Would GW Make Radical Changes to Fix 40k 8th?

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**ClockworkZion**

GW has largely overhauled the game a few times (RT to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, 7th to 8th). That said, I don't see us straying from a D6 anytime soon.

I do see AoS and possibly even Kill Team being possible places for new mechanics to be tried and then implemented into 40k (and vice versa as a needed), which could lead to CP generation every turn and even changes to how the shooting portion of the game works (something I'm all for but several people have shown a clear dislike for).

Basically it's anyone's guess how the game will change, but we can definitely guess it will, and if the game breaks the changes will ultimately be fairly radical in nature.

**Stormonu**

Wound and Save rolls (including Invulnerable saves) are separate really only because it gives the opponent a method to interact during the active player's turn, as well as a false sense of power over somehow being able to do something about losing a model. If 40K switched to an alternating activation system, having separate rolls could be combined much easier as the inactive player wouldn't have such a long down time between actions.

On the flip side, there would be a lot of sameness between unit's defense if To Wound and Save were rolled into one because there's not a lot of room to work with on a single D6 roll. There'd be more design space if it was a D8 or D10. Still, you could come up with some tricks (besides rerolls) to mitigate the small range.

The designers would need to think about it a bit to come up with some good tricks, but one I could see, for troops like say Terminators is that their To Wound/Save roll can never be modified (like an invulnerable save). Another might be to activate some ability on a natural roll of X - for example, it could be if an enemy wounds Khorne Beserkers, but don't roll a natural 6 on the wound, the Beserkers get a final attack (melee or ranged) before they are removed.

**Spoletta**

Stormonu wrote:
Wound and Save rolls (including Invulnerable saves) are separate really only because it gives the opponent a method to interact during the active player's turn, as well as a false sense of power over somehow being able to do something about losing a model. If 40K switched to an alternating activation system, having separate rolls could be combined much easier as the inactive player wouldn't have such a long down time between actions.

On the flip side, there would be a lot of sameness between unit's defense if To Wound and Save were rolled into one because there's not a lot of room to work with on a single D6 roll. There'd be more design space if it was a D8 or D10. Still, you could come up with some tricks (besides rerolls) to mitigate the small range.

The designers would need to think about it a bit to come up with some good tricks, but one I could see, for troops like say Terminators is that their To Wound/Save roll can never be modified (like an invulnerable save). Another might be to activate some ability on a natural roll of X - for example, it could be if an enemy wounds Khorne Beserkers, but don't roll a natural 6 on the wound, the Beserkers get a final attack (melee or ranged) before they are removed.

I'm sure that there are some good ways to remove it and replace it with something else, but i've yet to find someone who tells me WHY we should remove it. That part of the game is working, so why fixing something that isn't broken?

**CthuluIsSpy**

Blastaar wrote:

My big issue with terrain is that it doesn't affect movement much, and I'd love to see some way of slowing enemy units down by leading them through "difficult terrain" as well as solving the issues with true LOS.

Oh, so like pre-8th edition then. Because in earlier editions, most terrain was difficult and reduced movement from 6" to 2d6 pick the highest. I don't know why they decided to remove it, but it probably has something to do with the reintroduction of the movement stat...which would be a stupid reason, because WHFB had no problems with that, and that system had move stats. Terrain reduced movement by half in that system, iirc.

**Strg Alt**

There is nothing to fix with 40K. Every edition changes the rules for the sake of change and to allow for more models to be used in an army. Just compare the point costs of models from 2nd to 3rd. The aim to improve the game in any way was never on the table.

Choose your preferred edition and stick with it. Chasing the meta with each edition change is imo a foolish endeavour that get´s you nowhere.

**ClockworkZion**

Strg Alt wrote:
There is nothing to fix with 40K. Every edition changes the rules for the sake of change and to allow for more models to be used in an army. Just compare the point costs of models from 2nd to 3rd. The aim to improve the game in any way was never on the table.

Choose your preferred edition and stick with it. Chasing the meta with each edition change is imo a foolish endeavour that get´s you nowhere.

It gets me games that I have at least a chance of winning, so I wouldn't say it's gotten me nowhere.

