Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

Fix the broken rules, close the battery battalion loopholes and restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

I don't know how well to fix the problem of Elite units being decimated by AP and Damage without swapping to a D12 system though. Perhaps they need to just up the wound count of all Space Marine units by 1 across the board?

 BaconCatBug wrote:
8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

Fix the broken rules, close the battery battalion loopholes and restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

I don't know how well to fix the problem of Elite units being decimated by AP and Damage without swapping to a D12 system though. Perhaps they need to just up the wound count of all Space Marine units by 1 across the board?

Just my opinion, but the amount of wounds units have in this edition is already quite ridiculous. I think they already somewhat tried what you suggested, to just give elite units more wounds and a bit better saving rolls...but if the most probable solution is to just slap more and more wounds on a unit, you are dealing with a broken system and more fundamental issues.

I find the responses so far very interesting, since you get opinions from both spectrums. Also I am new here so I don't know the general tone of discussion on this forum, but I am really impressed how civil this discussion has gone down so far.

Edit: do you think 9th edition is more likely to bring back some more depth by incorporating some forms of the things that were suggested here, or do you believe it is more likely that GW will water down the rules even more?

Everything hurting everything isn't a necessity of the game. It's an unnecessary waste of time. When needing to hit on a 5+ and wound on a 6+ and then a 3+ save is ~1.8% chance.

There really just needs to be an auto-wound mechanism that gives slightly better odds than rolling in order to speed things up because otherwise you have to deal with people who will stand there and roll 300 dice so with the hope that MAYBE they can take 12 wounds off a tank.

eg: if rolling 40+ dice - consult a chart for your number if hits, wounds, etc

I played in 3rd, and 8th it was good enough to get me back in the game, but right away it came off as stupidly simple and unbalanced and all of the bloat has just made it worse.

Tiberias wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

Fix the broken rules, close the battery battalion loopholes and restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

I don't know how well to fix the problem of Elite units being decimated by AP and Damage without swapping to a D12 system though. Perhaps they need to just up the wound count of all Space Marine units by 1 across the board?

Just my opinion, but the amount of wounds units have in this edition is already quite ridiculous. I think they already somewhat tried what you suggested, to just give elite units more wounds and a bit better saving rolls...but if the most probable solution is to just slap more and more wounds on a unit, you are dealing with a broken system and more fundamental issues.

I find the responses so far very interesting, since you get opinions from both spectrums. Also I am new here so I don't know the general tone of discussion on this forum, but I am really impressed how civil this discussion has gone down so far.

Edit: do you think 9th edition is more likely to bring back some more depth by incorporating some forms of the things that were suggested here, or do you believe it is more likely that GW will water down the rules even more?

So far it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a 9th edition. GW said that 8th is supposed to be the final edition, and until now they have put a system in place to maintain it, so they are actually following that statement with investments.

Somewhere down the line we could see a consolidated rulebook, but i wouldn't put my bet on a completely new edition for at least 5 years.

As for my opinion, i have to say that 8th got me back in the game. If i use the numbers of miniatures painted per month as a meter, then 8th edition is about 8-9 times better than 7th.

There are a few things that could have been done better, especially in the allies/soup area, but in general i find the game to be more balanced, more fun and more tactically rewarding.

My impression is GW goes in waves of simplify the system, then add more rules to add complexity, remove or simplify, add more... cyclical.

I think they are thrashing around a bit trying to figure our what "magic" thing they can add that we all would think is cool.
I keep thinking unit activation...

6-7th was a bit of a rules glut plus "closest" shooting targets made things bog down terribly.

They may have to go a few steps further and have "40k Basic" and "40k Advanced" rulesets, basically the "casual play" / power levels / scenario / lighter rules vs "competitive" / points / balance based rules (rule of 3, etc.).

My thoughts having played every version of 40k (6th and 7th I played but set it down fairly quickly as things progressed).

8th edition is the best edition of the game yet. Are there weak points to it? Sure. There always will be in a game. However, I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.

Here's what I would say are amazing points that 8th edition has over any previous edition:

#1 - Troops aren't a tax. They're an investment
More than in any previous edition of the game, Troops are the backbone of your list. The reason is clear; Command Points. This gives another angle for players to "game" the system from. Stratagems are a big part of the game, and are able to turn lackluster units into golden units, and golden units in bonkers broken units. Regardless of what you're using them for, Stratagems are a big deal, but you'll only have access to a good number of them if you bring Battalions or Brigades, and for that you need the humble Troop. Troops aren't a tax any longer, they're points you're spending for a return on investment.

