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I still find templates weird, especially when it comes to being able to hit a model multiple times and certain weapons doing multiple wounds. The Hellhound and certain other flamers work better as anti-aircraft/anti-tank than they do as actual crowd control, and that's just off on multiple levels.

And I still see extreme peculiarity about spacing out models 2 inches apart for purposes of stretching out a buff congaline or maximizing DS denial. Ironically this may be more notable in 8th due to assorted changes making the game favor "horde" builds (such as Nanivati's build that came in 2nd at Adepticon) over the relatively compact "Biker/mech" lists of previous editions.

Call it conspiracy-mongering but WHFB got rid of templates when moving from 8th to AOS, despite being a game of "rank-and-file" maneuver that didn't really allow players to intentionally slow-play spacing out their models...my hypothesis is that GW axed them because you can only sell a set of templates to a gamer once, and if the LGS has a shared set, even that's a stretch.

Purifying Tempest wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
Yes, easily. Anyone who said they liked 6th or 7th better just played with a group of people who were really really bad at the game.

5th and parts of the other editions I could see arguments for, but disagree

People who really loved 6th/7th probably lucked into an army that was one of the prime offenders of the balancing issues and didn't have to invest a ton of cash in Riptides or Wraithknights or the such.

The rest of us had the wrong model composition to really abuse these combinations and probably didn't want to drop the hundreds of dollars needed to finish off the full block of cheese. Thus we saw 7th edition for what it was: roflstomping people who didn't want to play the bleeding edge of cheddar, or simply arguing about the rules interaction until the game became the background noise.

I love 7th and my primary army is Orks. I love 7th for having a lot more depth and decision making in both its list building and gameplay. Sure balance was a dumpster fire (GW really played favorites with certain codexes) but the game was fun when you had lists matched up that operated on a similar power level. Liking 7th isn't about being a power gamer or a WAAC jerk who is looking to roflstomp somebody. Personally the best games for me where the ones where it was extremely close while the one sided blowouts tended to be the boring games.

I will say, despite how you feel about 8th, armor modifiers being back is a blessing. Too many weapons used to be useless.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I will say, despite how you feel about 8th, armor modifiers being back is a blessing. Too many weapons used to be useless.

Damage is also huge, having that stat back adds a lot more depth to weaponry and allows for weapons profiles that are way more finely tuned without being overpowered.

Having ASM's and D back were great 8E ideas. The game is a lot better for it, especially given that the ASM's are more reserved than in 2E.

I think 8th is a step in the right direction, but it has a few problems.

- The to-hit modifier system is not good. The modifiers should be applied to the threshold required for success, not the roll itself because of the overheat mechanic on weapons. Have that trigger on natural 1s instead of end result of 1.
- Indirect artillery has no spotting requirement and no modifiers to affect accuracy when firing indirectly. This is one area that was way too streamlined and offers too little counterplay for the opponent.
- The complete removal of model facings reduces the value of maneuvering and flanking the opponent, which is bad because it doesn't reflect the very deadly effects of flanking in actual warfare. The really poor rules concerning how weapon arcs are handled is also just too permissive and further exacerbates the problem of the ease of concentrating firepower with little regard for proper positioning.
- The force organization system is way too permissive, especially for spamming effective combat HQs. If they maintained Brigade, Battalion, Patrol, Superheavy, Aux Superheavy, and a slightly more restrictive version of the Vanguard, Spearhead, and Outrider, I think the game would be improved.
- The removal of blast and template rules in the game makes infantry dispersion irrelevant, facilitating the horde style of gameplay. While I think the previous system was way too flawed to stay as it was, removing it altogether introduced another set of complications, and IMO all it needed was a refinement (specifically, to the way Warmachine/Hordes does it with the directions printed on the template itself).
- The prevalence of -1 to hit mods is quite insane considering that to hit modifiers can actually completely shut down an army's shooting phase if the BS is low enough. If a 6 always hit just like a 1 always misses, this might not be as much of an issue, but the use of this rule should be much more judiciously applied to specific elements of an army rather than a blanket rule for all models in an army (We all know which army we are talking about here).

