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Ill keep it short. Here are some Systems and suggestions I discussed or picked up from discussions. Keep in mind IMO Fluff is #1 priority and you can change points cost afterwards, although one shouldnt neglect balance ofcourse.
System changes are bigger and scale and would rather see them as 8.5th edition

[WS]
In old editions you compared your WS as well as Initiativ, in 8th edition you only have your own WS you care about which results in dull dice rolling which should not be the case in epic hand to hand combat.

Introduce 2 universal rules for A infantry that is good in melee, B) Infanry that are gods in melee
A)"Melee Proficiency" Enemy Infantry Units within 1" of this unit, targeting this unit receive a -1 to hit in the fighting phase.
B)"Melee Expertise" Enemy Infantry Units within 1" of this unit, targeting this unit receive a -1 to hit in the fighting phase, additionally this unit ignores the effect of the rule "melee proficiency" affecting this unit

Old suggestion:




_____________________________________________________________________________
[S&T]
I believe currently it is a bit hard to balance, especially around space marine lvl and vehicles.
First of all: anything that is OVER the double Strength value like: S3 vs S7 should not be able to wound.
2nd of all, for I would say 8.5 edition you could expand the strength and Toughness values.
Overall it means: Lasguns cant wound vehicles, leaves more room to balance like skitarii who sit between both and Terminators who should be more resiliant.
Also It differentiates more between elite and horde armies, which decreased in 8th edition and should make the games fluffier and more unique and not make skitarii for example just expensive guardsmen.


Here a short list:

Toughness
3: Guard, Cultist equivalents, tau
4: skitarii, scouts, necron warrior, eldar
5: Spacemarines, necron immortals
6: Terminators, Primaris, Nurgle Marines, Scout vehicles, some light vehicles
7: light to medium vehicles, transports, flyers
8: medium to heavy vehicles, heavy transports
9: Lords of War
10+:Anything bigger than a Knight

Strength
3: Lasguns, |guardsmen, Tau
4: Radium Carbines, |skitarii, Eldar
5: Bolter, Galvanic rifle, Gauss, |space marines, Sicarians
6: Tau Weapons, Guass Blaster, Tesla, skitarii tazer of +2|Stronger Space marines
7: Phosphor, Icarus( little rockets)
8: Icarus
9: Autocannon
11: Lascannon
14: Neutronlaser, Doomsday cannon
20: Anti Titanic Guns



___________________________________________
[Guardsmen]

Guard is the single most op troop atm in 8th edition and here I list reasons why the balance is off.
Conscripts should stay at 4ppm, guardsmen 5ppm, not nerf their stats but elite need a buff as they suffered alot on this edition.

Who shoots with -3/-4ap if in cover which they almost always are at T3 W1 troops? 6++ is never used. Same with the Hqs 2+/5++, almost never shot at as they are characters and almost nothing in melee has -4ap.
Skitarii: change the invuln to 6+fnp, sicarians a 5+fnp again, Hqs need better invulns and or fnp.
Cawl: 4++ with rerolls(nerfs shooting base as you have to pay more for his survivability, helps if you want him to help in melee as well which he has the weapons to do so, he should be the big boss techpriest and Id gladly pay more)
Dominus 4++
Enginseer 6++( not equiped for warfare)



1.Guard stayed the same cost.
2.Got better armor, as most weapons used to have AP 5, only lasguns hat AP -
3.Weapons were buffed in comparison for stated reasons
4.Got buffed as they are generating CP now which is crucial in 8th edition.
5.Have no morale issues and can screen the board really well, which is not part of the model cost calculation apparently, help against charges, deepstrikes and can easily for minimal cost hold objectives, or tie someone up in melee.
6. Opponents Cant really shoot them down efficiently as they are only 4ppm and should stay so, but having an armor save of 5+ is too good for them, when most standard weapons have now ap 0 instead of AP5
7.Also orders are really really good, but them being squishier should negate that and the armor would still feel like horde, but actually require using LOS and Cover and not just having huge lines across the field, without any tactical sense.