#2 - Anything can hurt anything. No action is completely wasted.
It really sucks when you just can't hurt something no matter what. Having a sliver of a chance is better than none. The current to-wound system is better than any other edition yet. It has its losers (sorry Multilasers & Heavy Bolters), but most guns feel like winners.

#3 - All hail modifiers.
A 6+ to hit is nearly impossible to make, but how about a 5+? Thanks to the wonderfulness of the to-wound and to-hit system they're using, modifiers have a big place in the game. +1 to wound doesn't sound much when you first hear it, but when you consider that in some cases it's increasing your damage output by 33% of something that already might deal a lot... and the effects add up fast. Previous systems just went all or nothing with instant buff to 2+, or instant drop to 6+.

#4 - Movement matters.
Getting across the table quickly has never been so important, and by opening up the movement options for all factions, the game really does feel like you're in the thick of it instantly. Anything that isn't crazy fast can feel slow as molasses by comparison, which can be really interesting in its own right!

#5 - Character rules work.
They may not always make sense ("But I can't even see any other target!! why can't I shoot the Farseer?"), but they are highly functional, with pros and cons for all sorts of positions and locations. Heroic intervention doesn't come up often, but is clutch when it does, and you can use that small movement to really bully some models out of an area. Auras may be a little over-plentiful at times, but they super helpful and really help make the character a central point to an army.

#6 - Mortal wounds are AWESOME.
Love these. I was really worried stepping into this edition and thinking of how it'd be like stomp, but it really hasn't been. Again, there's investment that needs to happen to make mortal wound spamming a thing. It's generally so hard that most armies don't do it. As such, the few instances where you can are amazing, and help knock over and keep in check units that are just really amazingly resilient.

#7 - Psychic Powers are a challenge, and the system to counteract them works.
You can make a psychic army (see; Smite), but a lot of previous psychic systems only ever seemed to make psychic powers odder and odder. Now it's a straight 2d6 roll against a target number. Beat it, it goes off. Don't get double 1's or 6's, or bad stuff happens. If your opponent has psykers nearby, they may snuff the power. Simple, clean, fast, effective, and fun.

#8 - Tournament systems are helping games be better.
Regardless of whether or not you play in tournaments, the fact that there are so many now, and these tournaments are getting support or even just recognition from a bigger community and GW helps everyone. It's because of tournies that GW can get the help to find really broken combinations that might be swept under the rug in previous editions. Being committed to making tournaments better helps keep GW involved, which helps all participants in the hobby. Yes, even you Mr. "I only collect 40k to paint the miniatures" guy! Look at the new Contrast Paints coming out. What's the big theme? Making the models Battle Ready. Ready for what? For tournaments! That's what!

#9 - GW is a more involved.
The biggest thing over other editions is just how involved GW is in their game. Because they've been involved, GW has been able to correct course on a bunch of things that were not fun. They fixed the character targeting rules. They fixed Smite Spam. They fixed Flyer Spam (twice!). They fixed infinitely regenerating CP. They're done a lot, and they will continue to help make the game better.

Pretty happy with 8th. The Strategem system is a far better version of the kind of unique mechanics a magic/psychic system should add to an army. There are too many strategems in general and would benefit from cutting to a more streamlined approach, but its a good mechanic overall.

Really fond of the way detachments work. I think they could be improved with scaling rewards (Battalion for example, could give 3 and +2 if you have 3 of any combo of Heavy/FA/Elite or something). I still like it overall and it does a good job of consolidating the game's faction bloat and giving every codex a place without abandoning a sense of a structured army all-together.

I have my nits to pick, but I'm overall pretty happy with the edition. As long as GW continues to adjust it, I think its only going to get better.

Now that the new game smell has worn off, I'm extremely meh about 8th and honestly miss 7th a lot. 8th in the process of streamlining everything has made the game far to simple and the list of viable units has shrunk a lot and the margin or armies that are good is also very small. 7th had it's problems yes, but it felt like a far more engaging game and I look back at it with sadness not playing it. I'm starting to play 30k simply because I enjoy the more complex rule set and army building

Were scatterbike/Wraithknight lists engaging?

