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Wayniac wrote:
The problem with wanting 40k to cater to everyone is one set of rules CANNOT do this. Different size games want different levels of detail. In a large scale system you don't want to care about specific weapons, but that information is a must-have in a skirmish game.

We are in the boat we are with 40k precisely because they tried to make a one size fits all game, and showed exactly why that is not done in game design.

Has it really shown that though? There are plenty of tournament winning lists that do not include any superheavies, which to me indicates that one set of rules CAN work and make a fairly balanced game.

I'd be interested to know why you think one set of rules can't cater for both. I mean it clearly can because it does. I'm assuming you mean there are disadvantages of it doing so? Just writing an opinion in capitals doesn't make it a fact.

 Brother Castor wrote:
I'd be interested to know why you think one set of rules can't cater for both. I mean it clearly can because it does. I'm assuming you mean there are disadvantages of it doing so? Just writing an opinion in capitals doesn't make it a fact.

Well i would say that knights basicaly broke 40k in a few places not entirly the rules, but how they interact and what they wanted to get out of the rules.

As well as the rules being kinda bad right now, small scaled games and games with a focus on infantry will often have rules that give lots of movement options as well as shorter weapon ranges. Games that forcus more on large scale do not need to focus on infantry details as much. WHich is why so many infanty weapons are kinda useless in 40k.

Good games have a wider range, but considering the state of 40k i do not think they succeeded at all.

 Brother Castor wrote:
I like the variation. You can play everything from skirmishes between a few units of infantry up to massive wars between armies that include knights and large flyers. To me that's what 40K should be like.

I love that you can have everything from Imperial Guard Conscripts (M6 WS5 BS5 S3 T3 W1 A1 Ld4 Sv5+) to a Warlord Titan (M18 WS4 BS2 S16 T16 W70 A5 Ld10 Sv2+3++), and play out any battle you like from the setting.

Mind you, you might look a bit like a TFG if you turned up at a local gaming club with a £1000 FW titan looking for a pick-up game

 Brother Castor wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
I like the variation. You can play everything from skirmishes between a few units of infantry up to massive wars between armies that include knights and large flyers. To me that's what 40K should be like.

I love that you can have everything from Imperial Guard Conscripts (M6 WS5 BS5 S3 T3 W1 A1 Ld4 Sv5+) to a Warlord Titan (M18 WS4 BS2 S16 T16 W70 A5 Ld10 Sv2+3++), and play out any battle you like from the setting.

Mind you, you might look a bit like a TFG if you turned up at a local gaming club with a £1000 FW titan looking for a pick-up game

A 1000 pound titan belongs in a glass cabinet and not on the tabletop.

 Brother Castor wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
I like the variation. You can play everything from skirmishes between a few units of infantry up to massive wars between armies that include knights and large flyers. To me that's what 40K should be like.

I love that you can have everything from Imperial Guard Conscripts (M6 WS5 BS5 S3 T3 W1 A1 Ld4 Sv5+) to a Warlord Titan (M18 WS4 BS2 S16 T16 W70 A5 Ld10 Sv2+3++), and play out any battle you like from the setting.

Mind you, you might look a bit like a TFG if you turned up at a local gaming club with a £1000 FW titan looking for a pick-up game

But, unless you cheat...

You’d almost certainly lose!

Marin wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Super heavies atleast feel like they should be part of 40K heck even Titans while were way cooler in Epic make sence.

Super sonic Flyers make no sense in 40k, like realy these marines can not move this direction because flyer, and the supersonic fighter with psychic flamers WTF?

Atleast baneblades, knights, primarchs make sence.

So Giants robots and tanks who need big transports to get carried from planet to planet are ok and flyers who are used more often are no ?

The way they interact with other units is broken bring able to move block with flyers is dumb.
Having a supersonic fighter that moves slower than running foot sloging infantry.
Flyers on the battlefield of 40k would be better represented by strategums. Landers and thinga like valkaries make sence, but they aren't realy ever leaving VTOL mode if they are remaining in the space represented by a 40k 6x4 table.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
I love that you can have everything from Imperial Guard Conscripts (M6 WS5 BS5 S3 T3 W1 A1 Ld4 Sv5+) to a Warlord Titan (M18 WS4 BS2 S16 T16 W70 A5 Ld10 Sv2+3++), and play out any battle you like from the setting.

Mind you, you might look a bit like a TFG if you turned up at a local gaming club with a £1000 FW titan looking for a pick-up game

But, unless you cheat...

You’d almost certainly lose!

It's still cool that the game can cater for it, if only from the point of view of seeing some amazing datasheets.

 Brother Castor wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
I like the variation. You can play everything from skirmishes between a few units of infantry up to massive wars between armies that include knights and large flyers. To me that's what 40K should be like.

I love that you can have everything from Imperial Guard Conscripts (M6 WS5 BS5 S3 T3 W1 A1 Ld4 Sv5+) to a Warlord Titan (M18 WS4 BS2 S16 T16 W70 A5 Ld10 Sv2+3++), and play out any battle you like from the setting.