Otherwise, I'm optimistic about the direction 40k is heading, which is why I'm here at all in the first place.

Mixed really.

I thought when the Indexes were dropped that 8th was the best thing in a long time. Then certain things started to emerge in the meta. GW has intervened (which is itself a miracle) but they can't seem to stop releasing overpowered stuff.

I mean I like DE having a powerful codex for the first time in a long time (ever?) but I can just do some maths and compare a vaguely coherent list vs a newish/non-competitive player's grab-bag bag of Marines and the result isn't pretty.

Stuff dies far too fast in 8th edition (or rather stuff does too much damage). Or at least it does if you have a vaguely optimised list. This is why I think people accuse it of being like a card game. You just play out your deck and hope it lands - typically you are hoping to kill 30-40% of their army in your first turn.

The thing is in a typical card game (there are exceptions) you play a game out over 10-15~ minutes...and if you get stomped you just play another. Or half or dozen.

40k doesn't really work that way. Playing out a 1.5-2 hour game which is palpably one-sided isn't all that fun. Or at least the novelty starts to wear off.

But 7th was a broken mess and 5th was arguably too boring because things tended to be harder to kill.

You will never get a balanced game - but for me the game would be better if "overpowered" abilities were pushing 25% points return (while weak options did say 15%), rather than 50%. In the former luck would have a greater role and the game would therefore appear to be in the balance until the end.

 auticus wrote:
Everywhere you look for over a decade. Just spark up a conversation about balance and discuss how you want listbuilding to not be so dominant, you'll get a train of people that will tell you a variation of that being boring if 2000 points were equal to 2000 points regardless of composition.

When AOS was first dropped one of the biggest complaints against the fan comps was that it was "too balanced" and that listbuilding was boring because everything was too even as well.

People want their liistbuilding and they want it to play a heavy role in the game. Even when Bottle was posting and now he's a gw dev he had talked about how he thought listbuilding should play a prominent role in the games. Face book groups produce the same data. Game dev seminars talk about how iimportant this facet of game design is today.

Judging by what you wrote here I think you actually misunderstood some peoples point about wanting list building to be important. Most people want a middle ground between original AOS (just bring whatever) and Chess (literally no difference in units and perfectly balanced). When someone is saying they want list building to matter what most are saying is they want the option to build a good anti-tank army and have it excel in that role. Not that no matter what unit you choose they all do the exact same thing. People want different styles and builds (not imbalance). Think hearstone for example if you could only play one deck with different visuals for the cards, the game would be incredibly boring very fast. Obviously, the more choice a player has the greater the chance for imbalance becomes. Most players want to be able to have lots of choices with relative balance vs. no choice with perfect balance.

I think some people definitely want that, but having fielded a few hundred emails when I was running Azyr Comp for AOS (one of the fan comps that used until official points came out) I can tell you that a lot of them wanted heavy handed listbuilding because the main criticism was saying its boring to have things too balanced and that I had effectively killed listbuilding and that was bad.

There needed to be over and under powered choices to make a lot of people happy.

 auticus wrote:
I think some people definitely want that, but having fielded a few hundred emails when I was running Azyr Comp for AOS (one of the fan comps that used until official points came out) I can tell you that a lot of them wanted heavy handed listbuilding because the main criticism was saying its boring to have things too balanced and that I had effectively killed listbuilding and that was bad.

There needed to be over and under powered choices to make a lot of people happy.

Really. is that what people want?

id be pretty disappointed with that. its not really list building if the over and under powered units is obvious

Mind you im talking about grossly obvious stuff and not things that are within a few % of "efficiency" or whatever.

 auticus wrote:
I think some people definitely want that, but having fielded a few hundred emails when I was running Azyr Comp for AOS (one of the fan comps that used until official points came out) I can tell you that a lot of them wanted heavy handed listbuilding because the main criticism was saying its boring to have things too balanced and that I had effectively killed listbuilding and that was bad.

There needed to be over and under powered choices to make a lot of people happy.

