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Why are people so hung up on this aspect of the game?
I understand that the amount that template weapons generally hit was significantly reduced. But damn. I hate fumbling with them looking to see how many are under and "oh the arrow is pointing that way" " I actually think it's this way"
Frankly I hope they never return

I liked them.
They were a very instinctive abstraction that were fun to use and a cool visual prompt and made model positioning pretty important. It made sense that taking blast weapons or carrying flamers would force horde units to spread out more to avoid hits at the risk of being less able to use smaller pieces of cover from other attacks.
Now that they are just rolled in with X additional dice they seem pretty dry.

I agree that mortars could have been streamlined and units with many multiple template weapons were a bit clunky though.

Templates were just fun as hell, and it felt rewarding. Who didn’t feel like an absolute champ when you got to count everyone under your flamer?

Templates were a garbage mechanic that often slowed the game down to half speed. Furthermore, they often lead to lengthy discussions because every template application relied heavily on judgement calls. I don't miss units like burnas or wyverns spitting out 4000 templates a second, or waiting on my opponent to meticulously move his ocean of Hormagaunts, keeping every single model 2" away from its neighbour.

The replacement for templates and scatter die, essentially D6 shots, is not really satisfactory. But at least the game is not slowed or killed by rolling a single die.

On the one hand I liked putting down flamer templates, and absolutely loved that blasts could scatter onto unintended targets. Moments like a Looted Wagon horribly missing it's target and instead blasting a friendly Trukk are very amusing.

On the other hand templates are the reason I never fielded more than ~60 total gaunt variants in a battle, despite really liking the mental image of a tyranid swarm. I find having to space out multiple 30 model squads every movement phase so very tedious. It really slows the game down.

All in all the playability gains outweigh the cost imo, but I definitely think there was a cost.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
On the one hand I liked putting down flamer templates, and absolutely loved that blasts could scatter onto unintended targets. Moments like a Looted Wagon horribly missing it's target and instead blasting a friendly Trukk are very amusing.

On the other hand templates are the reason I never fielded more than ~60 total gaunt variants in a battle, despite really liking the mental image of a tyranid swarm. I find having to space out multiple 30 model squads every movement phase so very tedious. It really slows the game down.

All in all the playability gains outweigh the cost imo, but I definitely think there was a cost.

Yes, that is what I think too. And the same is true for things like firing arcs and vehicle facings. The application of those mechanics were often a point of contention, but not having these mechanics makes the game feels somewhat stale at times. It is annoying that a tank can shoot out of its butt through a tiny window across the field as if normal. But in general I prefer no mechanics to bad mechanics.

Templates were fine in smaller games, became a pain in larger ones, since 40k has moved from its origins as a game with maybe two dozen models per side and one or two weapons lobbing blast markers (plus grenades, don't go there) to company sized games and above the mechanic just doesn't work.

Not for the actual mechanic itself but for the interaction with the movement phase and how that slows down.

Liking the ability to handle larger units quickly as exact placement matter less.

The game could do with a few mechanics to scale the number of hits on some weapons a bit more than "do this, or this if the target is 10+ models", e.g. a <scale:n> keyword on weapons that have a number of dice, where you add "n" dice for every ten models.

e.g.

Horde Slaying Blasting Big Bang Weapon, 2d6 Hits <Scale:2>

Doing 2d6 hits to units with 1-9 models, 4d6 for 10-19, 6d6 for 20-29 etc

Glad they're gone. My biggest issue with them was scattering because NO ONE would ever read the angle properly in my group and always shifted it in their favor. I had to start asking them to roll the dice right next to where they aimed and even then when the template traveled it tended to veer off in odd and interesting ways.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Glad they're gone. My biggest issue with them was scattering because NO ONE would ever read the angle properly in my group and always shifted it in their favor. I had to start asking them to roll the dice right next to where they aimed and even then when the template traveled it tended to veer off in odd and interesting ways.

Used to prefer the templates they had in V1 Epic, that had a clock face of a sort on them (or the earlier ones with an actual clock face 1-12), put the template down, roll a normal die (or D12) and thats the direction it goes in, shown on the template itself.