**Martel732**

Bharring wrote:
I do think both sides of the equation need to change. Oddly, look at the KT base model prices (but not wargear) - they seem much more in line with what should be.

However, even with moderate price changes, to really make Marines feel like Marines, the firepower fix feels necessary, too.

Marines only felt like marines for the first half of 3rd. This seems like a futile goal.

**Blndmage**

Movie marines?

**AnomanderRake**

Blndmage wrote:
Movie marines?

A reference to a joke army list in a White Dwarf long ago where your 1,500pt army was a single Tactical squad with absurd and ridiculous stats, protected by 20pt stunt doubles ("don't worry, my missile launcher didn't actually bite it there, it was a stunt double!").

**Blndmage**

AnomanderRake wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
Movie marines?

A reference to a joke army list in a White Dwarf long ago where your 1,500pt army was a single Tactical squad with absurd and ridiculous stats, protected by 20pt stunt doubles ("don't worry, my missile launcher didn't actually bite it there, it was a stunt double!").

Compared to what's out there now, I think an 8th Ed version could actually work.

**Stormonu**

Spoletta wrote:
Stormonu wrote:
Wound and Save rolls (including Invulnerable saves) are separate really only because it gives the opponent a method to interact during the active player's turn, as well as a false sense of power over somehow being able to do something about losing a model. If 40K switched to an alternating activation system, having separate rolls could be combined much easier as the inactive player wouldn't have such a long down time between actions.

On the flip side, there would be a lot of sameness between unit's defense if To Wound and Save were rolled into one because there's not a lot of room to work with on a single D6 roll. There'd be more design space if it was a D8 or D10. Still, you could come up with some tricks (besides rerolls) to mitigate the small range.

The designers would need to think about it a bit to come up with some good tricks, but one I could see, for troops like say Terminators is that their To Wound/Save roll can never be modified (like an invulnerable save). Another might be to activate some ability on a natural roll of X - for example, it could be if an enemy wounds Khorne Beserkers, but don't roll a natural 6 on the wound, the Beserkers get a final attack (melee or ranged) before they are removed.

I'm sure that there are some good ways to remove it and replace it with something else, but i've yet to find someone who tells me WHY we should remove it. That part of the game is working, so why fixing something that isn't broken?

Because it's an extra step that can be removed to save time. Look at something like D&D - you roll to hit, then roll damage. The defender doesn't add a step to negate the attack. The game would work without the added step of a save, it not a case of "fixing" anything anything, just an option for streamlining.

**Martel732**

DnDs system is absurd because it conflates hitting and armor penetration.

**Skaorn**

Honestly that depends on how you run DnD and HP. If you do it so that each time you get hit you get cut open by a claw or stabbed by a sword, then running armor as DR might seem better. If you run it like it was described in earlier additions, at least, where HP was described as your ability to get knocked around before essentially running out of steam and giving your opponent the opening to run you through. It was a more abstract take meant to simulate more cinematic fights where the your armor might protect you from a good hit from an enemy but your at least going to have a nice bruise or a small cut. At which point, it does kind of make sense that heavy armor makes you harder to hit because it's more likely to take a hit without you getting knocked around by it.

Think of it like earlier editions of 40k. You might have a wraithlord with T7, Sv 3+, and W3 and a SM captain with T4, Sv 3+, and W3. I seriously doubt that that captain got special upgrade that made him capable of having the same number of wounds as the much tougher wraithlord when he became captain. I honestly don't think a captain is that much better than a regular SM in terms of physical abilities but they do have experience. You can also throw in luck and destiny too. A wraithlord might have taken a sold hit from a plasma gun and kept going while the captain might have gotten out of the way enough so only part of his armor got melted.

Of course the way wounds have changed in 8th it seems to have moved a little closer to each hit means you just got stabbed by a sword. This always reminded me of a Dragon magazine comic I remember. In it you have a big, beefy barbarian chief being executed. He's tied to a post, got a bunch arrows sticking out of him, and a big old grin. The archers have no arrows left, look ready to pee themselves, and have a guy standing to the side yelling "he's still got 32 HP, guys!".

