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Glumy wrote:
As i and some others said in various topics HH has to transcend into 7.5 or 8th edition to survive.

However there are some things in 7th that just work better in an environment with less amount of factions. Environment where less distinction beetwen factions has to be filled by more distinction in the core rules. Also its somewhat of a historical (kind of) game so it would benefit from a more realistic ruleset. So things like vehicle armour facings or even vehicle damage table should be in the HH rules.

Even challenge rules where 2 heroes face each other is quite cool a rule for HH.

Also as was said above its more of a codex and formations problem why 7th edition wasnt really that popular. That is why people started playing HH massively before coming of 8th because it didnt have most of those problems.

In the end i would just like HH to be saved and played by more people.

I hope they can fix it and that your community can enjoy it. But for me, I'll never come back to it. I played for a little over a year and all I ever got out of it was disappointment and a massive wallet assault. It's a shame because the general ascetics, are pretty nice for that game.

 Togusa wrote:
What do you find wrong with 8th? Care to list examples?

For me personally, I find 8th to be an overly homogenized, simplified mess that devolves into blobs of dudes clustering into aura buffs and lobbing shots across the board. That is if my opponent doesn't just field 4 knights and shoot me off the table before I have a chance to do anything. Not that anything I could do matters when facing 4 knights.

Just comparing 30k Legion rules to 8th edition chapter tactics/chaos legion traits to me is enough to justify me wanting to playing Age of Darkness over 8th.

 Coolyo294 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
What do you find wrong with 8th? Care to list examples?

For me personally, I find 8th to be an overly homogenized, simplified mess that devolves into blobs of dudes clustering into aura buffs and lobbing shots across the board. That is if my opponent doesn't just field 4 knights and shoot me off the table before I have a chance to do anything. Not that anything I could do matters when facing 4 knights.

As far as I know that's no different than 7E. You could totally be stuck facing a list of clustering aura buffs lobbing shots across the board, or a lance of Knights with no way to do anything, at least under the GW 7E rules (did Age of Darkness change that with respect to Knights?)

8E at least doesn't have the more insane things of 7E and they at least made up their minds on some of the detail stuff in the core rules they were trying to do too much with (even if just to dump it), the balance is whacky (as is tradition), but the spread is better than it was in the previous edition (though probably not any better than something like 4E or 5E).

Just comparing 30k Legion rules to 8th edition chapter tactics/chaos legion traits to me is enough to justify me wanting to playing Age of Darkness over 8th.

For me, if I had to pick one thing like this, the fundamental 7E vehicle rules and HP's are enough to never want to play 7E again, they're just fundamentally so poorly executed that they make playing tanks really not fun. They needed to pick one kill mechanic and do it right, and they just...couldn't

Whatever else one wants to say about 8E, vehicles are dramatically more functional, if less detailed.

Whatever else one wants to say about 8E, vehicles are dramatically more functional, if less detailed.

Have to echo this point. I actually enjoy using vehicles in 8th. In 7th vehicles felt a bit too much like glass cannons if the enemy was fielding anti-vehicle weapons.

 Eldarsif wrote:

Whatever else one wants to say about 8E, vehicles are dramatically more functional, if less detailed.

Have to echo this point. I actually enjoy using vehicles in 8th. In 7th vehicles felt a bit too much like glass cannons if the enemy was fielding anti-vehicle weapons.

I'm going to echo this as well - I enjoy playing the 'Fury of the Ancients' Rite of War, but it's tricky when everything either explodes or is immobilised turn 1.

I like that in 8th vehicles got toughness and save charcteristics.

However when it comes to oversimplification i always recall my own reaction to the Dawn of War 1st expansion - Winter Assault. It was the time when the game balance got changed drastically. Long story short from the point where all units were more or less usable in every tier form 1 to 3 you got a balance where tier above was better than below.

For example:
Vanillia DoW balance: Chaos Marines usable in all tiers
WA balance: Chaos Marines < Khorne Berzerkers < Possessed

I write this because when WA was released i really (and i mean really) prised the new balance only to get bored of it after 1 or 2 months and went to play only the mod Dawn of War Pro that wanted to bring the balance to the core of the vanillia with additional races.
DoW Dark Crusade was a little better but only because they limited the tier 3 units to 2 units max so you had to use lower tier units still.

WA streamlined the game. A lot. Perhaps too much for me.

 Togusa wrote:

Process wrote:
Me and a friend have just made the plunge into 30k, and both got our "starter sets" of FW resin down at Warhammer world this weekend. Also had a few interesting conversations down there so im quite optimistic that 30k is going to grow.