That said, auras are stupid and should die in a fire.

I miss 7E 0%.

8E has its issues, a rather impressive number of them, but nothing like Invisibility shenanigans, rerollable 2++ invuls, dealing with Hull Points, or egregious codex balance issues to the levels we saw of stuff like the Scatterbike.

Yeah, 8E hs less detailed mechanics in some respects, but a lot of those either didnt add much most of the time or were inappropriate to the scale of the game or were inconsistently applied in previous editions anyway (e.g. tanks vs mc's).

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Now that the new game smell has worn off, I'm extremely meh about 8th and honestly miss 7th a lot. 8th in the process of streamlining everything has made the game far to simple and the list of viable units has shrunk a lot and the margin or armies that are good is also very small. 7th had it's problems yes, but it felt like a far more engaging game and I look back at it with sadness not playing it. I'm starting to play 30k simply because I enjoy the more complex rule set and army building

I do have to say that 6th-7th was the first edition I did not get all the Codex and rule books.
There were too many and some only came with special purchases.
Unless you were not legal on all your books and made a spreadsheet you had no way of knowing all the rules (sorry, or you are terribly rich).
I liked that they initially commonized all the main universal rules in the BRB, then they started getting special rule creep.
8th still has that to an extent but they typically say all the rules you need for that unit is in the unit card/entry (of course there is FAQ and Chapter Approved but typically that is a points tweak).

This is only my observation but the people that most liked 6th and 7th were the ones that liked it no-one knew all the rules and they could take some..."artistic license" with interpretation.
8th is "so simple" you can call people on these loose rules interpretations much easier.

Breng77 wrote:
Everything hurting everything is a necessary part of the game when the game allows for extreme lists. As soon as the game allowed for armies with nothing but Titans, or nothing but T8 MC, or Nothing but tanks, everything hurting everything becomes a must. Essentially the less restrictive list building becomes the more necessary it is to account for skew lists. If I can build a list where you can realistically only hurt anything with 1 or 2 units, and I kill those 2 units the game ceases to be fun. As an example back in 5th Ed I played a 1k point Kill points game in a league with an army consisting of 2 tactical squads in Land raiders, and Sammiel in his AV 14 land speeder. My opponent had 1 or 2 melta guns ( cannot quite remember) in his army, and a bunch of plasma. Turn 1 I killed the only squads that could hurt my army, The rest of the game was entirely meaningless.

If a game forces you into balanced lists you can have some units that cannot hurt other units. If you can skew then all the sudden stopping it makes some games terrible.

Any list that is skewed like the two above (one banking entirely on heavy armor to do all the work and the other having essentially no real anti tank) are going to bump into hard counters. That is simply the nature of list building. Imagine the LR players next game was against someone who took a drop pod and speeder heavy marine army with melta out the ass, it would also get wrecked.

The real issue is that GW needs a scoring system that would allow you to make up points some how with smart play even if your against a list you can't directly fight all that well.

Subjectively, I enjoy 8th more than 6/7th edition.

Objectively, it is not a good game. But then again 40K has never really been a good game.

I understand they wanted to streamline the game, but IMO they went way too far.

Problems with 8th:

-Lack of USR's. Their removal was needless. Their rules are cluttered and disorganized. You need to check a million books and data sheets just to find all the rules. Bespoke rules is not how any sane person would organize a game. This has had the opposite effect of "streamlining". I can't keep track of where anything is anymore. Theres a reason people use Battlescribe...because all the rules are in one place and organized. All the points values and options are there. You don't have to flip through a hundred books, erratas, faq's online commentary from GW. You'd have to be schizophrenic to organize the game the way they did, no professional company would do this.

-Cover: This needs a lot more than half a page to cover in depth. Why can't unit gain cover from hiding behind tanks...etc. Cover is also meaningless for anything with a 2+ save.

-Morale: Another bad idea ported over from AoS, if you're going to dumb it down so much why not just eliminate it all together? What happened to pinning, and fear and breaking from combat? Those were awesome and added much needed depth to the game. All they had to do was not make every army immune to psychology and they could have kept the system the same.