Never did that comp so can't comment on it really, But I played 9th age for quite a while though and the only major complaint people constantly had was the removal of special "fluffy" rules in the pursuit of balance. I understand that balancing act is difficult, but I've never heard some advocate blatantly for imbalance, simply that a goblin spearman plays differently than an elf spearman.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Kellevil wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Rules don't contradict themselves...

So Inescapable Accuracy and that one Ranger Stratagem that only lets them get hit on 6s is just nothing, then?

I stand corrected. Haven’t heard of that one.

I imagine that there will be more as time goes on. So yeah... I’m gonna cross that off my list.

Yeah. And I guarantee you there's more. Just look at the YMDC thread.

Not ragging on you for liking 8th or anything-just pointing out that your assessment wasn't fully accurate.

Because, despite me preferring 7th, I do enjoy 8th.

That was already FAQ with the same interaction between Dark Reapers and Culexus assasins.

 Galas wrote:


That was already FAQ with the same interaction between Dark Reapers and Culexus assasins.

The Culexeus/Reaper FAQ doesn't apply to the Ranger/Reaper issue (two differently worded rules).

Hm. Ok. Maybe they will answer that one in the mar.... spring FAQ.

Asmodios wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I think some people definitely want that, but having fielded a few hundred emails when I was running Azyr Comp for AOS (one of the fan comps that used until official points came out) I can tell you that a lot of them wanted heavy handed listbuilding because the main criticism was saying its boring to have things too balanced and that I had effectively killed listbuilding and that was bad.

There needed to be over and under powered choices to make a lot of people happy.

Never did that comp so can't comment on it really, But I played 9th age for quite a while though and the only major complaint people constantly had was the removal of special "fluffy" rules in the pursuit of balance. I understand that balancing act is difficult, but I've never heard some advocate blatantly for imbalance, simply that a goblin spearman plays differently than an elf spearman.

They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is a big problem with AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is big problem in AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

^this is what i am assuming the people meant (once again cant say for sure because I didn't read the messages and I never played AOS after the first weekend of its release)

But if you make everything equally good against everything you remove choice from the game and make it blander. There should be repercussions in-game for taking a Las Cannon vs. a heavy bolter or a Cannon vs. a Bow

Asmodios wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is big problem in AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

^this is what i am assuming the people meant (once again cant say for sure because I didn't read the messages and I never played AOS after the first weekend of its release)

But if you make everything equally good against everything you remove choice from the game and make it blander. There should be repercussions in-game for taking a Las Cannon vs. a heavy bolter or a Cannon vs. a Bow

But If you make obvious good things and bad things you are removing choice by making auto takes auto takes and everything else min or leave home.

at least making things mostly balanced means you dont have to have the majority of your models sitting on a shelf.

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is a big problem with AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

Im not convinced you've actually played AOS in any meaningful way judging from your comments. The fixed to wound has never been an issue at all. Ive never heard it arise ever in competitive or casual games as an issue.

Would I use it in 40k? No, due to the different nature of the game, with tanks and titans and things that should be harder to damage.

 Desubot wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is big problem in AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

^this is what i am assuming the people meant (once again cant say for sure because I didn't read the messages and I never played AOS after the first weekend of its release)

But if you make everything equally good against everything you remove choice from the game and make it blander. There should be repercussions in-game for taking a Las Cannon vs. a heavy bolter or a Cannon vs. a Bow

But If you make obvious good things and bad things you are removing choice by making auto takes auto takes and everything else min or leave home.

at least making things mostly balanced means you dont have to have the majority of your models sitting on a shelf.

I never said to make obviously good things.... Not really sure how that's what you got. What i want is different armies/units that have different strength/ weaknesses. For instance, it would be lame if a Tac marine, guardsman and Necron warrior all had the exact same stats and filled the exact same roll and the only difference was the model. Same thing if a flamer functioned identically to a melta and you were picking them for looks alone. What i want is a balanced game where you can play different forces that have different strengths/ weaknesses but are all viable because they have a correct cost attached to what they did. I understand this will make it impossible to achieve "perfect balance" but im not looking to play an expensive version of chess.