**Delvarus Centurion**

drbored wrote:
Some friends and I were talking (read: commiserating) about 40k and the state of the ATC and we came to a couple of realizations. There are some problems with 40k 8th edition that need to be addressed and I think we can all agree on a few of them.

1. Power Armor means very little in this edition. The titular 3+ save is often reduced (even in cover) by many weapons to a 4+ or 5+ save. Since many of these same weapons deal more than 1 damage, even having additional wounds isn't keeping Power Armored (or even Terminator Armored) units on the table.

2. Cover means very little. See above, but tack on the fact that GW doesn't seem to understand the definition of 'line of sight blocking terrain' and continues to make tiny windows that can technically still be seen through. The ITC rule of 'first floor LOS-blocking' is only a half fix. Making cover a +1 to your save doesn't help against many popular weapons, and turning it into a -1 to hit is only going to shift the problem to forces that have stacking abilities like this.

3. Allies are broken. You're either part of the 'in' crowd (Imperium, Eldar, Chaos) or you're out of luck (Necron, Orks, Tau, etc). Allies allow the 'in' crowd to shore up weaknesses in their lists from an incredible amount of options, or straight up break the rules as intended, like taking 9 Daemon Princes in a single list. Meanwhile, the 'out' crowd suffers, not having access to cheap forms of CP generation (or regeneration in the case of Kurov's Aquila and similar traits/relics), and often not having enough options to shore up the native weaknesses of their Codex.

So, we came up with a few ideas to address these concerns. Let's start at the top and work our way down.

1. Make Power Armor (and thereby Space Marines) tough. Actually tough. Make them the survivable super soldiers that they're supposed to be, head and shoulders above an Imperial Guardsman. The question is, how do we do this?

My answer: Flatten the AP system.

There are weapons that have an incredibly high AP, and rightfully so! Lascannons, Melta Guns, Blasters, Dark Lances, all the way up to devastating Volcano Cannons and the like. These weapons should still feel like the tank-busters that they were made to be, but against individual troops these weapons are simply too powerful of an elite killer. Here's just my one idea of how we can help keep our poor, flimsy Astartes soldiers from getting pasted too quickly.

--Ranged Weapons that have an AP value that is greater than or equal to 2 that target a model with the 'Infantry' keyword can only reduce the armor value of that unit to a 5+. If the target is counted as being in cover, the weapon can only reduce the armor value of that unit to a 4+ instead.

The aforementioned weapons are anti-tank weapons. They're made to vaporize tank armor, and of course they should still be deadly, but let's try to encourage the use of these weapons against their intended targets: tanks. Of course, these weapons will still do plenty of damage to infantry models if they get through and will therefore be great terminator killers, but at least things like Space Marines will still get some sort of save, and cover may actually mean something! We see a bit of this flattening of AP in Age of Sigmar where VERY few weapons have an AP greater than -2 and most have 0 or -1 at best. This means that even the greatest weapons won't deny most other units a save, which means that everyone has a chance to roll dice. There's one phrase that keeps testing even the best sportsmen: "I don't get a save against that." It's not fun.

2. I can't come up with a set of rules that would cover (ba-dum-tish) all of the different types of terrain that people use. Some people use the power of their imagination to turn cans of soup and cereal boxes into sprawling hive cities, while others use GW terrain that has a plethora of problems from a game-standpoint, and yet others prefer designing their own terrain in uncountable ways. Even so, we've seen some improvement from GW, and that's in the treatment of cover in Kill Team. It's simple: If a model is obscured, it counts as being in cover. Let's bring that over to 40k. If we improve the AP system as in the above, then that alone would go a long way to making cover count for something. If we DON'T change the AP system, then something needs to change with cover.

--Models counted as being in cover treat their armor save as being 1 better (ie, a 4+ armor save is counted as 3+ armor save). In addition, if a model in cover is the target of a ranged weapon with an AP value greater than 0, treat the AP value of that weapon as 1 lower (ie, a weapon with an AP of -2 is instead treated as -1).