A couple of thoughts;

- BAC and BOP reached the end of their lifecycle and all of the components can be purchased separately (no doubt the SW and TS characters will get a release). With the steady stream of box sets being released, surely this had to be expected?

- The FW last chance to buy thing seems a little over-hyped, according to the gent behind the till in the FW store; just as many lines were discontinued in previous years.... they just didn't advertise it. And looking at the way the shelves are now layed out in there it certainly seems liek theres some strategy to whats being kept and whats being discontinued.

- If you have to "sell" 30k to somebody. Then its not for them. Its a game that's deep rooted in the fluff and the gaming side seems very much secondary to the hobby side. So if you dont know who Horus is or who the legions are... why wouldn't you just play normal 40k?

- Also on the above- The cost of models.... Theres nothing stopping you playing with a force comprising entirely of 40k plastic kits with a little modification, but when the aesthetic and theme come first it is worth the extra little bit of cash to get the justearin terminators over standard, or the contemptor over the standard dread etc. or just buy recast?

Speaking as someone who recently left this community, I take serious disagreement with your last statement there about selling 30K to people.

The game is about min/maxing Phsophor or Mechanicus Robots.

Guard, Custodes, and Ad Mech completely destabilized the game. Those three factions are so broken rules wise that I'm not even sure it is possible for the earliest Legions to compete with them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
HH remaining stuck on 7E doesn't help things, that was the worst ruleset 40k ever had, and it makes it difficult to introduce new players already familiar with 8E when they have to learn an outdated ruleset.

Losing Alan has also obviously hurt, as have a number of other already mentioned factors, and it definitely feels like peak HH fever has come and gone. It also doesn't help that they've been working on the HH project since 5E and still havent fleshed out everything.

I suspect one of two things will happen with HH. It will either be allowed to slowly wither and fall off before getting scrapped in a few years, or itll get rolled into whatever ruleset 40k is using with some likely dramatically pared down faction/legion rules and rereleased down the road, but either way I dont expect the current iteration of HH will enjoy the support it once did.

Lot better than 8th and only needs good codexes to be better as HH showed. 8th ed is unbalanced mess that has reached even worse than 7th ed was while being illogical, unfun and you can't even play game to completition without house rules.

Is HH rules perfect? No. Nothing never is. But it's better than the unbalanced illogical mess that the 8th ed is

STRONGLY disagree. I almost completely quit this whole hobby tanks to 7th edition. 8th Edition has kept me immensely happy.

What do you find wrong with 8th? Care to list examples?

So on your first point about min- maxing phosphex bots, I am sorry your local group sucked that hard.

Yes, custodes threw stuff off but Admech is fine, I beat them on the regular with my 16th legion.

As for 8th issues. My personal beef.

-Everything feels the same
-Falling back out of CQC without even a LD check screws over CQC units, hard.
-No vehicle facings. I can fire my left gun out the back right tire! Made you think a bit more.
-Cover is a joke. Unless you have LOS blocking terrain your basically playing on an open field. I get that they wanted to "reduce arguments about cover" but what the feth kind of people actually argue about that?!
-Primaris Lore is a fething dumpster fire. Models look solid though.

7th sucked hard IMO because the codex creep was real. The base system was fine.

Nothing wrong with AdMech and nothing wrong with Guard (you mean Militia not Death Guard, right?).

Custodes were horrible, I'm hoping the nerf they just got hurt them somewhat, personally I'd have gone a lot further to limit them as they were daft on release.

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:

As for 8th issues. My personal beef.

-Everything feels the same
-Falling back out of CQC without even a LD check screws over CQC units, hard.
-No vehicle facings. I can fire my left gun out the back right tire! Made you think a bit more.

The issue there was that it only affected vehicles, and only when GW decided to actually class them as such (stuff like thr Riptide not being a vehicle was silly). It didn't apply to artillery, heavy weapons units, or big monster gribblies. Everyone else could shoot out of their butts just fine.

With armor facings, all it did was mean tanks autodied once something made base contact and autohit rear armor, while against shooting most vehicles had similar or identical front/side armor anyway while shots to rear armor were honestly very rare.

-Cover is a joke. Unless you have LOS blocking terrain your basically playing on an open field. I get that they wanted to "reduce arguments about cover" but what the feth kind of people actually argue about that?!

Cover and terrain is definitely a thing they borked, that said, with the humongous number of ignores cover abilities and weapons in 7E, in practical effect its mostly a wash.