Asmodios wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is big problem in AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

^this is what i am assuming the people meant (once again cant say for sure because I didn't read the messages and I never played AOS after the first weekend of its release)

But if you make everything equally good against everything you remove choice from the game and make it blander. There should be repercussions in-game for taking a Las Cannon vs. a heavy bolter or a Cannon vs. a Bow

But If you make obvious good things and bad things you are removing choice by making auto takes auto takes and everything else min or leave home.

at least making things mostly balanced means you dont have to have the majority of your models sitting on a shelf.

I never said to make obviously good things.... Not really sure how that's what you got. What i want is different armies/units that have different strength/ weaknesses. For instance, it would be lame if a Tac marine, guardsman and Necron warrior all had the exact same stats and filled the exact same roll and the only difference was the model. Same thing if a flamer functioned identically to a melta and you were picking them for looks alone. What i want is a balanced game where you can play different forces that have different strengths/ weaknesses but are all viable because they have a correct cost attached to what they did. I understand this will make it impossible to achieve "perfect balance" but im not looking to play an expensive version of chess.

it was the the general premises that people want imbalance for the sake of choice. you know the second there is a skew people will abuse it.

yes the game shouldn't be 100% homogenized different armies should do different things and for the most part 40k is fine in that manner. AOS less so but its still there. its always going to be a hand full of specific units or options that seriously need help if gw could take care of that then personally id be happy.

CassianSol wrote:

Im not convinced you've actually played AOS in any meaningful way judging from your comments. The fixed to wound has never been an issue at all. Ive never heard it arise ever in competitive or casual games as an issue.

The AOS units have special rules that sometimes give them role and preferred targets, but the core rules don't do that. Choice between hitting on 4+, wounding on 3+ or hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+ is meaningless, as is a choice between a weapon that attacks d6 times for one damage or one time for d6 damage (as the damage spills anyway.) It doesn't matter whether you attack a unit of small things or one big thing. The core rules are built so that most choices are meaningless. Only rend has some meaning,as it is more valuable against heavily armoured foes. The core rules are terrible, some units have special rules to mitigate this.

Asmodios wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 auticus wrote:


They never argued for imbalance, per say... but... I don't know how else to interpret various versions of "you killed listbuilding by making things too balanced, and thats a huge flaw".

If 'balance' is achieved by everything being equally good versus everything, then it is bad, and that is big problem in AOS core rules. This is why I was super glad that the idiotic fixed wound chart and multi-damage spilling were not ported over to 40K.

^this is what i am assuming the people meant (once again cant say for sure because I didn't read the messages and I never played AOS after the first weekend of its release)

But if you make everything equally good against everything you remove choice from the game and make it blander. There should be repercussions in-game for taking a Las Cannon vs. a heavy bolter or a Cannon vs. a Bow

No no no. This is not what the discussion was. The discussion ws purely about the comp point system and how the points were too balanced and made listbuilding pointless, it was not about AOS core mechanics. It was actively argued against by a great many people that 2000 pts = 2000 pts is not what the community wanted at all, because that makes listbuilding pointless.

For me it was an eye opener because this was nothing I ever considered or wanted to consider, but it was where a lot of people sending in input were going.

 auticus wrote:

No no no. This is not what the discussion was. The discussion ws purely about the comp point system and how the points were too balanced and made listbuilding pointless, it was not about AOS core mechanics.

Ok, that's silly then.

Thats silly but combo-driven games are popular for a reason. People LOVE to "find" the most broken stuff and use it. They think they are very clever for doing it (When most of the people will just copy it from internet).

The only problem is when the balance is SO bad that you have 0 ways to compete. But as long as theres some kind of combo that you can do... oh man. Thats the point of it all.

Played it quite actively during first few months. Gave up later, it's just too silly, too streamlined, too unbound for my liking. Played a small updated HH game with templates, armor facings and a ton of USR's - such a refreshment <3

my hypothesis is that GW axed them because you can only sell a set of templates to a gamer once, and if the LGS has a shared set, even that's a stretch.