The problem becomes that when things like the Warlord Titan come into play, or even units an order of magnitude smaller, the differences between that Guard Conscripts and a Space Marine or Aspect Warrior or Ork Nob all become largely irrelevant and they might as well all be T1 W1 Sv- with S1 weapons, but many of those units are paying significantly more for stats that are only really relevant when comparing between other Troops, and thus against the Titans and Knights aren't performing any better than the Guardsmen really but die just the same and have far fewer numbers.

Likewise, why on earth do I care or need to bother with what type of pistol or power weapon blade a Sergeant has when we're fighting a Warlord Titan or a Knight Lance? Why am I bothering to keep track of the individual dude armed with a flamer or meltagun when we're engaging in such battles? That level of detail and granularity just becomes pointless and time wasting at such scales. The level of detail scales inversely with unit scale, which is rather bass-ackwards, with larger units largely just getting rules to ignore restrictions on things while the smaller scale a unit is the more rules it has to worry about (a Warlord Titan doesn't have to worry about moving and shooting or often even LoS, doesn't have to worry about losing models with specific weapons, doesn't have to deal with Morale tests, it just shoots and takes penalties according to its damage table).

Yeah the game can physically make all these things work on a table together, but it's really hamfisted and runs into a lot of issues, there's a reason these scales usually get broken up into different rulesets.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem becomes that when things like the Warlord Titan come into play, or even units an order of magnitude smaller, the differences between that Guard Conscripts and a Space Marine or Aspect Warrior or Ork Nob all become largely irrelevant and they might as well all be T1 W1 Sv- with S1 weapons, but many of those units are paying significantly more for stats that are only really relevant when comparing between other Troops, and thus against the Titans and Knights aren't performing any better than the Guardsmen really but die just the same and have far fewer numbers.

That's a good point. Probably quite realistic though. How would another system handle it better? Surely Marines will always need to cost more than Conscripts if they're allowed to fire at each other and retain their relative effectiveness as well?

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem becomes that when things like the Warlord Titan come into play, or even units an order of magnitude smaller, the differences between that Guard Conscripts and a Space Marine or Aspect Warrior or Ork Nob all become largely irrelevant and they might as well all be T1 W1 Sv- with S1 weapons, but many of those units are paying significantly more for stats that are only really relevant when comparing between other Troops, and thus against the Titans and Knights aren't performing any better than the Guardsmen really but die just the same and have far fewer numbers.

Likewise, why on earth do I care or need to bother with what type of pistol or power weapon blade a Sergeant has when we're fighting a Warlord Titan or a Knight Lance? Why am I bothering to keep track of the individual dude armed with a flamer or meltagun when we're engaging in such battles? That level of detail and granularity just becomes pointless and time wasting at such scales. The level of detail scales inversely with unit scale, which is rather bass-ackwards, with larger units largely just getting rules to ignore restrictions on things while the smaller scale a unit is the more rules it has to worry about (a Warlord Titan doesn't have to worry about moving and shooting or often even LoS, doesn't have to worry about losing models with specific weapons, doesn't have to deal with Morale tests, it just shoots and takes penalties according to its damage table).

Yeah the game can physically make all these things work on a table together, but it's really hamfisted and runs into a lot of issues, there's a reason these scales usually get broken up into different rulesets.

I was going to make a similar point, but you phrased it a lot more clearly than I would have.

One thing I'll elaborate on is the lack of detail at the level of Knights. You'd think that vehicles of that size might have some more detailed rules. Maybe they're like the Gargantuan creatures in Warmachine, where you attack different parts of them (each with their own damage grids). So maybe you'd have to decide between shooting the left or right side. Or between shooting the torso or legs. Nope. Just a single, standard Wounds score. Okay. Well I'm sure that Knights have some tough decisions to make. Do they have power reactors and have to divert power between shields or weapons? Nope. Do they have more restrictive movement due to their immense size and mass, thus necessitating the use of supporting units to guard their flanks/rear? Nope. Hell, the small ones can match a fething Ravager for speed. Glad DE stripped the armour from their vehicles to make them faster.

Basically, far from having more detailed rules, all they do is ignore existing rules. And this is why I don't find them fun to play against. There's nothing to them. They're just bricks with guns. There's no satisfaction in damaging them because it makes so little difference. And even if you actually manage to destroy one, it just feels so unrewarding. It's like celebrating because you managed to drink an entire bucket of wallpaper paste.

Vipoid nailed it. Couldn't have said it better

 SHUPPET wrote:
Vipoid nailed it. Couldn't have said it better

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

One thing I'll elaborate on is the lack of detail at the level of Knights. You'd think that vehicles of that size might have some more detailed rules. ... far from having more detailed rules, all they do is ignore existing rules. And this is why I don't find them fun to play against. There's nothing to them. They're just bricks with guns. There's no satisfaction in damaging them because it makes so little difference. And even if you actually manage to destroy one, it just feels so unrewarding. It's like celebrating because you managed to drink an entire bucket of wallpaper paste.