-Primaris Lore is a fething dumpster fire. Models look solid though.

agreed.

7th sucked hard IMO because the codex creep was real. The base system was fine.

Hrm, vehicles, challenges, wound allocation, Jink, lots of major missions issues, terrain setup, powers like invisibility, etc were all big core rules problems, at least to me.

 Vaktathi wrote:

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:

As for 8th issues. My personal beef.

-Everything feels the same
-Falling back out of CQC without even a LD check screws over CQC units, hard.
-No vehicle facings. I can fire my left gun out the back right tire! Made you think a bit more.

The issue there was that it only affected vehicles, and only when GW decided to actually class them as such (stuff like thr Riptide not being a vehicle was silly). It didn't apply to artillery, heavy weapons units, or big monster gribblies. Everyone else could shoot out of their butts just fine.

With armor facings, all it did was mean tanks autodied once something made base contact and autohit rear armor, while against shooting most vehicles had similar or identical front/side armor anyway while shots to rear armor were honestly very rare.

-Cover is a joke. Unless you have LOS blocking terrain your basically playing on an open field. I get that they wanted to "reduce arguments about cover" but what the feth kind of people actually argue about that?!

Cover and terrain is definitely a thing they borked, that said, with the humongous number of ignores cover abilities and weapons in 7E, in practical effect its mostly a wash.

-Primaris Lore is a fething dumpster fire. Models look solid though.

agreed.

7th sucked hard IMO because the codex creep was real. The base system was fine.

Hrm, vehicles, challenges, wound allocation, Jink, lots of major missions issues, terrain setup, powers like invisibility, etc were all big core rules problems, at least to me.

I will defiantly give you that vehicles are a tad squishy in 7th/AOD. Either your antitank deals with them, or they don't. That said I would still take that over the 8th way of handling them.
I could see a hybrid system of More hull points, a decrease in AV but a chart much like the one 8th uses.

As for your other points, the AOD book and faq fixed pretty much all of those. Invisibility is gone (thank god), terrain set up is more fair, the missions are honestly all fine as are the varius deployment types. Challenges are a bit of an odd system but never had an issue myself and now since wounds can spill out seems to fix a lot of issues.

Just to echo a lot of other posters, I think FW’s Heresy isn’t dead, but it’s switching to ‘maintenance’ mode rather than ‘growth’. I think that over the last few years a few different things combined to really boost growth of Heresy:

1. 7ed 40k was a mess of mini codexes, floating data sheets and formations and constant changes. 7ed 30k was exactly the same game, but with less random stuff to keep track of, which was really attractive to some people (me included). This attracted a lot of older/hobby-focused/less competitive gamers and being the same ruleset makes it easy for those people to switch over.

2. BOP and BAC made it really cheap to get your core army, being better value than a lot of 40k starter sets. You could build your core from those and then spend your money on fancy FW resin centrepieces.

3. FW had kinda moved 90% of their resources into Heresy to support this, so there were lots of cool models constantly coming out. (Their original brief was to provide expansions and cool collectors models for the core GW games, but since WHFB was on its way out and Heresy was technically an expansion for 40k I doubt anyone at GW HQ cared - even when the IA books dried up!)

4. The Heresy novels were amazing, some of the best BL has ever released, and they massively helped push people into building Heresy armies.

Pretty much all of that has now gone. BAC and BaP have been discontinued. The Heresy novel series got so incredibly bloated with audiobooks and exclusive short stories and compilations it became really daunting for anyone to start reading it. And 7ed 30k can no longer be considered an expansion to 40k any more, so I wouldn’t be surprised if GW is putting pressure on FW to get back to their original remit and produce some models for AoS and ‘modern’ 40k.

Given this current situation, I can’t see Heresy growing much in the future. I see it shrinking, though a lot of that shrinkage might already have happened. While I’m sure there are enough people near each other in the UK to fill a tournament, many of the stories in this thread reference smaller or remote scenes just ceasing to exist.

For the future, I think GW could go down two routes, depending on what they want from the product.

If they want the sort of growth and sales they had previously (which then justify FW putting loads of resources into it), I think they need to update the system to 8ed and put out some sort of plastic package deal. BL are restarting the novels as a separate Siege of Terra series, so that might be a good tie-in. I think that’s the only way to get back the big selling points above.

Alternatively, they could LOTRise it - just accept that this is a niche game with a small but loyal player base and massively downscale support, while keeping the game alive. Occasional releases, the odd book, someone at FW looking over any FAQlike changes just to keep it going. About the same level of support that LOTR has had recently. Realistically, I think this is their plan, at least for the next few years.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
BL are restarting the novels as a separate Siege of Terra series, so that might be a good tie-in. I think that’s the only way to get back the big selling points above.