The issue with your proposed WS Changes is that it overly punishes differences.

If I have WS4 and you have WS3, I hit you on 3s and you hit back on 5s.

What I've proposed in the past, and I think works better with 8th, is just give former melee machines WS1+ or even WS0+, and then have them inflict -1 or -2 to be hit in CC.

I believe the conversion I used was...

WS2 becomes 5+
WS3 becomes 4+
WS4 becomes 3+
WS5-6 becomes 2+
WS7-8 becomes 1+ and inflicts a -1 penalty to enemy CC
WS9-10 becomes 0+ and inflicts a -2 penalty to enemy CC

The only exception I know of, off-hand, is the Culexus. Give him a 1+, but NOT the -1 to be hit.

WEAPON SKILL
I basically agree with JNA. The current system mostly works fine. The places where I miss the old system are where extreme BAMFs are fighting mooks. Fire warriors and termagaunts are already pretty bad at doing damage to anything with a decent armor save, and that's as it should be. Those same tau and gaunts being surprisingly good at dragging down Lucius the Eternal or a Phoenix Lord or even just the average harlequin? Less so.

Basically, anything that qualifies for top-tier melee combatant status or that is especially good at throwing off enemy attacks should inflict -1 to to-hit rolls made against them in the fight phase.

So Lucius the Eternal should definitely impose penalties. Kharn maybe doesn't by virtue of being all about that froth-mouthed offense. A captain maybe does. An autarch maybe does, but a phoenix lord definitely does. Harlequins maybe should, and would need an accompanying price hike.

STRENGTH & TOUGHNESS
I'm not against expanding the values used in the game, but I'm not sure much really changes as a result of doing so either. With the numbers you've presented, guard still wound marines on 5s. Marines still wound guard on 3s. You give yourself a smidgeon more room to express who would win in an arm wrestling match, but you don't really change the math of the game in many cases. Maybe with more examples I might change my mind on that point. I see you've upped the toughness of terminators, for example, and that does interesting things to them.

Not being able to wound things at all with some weapons seems like a bad move to me though. I know that's how things were for a long while, and it never felt good to be on the receiving end of a toughness spam army.

Say you bring a vanilla guard list with a conventional mix of infantry and tanks. Now say I bring a vanilla dark eldar list meaning everything in my army is riding in a transport (which according to your chart means my entire army is riding in a T7 transport that they can shoot out of). That means the only things in your army that can hurt me are the tanks and maybe the occassional special or heavy weapon here and there. In my first two turns, I will focus down your tanks so that you have nearly nothing left in your army that can meaningfully interact with me. Fun, right?

Or for a simpler, more direct example, you're that same guard army. I'm playing all knights. You aren't playing 40k. You are playing a game where I remove your ability to hurt me ASAP, and then the rest of your game is just you figuring out which squads to place on objective or throw into the grinder to slow me down. It's not the experience either of us signed up for.

As pitched in another thread, I personally like being able to wound on 6s, but I find it's very time consuming for little impact. Instead, I'd like to see a universal rule introduced that lets you trade in 6 hits for 1 automatic wound when firing at a target with double the toughness of a weapon's strength.. Basically cutting out the extra rolling for a statistical average.

So if I shoot 10 bolters at a knight and get 14 hits, I could trade in 12 hits for 2 wounds and then resolve 2 to-wound rolls normally. Weapons like eldar shuriken catapults that have special rules that trigger on 6s would be treated as having rolled a 6. Because that's the number you would need to hurt the thing in the first place.

GUARDSMEN
Sure. They could be 6+ saves instead of 5+. It would nerf them significantly. They'd still probably be decent.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The issue with your proposed WS Changes is that it overly punishes differences.