Not an arrow on a die rolled somewhere else thats a good idea in theory and doesn't work in practice.

I felt pretty bummed when I heard that there would be no more templates in 8th.I honestly don't understand all that talking about arguing for any lengthy time wether or not a template hits one or more model. I NEVER had an argument about a template hitting someone or not in all my 10 years of playing 40k. Seriously, never. Granted, we did play rather laid-back, but at times we also had our more competitive games. Also, unit coherency always was a thing, but I personally only heard crying about spreading models out as much as possible in the lasts few years.
Plus, I feel like weapons like flamers aren't that great against hordes than they used to be. I think they (and most former template weapons in general) need a mechanic that they hit x models plus y if there are more than z models in the unit. I think it is wierd that for example battle cannons can inflict up to 6 hits onto a single model that can deal x wounds each (I don't have the exact figures right now). Same with flamers, really. I think the wording should be changed to inflict x hits on MODELS rather than x hits in general.

But yeah, these are just my two cents. All in all I miss templates and think that the transition of template-based weapons to random hits could have been smoother.

Sure, they were a problem for WAAC players due to them wanting to argue over every position to benefit them (but they do that for every mechanic so why are templates any different?), but for games played just for fun they were, well, fun! No matter which side of the board your on, there is something incredibly enjoyable about someone quite literally placing a target over the top of a large unit of models. Some of the most fun I've had in apocalypse games were when someone cracked out the MASSIVE templates and then we'd all watch in terror and excitement as an entire section of the board just disapeared.

Rolling dice to show that 10 models have been hit doesn't have the same impact as seeing for yourself the number of models caught in a blast radius.

(Also, as someone said above, there is also the tactical aspect of it people miss: trying to get as many models as you can within cover without making them too vulnerable to template weapons)

I'm pleased that templates are gone. No one ever got the scatter direction correct and it meant that armies strung their units out in a weird unrealistic (yes I know it's an abstract game) fashion to save models from being hit. Just having a straight forward roll to hit and wound is a much better mechanic if a less visual one.

Templates where a thematic and cool edition in my opinion and the game feels more bland for them being gone.

But 40k has increased over the years to a scale where templates are impractical to use.

GW would never reduce the scale of battles, in fact there has been scale creep with every edition because GW likes nothing more than selling those that collect even elite armies, horeds of models.

Templates would ruin the new design of 8th editon .... "EVERYONE DO THE BLOB-STAR"

Can you imagine how devastating little plastic templates would be to the 8th editon meta???

Well, 8th was designed around not using templates, hence the change to "aura-Hammer" we've seen in the main rules. It stands to reason if templates were still around, you wouldn't have aura-based rules to begin with.

Personally I don't miss them. Even in casual games, I saw way too many "misrepresentations" of the scatter die, etc. The time they added was way too much, and if we're honest once they went beyond the 3" Demolisher cannon template things just got stupid.

The pie-plates and armageddon-based templates were simply stupid, a victim of the game scale creep with no really good solution to it other than ridiculous templates. Templates may have made sense in 2nd (and even then a unit throwing frag grenades was incredibly tedious), but when you have template weapon rules and you introduce titans and crazy war machines, you end up with literal pie-plates. While thematic, perhaps, it's obnoxious during actual game play.

I miss templates for flame weapons. Are you going to tell me I hit a 30 man conscript squad with a Hellhound and I'd only get d6 of them? The variable damage die doesn't scale for densely packed models.

But, that argument is entirely undone by wasting 45 friggin' minutes as a guard player carefully measures 2" maximum between every single model in a 20-30 man squad or unit...feth that noise.

The time wasted in preventing template coverage was of borderline biblically stupid proportions. Removing that was massively important.

 Brotherjulian wrote:
I miss templates for flame weapons. Are you going to tell me I hit a 30 man conscript squad with a Hellhound and I'd only get d6 of them? The variable damage die doesn't scale for densely packed models.

10,000 times this.

No counter to cheap hordes. Guess what rules now?

The biggest problem I see is that templates have remained the same size since I started playing (2nd) but base sizes have increased. Therefore you got fewer models under a template as editions increased base size.