New name for the series and a fresh start is a good idea. Horus Heresy series after around book 30 (for me) just started to get overly bloated. Most of the recent books are just boring. They write books that do important story elements that could take 1/3 of the space of the book and the rest it fills with boring stuff. I lost interest with HH series around book 41 (Master of Mankind was okay). I do read the series as i want to be up to date with the story but i just cant be blind to the truth.

So a new name and fresh start. Lets just hope this new series will get to the point without stretching it too much. It would probably be okay to fill 3 books with content. I suppose they wil try to milk it by stretching it to 12. I hope they have enough material for this.

It would be nice to get some Siege of Terra boxed set with a new ruleset in a year like LOTR got.

A switch to 8th would kill 30k.

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:
A switch to 8th would kill 30k.

Great. Lots of good thinking there.

I think, weirdly, it would be worse doing it now. If they’d just stuck to the original guns of ‘30k is an expansion to 40k and it’s gonna happen’ then I think there would have been a bit of grumbling but mostly people would have moved on. The delays and change of positions turned that whole thing into a really angry and partisan shouting match, to the level where ‘that conversation’ is banned on some Heresy groups.

Right now, there are a ton of Heresy fans who have left the game and (I think) it’s now consigned to a slow shrinkage and very few new players.

But if they switch to 8ed there are a ton of angry people who (while they probably would have been fine if the switch just happened a year ago) are now DEAD AGAINST THE TERRIBLE KIDDIEHAMMER 8ED and will all burn their models and jump up and down to prove it.

Short term solution: just stick with that group and let the game shrink into LOTR.
Long term growth for the game: switch, pour resources into it, let there be a bit of angry shouting and then rake in the cash like a couple of years ago. After all, that’s exactly what happened with AOS, and it now has more players than Fantasy ever did.


.

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:
A switch to 8th would kill 30k.

You could burn your army like some WFB players did.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:
A switch to 8th would kill 30k.

Great. Lots of good thinking there.

I think, weirdly, it would be worse doing it now. If they’d just stuck to the original guns of ‘30k is an expansion to 40k and it’s gonna happen’ then I think there would have been a bit of grumbling, mostly people would have moved on. The delays and change of positions turned that whole thing into a really angry and partisan shouting match, to the level where ‘that conversation’ is banned on some Heresy groups.

Right now, there are a ton of Heresy fans who have left the game and (I think) it’s now consigned to a slow shrinkage and very few new players.

But if they switch to 8ed there are a ton of angry people who (while they probably would have been fine if the switch just happened a year ago) are now DEAD AGAINST THE TERRIBLE KIDDIEHAMMER 8ED and will all burn their models and jump up and down.

Short term solution: just stick with that group and let the game shrink into LOTR.
Long term growth for the game: switch, pour resources into it, let there be a bit of angry shoutingand then rake in the cash like a couple of years ago. After all, that’s exactly what happened with AOS, and it now has more players than Fantasy ever did.

That's a really going point that I had not previously considered. Some 30k players that remain and keep playing have developed an identity that's bound in the hatred of 8th edition and the importance of vehicle facings and the other "simulation" aspects of 7th.

Things vary from region to region, and group to group, but in my neck of the woods most players that kept playing would welcome a switch to 8th. We're in it for the models and playing against other people who take painting and modelling seriously, the rules are less important. Most of us play both 7th and 8th, so the transition would be smooth. The few holdouts would switch to 8th because that's what the group did and they can either learn the rules or quit the game.

While I would enjoy an 8th edition version of Horus Heresy (particularly because they could learn from the experience in 8th now --- all of the FAQs and revisions etc. would just be in the rulebook at this point instead), I don't imagine it'll go to 8th anytime soon.

Consider how slow Horus Heresy is released (book-wise). GW would need to do what they did with 40K and release indexes for all of the existing HH models. Feasible, but still a lot of work, and then people would gripe through the more boring "Indexhammer" phase of Horus Heresy. Then you'd be restarting the slow book-a-year cycle that HH seems to be stuck with, etc. GW proper would need to come in and push massive resources to ensure that didn't happen somehow. Imagine how many current HH players would hang around if 8th launched and you had to wait another 3-4 years for a proper new Black Book, etc.

