that...

What they've done to the FOC kinda makes me sad. For what they've turned it into, they might as well have thrown it out and just said that anyone can run anything. Overall however, the edition is leaps and bounds better than 6th or 7th was.

Seriously though, GW, just re-release 5th, charge us $40 for it, and then promise us that you're never going to change the core rules again. I'd continue playing this game forever.

I've only played one game of 8th so far. I'm not very competitive like most of the others and just want to throw dice and kill stuff some we've agreed to play PL to simplify things and make it so we can mash lists together quickly since we never how many are going to show up to play.

I'm liking the concept so far. Only thing thats a bummer is that my first game I brought a lot of chimeras and 2 leman russes and realised they are complete garbage and not worth using. I just won't use a lot of them anymore.

But I can't wait to use all the pewter karskins I have as scions next time.

There are lots of point costs that are off. And There are even less army restrictions than in 7-th. So the op stuff is easilly spammable. And there's a number of op stuff. Like scion comsquads. But i hope gw will fix this issues. If they do, it's gona be a really good game.

I like most of what 8th has to offer. It is a little bland atm (will hopefully change with proper codicies), but there are a few issues I am finding.

Terminators are actually worse than last edition, and bikes got a buff. That should be flipped imo. Vehicles in general seem to be too expensive imo. The whole vehicles can be locked in combat is silly to me. The vindicator is now trash. There are no generic chapter masters now, meaning space marine armies without a unique character who is a CM do not have access to one unless they borrow one from another army. Guilliman is probably gonna end up in a lot of SM armies regardless if they are Ultramarines or not. I do not understand why the GK were nerfed as well. Ad Mech kinda got the short end of the stick with still no transports, unnecessary nerfs, and per the rules they go second due to no transports. Not liking all the random for the sake of random it makes me question a lot of units and weapons that might otherwise be good if they were more consistent like 3+d3 hits or wounds instead of a d6. I am quite nervous atm as an Iron Hands player. I am thinking more and more that this is the edition that I will have to retire them permanently. Might have to start playing *retch* Ultramarines just so I can play my army as my army.

Despite all the mentioned negatives, as a whole I think 8th gets a big this time around. The thought of not being able to enjoy my army makes me want to start a new one rather than say, "heck with it, burn the minis, I quit." I still might end up burning the minis of my Iron Hands depending on how things codex wise go. Not like I'll get back that 30k+ I spent buying kits/building/painting/converting them, and I would rather destroy them than let someone else have them (selfish and petty I know). Overall still excited for this edition. At least for now. That's saying a lot coming from a pessimist like myself.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

The bad -

I really, really hate the fact that anyone can just walk away from combat by falling back. It makes no sense thematically and seems broken from a gameplay perspective. How does it make sense for soldiers to just sit still and watch an enemy squad just walk away? I wish there was a test of some kind, or maybe extra movement for the squad that isn't running away, or mabye the squad that runs away suffers mortal wounds. something.

Yes, I know the squad that falls back can't charge or shoot (unless they actually can), but still, it seems dumb that, say, terminators can walk away from jump pack infantry just because.

I really like the fall back change. IMO hard CC has been absolutely bonkers-level OP since forever.

"Here's a squad you cannot beat in CC. If I get within a foot of anything in your army that's not equally bonkers-OP in-close I'm going to charge and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm going to smash your face in on my turn. Then I'm going to continue to smash your face in on your turn after you get no option to shoot them. Then, in order to win I don't actually have to kill your entire squad. I just have to cause you to fail one roll that you're going to take massive penalties to unless you ignore it like I probably do, and if you fail the roll that comes after that one I kill the rest of the squad anyway. By the way, this particular mechanic (sweeping advance) ignores pretty much any and all anti-CC or 'My army is really, really durable'-type rule you can name just because. Then, if the dice go my way (and I've stacked the deck to make sure it will because I can. It's my army's 'theme'), I'm going to do most of this in your turn, after any point where you could possibly do anything to affect the outcome of this fight (except maybe to feed this nigh-invincible unit more meat). Which means that in my next turn, after you have failed to do anything whatsoever to this unit on your turn, I can move it and assault with it again completely danger-free. And, just to polish this off, most half-decent CC weapons ignored armor. Not, 'had a good AP value'. Just straight up ignored it up until 6th or 7th edition And even then they were still pretty good at just ignoring armor."

Close combat has been OP forever because half the armies in the game are shooting-focused, and shooting has been hands-down inferior to CC in the base rules. There have been lots of scary guns, but to make them even close to CC in terms of power they had to let shooty armies table entire enemy armies by the end of turn 2 since that's how long CC armies typically took to kill entire shooty armies once they spent 3 turns getting into CC against a shooting army that was actively running away from them the entire game.

The targeting rules worked in their favor.
The shooting rules worked in their favor.
The morale rules worked in their favor.
The movement rules worked in their favor.
The armor rules worked in their favor.

Finally there is some parity. Shooting is scary, CC isn't some magical state that completely invalidates shooting until one or the other squad just dies, and moral works for shooting heavy armies as well. I stopped playing WH40k because of hard CC armies. No matter what you did, shooting did almost nothing because all their power was locked into one or two models that did all the heavy lifting, and systems like morale seemed to be specifically designed to let these models largely ignore them themselves while penalizing their opponents.

And They Shall Know No Fear did NOT help matters any. One of the most powerful rules in the game was sweeping advance, and Marines were largely immune to it for multiple editions while, at the same time, being one of the biggest offenders of the deathstar tactic.

No more tabling armies with shooting, and no more deathstars means people like me who like to play armies rather than special characters with buffer wounds get to actually have fun.

They were all good changes.

The more I read, the more it seems like they just outright forgot stuff.

Ork warbikes are the only bikes in the game that don't get a turboboost rule?

All the tau suits have JETPACK as a keyword, but I haven't see a single rule that refers to jetpacks.

Units (like daemonettes) that "always strike first" actually don't ever strike first when charged.

Battlecanons average less than two hits per shot - you get more bang from your sponsons than your main gun.

Terrain has been almost comically left out. Nothing slows anyone's movement. No rivers, no rough ground, or swamps, or anything that might possibly leave lines-of-fire while slowing someone down.

Likewise, no ability to screen models, or provide cover for nearly anything. See 5% of a tank? Just as good as seeing all of it. Shooting through two of your other units - meh, bullets won't hit them.

The most comical application of this came from a discussion somewhere else - where the 'best' Leman Russ configuration was claimed to be one with 3 heavy flamers, advancing behind an infantry screen. Because, those infantry sure aren't going to mind a tank shooting promethium through them.

And, more flamer fun - supersonic flyers making strafing runs now fly low enough to the ground for them to be hit by a flamethrower...

I'm failing to understand why people think this is great - I mean, comparing it to 7th, sure, you don't have the extreme abuses of deathstars, but these rules are among the least logical I've ever seen.

I really hoped for better. I heard that GW had turned to outside playtesters, and was expecting that this would help them. But it seems that their rules department is still as inept as ever.

Maybe all the playtesters just decided that balance and gameplay are more important than fluff and logic.
You absolutely can make the case to reduce realism to improve gameplay in a complex game like this.