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 MagicJuggler wrote:
Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.

Really now?

Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.

Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.

 Blackie wrote:
By the time all codexes are out it will be time for 9th edition. I mean, if rumours that say orks will receive their codex in december are true it means that they'll get their rules 1 year and a half after the release of the current edition, which is a lot considering that 40k editions usually last 3 years. We'll only have 1 year, maybe 1 and a half with all codexes out.

In the prevoius editions you could play with older codexes, now you must use the index which is a mess: no special rules and overpriced stuff. I think 8th edition is the playtest for 9th, which maybe will be balanced. So far I miss 7th edition, but just because my armies had more viable units and different styles to use.

Nah, i'm 99% sure all codex's by July and who says their will be a 9th this early? They may come out with 9th, but it might just be an 8.1

I actually assumed 8th would be a more living-rulebook-y edition, kinda like how 3rd Edition was, which means it would last much longer.

Updates would come in the vein of Chapter Approved books, while story progression will happen in Campaign Supplements.

I expect there to be multiple versions of lots of characters (e.g. a pre-campaign, campaign, and post-campaign version of a model is conceivable).

7th was a fine ruleset, with just a few tweaks needed.

The issue was codex imbalance (including formation imbalance).

Again a few paragraphs of errata and some points changes would have fixed this.

8th is just... meh. Everything is very homogenous. Spam is even more viable. A lot of tactical stuff has gone. I'm bored of it already.

 Irbis wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.

Really now?

Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.

Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.

1) Rhinos had Fire Points. It was possible to use them for firing Gravdevs out of. In 8th, transports simply to transport are fairly redundant since you have to be static to disembark from them, you can surround them...
2) In Guard, the vehicles you see are: Taurox Primes (not for actually transporting anything, but Gatling Cannons), and artillery of choice. Oh, and Sentinels are in for the "no deepstrike bubble." Because if you don't infiltrate or have chaff...you might as well not play if you're not turn 1.
3) Riptide and suitspam wasn't even that good. Other than Nanivati's nova list, it didn't actually take tournaments in 7th. Scrub harder.

If there was a real issue with 7th, it was the fact it introduced Maelstrom (Random objectives with random scoring), it had too many USRs and non-USRs, and the scoring system was still very "Rocket Tag." What won games in 7th was being able to draw objectives, turbo onto them, and score points before your opponent was allowed to do anything. A lot of this is unfortunately inherent in 40k being IGOUGO, and with the general increase in dice being thrown in 8th, IGOUGO's poor scalability shows even more than ever.

zerosignal wrote:
7th was a fine ruleset, with just a few tweaks needed.

The issue was codex imbalance (including formation imbalance).

Again a few paragraphs of errata and some points changes would have fixed this.

8th is just... meh. Everything is very homogenous. Spam is even more viable. A lot of tactical stuff has gone. I'm bored of it already.

Everything is homogenous? I just played an army of Ork Tankbustas, some boys, some lobbas, and like 30 Stormboys with a special character with a trio of Imperial Superheavies and various support elements. The armies felt VERY different.

Spam? Spam is fine. I don't know why people think spam is bad. Armies run on spam, IRL, in the fluff, and in the rules.

As for the tactics being gone: this is true in some ways and less true in others. I actually think no-scatter Deep Strike makes things /more/ tactical, because you can more effectively screen against it and more effectively use it, with less "lawl, you done scattered, get fethed mate" or "Oh, I have a pod, so actually there's no danger at all... oh wait I still scattered out of melta range of the target. Neato." Just as an example.

Honestly it could go either way and a lot depends on how GW want to approach things. In that past new editions were a big shake up of hte rules of the game; now with 8th edition there is the ground in place to have fewer new versions of the game and instead have an evolving and updating rules system.

I could well see them going several years and then releasing an updated codex and rulebook combo to account for the FAQ/Errata and balance changes. Yes there's Chapter Approved but after a few years the old rule book and codex will be out of date. So they could easily re-release those without having a whole new edition of the rules.

Right.

Also, the thing I think that is different is that modern casting technology means they can whip models out much faster. This means that you can keep the edition of the game fairly static, while releasing models (and new rules for them) fairly quickly, without having to re-boot the whole core ruleset.

Adjustments to rules can be made through mechanisms already put in place (e.g. Chapter Approved).

As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.

The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.

While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:

Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.