If GW does put HH into 8th edition, they'd need to do it all at once, an expensive proposition at the very least. GW and Forgeworld very much built a new method of sales around the episodic nature of the Horus Heresy (matching it with novels, etc.). I don't know if HH players currently would be willing to ride that pony again, reverting to standard Space Marine rules, etc.

 Elbows wrote:
While I would enjoy an 8th edition version of Horus Heresy (particularly because they could learn from the experience in 8th now --- all of the FAQs and revisions etc. would just be in the rulebook at this point instead), I don't imagine it'll go to 8th anytime soon.

Consider how slow Horus Heresy is released (book-wise). GW would need to do what they did with 40K and release indexes for all of the existing HH models. Feasible, but still a lot of work, and then people would gripe through the more boring "Indexhammer" phase of Horus Heresy. Then you'd be restarting the slow book-a-year cycle that HH seems to be stuck with, etc. GW proper would need to come in and push massive resources to ensure that didn't happen somehow. Imagine how many current HH players would hang around if 8th launched and you had to wait another 3-4 years for a proper new Black Book, etc.

If GW does put HH into 8th edition, they'd need to do it all at once, an expensive proposition at the very least. GW and Forgeworld very much built a new method of sales around the episodic nature of the Horus Heresy (matching it with novels, etc.). I don't know if HH players currently would be willing to ride that pony again, reverting to standard Space Marine rules, etc.

It's not going to happen, but they could try something radically different. Instead of doing this slow development cycle, why not work with the community. There is already the community built 8th edition port for the heresy. Bring those kind souls into the fold and let them help you redesign the rules. This generates excitement in the community and basically free advertisement. This also reignites sales of miniatures that they have already produced. Never going happen, but a middle aged man can dream.

The whole coffee table book approach as the standard book is just a horribly slow development cycle. Even if they don't want to work with the community and to get things off the ground quickly they need to dump the physical book approach to codex and redbook development. Make an army builder app and make it a subscription service. This gets you a predictable month to month income that makes investors happy while your customers get a living rulebook that can push out changes and FAQs instantaneously. I get that many people want a hardbook still, but I don't have space for that stuff anymore and I think most people feel the same. It makes sense to save the hardbooks for campaigns with maps and stories to base the game around. Rulebooks should be purely digital.

bogalubov wrote:

The whole coffee table book approach as the standard book is just a horribly slow development cycle. Even if they don't want to work with the community and to get things off the ground quickly they need to dump the physical book approach to codex and redbook development. Make an army builder app and make it a subscription service. This gets you a predictable month to month income that makes investors happy while your customers get a living rulebook that can push out changes and FAQs instantaneously. I get that many people want a hardbook still, but I don't have space for that stuff anymore and I think most people feel the same. It makes sense to save the hardbooks for campaigns with maps and stories to base the game around. Rulebooks should be purely digital.

Ugh those subscribtion based ones are plague. Only able to play as long as you pay=joke. It's basically making players your hostages. And unlike video games here you now have physical models that would become obsolete.

No way. No company can be given authority to decide how long the game can be played.

To switch Legions to 8th, you literally need 2 books, around 100 pages each, legion special book needs a bit more considering number of legions now. Then you can have 2 more book for custodes/admech/solar/cult...not really that much job to be done tbh.

No need to release all previous black books at this point. Though by the time they decide to switch it to 8th, 9th will be out, so might as well, switch it to 9th.

bogalubov wrote:...in my neck of the woods most players that kept playing would welcome a switch to 8th. We're in it for the models and playing against other people who take painting and modelling seriously, the rules are less important. Most of us play both 7th and 8th, so the transition would be smooth. The few holdouts would switch to 8th because that's what the group did and they can either learn the rules or quit the game.

I mean, IN THEORY that's what all of the Heresy gang would do, because they're mostly there for the cool models and storytelling and the rules don't even matter, right? They're just narrative gamers, gaming for fun, right? Definitely not competitive at all. Nope.

tneva82 wrote:Ugh those subscribtion based ones are plague. Only able to play as long as you pay=joke. It's basically making players your hostages. And unlike video games here you now have physical models that would become obsolete.

I think he's just suggesting that an army-builder app be subscription-based. I agree that the basic rules should be a simple free thing, and I prefer handy reference books (or printouts) in-game to using the iPad, but running the whole game on £70 coffee-table books is just silly.

smurfORnot wrote:To switch Legions to 8th, you literally need 2 books, around 100 pages each, legion special book needs a bit more considering number of legions now. Then you can have 2 more book for custodes/admech/solar/cult...not really that much job to be done tbh.

Yup. Agreed. If they did this, the people who REALLY wanna stick with 7ed can still play it using the existing black books.