-Random dice for explosions and templates: There's too much randomness involved now. Just bring templates back, eliminate scatter and roll for ballistic skill to hit everyone under the template. If you want to keep the dice rolls make it 2d3 for blasts, 3d3 for templates, and 4d3 for large blasts.

-Flyers: Hey look, they had to add rules for flyers because their original mechanic was absolutely stupid. I could have told them that 2 years ago.

-Psychic Phase: Boring and predictable. Introduce power dice management system like the old 8th ed fantasy rules. (no not the 7th ed fantasy ones, no not 7th ed 40K either, both of those were terrible) This adds skill to the psychic phase rather than dumb luck. This eliminates issues with the psychic phase as well, such as spamming smite without that tacked on -1 modifier and only being able to use psychic powers once per phase. Also, stop with the mortal wounds garbage. Use some creativity with your powers, not everything has to be a mortal wound on 6+ or d3 mortal wounds. Use strength values and AP.

-Character Auras and Independent Character removal: This was a terrible idea. It's forced all characters into a force multiplier situation. Characters that should be fighting on the front lines like Guilliman are instead put in the back rank behind a line of tanks simply to provide buffs. Not only is this bad for the game because it promotes gun lines, but it's also flies in the face of the established lore of 40K. If anything, character buffs should only be able to affect one unit per turn, not an area of effect. The inability to put characters into units is absurd. Now we have buff auras that exacerbate the death star problem we had in 7th by providing buffs to almost entire armies instead of a single unit, and we have completely ridiculous targeting restrictions on characters.

-Dice Rolling and Modifiers: Why on earth did they decide to make modifiers work the way they do with re-rolls. It's so counter intuitive it's unreal. It actually slows down the game. I thought the whole point was to streamline, not make it unbelievably frustrating. Just make it how it used to be. If you need a 3+ to hit and you have a -1 modifier, now you need a 4+. Thats it. Not, you actually rolled a 3, but then you gotta subtract, but then you have to re-roll failed, which the 3 wasn't etc...feth, its so frustrating.

-Stratagems: These should be once per game only. They should be game changing plays made at the right time to win, not spammable. Using the right stratagem at the right time should be a tough decision to make.

-Command Point generation: Command points should not be able to be generated through number of detachments. Detachments outside of the standard brigade, battalion and patrol should cost command points...not give them. Allied detachments should cost command points too. Command point generation should occur in game by killing enemy units, warlords, and grabbing objectives.

-Relics: Stop tying them to command points. Just allow them to be purchasable for points.

-IGOUGO: This needs to be changed to an alternating system. It's an antiquated mechanic that benefits first turn and shooting way too much. At the very least something along the lines of the Kill Team turn sequence should be adopted. Until 40K changes to alternating activations or even alternating sub-phases, the game will always be mediocre at best.

GW, please. Stop using AoS as a template for 40K, its an absolutely terrible game on almost every conceivable level. Organize your game in a way that makes sense for people. Stop using power levels, use points. Stop streamlining your game into nonsense. Just use the appropriate number of pages to build a game that functions properly.

40k has for a long time been pretty confused as to what scale of game it wants to be.
It mixes detailed rules suited for a small skirmish game, with highly abstract rules more suited for a company level battle. This is mostly just due to the size of games increasing over time, from back in the day when 40k was a small skirmish game.

There's still plenty of scale mix-up. But I see a lot of the changes made with 8th edition as a push towards cleaning this up, and setting the scale of the game more firmly towards company sized battles.
I don't think the game is ever going to entirely get there. Too much skirmish level cruft that the players want to keep, like being able to customise a squad leaders sidearm. But I believe that's the thinking behind the direction the game has gone.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
-Cover: This needs a lot more than half a page to cover in depth. Why can't unit gain cover from hiding behind tanks...etc. Cover is also meaningless for anything with a 2+ save.

Incorrect. AP is a thing.

 Just Tony wrote:
GW has been trying to cram 2nd Ed. back into the rules since 5th, and it broke the game. 8th is them trying to bring it back again, but with CCG synergies/activations. That's about the size of it.

And I think if you look at the more emphatic supporters of this edition, they were also 2nd Ed. hardcores as well...