I think that if GW/FW ever released Legion specific templates - those would've sold like hot cakes

Well, i guess things differ for people. Some say there are a lot of new people and sales are high but what i see is that our gaming group went from 15-20 to 30 at first and than rapidly spired down to just a couple people playing much less regularly. Only around 5 people continue playing 40k. The bright side is that we're trying new great games.

 Crimson wrote:

CassianSol wrote:

Im not convinced you've actually played AOS in any meaningful way judging from your comments. The fixed to wound has never been an issue at all. Ive never heard it arise ever in competitive or casual games as an issue.

The AOS units have special rules that sometimes give them role and preferred targets, but the core rules don't do that. Choice between hitting on 4+, wounding on 3+ or hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+ is meaningless, as is a choice between a weapon that attacks d6 times for one damage or one time for d6 damage (as the damage spills anyway.) It doesn't matter whether you attack a unit of small things or one big thing. The core rules are built so that most choices are meaningless. Only rend has some meaning,as it is more valuable against heavily armoured foes. The core rules are terrible, some units have special rules to mitigate this.

It is almost like it was built with the intention of layering in those additional special rules...

I think GWs sales boost (which is hard to lie about) may also be due to the fact the models are typically very good now and have been for a couple of years.

I remeber about 5~ years ago thinking it was a bit of a toss up with say warmahordes. Now its no contest.

On balance I think there will always be meta determined good and bad choices. The issue is the range between them. Compare say a Flyrant to an Ork buggy.

I'm enjoying it to be honest, I preferred 1st edition but thats basically playing a totally different game with the same name.

I do think the core rules would benefit from being about twice as long though and more clearly and tightly written - with a terrain section that mattered.

I'm expecting the core to improve in the next edition though.

What GW have tried, and largely managed is what Battlefront tried and largely failed with the new edition of FoW, strip out what they thought was cruft and refocus the game on the bits that actually mattered.

I'm liking the way most of the ways for a player to shut their opponent down have gone or been more limited, with a focus on making your own force better more than the enemies worse (the "-1 to hit me so ner" excepted).

Downsides:

1. building an army is a royal pain with the points split from the data cards

2. movement is way too fast compared to weapon ranges, when you can move then charge further than you can shoot something is wrong - would be ok with a better overwatch mechanic (say -1 to hit, no indirect fire), or with longer ranges and the current systems (or better still reduced movement). It just feels wrong that an enemy in clear terrain piling forwards can get from one side of your kill range to close combat without you actually being able to stop them

Upsides

1. the data cards, the abandonment of the "lead out the codex to make photocopying it a pain" and the soup of USR most of which seemed to cross reference each other through three layers down to a "+/-1" on a stat or dice roll have made actually playing the game a lot faster

3. discovering in close combat that dice have sides other than 3,4 or 5, which frankly on a D6 system was rubbish anyway

2. there is no point #2

4. The expanded range of missions, yes I know previous editions had expansion books of missions, no one seemed to every play them, a bit like Warhammer was always "battle line" - now you need a more varied army because what it will be asked to do varies so much more.


I skipped 2nd, 3rd & 4th, returning in 5th which was ok, 6th was meh and 7th was pointless and an obvious stopgap

8th edition is without a shadow of a doubt a better system than 6th and 7th, however given how bad those two were it isn't that hard, nor is it a brilliant endorsement for 8th edition.

8th edition does get a lot of things right, but saying that it also gets a lot of things wrong.

If I am to be honest I think the best shape the 40k game has ever been in was the 3rd edition rulebook. What made that format work is that all forces had their rules in the back of the book. No force had to wait, and the system was free from power creep in the shape of Codex creep. Also the system didn't have flyers and superheavies, those while being nice models should be locked into apocalypse sized games, or Epic. In a lot of ways it is a combination of codex and scale creep that breaks the systems, each edition has been an attempt to patch the core rules to accommodate the editions made in the Codexes.

8th broke that trend and everything was reset, which was badly needed. What remains to be seen is whether GW can keep from repeating their too often trend for power creep. I imagine that a lot of the creep comes from getting used to the limits of an edition, hence why the level of power between the first and last codex produced for a system is so pronounced.