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

Process wrote:
Me and a friend have just made the plunge into 30k, and both got our "starter sets" of FW resin down at Warhammer world this weekend. Also had a few interesting conversations down there so im quite optimistic that 30k is going to grow.

A couple of thoughts;

- BAC and BOP reached the end of their lifecycle and all of the components can be purchased separately (no doubt the SW and TS characters will get a release). With the steady stream of box sets being released, surely this had to be expected?

- The FW last chance to buy thing seems a little over-hyped, according to the gent behind the till in the FW store; just as many lines were discontinued in previous years.... they just didn't advertise it. And looking at the way the shelves are now layed out in there it certainly seems liek theres some strategy to whats being kept and whats being discontinued.

- If you have to "sell" 30k to somebody. Then its not for them. Its a game that's deep rooted in the fluff and the gaming side seems very much secondary to the hobby side. So if you dont know who Horus is or who the legions are... why wouldn't you just play normal 40k?

- Also on the above- The cost of models.... Theres nothing stopping you playing with a force comprising entirely of 40k plastic kits with a little modification, but when the aesthetic and theme come first it is worth the extra little bit of cash to get the justearin terminators over standard, or the contemptor over the standard dread etc. or just buy recast?

Speaking as someone who recently left this community, I take serious disagreement with your last statement there about selling 30K to people.

The game is about min/maxing Phsophor or Mechanicus Robots.

Guard, Custodes, and Ad Mech completely destabilized the game. Those three factions are so broken rules wise that I'm not even sure it is possible for the earliest Legions to compete with them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
HH remaining stuck on 7E doesn't help things, that was the worst ruleset 40k ever had, and it makes it difficult to introduce new players already familiar with 8E when they have to learn an outdated ruleset.

Losing Alan has also obviously hurt, as have a number of other already mentioned factors, and it definitely feels like peak HH fever has come and gone. It also doesn't help that they've been working on the HH project since 5E and still havent fleshed out everything.

I suspect one of two things will happen with HH. It will either be allowed to slowly wither and fall off before getting scrapped in a few years, or itll get rolled into whatever ruleset 40k is using with some likely dramatically pared down faction/legion rules and rereleased down the road, but either way I dont expect the current iteration of HH will enjoy the support it once did.

Lot better than 8th and only needs good codexes to be better as HH showed. 8th ed is unbalanced mess that has reached even worse than 7th ed was while being illogical, unfun and you can't even play game to completition without house rules.

Is HH rules perfect? No. Nothing never is. But it's better than the unbalanced illogical mess that the 8th ed is

STRONGLY disagree. I almost completely quit this whole hobby tanks to 7th edition. 8th Edition has kept me immensely happy.

What do you find wrong with 8th? Care to list examples?

So on your first point about min- maxing phosphex bots, I am sorry your local group sucked that hard.

Yes, custodes threw stuff off but Admech is fine, I beat them on the regular with my 16th legion.

As for 8th issues. My personal beef.

-Everything feels the same
-Falling back out of CQC without even a LD check screws over CQC units, hard.
-No vehicle facings. I can fire my left gun out the back right tire! Made you think a bit more.
-Cover is a joke. Unless you have LOS blocking terrain your basically playing on an open field. I get that they wanted to "reduce arguments about cover" but what the feth kind of people actually argue about that?!
-Primaris Lore is a fething dumpster fire. Models look solid though.

7th sucked hard IMO because the codex creep was real. The base system was fine.

Point 1. I dunno about everything being the same, I play Tau and I feel pretty unique compared to my other armies, and my local group.
Point 2. I play Tau. LD checks would be fine with me, but I really could care less about CC.
Point 3. THANK FETHING GOD-EMPEROR. Facings were the WORST part about tanks in 7th edition. They were the cause of almost as many arguments for me than armor facings. Good riddance!
Point 4. You can talk with your opponent, I know my local group completely house ruled terrain. It also would appear that it may be officially changing in CA18.
Point 5. Some people like the Mona Lisa, others don't. Doesn't make it a solid reason in my opinion for why something is inferior.

When it comes to 7th I nearly left this game. 8th Revitalized it for me. In the past 14 months I've played close to 200 games. But in the last two years of 7th I probably played less than 60. It felt like a chore.

About Ad Mech, no, it wasn't fine. Some of the most brutal and demoralizing defeats I faced came from that army. Everything was toughness based, everything was AP 1, everything was repairable. One of our local players was well known for having the power to break just about anything he touched rules wise, after facing his Ad Mech lists, I never played against the army again. It was a nightmare.