That should be immortalized in signature somewhere...

suprised that you don't have a "limited to 1 or 2" option. I'd vote for that. All knights is kinds pants-on-head dumb

D&D has generally had one rulesset that handles both some random goblin scrub and literal gods.

Said rulesset was less balanced than 40k (and deeper), but it didn't make the "game" unfun.

The difference is 40k is more competitive inherently than D&D. But 40k isn't a pure competitive sport.

40k *can* have rules for both ends of the spectrum. It's likely to balance poorly when the far ends of the spectrum get used - much like in D&D, the balance between gods and goblins is likely to be off. That means a matchup between a midrange TAC list and a pure-Superheavy list or a pure-Horde list is likely to be uneven. But it doesn't necessitate which side is more powerful.

Outside the Castellean, 40k seems to have balanced such that Superheavies can be fielded, but lose the skew matchup. I like that. People I play can bring Superheavies, and I'm not going to auto-lose because I didn't bring Superheavies (or a list tailored to beat them). While being balanced would be preferable, it's not viable to balance every point on the spectrum - so if TAC vs SuperheavySpam has to skew one direction, I'm glad it's in TAC's direction.

In other words, I think GW has fixed superheavies the right way. They are legal, but not optimal (mostly). So the game doesn't revolve around them.

All that said, I don't like facing Superheavies personally. But that's my problem; if someone else wants to play superheavies, that's their perogative. Some people don't like playing against Eldar, and that's their perogative - I'll switch to Marines/Tau or arrange to play a team game as their ally if possible, but I'm not going to bin my Eldar just because they don't like them. There are other people I can play my Eldar against (or they can play their Knight-spam list against).

 Lobukia wrote:
suprised that you don't have a "limited to 1 or 2" option. I'd vote for that. All knights is kinds pants-on-head dumb

An all knight army is a lot less oppressive than a souped up castellan with tons of CP. against a pure knight, you can actually easily win by securing objectives. you can also bait out the rotate ion shield to actually kill some knights. They also run out of CP super fast so their efficiency drops early in the game

Question: Other than the Knight Castellan and/or Rotate Ion Shields being uncapped, are there any particular superheavies that are an issue? I might point at the Shadowsword and say it might be an issue, but most Superheavies I've played against (Knights excluded) were big but impractical meme picks.

Play with as many as you want. If you want something more of a tactical game play Kill Team instead.

 vipoid wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem becomes that when things like the Warlord Titan come into play, or even units an order of magnitude smaller, the differences between that Guard Conscripts and a Space Marine or Aspect Warrior or Ork Nob all become largely irrelevant and they might as well all be T1 W1 Sv- with S1 weapons, but many of those units are paying significantly more for stats that are only really relevant when comparing between other Troops, and thus against the Titans and Knights aren't performing any better than the Guardsmen really but die just the same and have far fewer numbers.

Likewise, why on earth do I care or need to bother with what type of pistol or power weapon blade a Sergeant has when we're fighting a Warlord Titan or a Knight Lance? Why am I bothering to keep track of the individual dude armed with a flamer or meltagun when we're engaging in such battles? That level of detail and granularity just becomes pointless and time wasting at such scales. The level of detail scales inversely with unit scale, which is rather bass-ackwards, with larger units largely just getting rules to ignore restrictions on things while the smaller scale a unit is the more rules it has to worry about (a Warlord Titan doesn't have to worry about moving and shooting or often even LoS, doesn't have to worry about losing models with specific weapons, doesn't have to deal with Morale tests, it just shoots and takes penalties according to its damage table).

Yeah the game can physically make all these things work on a table together, but it's really hamfisted and runs into a lot of issues, there's a reason these scales usually get broken up into different rulesets.

I was going to make a similar point, but you phrased it a lot more clearly than I would have.

One thing I'll elaborate on is the lack of detail at the level of Knights. You'd think that vehicles of that size might have some more detailed rules. Maybe they're like the Gargantuan creatures in Warmachine, where you attack different parts of them (each with their own damage grids). So maybe you'd have to decide between shooting the left or right side. Or between shooting the torso or legs. Nope. Just a single, standard Wounds score. Okay. Well I'm sure that Knights have some tough decisions to make. Do they have power reactors and have to divert power between shields or weapons? Nope. Do they have more restrictive movement due to their immense size and mass, thus necessitating the use of supporting units to guard their flanks/rear? Nope. Hell, the small ones can match a fething Ravager for speed. Glad DE stripped the armour from their vehicles to make them faster.

Basically, far from having more detailed rules, all they do is ignore existing rules. And this is why I don't find them fun to play against. There's nothing to them. They're just bricks with guns. There's no satisfaction in damaging them because it makes so little difference. And even if you actually manage to destroy one, it just feels so unrewarding. It's like celebrating because you managed to drink an entire bucket of wallpaper paste.

Yeah, this has always been the greatest missed opportunity I see with the Knights. Rather than a degrading stat line, they should have made them a little more like Knights Renegade, and made them sort of a conglomeration model with multiple profiles for various portions of it. I don't want it to turn into battletech, but giving the various components their own profiles with some extra rules for dealing with damage would be reasonable. But then we're still stuck with D6s sadly.