Personally I'd love to see the flamer template come back so that you can try to direct and maximize the targets hit. That might help against blobs since they tend to clump up when charging into melee.

I preferred templates, my weapons where better with them as they where more reliable.

The 8th implementation of blasts was lazy and turns them into pseudo-machineguns.

I still see 2" coherency shenanigans in 8th due to aura congalines and ensuring that units are spaced exactly 18" apart for no-DS shenanigans. One game I witnessed earlier this month, one player spent most of their game ensuring that all Brimstones were connected to Changeling, all Nurglings were spaced out in front to create a no-DS zone, etc. And 8th still has the odd "pseudo-AOE" stratagem or weapon, notBeam Psychic Power, etc.

The issue with trying to make damage "scale" by enemy unit size is that it fails to model the ability for an AOE to hit multiple enemy units. Say your opponent takes multiple Culexus Assassins (to use a lazy example). Your flamethrower/cluster bomb must attempt to kill *one* assassin at a time, and if it misses...nothing.

So either bring back blasts with either Bolt Action Scatter (funny factoid, Bolt Action used random damage for blasts in 1st edition then went to using templates), "make a to-hit roll for each model underneath", or something else not contingent on exact scatter die angle. And if you're complaining "but my 2-inch spacing," play against less awful people as those people will find a reason to spend time spacing.

Yeah the 30" congo lines for buffs are just hideous.

Yeah I loved my flamer templates when I play against my DE friend. Now I can't cook them but at the same time he gets to play more simply because I don't have ap on most of my things

Pancakey wrote:
Yeah the 30" congo lines for buffs are just hideous.

So were perfectly spaced out units that also conga lined to avoid as much of a template as possible.

 Brotherjulian wrote:
I miss templates for flame weapons. Are you going to tell me I hit a 30 man conscript squad with a Hellhound and I'd only get d6 of them? The variable damage die doesn't scale for densely packed models.

No, I'm not, I'm going to tell you that you got 3d6 of them.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
I liked them.
They were a very instinctive abstraction that were fun to use and a cool visual prompt and made model positioning pretty important. It made sense that taking blast weapons or carrying flamers would force horde units to spread out more to avoid hits at the risk of being less able to use smaller pieces of cover from other attacks.
Now that they are just rolled in with X additional dice they seem pretty dry.

I agree that mortars could have been streamlined and units with many multiple template weapons were a bit clunky though.

Couldn't agree more bud.

Templates were completely fine, you did have a few asshats that would try and game them (maximizing distance between models, etc.) and eat up time, but most players wouldn't be that anal. Barrage weapons were clunky, as were mortars and a few others, but in general templates were fine, game flavor to units, and encouraged strategic choices in weaponry and allowed for fun shenanigans (like Hellhounds "ranged flamer")

Doubling the time it took to take your movement phase because you had to space everything out exactly into maximum coherency was not fun and I'm glad it's gone.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Doubling the time it took to take your movement phase because you had to space everything out exactly into maximum coherency was not fun and I'm glad it's gone.

Sitting there arguing that at a certain angle you got 5 doods under the template but from another slighting off angle you only get 4.

there was a lot of good and a lot of bad on templates but it took soo much time from multiple phases. especially if people were abusing it.

not that i like the current set up as much. its an improvement but it could be much more intuitive.

I'm happy they're gone, and I'm a Guard player. About half my weapons used templates, sometimes multiple templates, such as my Thudd Gun battery, and I don't miss them now that they're gone. I get that some of them are slightly less effective now than they used to be, but the effectiveness of a template weapon was always situational and variable in the past. The benefits of not using them, far exceeds having them, in my opinion.

I agree with the sentiment that they've been reduced to "pseudo machineguns", but at the scale of average 40k games, I think that's an abstraction that had to happen. I think 8th edtition has found a nice balance between abstraction and "realism" (or simulation), although it's still far from perfect.

I miss flamer templates immensely, as someone who's built an entire GSC army around that template it was sad to see it go. I understand the blast templates being removed due to scatter arguments but I think they could've stayed with a different mechanic.

Just doesn't seem likely that I'd shoot a flame template at a squad and only get 1 hit ya know?