Yes I can see it, although I wanted it too to make up for the absence of initiativ, as well as leave more room for balance as almost everyone hits on 3+/4+. However some melee units would be more expensive than in comparison to horde, as horde will become worse in melee if they are not dedicated to that.
Another possibility were that only if you have half or less / or double or more the WS you get +1/-1 to the roll as it showcases the extreme difference in their melee capabilities.

Edited in my Original Post:
It would be way easier using your method, everyone that is proficient in melee like Ruststalkers Should give -1 to hit in melee against infantry units. (make it an universal rule eg. named: Combat Proficiency)
The Best of the best would additionaly have the rule to ignore that -1 to hit. (make it an universal rule that is an extension of the other eg. named Combat expertise)
Thirdly the rule would affect Vehicles or Monsters ( vehicles and monster fight differently and dont interact much with the other weapons like infantry vs infantry would do)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
WEAPON SKILL

I can see where you are coming from, I only played little in 7th edition, as it was my starting edition and I primarily focused on painting and building my army. How did it work/ Why did such a system work back in 7e with hull points?
I would argue that more balanced lists would be more important instead of body spamming. Additionaly Vehicles would get either expensive or have less wounds in comparison to guard for example as they will be harder to kill with infantry weaponry, however still be as easy to be killed from AT weaponry. That would also mean that you have in comparison more infantry models on the field if the enemy only runs knights, which are two extremes of list building but the guards men would have to play the objective.
Maybe Knights should be moved down in Toughness, as they had an armor value of 13 I believe in 7E

I'd rather have guardsmen with a 5+ save and be 5ppm than have guardsmen with a 6+ save and be 4ppm. Guardsmen are already one of the weakest infantry on the tabletop (in terms of individual fighting ability, not overall strength), and making them even weaker seems counter-intuitive. I like the fact that guardsmen have a crunchy 5+ save, and I feel it is in just the right spot to be noticeable, yet not overpowered.

I think the bigger problem is how bolt weapons have transitioned from earlier editions into 8th. The lack of AP really hurts them.

 0XFallen wrote:

Edited in my Original Post:
It would be way easier using your method, everyone that is proficient in melee like Ruststalkers Should give -1 to hit in melee against infantry units. (make it an universal rule eg. named: Combat Proficiency)
The Best of the best would additionaly have the rule to ignore that -1 to hit. (make it an universal rule that is an extension of the other eg. named Combat expertise)
Thirdly the rule would affect Vehicles or Monsters ( vehicles and monster fight differently and dont interact much with the other weapons like infantry vs infantry would do)

This feels slightly odd to me as it would mean that all units good enough at melee to have Combat Proficiency but not Combat Expertise would be inflicting a penalty on one another. I can see where the cinematic appeal of death company and chaos chosen dueling with their blades crossed lies, but it is a straight debuff to the offensive abilities of most melee units. Also, where's the cutoff? Do ork boyz have Combat Proficiency? If so, units like fire warriors or guard or guardians who already do next to nothing against orks in the fight phase now do even less. If boyz don't have combat proficiency, then you just nerfed ork boyz against things like death company. Which is maybe intentional, but I"m guessing probably isn't.

That said, I totally support basically this idea but with much more limited application. (See below).

I can see where you are coming from, I only played little in 7th edition, as it was my starting edition and I primarily focused on painting and building my army. How did it work/ Why did such a system work back in 7e with hull points?
I would argue that more balanced lists would be more important instead of body spamming. Additionaly Vehicles would get either expensive or have less wounds in comparison to guard for example as they will be harder to kill with infantry weaponry, however still be as easy to be killed from AT weaponry. That would also mean that you have in comparison more infantry models on the field if the enemy only runs knights, which are two extremes of list building but the guards men would have to play the objective.
Maybe Knights should be moved down in Toughness, as they had an armor value of 13 I believe in 7E

I'm not sure which parts of my post you're specifically referring to, but I'll try my best to respond.