This does a few things. It doesn't ignore weapons that have an already outrageously high AP value. A Melta Gun, for example, will punch through the rock that the guardsman is hiding behind, and then punch through the guardsman with just as much ease. It does, however, give tanks a reason to try to hide behind some cover, to put a bit of extra wall between them and the lascannon that's targetting them. This does make tanks tougher against long-ranged shooting, but if you specify against ranged weapons, then it still gives power fists, chainfists, thunder hammers, and the like a role in tank-busting, as they should have. Anything that nerfs long-ranged I-can-see-you-through-this-tiny-window type of shooting is a good thing in my mind. It gives tanks, troops, anything a chance to move up the field to engage gunlines. This also gives models with armor a reason to stay in cover against things like plasma guns, autocannons, and things like that, meaning, you guessed it, Space Marines are a little more survivable against massed plasma and the like!

3. Finally, we come to allies. To be honest, I'd love to say 'just get rid of the whole system', but that wouldn't sell models, right? You know what else doesn't sell models? People leaving 40k to go play a different company's game. That's pretty exaggerated, I know, but I do notice a lot of people jumping from 40k to Age of Sigmar. That may be a win for GW, but probably not in the way that they would like. Why are people jumping to Age of Sigmar? Well, there aren't as many ally shenanigans as in 40k. Yes, Order is the largest faction and Stormcast Eternals can ally with just about anything, but even then you're limited to allying only 20% of your force.

There's a few things to allies that make them troublesome. The first is Command Points. The way they're generated and used is unbalanced. I've seen many games where even armies with 12+ command points eat through them by the end of turn 2. This front-loading of command points encourages a problem that I hear about a lot in 40k: alpha strikes. Especially in the shooting phase. Even if it's gunline vs. gunline, using a ton of stratagems and command points at the front of the game means you're often truly playing a 2000 vs. 1500 point game after Player 1 gets through their shooting phase.

This can be fixed by adopting the same system that is working for Age of Sigmar and is being used in Kill Team: Start the game with 1 command point and generate maybe 1-2 more at the start depending on how your army is composed (or if your leader is still alive). GW has shot themselves in the foot a little bit with this by adding stratagems that allow you to take multiple relics or warlord traits by spending 1-3 command points, along with stratagems that are used before the battle begins to affect deployment that often cost 2-3 command points as well. This means that the demand for command points is much higher in 40k, especially at the beginning of the game, than it is in other games. In the case of allies, though, this is only further problematic, since it encourages multiple game-changing relics to be bought. My solution? Start by getting rid of stratagems that give you more warlord traits or relics. Relics are... relics! When 15 different Imperial Guard regiments are all bringing Kurov's Aquila to the field of battle, it doesn't feel like a relic any more, does it? What's more, stratagems that cost 3 command points are now even more dire when you're only generating 1-2 command points per turn! That's a good thing, as it means that players will really have to consider whether that Command Re-roll is really worth it...

The other difficulty is the detachment system. Limiting allies to a point value won't even really stop a lot of the abuse that we see. You can still fit a Blood Angel Slam-captain and 180 points of CP generating Guardsmen into a 400 point limitation. So how do we get around this while still allowing people to use detachments and without limiting points?

Encourage other kinds of behavior. Let's start by tiering out the faction Keywords.

Tier 1 - Imperium, Xenos, Chaos - these are the great tiers, much like in Age of Sigmar, that, if your army is battle forged and made entirely with units that share this keyword, you get access to a few weaker relics and warlord traits. These won't generate additional CP and they won't give you any great bonuses, but if there's a combination you want that relies on having a bunch of different factions working together, then this is what you get.

Imperium Tier 2 - Astra Militarum, Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus, etc - If your army is battleforged and made entirely of detachments that share a keyword in this tier, you get access to your faction-specific stratagems. What? You mean if I take only Tier 1, I don't get faction-specific stratagems? Yep. You heard me right. If your army is all over the place, how do you expect a commander to efficiently issue orders? How would one commander be able to tell a Custodes Bike Captain to use their specific stratagems while simultaneously asking an Imperial Knights warlord to use a faction-specific stratagem there, too? Not only is it not fluffy, it's just bonkers, to be honest.

Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Tier 3 - Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Imperial Fists, etc - If your army is battleforged and made entirely of detachments that share a keyword in this tier, you get subfaction-specific relics and warlord traits, as well as a few bonus command points to spend on all of your spiffy stratagems.