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 ArbitorIan wrote:

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:
A switch to 8th would kill 30k.

Great. Lots of good thinking there.

I think, weirdly, it would be worse doing it now. If they’d just stuck to the original guns of ‘30k is an expansion to 40k and it’s gonna happen’ then I think there would have been a bit of grumbling but mostly people would have moved on. The delays and change of positions turned that whole thing into a really angry and partisan shouting match, to the level where ‘that conversation’ is banned on some Heresy groups.

Right now, there are a ton of Heresy fans who have left the game and (I think) it’s now consigned to a slow shrinkage and very few new players.

But if they switch to 8ed there are a ton of angry people who (while they probably would have been fine if the switch just happened a year ago) are now DEAD AGAINST THE TERRIBLE KIDDIEHAMMER 8ED and will all burn their models and jump up and down to prove it.

Short term solution: just stick with that group and let the game shrink into LOTR.
Long term growth for the game: switch, pour resources into it, let there be a bit of angry shouting and then rake in the cash like a couple of years ago. After all, that’s exactly what happened with AOS, and it now has more players than Fantasy ever did.


.

One thing I probably could have lived with, without a rules change, was to see more of the line migrate to hard plastic. That would have kept me around longer. When I bought my Tau army, I spent close to 700$ on it, but my HH Ultramarine legion cost me well over 1600$.

 Togusa wrote:

When it comes to 7th I nearly left this game. 8th Revitalized it for me. In the past 14 months I've played close to 200 games. But in the last two years of 7th I probably played less than 60. It felt like a chore.

THIS.

I played almost exclusively Heresy for the whole of 7ed, and was in the process of changing all my armies over to Heresy where possible. Heresy events, Heresy tournaments, etc etc. Not because it was a brilliant game, but because I preferred the background and it was way less of a slog than 40k 7ed. I mean, it still felt like a chore to play compared to any other modern war game, but I preferred playing Heresy to 7ed 40k!

This past year I’ve probably already played more games of 40k 8ed than I ever had of 7ed (any version). It’s just a lot more fun.


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LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:

-Cover is a joke. Unless you have LOS blocking terrain your basically playing on an open field. I get that they wanted to "reduce arguments about cover" but what the feth kind of people actually argue about that?

Just to the cover thing, two points people often forget about 8ed cover when looking from a 7ed POV:

- there’s a whole section of advanced cover rules for Cities of Death at the back. In HH8ed, we recommend everyone use them.
- terrain has become much more a Movement thing than a Saving Throw thing. Infantry get massive advantages in cover, and almost all vehicles have to go around practically everything. It’s not just ‘basically ignore it unless you roll 1’. Cover placement can really mess with the game, just because of movement rather than saving throws.

I still think a lot of it has to do with GW not wanting FW to get ahead of BL. There are only a few Primarchs left to release and they are probably going to hold them back until after the siege of terra is wrapped up in the novels.

I played several games of 8th just to try it only. I didnt play much more mostly because:
1) i dont have much time
2) i prefer HH to 40k history
3) i have pretty tough min maxing players to play with (its not a minus, it means i need best units like 40 Cultists in order to match effectively)

Ok so i was for the last 1.5 years working (slowly) on my Word Bearers. First for Betrayal at Calth game and later expanded for a big standalone army. Now theyre a fully playable Heresy army.

For the last month or so i began playing several games with some buddies who still play HH in my area. Reading through 7th edition Rulebook is quite a feat itself. I think 7th edition has some pluses over 8th but i wrote about it in other posts/topic (for example some randomness in deep striking, templates, etc can be good for players only playing for fun). Anyway i started playing 40k in 4th edition and i just adored that older version of the game. When comparing 4th edition rulebook to 7th edition rulebook the 7th edition at its base looks like bloated mess from the start. It just has too many, forgetable rules. I would say 7th codexes were the worst but edition itself could use some shrinking.

On a side note HH always seemed fun for me for things like Zone Mortalis. Now i want to try Victory is Vengeance rules with a friend.

I will say it again HH needs to go 8th to survive. I would myself prefer something like advanced 8th but ill take whatever they can give me.

My army and excitement for the game are in stasis. Frankly, I’ve following 30k news to be stressful compared to other games, and I’m finally sick of Forge World. The regional price hikes were only the last straw.