In 7th edition, most of the units that are now called "characters" had a rule called "independent character" that allowed them to attach themselves to a friendly unit. As a result, they could not be targeted in the fight phase except as part of the "challenge" rules that let things like other independent characters and sergeants/nobz/exarchs/etc. call other characters out. The result was character models like Lucius, for instance, couldn't be targeted by a pile of random ork boyz until he was the last model. He could be targeted by the nob, but not all the nob'z pals.

Additionally, hitting in melee wasn't a flat number like it is now. There was this chart that was sort of tough to explain but basically boiled down to:
* If your WS is the same as the enemy's or not too much lower you hit on 4's
* If your WS is higher, you hit on 3's.
* If your WS is much lower than the enemy's you hit on 5's.

That last part didn't come up much, but it did mean you had rare scenarios where especially talented melee combatants were only being hit on 5s by less talented opponents.

8th edition doesn't offer the same level protection attaching to a squad in close combat did, and WS is now a flat number. So guardsmen who might have once hit my phoenix lords on 5s in melee now hit them on 4s. More elite units that would have hit those phoenix lords on 4s now hit them on 3s. That's why I suggested letting certain especially talented melee combatants impose the -1 to hit against other units in melee. It lets the short list of units that were previously capable of reaching the point of only being hit on 5s by some enemies recapture some of that combat superiority. If two characters with that same rule are swinging at one another, letting them both impose a -1 against one another arguably feels more cinematic. Like they're both good enough at dueling to draw the fight out longer than usual.

I'm not sure how the hull point question factors into Weapon Skill, so I'll assume that part was in response to the Strength/Toughness part of the discussion.

In previous editions, vehicles had an armor value that often meant anything more durable than an ork truk or a dark eldar transport was basically untouchable by something strength 4 or lower. The exception being that almost all vehicles had a rear armor value of 10 which meant that you could wound them on 6s if you shot them in the butt or punched them in close combat. This relative invulnerability was a problem off and on over the editions. When I started playing in 5th, vehicle spam was the way to play because an army with enough vehicles basically couldn't be killed. Rather than lowering their "wounds", you rolled on a chart each time you hurt a vehicle and tried to accumulate enough damaging rolls on that table to kill it. In 6th edition, they basically made that table a lot more punishing to vehicles so that they died faster. Arguably too fast. In 7th edition, they gave all vehicles a small number of wounds, called hull points. This meant that even though the vehicle was still basically immune to small arms fire, you only had to get a few goods hits in with your mid or high strength weapons to destroy it. In 7th edition, mid-strength weapons typically had a higher rate of fire meaning they would whittle down most vehicles more reliably, but weapons with good enough AP could potentially kill a vehicle in a single shot.

This edition, almost all vehicles had their wounds (hull points) tripled or more. They also got armor saves (they didn't have those before) meaning that they had a chance of completely ignoring some of the shots that managed to wound them.

So basically, it was still really unpleasant to play against an armor spam army in past editions, but you could sort of work around it by cramming a ton of mid or high strength weapons into your army because the vehicles tended to die faster against everything but small arms fire. Vehicles were also more susceptible to attacks in melee, so any unit with strength 4 or better had at least a small chance of killing off most vehicles in melee.

Part of the reason knights were a pain last edition is that they were tough enough to not really be all that threatened by mid-strength shooting and could basically ignore any unit in the game in melee that wasn't strength 7 or higher. It was a pain. Which is why I don't like the strength/toughness changes you've proposed. It stinks to have huge chunks of your army be completely unable to interact with big chunks of the enemy army. Worse, if the high toughness units are part of the competitive meta, then it makes it feel like your units that focus on small arms fire are basically non-options. For a modern example, I basically pretend most aeldari melee units don't exist when writing competitive lists because knights make them a bad idea.

But I'm only guessing as to what part of my post you were replying to, so I'll cut this rant off here and let you respond. ^_^;

w1zard wrote:
.

Thats how they should be, they dont win with individual performance but by holding lines and objectives as they are expendable and really high in numbers, right now they are the best troop choice available and are already pushing the line of being almost as good as skitarii individually, which doesnt fit lorewise, although that might be also because GW gutted the skitarii rules.