Whether it is more balanced or not I think it's very cool that basic troops are good again. I'd rather play a game dominated by hordes than dominated by big single models or super elite deathstars. At least when you lose to a horde you get to kill lots of models

I fully expect new units released like they have done recently - ergo dataslates released with new rules for hte new models. The big question is how GW will approach releasing new models for the game in the long term. They could slow releases of new models and then have a big 40K release of one new model per faction; or they could let them out in drips and drabs; hopefully trying to support all armies at once on a rota so that one army isn't left behind

Alongside that they could do bigger single faction releases to get things like a larger number of models in plastic (eg a big sisters of battle release event) or to update core model sculpts.



So after a few years there'd be more than enough new models to justify a codex update; esp if they continue to use codex to deliver more improved and deeper lore on the game.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.

The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.

While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:

Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.

That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.

For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.

It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.

zerosignal wrote:
7th was a fine ruleset, with just a few tweaks needed.

The issue was codex imbalance (including formation imbalance).

Again a few paragraphs of errata and some points changes would have fixed this.

8th is just... meh. Everything is very homogenous. Spam is even more viable. A lot of tactical stuff has gone. I'm bored of it already.

Hrm, while there was no shortage of codex issues, there were a lot of core rules issues. Maelstrom was (though still is) a giant mess of random gak while the Eternal War missions were lifted from 6E but without any allowance for other changes (e.g. Big Guns and Scouring gave no bonuses for using HS/FA units as they were supposed to due to scoring changes but became huge liabilities anyway). Vehicles were monstrously ill-defined and inferior in just about every meaningful way to MC's. Jink was a horrifically abuseable mechanic (particularly next to smoke launchers or GTG). Bikes had way too many special abilities/bonuses. There were all sorts of issues with unkillable deathstars that the core rules enabled. Lots of "oversimplified" 8E mechanics weren't too much different than 7E in the ways that mattered (e.g. yeah DS could scatter and mishap in 7E, but the risk was so mild, particularly next to earlier editions, that 8E's simplifications simply removed an illusion of depth that had long since gone). There was an absurdly heavy emphasis on mid-strength multishot weapons that could glance vehicles and wound infantry on 2's. 8E's not perfect, but the core 7th rules weren't great either.

Will I get eaten alive if I say I like 8th Editions Maelstrom more, given the single house-rule of being able to discard an impossible card?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.

The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.

While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:

Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.

That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.

For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.

It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.

I know someone said they hated my idea...but limit Overwatch to a stratagem that allows a commander to pick up to 3 units to place on Overwatch.

If you HATE stratagem....then make it so that the upper tier characters, Farsee, Boss, Chapter Master, Lord, etc can each nominate 1 unit to go into Overwatch if they are near them, etc. That way 1 to 3 units at most will probably be on Overwatch

Either way you Avoid 2nd ed where everyone was on overwatch waiting for the other guy to move and lose.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I actually assumed 8th would be a more living-rulebook-y edition, kinda like how 3rd Edition was, which means it would last much longer.

Updates would come in the vein of Chapter Approved books, while story progression will happen in Campaign Supplements.

I expect there to be multiple versions of lots of characters (e.g. a pre-campaign, campaign, and post-campaign version of a model is conceivable).

That is pretty much what I read from the early days of 8th. There would never be another edition just new units with their datasheets in the box, and continuous yearly updates with CA.

Yeah, this CA wasn't quite like what I expected, or like the CA of old, but that may just be due to how it came out in the mid of the codex release binge. Moving forward it might have collected unit datasheets for the new units of the year, or something similar.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.

The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.

While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:

Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.

That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.

For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.

It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.

I understand what you're saying, and this is why I considered the rules a "stopgap." The rules were modified from 2nd ed Overwatch, with three main differences:
-Forfeit shooting, instead of forfeit moving and shooting.
-Triggers on declaring an adverse Psychic Power/shooting attack/charge, rather than during the movement phase.
-You don't get the option to roll leadership to "stay" in Overwatch.

All three changes were meant to de-incentivize extreme turtling/standing off, like what happened in 2nd ed where combined with Blind Grenades you could (paraphrasing Andy Chambers) "attempt to bore your opponent into attempting a reckless charge."

My main project has a more intricate way of handling large units; I know there's a lot of anti-big sentiment in games, but my rationale was if a Baneblade costs approx 3-4 tanks worth of points, it should have 3-4 activations worth of units. "Activate the engine block." "Activate the main turret", etc.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Will I get eaten alive if I say I like 8th Editions Maelstrom more, given the single house-rule of being able to discard an impossible card?