Second Edition was a great edition and 8e doesn't have much in common with it beyond superficial stuff like save modifiers. 2e had deeper morale mechanics, smoke grenades, flashbangs, etcetc (really a ton of grenade variety), and would highly reward tactical movement of your units while keeping them in cover/creating cover. Plus it didn't have dice pool nonsense either and had good 'ol templates for everything, especially grenades. It's also probably the best 'Marine' edition because Marines are a unique army in 2e because of the tactical modifiers they provide. Sure they're durable, but what allows marines to shine in 2e is being able to shrug off flash grenades, see and shoot straight through smoke, or resist the effects of morale. They don't often get shot to pieces because 2e gives you the tools to prevent you from getting shot to pieces.

Plus it was probably the only edition that Terminators weren't gak besides TH/SS deathstars.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

Fix the broken rules, close the battery battalion loopholes and restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

I don't know how well to fix the problem of Elite units being decimated by AP and Damage without swapping to a D12 system though. Perhaps they need to just up the wound count of all Space Marine units by 1 across the board?

I've been toying around with experiments myself in TTS and IMO boosting marines across the board by 1 wound and 1 attack while giving terminators 3 wounds and toughness 5 does a lot to make them 'not gak' as unit choices. Boltguns still suffer from having no AP but what really shines about boosting marines wounds and attacks is that it makes them much better at assaulting. Compared to now where you don't really want to charge a squad of guardsmen in melee, changing a couple things suddenly makes tactical marines super effective no-AP assault troops to maul an enemy squad and swiftly cause a rout so long as they're T3. It also actually makes Assault Marines worth bringing and an Eviscerator not suck.

Bolt action's turn system is another thing I was messing around with, where each unit on both sides gets an activation die shuffled into a bag and randomly drawn to simulate the fluctuating initiative of war. It also makes deep strikes REALLY effective by allowing them to do a two-turn wombo combo if you get lucky. Only deep strike at the end of the first 'phase', followed by immediately activating them the next 'phase', makes anything with melta scary as hell.

 Yarium wrote:
#1 - Troops aren't a tax. They're an investment
More than in any previous edition of the game, Troops are the backbone of your list. The reason is clear; Command Points. This gives another angle for players to "game" the system from. Stratagems are a big part of the game, and are able to turn lackluster units into golden units, and golden units in bonkers broken units. Regardless of what you're using them for, Stratagems are a big deal, but you'll only have access to a good number of them if you bring Battalions or Brigades, and for that you need the humble Troop. Troops aren't a tax any longer, they're points you're spending for a return on investment.

Err, what? What you just described with CP is a textbook troops tax. You aren't taking troops because the units themselves have value, you're taking them because you need to fill mandatory FOC slots. And all of these CP battery detachments take them as MSU with minimal upgrades to keep the tax as cheap as possible.

#2 - Anything can hurt anything. No action is completely wasted.
It really sucks when you just can't hurt something no matter what. Having a sliver of a chance is better than none. The current to-wound system is better than any other edition yet. It has its losers (sorry Multilasers & Heavy Bolters), but most guns feel like winners.

This is a bad thing! It panders to people who are bad at math and say things like "I have a chance" even when the attack is extremely unlikely to accomplish anything, encourages extra time wasted on rolling dice, and the intent behind it over-homogenizes the game and takes away strategic depth.

#4 - Movement matters.
Getting across the table quickly has never been so important, and by opening up the movement options for all factions, the game really does feel like you're in the thick of it instantly. Anything that isn't crazy fast can feel slow as molasses by comparison, which can be really interesting in its own right!

Err, what? 8th edition is the opposite of having movement matter. When so much stuff is so fast movement ceases to be relevant. You aren't planning out moves over several turns to get where you need to go, you just cast "plasma deep strike" like a CCG card and roll your attack dice. 8th edition, through a combination of excessive movement distance and minimizing the relevance of terrain, has made movement matter less than at any time I can remember.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Everything hurting everything is a necessary part of the game when the game allows for extreme lists. As soon as the game allowed for armies with nothing but Titans, or nothing but T8 MC, or Nothing but tanks, everything hurting everything becomes a must. Essentially the less restrictive list building becomes the more necessary it is to account for skew lists. If I can build a list where you can realistically only hurt anything with 1 or 2 units, and I kill those 2 units the game ceases to be fun. As an example back in 5th Ed I played a 1k point Kill points game in a league with an army consisting of 2 tactical squads in Land raiders, and Sammiel in his AV 14 land speeder. My opponent had 1 or 2 melta guns ( cannot quite remember) in his army, and a bunch of plasma. Turn 1 I killed the only squads that could hurt my army, The rest of the game was entirely meaningless.