Before I go into my list of complaints, I think FW is failing to take advantage of the opportunity given to them by the low pound. Unlike GW, their costs are largely domestic. A weak local currency is a boon to exporters with minimal foreign liabilities; it’s how Japanese and then Chinese exports took off. It was not a good time to slow down their campaign book output and release rhino doors for months. The price advantage outside the UK still helped, though, and BaC/BoP (and a few podcasts) grew the game tremendously here. Not all of those buyers would go on to buy a lot of FW resin, but it was still growth. Not anymore.

The Last Chance to Buy campaign is when I started falling out of love. I use a lot of Mk II and legion torsos for my White Scars so I took it kind of personally. I was already annoyed (and some Ravenwing players are too) that we usually get depicted in Mk II yet all of the Fast Attack models are Mk IV-only, so going full-Mk II was expensive and there was never a good solution for biker arms. But the campaign kept going longer than I expected, often with items selling out before my time zone was even awake. Terrible communication, too, which we’ve gotten used to with FW just as GW has gotten better at it. On the less-bad side, they appeared to extend Mk II production to accommodate any orders sent in that week.

But it had been stressful before. The whole 7th/8th decision was a disaster. Not so much because of the outcome, at least in the short term, but because instead of telling us they were thinking about it, their customer service reps were sending out contradicting emails. Before that, we had the multibombing saga when a 40k FAQ affected 30k and FW wouldn’t comment on it. It took them nearly two years to answer ⅔ of our questions on the red books. An army that can do well despite 20-25% points penalties in a lot of events received only minor tweaks a year and a half later. And for nearly a year, the only HQ model for that army was a WHW exclusive, just like a bunch of consul types. That’s insane.

I’ve gotten much better service from games companies that have asked far less of me, and it’s time I rewarded them instead.

TBH I don’t get much of the doom and gloom in this thread. Oddly enough I’ve have actually seen some uptick in interest and gaming in my community. For a year or two I was barely able to get two or three games a year outside of going to LVO or something. The only thing that’s bothered me much is the whole pricing change up which made zero sense. But everything else is more understandable in terms of releases slowing down and the general confusion around the switch up of 40k to 8th.

I think we won’t see something like a change of 30k to the 8th ruleset at least until all of the legions get their Primarch and all that.

As for 8th vs “Age of Darkness 7th”, I think I agree with the people who have said that if 30k had just ported over to 8th immediately there would have been much less heel digging than we see now (from both 40k and 30k communities. I am a fan of 7th, prob because I didn’t have any actual 40k games just Horus Heresy. And I see some of the attraction that 8th has. But now I think that both have been split for so long, it’s created two communities with widely different experiences and outlooks, with some overlap. Most people I know who do play both systems lament the loss of some detail in the 8th ruleset but also wish that 30k was more streamlined.

I’m rambling now I think. Summation is, I don’t think everything is as bad as some people here seem to think. Heresy is not dead. 30k prob won’t go 8th for a long time (if ever).

30k does not need to be streamlined, it’s fine. The reasons we started playing 30k here, was not only because we love the setting, but we see the whole ruleset as vastly superior to the mortal wound shitstorm 8th is.

A couple of years ago, Horus Heresy was the sole focus of Forge World. Now, it's having to share resources, logistics and release slots with all the Specialist Games. Of course that's going to have an impact.

Personally, I played because I liked the setting, and despite the rules. Vehicles? too fragile, but not particularly awful. However, the thing that really ripped my knitting was wound allocation - apparently one model could somehow intercept all the fire from a huge mob of rapid-firing space marines; is he leaping about like Yoda to do that? Artificer Armour was a stupid idea in 1999, it's still stupid in 2018. I've played one game of HH since 8th edition 40k came out, and it was fun - but only because of the fact I was playing against a friend, and we both had painted armies on a decent-looking board; actually using the rules was a slog.

I feel like a lot of the stuff that clogs up HH at the moment - Legion special rules, the Ritges of War and whatnot - could be easily done as different Detachments or Stratagems. The Communications officer, for example, is a shoe-in for providing additional CP; a better representation of the role than just having a big gun.

This is the problem. Whenever people talk about Horus Heresy a bunch of people stick their heads out of the sand long enough to proclaim everything is fine and then stick them right back in. 7th Edition is probably one of the most hated editions in 40k's history and HH does not benefit from clinging to it. It's makes an already difficult hobby entry process neigh-impossible for anyone but the most dedicated and income heavy of players - a niche it can now fight with Adeptus Titanicus players over.

If HH doesn't keep up it's going to end like Star Fleet Battles - 40 guys wielding 300 page rulebooks and 20 pages of house rules attached consoling themselves that balance isn't that big of a deal after all.