This system encourages players to use one codex to get access to some of those fancy things. Really want to have Kurov's Aquila in your list? Well, you better make a battleforged army of units entirely from a Cadian regiment. Want to be able to Sally Forth! with your Imperial Knights? Then you better at least make an army that's all from Imperial Knights, if not from the same household. If you truly want to still bring Slamguinius and a CP farm of Imperial Guard, then you're going to miss out on a lot of stratagems, warlord traits, and relics.

THESE ARE JUST SOME IDEAS. These are not gospel. I am not so beholden to these ideas that I will defend them to Internet death. I am shooting things out there to see what sticks. Don't like these ideas? I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR OWN. Critique is fine, but let's keep things civil. If you think I'm an idiot, you can think that all you want, but please don't say it, that's just rude.

So, what do you think? How would you improve 8th edition to better balance it? How would you bring some of the lower-performing Codexes up while keeping the higher performing Codexes in check?

Saying AP should be flattened for that reason is subjective. First of all, we pay through the nose for high AP weapons, when I use one, I want it to hit hard. Obviously it should do just as good as it does against elites, it seems you are just looking for rule changes that benefit you rather than the game. As for marines they don't need better armour, they need two wounds flat as they should anyways in my opinion but at Astartes price, 1 wound in this edition does not cut it at all. AP is not an issue, it was a serious issue in 7th.

**Larks**

There are some good suggestions in here, though for me the only thing I want to see changed - so perhaps off topic as it's not by any means a "radical" change - is that your warlord must be taken from the faction/detachment that takes up the largest portion of your force, as determined by points/power level. Command Points being pooled as a resource to be spent on any available stratagems is fine in my opinion, but the force's commander should be from the largest group. Yes, I'm sure you can argue any which way about how it's fluffy for x,y,z reason how a leader can be a,b,c - but we need to worry about game mechanics.

I say this as an Imperial Guard player who frequently enjoys the presence of my Blood Angels Hammer Captain in my Cadian lists, and as a Blood Angels player who enjoys making use of the CP Battalion in Golden Host/Death Company lists.

**Strg Alt**

AnomanderRake wrote:
Blndmage wrote:
Movie marines?

A reference to a joke army list in a White Dwarf long ago where your 1,500pt army was a single Tactical squad with absurd and ridiculous stats, protected by 20pt stunt doubles ("don't worry, my missile launcher didn't actually bite it there, it was a stunt double!").

That was a great ruleset. People should take these stats and use them for 8th. It´ll be a win/win situation for all of us.

**marcman**

Without allies 40k would be boring tbh, I could maybe see limiting the number of detachments and in tournament play allowing armies like Ork, Tau, or Necron to ally with whoever they want (in my opinion tournaments/rules should ignore fluff and be unbiased). If 40k removed allies I would sell off my 40k lmao

I agree cover and LOS is an issue, but I think that +1 to armor is a step in the right direction. A possible alteration could be allowing the unit to roll BOTH a cover and armor save (first roll being if the shot hits the building, second if it goes through the armor). It does thematically make sense that a lascannon shot is strong enough to shoot through both a tree and power armor, infact my gripe in 7th was that cover is spammed too much (which is why i enjoyed using things with ignores cover)(you were at a major disadvantage if you weren't in cover in 7th, making games very boring for people with high ap guns) so I very much appreciate the rule change. Maybe making house rules/ using things with nonsee through windows is an easy solution.

I disagree on nurfing lascannon shots/ making max save a 5+. This sounds more like a personal gripe from someone who takes termies and not tanks. There is already a clear advatage to shooting lascannon shots at tanks over MEQ/TEQ, the only other change i could see is not a debuff on shooting at infantry but a to hit buff for shooting at vehicles (it should be easier to hit vehicles, especially ones that are close). Maybe a BS buff of +1 or +2 depending on distance from the vehicle. What your talking about is a universal invul save which is silly. It makes perfect sense that a troop in powerarmor hit with a lascanon is vaporized. Lascannons are single shot and their damage doesn't spill over, so at most youll lose one model anyways.

