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Do you miss the complexity and tactics of older editions vs the simplified rules of 8th

In a general sense, no. I actually wish they made it more simple, like when you are in close combat you cant spend time on complex things like disengage, overwatch is too advanced also.


On a more serious note, terrain rules are BOOOOOORING!!!

Another oversimplified poll, brought to you by ForceChoke.

I said no because the poll is so flawed.

Tactics in 7th ed - really?

Tactics are just changing, thats all.

Man that poll is just the definition of "Loaded Question"

You mean the tactics that amounted to "grab every OP unit you could find and stuff as much of them in your list as possible"?

Nope. If anything I foresee 8th relying on tactics more than 7th or 6th.

While I like a lot of the simplification, what I regret is that it was at the expense of flavor. The loss of different vehicle armor facings, equipment like Skitarii dataspikes/doctrines, and such take go a little too far to homogenize things, methinks.

 Melissia wrote:
You mean the tactics that amounted to "grab every OP unit you could find and stuff as much of them in your list as possible"?

Nope. If anything I foresee 8th relying on tactics more than 7th or 6th.

Plus find armies that have loads of free units and claim to be a tactical genius.

I love how the dichotomy presented does not include "Do you enjoy the fact that 8th has comparatively more tactics than 7th."

Don't get me wrong - the game is much lighter on STRATEGY than before, now that "what list am I running with what formations in what detachments" and "what psychic tables do I roll on" are removed as factors.

In 7th, mobility was enormous, Obsec gave an immediate trump card in contesting objectives, melee was pretty much a "sit and watch" process as soon as you closed, and the average competitive list was so skewed that many matchups were foregone conclusions before they even started.

Sure, model placement with regards to template weapons existed in theory, but in practice templates were generally disregarded BECAUSE of how elementary it was to mitigate their effectiveness, with just a few very undercosted platforms using them. And now you have model placement with regards to objectives, terrain, and characters mattering much more. The micro of having to maintain exactly 2" spacing on my models and having to figure out who is the closest to the center of the blast will not be missed.

my biggest gripe with 8th so far is not the tactical depth, it's how poorly optimized most terrain setups are for the game. A good setup for 8th includes a lot of line of sight blocking features allowing all models to play around terrain. Most ruin setups have a lot of open windows allowing for easy LOS making it very tough to actually use cover ifyou're not an infantry squad.

Complexity does not equate to more or better tactics or even a more intelligent game. I do wish people would start to stop equating these things.

The more I play 8th the happier I am.

 ForceChoke wrote:
Do you miss the complexity and tactics of older editions vs the simplified rules of 8th

Nope, in fact I never played any edition of 40k before now. I did collect and paint, but the rules were poorly assembled and overwhelming for years until 8th. I generally don't like games to get any more complex than 8th, blood bowl, or star wars armada.

Tell me, did you stop beating your wife?

The poll is so loaded I am surprised it's not banned in California yet.

I've played since 3rd (started at the very end of 2nd ed as it was changing over). 7th was not "tactical", it was a total clusterfeth and the fact so many people quit the game for 6th and 7th and have come back to 8th proves it.

The only people genuinely upset with 8th edition are Taudar players.

Do you hate learning new rules and tactics?

 Melissia wrote:
You mean the tactics that amounted to "grab every OP unit you could find and stuff as much of them in your list as possible"?

Nope. If anything I foresee 8th relying on tactics more than 7th or 6th.

That's strategy, tactics was pointing them towards the enemy.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Tell me, did you stop beating your wife?

The poll is so loaded I am surprised it's not banned in California yet.

I've played since 3rd (started at the very end of 2nd ed as it was changing over). 7th was not "tactical", it was a total clusterfeth and the fact so many people quit the game for 6th and 7th and have come back to 8th proves it.

The only people genuinely upset with 8th edition are Taudar players.

And daemon players.

I don't miss them, because aside from a handful of things they haven't left.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Man that poll is just the definition of "Loaded Question"

It is a cow. In that it is udderly ridiculous.

7th edition never had any tactics. It was won in the list building phase.

 Fafnir wrote:
7th edition never had any tactics. It was won in the list building phase.

This is pretty much how i recall 5-6th as well.

didnt play heavily with 5th. and i never got to play the older editions so i cant speak of them.

Eh; this sounds like a bait thread, but I'll bite:

-I miss being able to choose which units could or could not go into Reserves, rather than it being something only certain units are allowed to do. Being able to choose when to bring units from reserve is a nice consolation prize, but the whole "9 inches away from the enemy" means if your opponent spaces units 18" apart, you have a giant zone of "No Deep Strike". Which is weird because weren't such openings the sort of thing Deep Strike was meant to exploit? Currently, the best-case scenario is using it less as a "backfield disruption" tool, and more like a "tickle a moshpit from the flank" tool, which brings up another point:

-I find flanking really doesn't matter so much in this edition. Cover rules are so restrictive to the point of relative pointlessness, as every model must be in cover or else no one gets cover, you can no longer do cover saves via intervening models ("Rhino Trains" were a thing), and AP generally outstrips the bonuses granted to cover anyway. Not that this matters much, because the defender allocates all casualties anyway, even if they're out of range or not even in Line of Sight. Add the weirdness of removing blasts and templates as well as tank shock or other crowd-control tricks (I've found people will still abuse coherency anyway for maintaining bubblewrap and congalines, fwiw).

-I miss Go to Ground, as well as Ion Shields and Jinking being conscious decisions rather than passive always-on effects. I know GW wanted to streamline, but all of these could have been abstracted into a single "Defend" action, the way that Running/Turboing/Supersonic/Flat-Out were abstracted into "Advance".