If a game forces you into balanced lists you can have some units that cannot hurt other units. If you can skew then all the sudden stopping it makes some games terrible.

Any list that is skewed like the two above (one banking entirely on heavy armor to do all the work and the other having essentially no real anti tank) are going to bump into hard counters. That is simply the nature of list building. Imagine the LR players next game was against someone who took a drop pod and speeder heavy marine army with melta out the ass, it would also get wrecked.

The real issue is that GW needs a scoring system that would allow you to make up points some how with smart play even if your against a list you can't directly fight all that well.

At 1k points in 5th the army you describe wasn’t a thing. Especially given I knew who I work be playing and it was Dark Angels. But against a reasonable list expecting to face a balanced force taking an extreme force always causes issues with game enjoyment for one part of the other.

I played a ton(100+) of games in RT & early 2nd(maybe 4 games), quit with the end of new models(squattening). Wanted to come back a couple if times but rules sucked until 8th.

I love the game and if they just refine the rules writing & make an effort(which they hadn't in a while) with the community engagement we should all be happy.(well maybe not certain people).

I do love all the "40k has never been a good game comments." Why are you spending $$ and playing something that isn't good? Its not like there are no other options out there. This isnt 1989 where it was warhammer or bust the market is flooded with wargames now.

The Salt Mine wrote:
I do love all the "40k has never been a good game comments." Why are you spending $$ and playing something that isn't good? Its not like there are no other options out there. This isnt 1989 where it was warhammer or bust the market is flooded with wargames now.

Because the only thing that matters is what other people play. It's an annoying habit of the wider market where people sheepishly only follow what's 'new' so it becomes incredibly hard just to convince people to just play older editions.

Also, people play 40k because of the lore and aesthetic primarily. Take both of those away and you would just have a fairly godawful wargame with zero redeeming facets. What makes warhammer is using its fluff as a crutch, otherwise it'd just be a broken and unfair system against games with far better balancing for fair pickup play. Or hell just Warhammer Epic, which is honestly just objectively superior to 40k in terms of depth of mechanics.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

Yeah sure, nerf monoliths even more. They are already hardly used, all we need is a legal reason to not use them
I mean, you're not wrong, its just something to consider.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Comand points regens, farms, and batteries just broke it for me. At the begining of 8th, i faced like 2 tfg who essentially had unlimited CP and it was broken af. Dont know it they FAQ or errata it b4 i rage quit the game n sold my entire army being salty af.

Damn man....if that's true that's some interesting decision making…. FYI CP farming has been greatly FAQ as you can only ever regain 1Cp per battle round.

I have been playing since second, and I love 8th. I think it is the best rule set, and while not prefect, I like it better than all previous editions. Now, if GW was as active during 5th or early 6th as they are now those might have been better games, but alas that is not what history holds.

I agree with some of the comments above, 8th could be a really great game with a few minor changes (alternative activation would be a completely different game and require a major change so that is not something I think you can just jam into 8th edition, but would require a rewrite of the whole game, which we just had in 8th).

I think stratagems should be one use per game for all of them. Some of them are spammed endlessly (VotLW, Command re-roll) and some never used. Making it a choice when to use something as good as VotLW would add some tactical depth (I play Chaos by the way)

Relics should cost points. The really bad ones should be really cheap, but the CP regen, or the knight ones that are really effective need points to account for their effectiveness.

Outside of Titanic vehicles and Aircraft, basically all vehicles need +2-4 more wounds, and some elite units probably need to be 3 wounds, like terminators.

You should be able to move and summon, which would make it actually usable.

Cover needs better rules, although if you use enough terrain this is not as much of a problem.

I think with these modest changes that the game would be better, but I still like it now.

Yeah, free relics and free squad leaders is a bad design choice. I'm not sure what they were thinking there.

I mean, look at a nob's stat line - do you really think that's worth 7 points, the same as a boy, GW?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
8th would be great if they hired competent rules writers.

restrict TITANIC units in matched play to 3000 points or more and we have a good start.

Yeah sure, nerf monoliths even more. They are already hardly used, all we need is a legal reason to not use them
I mean, you're not wrong, its just something to consider.