Nope, same here. I have not played a single Eternal War mission yet in 8th. Almost all games are maelstrom, unless I'm teaching a new player to play or play some random narrative mission - those are pretty neat for fun games.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Will I get eaten alive if I say I like 8th Editions Maelstrom more, given the single house-rule of being able to discard an impossible card?

Nope, same here. I have not played a single Eternal War mission yet in 8th. Almost all games are maelstrom, unless I'm teaching a new player to play or play some random narrative mission - those are pretty neat for fun games.

We house-rule malestrom misions so D3 cards give you 2 VP. No rolls. Much more balanced that way.

I prefer ITC to having to negotiate the gak out of GW's maelstrom.

Martel732 wrote:
I prefer ITC to having to negotiate the gak out of GW's maelstrom.

Theres no negotiation, they are in the bases of the regional tourneis, but we play with the hybrid missions that mix Eternal War and Maelstrom objetives.

I only play ITC missions now. Progressive kill & objective scoring, without randomness, and you get to pick your secondaries so you're not completely hosed.

Eternal war was never fun. Ever. It wasn't fun in 7th, it wasn't fun in 8th, glad it's dead. Maelstrom is fun, but the progressive scoring (you cap an objective, you cap more objectives end of game turn), with chosen secondaries, is better, so you're not drawing stupid cards ("make your opponent fail a morale test!") to drawing flat out impossible ones ("hold objective 6! oh look! It's under the IG backline, all you have to do is completely table them to take it!").



You see literally the same handful of people pining for 7th edition.

And it's because they ran stuff that got nerfed or deleted.

"I can't summon free points anymore! 8th is garbage!" For example.

7th would have been perfect I'd they did the three following things.

1)formations cost points, not free stuff from formations.

2) get rid of warp charge system. Implement 8th Ed power system into 7th Ed.

3) remove the hull point system and go to the 8th Ed vehicle system for wounding

The argument that 7th was a good system and it just needed some fixes applies to 8th IMO.

Both are fine BASE systems that need some work, like any game system out there.

Do not get me wrong, 7th ed with the codex creep, zero codex balance and formations that were out of control had a lot of issues but it had good things as well.

8th has its issues too. The cover mechanics are pretty meh, character targeting is a bit weird, other little things.


Both systems were fine, both need work.

 Blackie wrote:
By the time all codexes are out it will be time for 9th edition. I mean, if rumours that say orks will receive their codex in december are true it means that they'll get their rules 1 year and a half after the release of the current edition, which is a lot considering that 40k editions usually last 3 years. We'll only have 1 year, maybe 1 and a half with all codexes out.

In the prevoius editions you could play with older codexes, now you must use the index which is a mess: no special rules and overpriced stuff. I think 8th edition is the playtest for 9th, which maybe will be balanced. So far I miss 7th edition, but just because my armies had more viable units and different styles to use.

There won't be "editions" any more. We have tri-annual updates and chapter approved. I can see them releasing an update core rules, but not a new ruleset.

Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
7th would have been perfect I'd they did the three following things.

1)formations cost points, not free stuff from formations.

2) get rid of warp charge system. Implement 8th Ed power system into 7th Ed.

3) remove the hull point system and go to the 8th Ed vehicle system for wounding

1) Either that, or grant meaningful disadvantages. Either way, tweaking the trouble formations is one option.
2) Psychic Focus, Smitespam and 2d6? No. Make the system "degrees of success" ala Kings of War.
3) Add more HP, consolidate wounding for vehicles/superheavies.

 Marmatag wrote:
Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.

I’m a grey knight, tau, space marine, inquisition player who doesn’t bring big Bobby G to friendly games. I’m looking real fondly on this edition.

“Don’t worry, the Codex will fix it”™

Behold the mighty skyray! It is 195 points, and does a devistating 3 mortal wounds a game and requires markerlights support!
Grey Knights are totally fine, it’s not like we’re only useful if you bring less than 3 units of us. Also why do terminators pay for a 5++ when their 2+ is basically a 5+ vs ap3? I can’t wait for the custodian Codex to read “we’re 1:1 better than grey Knights at being grey knights, lol”

 Marmatag wrote:
Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.

I’m an ork player, all I play is 7th, won’t touch 8th with a 50 foot grabba stik, and for the record I play against eldar and tau (a lot) and have never had any trouble with them