-Likewise, I miss Overwatch being a choice ("you get to overwatch against one enemy unit. Choose wisely") rather than a "anytime the enemy tries to charge" effect.

-I'm still irked about all models measuring all LOS from the hull, and armor facings. You know Imperial Bastion Beyblades and all. Measuring from a weapon wasn't rocket science, nor was a lot of AV checking. (I know there were some exceptions, but "do I have a side shot to this Vindicator" wasn't all that difficult) It leads to an odd advantage for big models, since they can be "in range" with all their weapons versus an enemy squad ("my wingtip is within 24 of your squad, brrt"), but the inverse isn't necessarily true. ("only one Marine is in within 24 of my wingtip"), and can promote bizarre modeling for advantage ("my Dozer Blade smites you").

-I feel that Battleshock is a sloppy replacement for morale. To a lesser extent, I also miss pinning. While morale via shooting was situational in 7th ("Fearless" blobs, or minimal range on Ld mods), it could rack up quickly in the Assault Phase, especially if you were able to set up a chain assault. One of the more amusing (thought you really needed to look for an opening to pull it off) ways to kill Daemons in 7th was to set up a multi-assault versus the hard-to-kill Grimoired super-unit and another weaker unit, pile in the attacks on the weaker unit, then let Combat Resolution kick in ("Sorry, Grimoire doesn't save versus Instability"). Battleshock is now strictly a "focus on one unit, or two units if your opponent has 2 Command Points" gimmick. It also leads to some weirdness like a Vanguard vet charging a Venom, losing some mates to Overwatch, pasting it and everything else in the melee, then wandering off to grab a beer.

-I actually liked the 7e Psyker Phase in theory. I liked the idea that putting more WC in a power equals both a higher chance of the power succeeding, but a higher chance of frying yourself. Risk-versus-reward. I know the larger issues were psykers pooling Warp Charge into megapowers, and deny being "all or nothing" (if your opponent manifested on 5 successes, denying on 4 successes was same as getting 0). I feel that modding it to be "powers are weak, but scale based on successes", and "deny subtracts successes" would rebalance the system while being fluffy/interesting. Definitely less mind-numbing than watching a Tzeentch Daemon army spam Smite.

I don't mind the removal of random charts (but random damage is annoying), extraneous USRs like Soul Blaze, etc. I do miss the removal of rules that increased player agency and "in-game options", as well as core rules that rewarded better maneuver and punished bad positional play.

It needs an option for "What tactics? This game was made by GW."

5th was (up until the introduction of flyers, at least) a lot better in that regard, as most codecies released during the life of that edition were at least somewhat competitive against one-another. The problem with them usually had more to do with internal balance, where some units were auto-take, and others were useless. You could still lose pretty decisively in list building, but you usually weren't screwed just for your choice of book.

I miss nothing about 7th honestly. between summoning circle builds, gladius builds, undercosted units abounding and being able to legitimately buy a winning army (well hard to lose with short of bad tactics and dice rolls) I am very openly in favor of 8th, standing on the sidelines cheering it along

What I don't miss from 7th edition:

Space Marine players getting free transports from the Gladius.

Space Marine players saying this was balanced.

Space Marine players getting salty when their special snowflake force didn't get free transports on top of the other bonuses they had.

Eldar players thinking Scatbikes, Wraithknights, and D-weapons on infantry were all balanced.

Tau players thinking they were the underpowered codex.

50-some-odd rules that basically all did generally the same thing

Everything with Summoning, from the fact it gave you free units to the actual rules themselves, which were a huge mess that were trying to say "you got these models in your army to deploy via deepstrike right now".

Random Tables.

Grav Weapons, they were the Primaris Marines of Special Weapons.

Formations. Unbound at least had some drawbacks. Formations just basically tossed all of that out the window.

And finally, every single player who built an army with 7th edition guidelines thinking that not only will those armies survive into 8th edition, but survive not only unchanged but also OP in their power.

another post I find interesting to read even though I did not play 7th.

Lets see:

I miss Stasis Grenades

I miss Bionic Arm + Crushing Blow + Vortex Grenade

Perhaps Frenzon + Hatred + Banshee Exarch

Banshee Exarch + Bounding Leap + Combat Drugs + Executioner

blah blah blah....

I could go on forever and a tad more, the point is a lot of stuff may have added complexity and interesting tactics, but was the game play actually better?

That is what you need to ask when you evaluate how your army played vs whatever your opponent was using. After a few months we should have a better picture.

 n0t_u wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
You mean the tactics that amounted to "grab every OP unit you could find and stuff as much of them in your list as possible"?

Nope. If anything I foresee 8th relying on tactics more than 7th or 6th.

That's strategy, tactics was pointing them towards the enemy.

Haha, I stand corrected XD

[MOD EDIT - Rule #1 - Alpharius]

If you didn't play 2nd Edition with vehicle data cards with multiple hit locations, turn measurements, 100x different templates, wargear and mission cards, multiple weapon damage, multiple invulnerable saves, riderless bike missiles and massive variance in stats between models, then you have never played a complex or tactical edition of 40K.

Everything after 2nd has been simple toy soldiers, you might as well all just shout "pew! pew!" and flick the models over with your fingers.

 ForceChoke wrote:


Keep it civil or don't comment. You're adults and should try to act the part.

He says, right after the personal attacks.

 ForceChoke wrote:

No job or social life?
Big man behind a computer screen.

Classic ForceChoke.