Wyldhunt wrote:
.

Thanks for all the information =)

I was asking about if vehicle spam was a problem in 7th edition, the handful of games I played it was no problem. My Skitarii Neutronlaser and Arc weaponry with haywire seemed a little op back then.

I miss Characters attaching themselves to units and being called out for a duel, it was really cinematic and I can remember my techpriest dueling a necron overlord for 5 rounds without killing him, as well as getting support from vanguards as the overlord was his last model.

You are right, not being able to interact with certain models is not a good feeling and might be a problem. However I believe it encourages more balanced lists as with horde only you cannot kill them, but you can still get objectives or tie them to melee. And with vehicles only you might have trouble not having enough cheap anti horde as your points go into resiliant models and have trouble with CP and Objectives. However I might change the S+T and lower the upper toughness a bit as knights were only AT 13 to begin with in 7E That way the only problem is S3 against vehicles and S4 against Heavy vehicles and knights, maybe even light vehicles staying at T6 as they are build for speed. With horde like armys like guard you should have as much fire power like they have right now, a lot want to see them at 5ppm but I want to preserve the difference of horde and elite armies. They already have the bodies, objective and board control advantage and elite are slacking right now. (edited Toughness in original post)

Regarding Melee: The thought is that Melee already has huge damage output most of the time, especially because they fight in your opponents turn too. Orcs might not get the -1 to hit but those that get the buff might, if they are already good right now, get a points increase. Yes you are right Tau and guardsmen arent meant for melee, their output is hindered, HOWEVER they are still able to hold them just as long as before, so they can either hold them even longer or move out for your army to shoot at them. So what basicly changes is their survivability in CC and the ability to balance melee units more. It also adds to a fluffy cinematic and more interactive melee environment. Those without the rules get outclassed, at least individually, but proficient ones who are then again outclassed by the few "gods" in melee like primarchs or high ranking Hqs. I also dont see what you mean by (see below) Where is the much more limited application?

 0XFallen wrote:
Thats how they should be, they dont win with individual performance but by holding lines and objectives as they are expendable and really high in numbers, right now they are the best troop choice available and are already pushing the line of being almost as good as skitarii individually, which doesnt fit lorewise, although that might be also because GW gutted the skitarii rules.

Guard are supposed to be all about numbers sure, but you have to take into account that guard are only individually weak in comparison to every other massively overpowered army out there. I mean, space marines shoot .75 caliber, fully automatic, armor piercing, grenade launchers as their basic rifle.

I think a 5+ save at 5ppm represents a guardsman better on the tabletop than a 6+ save at 4ppm. Guard armor is comparatively weak, but not THAT weak. 6+ save would be appropriate for a rabble of heretics or rebels with mismatched and neglected equipment rather than a professionally trained and properly outfitted army. If guard were 6+ saves, then how do you reconcile that with the fact that carapace armor (that some guard models can get) is +4 save? Do guard models go from a 6+ save to a 4+ save, skipping 5+ entirely? Keep in mind that space marine scouts and other models in other armies use carapace armor, so a change here would effect those factions as well.

No, a 5+ save is the perfect spot, and they really should be 5ppm... with conscripts staying at 4ppm to reflect armies that rely on human wave tactics which contrary to popular belief, not all guard regiments do.

w1zard wrote:

 0XFallen wrote:
Thats how they should be, they dont win with individual performance but by holding lines and objectives as they are expendable and really high in numbers, right now they are the best troop choice available and are already pushing the line of being almost as good as skitarii individually, which doesnt fit lorewise, although that might be also because GW gutted the skitarii rules.

Guard are supposed to be all about numbers sure, but you have to take into account that guard are only individually weak in comparison to every other massively overpowered army out there. I mean, space marines shoot .75 caliber, fully automatic, armor piercing, grenade launchers as their basic rifle.