**CthuluIsSpy**

TIL earlier editions which didn't have soups were boring. I guess the amount of fun I had back then compared to now was a lie.
If you can't play as a pure faction without getting penalized, then the system sucks. Why should I have to buddy up with another faction just to have a chance of winning? That's bs.
Its just a way to get you to buy another army, and if you play as xenos, which generally don't have allies, then too bad, I guess you should have played imperial then. Now buy 3 knights and marines.

**Pancakey**

Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

**CthuluIsSpy**

Pancakey wrote:
Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

Yeah, 4th edition Area Terrain rules were cool. Iirc, if a unit was more than 6" away from the edge of the area terrain piece it was considered to be out of LOS.
That should help with some of the complaints of there not being enough LoS blocking terrain.

**catbarf**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Pancakey wrote:
Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

Yeah, 4th edition Area Terrain rules were cool. Iirc, if a unit was more than 6" away from the edge of the area terrain piece it was considered to be out of LOS.
That should help with some of the complaints of there not being enough LoS blocking terrain.

On that note, and this may be contentious, but I really dislike TLOS as a game mechanic. Cover and terrain would be much easier to manage if they just followed simple rules using the model's base. Base is wholly within an area of cover? You get cover. Can't trace a line between your base and the enemy's? No LOS. It's strange to me that the LOS/cover rules are the only part of the game where modeling matters- for all other purposes, a model is simply considered to occupy the space covered by its base.

**CthuluIsSpy**

catbarf wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Pancakey wrote:
Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

Yeah, 4th edition Area Terrain rules were cool. Iirc, if a unit was more than 6" away from the edge of the area terrain piece it was considered to be out of LOS.
That should help with some of the complaints of there not being enough LoS blocking terrain.

On that note, and this may be contentious, but I really dislike TLOS as a game mechanic. Cover and terrain would be much easier to manage if they just followed simple rules using the model's base. Base is wholly within an area of cover? You get cover. Can't trace a line between your base and the enemy's? No LOS. It's strange to me that the LOS/cover rules are the only part of the game where modeling matters- for all other purposes, a model is simply considered to occupy the space covered by its base.

The problem thought is that not all bases are the same.
Take my immortals for instance - some are on 25mm bases, some are on 40mm bases. This alone breaks a system that's reliant on bases, as now you have two different interactions with the same unit.
Rebasing isn't a solution, because there's a chance you could seriously break the model. Especially the slot-type ones, which is what the metal models used.

**Reemule**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Pancakey wrote:
Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

Yeah, 4th edition Area Terrain rules were cool. Iirc, if a unit was more than 6" away from the edge of the area terrain piece it was considered to be out of LOS.
That should help with some of the complaints of there not being enough LoS blocking terrain.

On that note, and this may be contentious, but I really dislike TLOS as a game mechanic. Cover and terrain would be much easier to manage if they just followed simple rules using the model's base. Base is wholly within an area of cover? You get cover. Can't trace a line between your base and the enemy's? No LOS. It's strange to me that the LOS/cover rules are the only part of the game where modeling matters- for all other purposes, a model is simply considered to occupy the space covered by its base.

The problem thought is that not all bases are the same.
Take my immortals for instance - some are on 25mm bases, some are on 40mm bases. This alone breaks a system that's reliant on bases, as now you have two different interactions with the same unit.
Rebasing isn't a solution, because there's a chance you could seriously break the model. Especially the slot-type ones, which is what the metal models used.

I don't understand your point. Why wouldn't rebasing be an issue? And it does have precedence.. Look at all the rebasing that 4th or 5th caused.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Reemule wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
catbarf wrote:
CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Pancakey wrote:
Writing decent terrain rules WOULD be RADICAL!

Yeah, 4th edition Area Terrain rules were cool. Iirc, if a unit was more than 6" away from the edge of the area terrain piece it was considered to be out of LOS.
That should help with some of the complaints of there not being enough LoS blocking terrain.

On that note, and this may be contentious, but I really dislike TLOS as a game mechanic. Cover and terrain would be much easier to manage if they just followed simple rules using the model's base. Base is wholly within an area of cover? You get cover. Can't trace a line between your base and the enemy's? No LOS. It's strange to me that the LOS/cover rules are the only part of the game where modeling matters- for all other purposes, a model is simply considered to occupy the space covered by its base.