Fair point. Lord Of War then.

I started playing in 3rd, and I've hardly gotten any games in in 7th or 8th (more Shadow War Armageddon, Necromunda, and Kill Team), so discount this as you will.

I regret the 'details' moving from the model to the rules. That sounds weird, so let me unpack it. I don't feel like the game has gotten any less complex, but things like armor facing, maneuvering, armor penetration, line of sight have been simplified or removed, so they don't matter in the game, and things that are entirely abstract, like auras and command points and strategems have become much more important. 3rd was a PITA for WYSIWYG, but I feel like the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

Let me illustrate this with the only army I've retained, Orks. In 3rd, Orks could upgrade units to be Ardboys, or Skarboys, and Kommandos could have tankbusta bombs. The metal Kommando models eventually producted were all equipped with Tankbusta bombs. To take Skarboys or Ardboys, the models had to be represented in some way (I did all my skarboys with chain-choppas and all my ardboys with two shoulder pads and a helmet or iron gob, while the regular 6+ guys got ONE of those options.

Tankbusta bombs, Skarboyz, and Ardboys all dropped out of editions somewhere between 4th and 7th. They just weren't a thing. So in one way, I'm happy that they are back there again in 8th.

But 8th, while embracing more stuff, still doesn't get it right.

Kommandos are still ALL modeled with tankbusta bombs, yet only 1 in 5 can take them, and in most cases, you can remove any model from the unit for casualties. So the presence of tankbusta bombs (and many pieces of equipment) is more 'did you pay the points' than "is it on the model?"

Skarboys and Ardboys are back, but they are a strategem, that costs commmand points. So it doesn't matter what the models look like, their game performance depends on how you constructed your army, and spent abstract points on abstract rules before the game. You can't look at the orks and see that these guys have a better armor save; you have to pay attention to what card someone played.

Strategems are, in my own opinion, but with very limited experience, a really good idea with a really inconsistent application. I really, really like the idea of rewarding people for constructing thematic lists, but in practice, it seems to lead to taking certain IG detachments to provide CP. I really, really like the idea of being able to spend CP on clever strategems and tactics, like outflanking the enemy, or calling in airstrikes, but instead, the CP are used to just alter game perfomance, like letting you attack twice, or take more of ''one only" items.

Every little plastic blob doesn't have to have game rules (speaking as the guy who scraped the purity seals off his Space Wolves and modeled the characters with wolf tooth necklaces and wolf tail talismans for the rules benefits), but Warhammer is a miniature war game, and the models should function as more than counters to denote position.

I've been playing 40k since early 3rd and I've got to say 8th is the most fun I've had in the hobby since the early days. Like all editions, it has its issues but overall I think it's a really good edition of the game.

The fixed WS/BS rolls is actually a really minor change. For the most part having a high BS never really done anything past a certain point, and the WS comparison chart was never really too impactful - everything was usually hitting on a 3+ or 4+ in melee anyway, so now there's more scope to expand that to a 2+ to 6+ range. At first I found the removal of Initiative a bit jarring, but after playing a few games I was glad it had gone.

In terms of the "lethality" of the game, I find it no worse than 6th/7th edition. My vehicles definitely survive longer now than they did then. MEQ still die in droves, which is what I think the main "lethality" complaint is. There's a saturation of widely-available anti-MEQ weapons that make life tough for power armoured units, but again this has been happening for a long time now. In a group with friends I found this to be a non-issue, we just had a gentleman's agreement to not spam plasma or grav, but for pickup games at a LGS or tournament play it's just a reality we all have to deal with.

I like stratagems, but I don't like how many command points people can rack up with minimal investment. I feel that the CPs generated by detachments need to be toned back to what they originally were, and that the stratagems in some of the earlier books need to be revised. Otherwise I love them!

Terrain is still an issue. As long as a Leman Russ can fire all its weapons through a single window of a ruined building to hit something on the other side with no penalty then terrain is having less impact than it should. If you have big blocky Line of Sight blocking terrain or use the Cities of Death ruleset it's a bit better but still needs work. I don't hate it as much as other people seem to though.

 Peregrine wrote:

Err, what? What you just described with CP is a textbook troops tax. You aren't taking troops because the units themselves have value, you're taking them because you need to fill mandatory FOC slots. And all of these CP battery detachments take them as MSU with minimal upgrades to keep the tax as cheap as possible.