I think a 5+ save at 5ppm represents a guardsman better on the tabletop than a 6+ save at 4ppm. Guard armor is comparatively weak, but not THAT weak. 6+ save would be appropriate for a rabble of heretics or rebels with mismatched and neglected equipment rather than a professionally trained and properly outfitted army. If guard were 6+ saves, then how do you reconcile that with the fact that carapace armor (that some guard models can get) is +4 save? Do guard models go from a 6+ save to a 4+ save, skipping 5+ entirely? Keep in mind that space marine scouts and other models in other armies use carapace armor, so a change here would effect those factions as well.

No, a 5+ save is the perfect spot, and they really should be 5ppm... with conscripts staying at 4ppm to reflect armies that rely on human wave tactics which contrary to popular belief, not all guard regiments do.

I guess you are right, weird that conscripts have the same cost.
I believe the problem is then the other way around, not only because of the ap system but losing or nerfing of special rules.
For example skitarii used to have a 6+fnp, now they have a 6++ which doesnt do much, who shoots with -3ap/ -4ap if in cover which they almost always are against T3 1W infantry? Same with our Hqs having a 2+ and 5++, will almost never be shot as they are characters and not much has -4 in melee. So make skitarii more elite again, however Admech codex is a whole other matter and has too much to talk about, which I posted about and you can look it up in my profile if you want to check it out. Space marines, argueably suffered the most from the AP changes as better Armor was exponentially better in 7E.

 0XFallen wrote:
I guess you are right, weird that conscripts have the same cost.

Conscripts have the same cost because they used to be 3ppm. That was way too good, but GW couldn't think of a way of nerfing them effectively because guardsmen were 4ppm. So they just made conscripts 4ppm too and essentially removed them from the game because they didn't want to deal with it.

 0XFallen wrote:
Space marines, argueably suffered the most from the AP changes as better Armor was exponentially better in 7E.

I cannot comment on the skitarii stuff. But as for marines, they suck so bad this edition for two reasons, the first being the bad transition bolt weapons had from 7th to 8th. Under the old AP system, bolt weapons ignored all saves that were worse than 4+, that is to say guardsmen and orks didn't get armor saves vs bolt weapons. Now everyone and their mother does, effectively gutting space marine firepower against guardsmen and similar targets by up to 33% compared to 7th. The second reason is because many marine statlines were lazily copy+pasted from 7th edition to 8th with no consideration as to how those statlines would interact with the new rules. 1W, 3+ save, and a gun that is slightly better than a lasgun is not worth 13 points when a guardsman is 4 points. No effort and thought went into making old marines viable because it was all spent making primaris viable.

GW didn't have the bravery to just say "Here are the new truescale tac marine kits, you can use your old marines to represent tac marines, but going forward these are going to be the new kits..." because they were afraid of the apoplectic rage space marines players would fly into if half of their army was squatted overnight. Instead, GW pussyfooted around the issue with the whole primaris marine bunk, and butchered the lore, so they could slowly phase out oldmarines and phase in primaris marines. Mark my words "primaris marines" will eventually just become "marines" after the entire space marine model line is done in "primaris scale", and old marines and the word "primaris" will never be mentioned again.

w1zard wrote:

.

Essentialy the same happened with skitarii, every special rule is gone and are now just expensive guardsmen. For example the had the radium carbine Assault 3 ap5 wounds of 5 dealt 2 separate wounds, now they are ap 0 and wounds dont carry over.
Rangers had 30" rapidfire 1 S4 AP 4 and are now AP0 as well. GW didnt know what to do anymore and just decreased the points of admech like 5 times. Slowly becoming more horde instead.

Regarding Primaris I think has potential lorewise, maybe after the crusade a kind of civil war or cold war will start.

 0XFallen wrote:
Regarding Primaris I think has potential lorewise, maybe after the crusade a kind of civil war or cold war will start.

Possibly. It doesn't change the fact that all of the primaris lore is super contrived, and exists basically only as a justification to be able to sell truescale marine models without squatting old marine models overnight.