The problem thought is that not all bases are the same.
Take my immortals for instance - some are on 25mm bases, some are on 40mm bases. This alone breaks a system that's reliant on bases, as now you have two different interactions with the same unit.
Rebasing isn't a solution, because there's a chance you could seriously break the model. Especially the slot-type ones, which is what the metal models used.

I don't understand your point. Why wouldn't rebasing be an issue? And it does have precedence.. Look at all the rebasing that 4th or 5th caused.

You may like to go through the laborious process of detaching your models from the bases and repairing breaks (especially on thin legged ones), but I don't think many would be bothered doing that. What rebasing in 4th and 5th ed? I don't remember any such rebasing in 4th and 5th ed.
Do you mean in WHFB? How long ago did that happen, and has it happened again, in such a way that affects the gameplay? Could it be that GW realized changing the bases in a game system that's base reliant is a bad idea, and as such chose not to do it again?

**Spoletta**

As bad as it is, AoS did cause a lot of rebasing and GW gave us a table of standard base sizes for each model.

Not only that, but with the endless spells, we had the first case of LoS based on bases. The palisade spells negates LoS if you cannot trace a straight line between the center of the attacking model and the center of target without touching the palisade base.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Spoletta wrote:
As bad as it is, AoS did cause a lot of rebasing and GW gave us a table of standard base sizes for each model.

Not only that, but with the endless spells, we had the first case of LoS based on bases. The palisade spells negates LoS if you cannot trace a straight line between the center of the attacking model and the center of target without touching the palisade base.

Yeah, but you can still use square bases in AoS, can't you? Which would imply that bases don't have that much of an impact on the game.
Its not like WHFB, where changing the base size had a considerable impact on the game, as units then had a much bigger footprint on the table.

**eldritchx**

Martel732 wrote:
DnDs system is absurd because it conflates hitting and armor penetration.

DnD's current system treats the attack roll as determining whether you land an effective hit, i.e. not an armored location that is beyond your strength to overcome. It's abstract, but it conflates nothing. High dexterity allows you to dodge more to avoid telling hits but is limited by armor weight. Strong attackers can land effective hits more easily by just penetrating armor, whereas dexterous attackers can go for weak spots instead.

40k's system is less abstract but requires 2 additional rolls, which allows for greater granularity with a d6 system, whereas a d20 system does not need this as much.

**Spoletta**

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Spoletta wrote:
As bad as it is, AoS did cause a lot of rebasing and GW gave us a table of standard base sizes for each model.

Not only that, but with the endless spells, we had the first case of LoS based on bases. The palisade spells negates LoS if you cannot trace a straight line between the center of the attacking model and the center of target without touching the palisade base.

Yeah, but you can still use square bases in AoS, can't you? Which would imply that bases don't have that much of an impact on the game.
Its not like WHFB, where changing the base size had a considerable impact on the game, as units then had a much bigger footprint on the table.

No, you can't use square bases. You can have them on your models, but by rules you have to measure distances as if they had the standard round base.

**Scott-S6**

catbarf wrote:
Base is wholly within an area of cover? You get cover. Can't trace a line between your base and the enemy's? No LOS

That only works on flat boards. If a model is elevated 90% of the model might be visible but the base is not visible. You then end up with horrible cludges and exceptions like in malifaux.

It also makes all terrain LoS blocking unless you add more exceptions.

**Martel732**

eldritchx wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
DnDs system is absurd because it conflates hitting and armor penetration.

DnD's current system treats the attack roll as determining whether you land an effective hit, i.e. not an armored location that is beyond your strength to overcome. It's abstract, but it conflates nothing. High dexterity allows you to dodge more to avoid telling hits but is limited by armor weight. Strong attackers can land effective hits more easily by just penetrating armor, whereas dexterous attackers can go for weak spots instead.

40k's system is less abstract but requires 2 additional rolls, which allows for greater granularity with a d6 system, whereas a d20 system does not need this as much.

You say abstract, i say conflate.