I disagree with you here. If they were useless, you wouldn't see them at all. The value of what they allow you to bring (CPs) combined with their presence means they are worthwhile. Yes, the best ones in a tournament are like that, but if we look at tournaments in the past editions, troops were as devoid as possible. Now they have a place. Maybe you don't like that place, but it's there, and smart players make use of these units to great effect such that they take MORE than the minimum. Since there's so much reward to having more CP's, they CHOOSE to pay for even another 3 units of Troops to get even more CP. Then they use those troops so that the points are also not wasted. By your definition, any unit which you take for any reason other than "it shoots good" is a tax. This isn't a tax, it's an investment. You put points in, you get CP's out, but how much you put in is up to you - not up to the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

This is a bad thing! It panders to people who are bad at math and say things like "I have a chance" even when the attack is extremely unlikely to accomplish anything, encourages extra time wasted on rolling dice, and the intent behind it over-homogenizes the game and takes away strategic depth.

Says you. Sure, it's a bad chance, but that doesn't matter if it feels right, and this feels right. The game has enough knobs and dials such that it's very rare that you can win off this strategy, but it makes the game more compelling for both sides when nothing is completely safe. You think this is bad because it takes away strategic depth, but I think it's good because it adds FUN to the game. As for strategy - it's up for you to figure out the best path with the tools you got and the restrictions of the system. You can't make up new moves in chess - you work with what you got, and the limitations that each piece has. Well, anything being wounded on a 6+ is a limitation that you have to work around, and there's a lot of strategic and tactical decisions that come with that. The existence or not of a rule isn't what makes a game strategic - it's how the system as a whole allows for worth while decisions. It's pretty rare that throwing some units in against a big tough thing will produce results, but the fact that it can may actually make the game MORE strategic, not less.

 Peregrine wrote:
Err, what? 8th edition is the opposite of having movement matter. When so much stuff is so fast movement ceases to be relevant. You aren't planning out moves over several turns to get where you need to go, you just cast "plasma deep strike" like a CCG card and roll your attack dice. 8th edition, through a combination of excessive movement distance and minimizing the relevance of terrain, has made movement matter less than at any time I can remember.

Very much disagree. Not sure how much you're playing, but where you are, and where you plan to go, matter a ton. With lots of units having high movement values, this makes planning more difficult to do, and allows more chances to react and adapt. The game is more likely to take place over a larger area of the table. It gets to be more strategic because you need to consider the whole table; not just the small part where you units get to and then stay there. You can plan around deep strike - there's lots of ways to counter-act and counter-play it, and it's only one piece of the puzzle that is defeating your opponent's army. I can't think of a time that movement has mattered MORE than now. Often, where I need to be to deal damage, where I need to survive counter attacks, where I need to counter-act my opponent's next moves, and where I need to be to score points, are 4 entirely different places on the table. That, to me, sounds like something that makes movement matter a LOT.

Because the only thing that matters is what other people play. It's an annoying habit of the wider market where people sheepishly only follow what's 'new' so it becomes incredibly hard just to convince people to just play older editions.

Also, people play 40k because of the lore and aesthetic primarily. Take both of those away and you would just have a fairly godawful wargame with zero redeeming facets. What makes warhammer is using its fluff as a crutch, otherwise it'd just be a broken and unfair system against games with far better balancing for fair pickup play. Or hell just Warhammer Epic, which is honestly just objectively superior to 40k in terms of depth of mechanics.

I would disagree that the fluff is the only thing holding the game up. Just look at the gak show that 6th and 7th. It doesn't matter how good the fluff is if you have a bad game no one is going to play it. Which is exactly what happened in 6th and 7th people were leaving the game in droves. I also disagree that more mechanics make for a better game. There reaches a point where you have so many stupid situational mechanics where you spend more time reading a rule book and arguing over obscure interactions than actually playing the game. This is the first addition of the game I have been able to play where myself or my opponents do not have to reference the rule book almost every single game. 8th has just the right amount of simplicity and it still allows for a surprising amount of tactical depth. If 8th had no tactical depth anyone who can net list an army could win a major tournament. However, I constantly see certain names at top tables which leads me to believe skill and tactical thinking are still a major part of this game.