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Seabass wrote: Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.
8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...
the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.
then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.
Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.
Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.
Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.
Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.
And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!
I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.
+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"
My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.
OK, so I did play in second, and if I have conflated the cost of an apothecary with the cost of the wargear card together, then so be it, I was 17 years old when I played and I am 41 years old now, hell, I can barely remember what wargear cards came in expansions and which ones came out of white dwarfs (which is why I mentioned the incredibly hard to get and often wanted ablative armor). WHOOPS, I'm so goddamned sorry I don't remember identically what those rules are. But it gues it's just easier to insult people. I don't think, even then, that it changes much. I mean, we could go on and point to the Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons and cyclones, and yeah, a host of other things. Also, the stupid super exarch was just dumb, having a ton of attacks, damn near unhittable, it was just bonkers. Or, just look no further than the black codex assassin, or that, at least in my area, after dark millennium came out, no one wanted to play with it because the stupid psychic phase took too long and no one wanted to play a mini card game inside of their game of 40k, so events in my area and players just didn't use it. chart after chart? in the rule book for the core game, i remember there being like 3 or 4 different psychology charts for failing morale checks depending on whether the unit caused terror, or just fear, or other psychological effects, or the hallucinogen grenade (i may have some of the names wrong, im so fething sorry if i do, i dont have it all completely committed to memory like you two clearly do, as the gods of 2nd edition you are/were) which had a d6 result for model after model.
hell, just jump into something was long and laborious, with scatter for every model, or my personal favorite, the smart ass space wolf player who took 20 blood claws, gave them all jump packs and smoke grenades and then jumped in, and popped smoke, which ended up with about 60+ hours of rolling scatter, and then rolling scatter for the grenade, and then, yup, you guessed it, on the next turn, you had to roll on yet another chart to see what happened with the 20 smoke grenades (whether they went away, drifted (which then incured another scatter check i think. again, not a god of 2nd edition unlike the pantheon that now stands in judgment apparently) so yeah, chart after fething chart. that was a thing. sorry, you don't remember that. i do...wait... did you actually...nevermind...
The point of all of this was that I have seen a lot of pointing to 2nd edition as some hallmark of good game design and it just wasn't. It was a fun game. The story and models brought a lot of my friends into it, as well as myself, (i can still remember being completely enthralled by the last story on the inside of the dark millennium rulebook, which was the first introduction to mckachen and stern) but it wasn't a golden age relic of excellent gameplay and design that so many seem to point it up.
Sure, I've probably conflated a lot more about that edition in my head, but who cares, it was 23 years ago, That doesn't negate my original point. Removed - BrookM
In response to all this, I'd like to chime in that 2nd Ed. gaming was pretty damn sparse when 3rd hit, and the shift in # of games being played at local stores was dramatic. We had to fight for table space then, and you'd be lucky to find more than 1 game of 2nd running at a store before 3rd dropped.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/11 19:13:30
Seabass wrote: Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.
8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...
the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.
then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.
Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.
Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.
Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.
Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.
And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!
I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.
+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"
My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.
OK, so I did play in second, and if I have conflated the cost of an apothecary with the cost of the wargear card together, then so be it, I was 17 years old when I played and I am 41 years old now, hell, I can barely remember what wargear cards came in expansions and which ones came out of white dwarfs (which is why I mentioned the incredibly hard to get and often wanted ablative armor). WHOOPS, I'm so goddamned sorry I don't remember identically what those rules are. But it gues it's just easier to insult people. I don't think, even then, that it changes much. I mean, we could go on and point to the Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons and cyclones, and yeah, a host of other things. Also, the stupid super exarch was just dumb, having a ton of attacks, damn near unhittable, it was just bonkers. Or, just look no further than the black codex assassin, or that, at least in my area, after dark millennium came out, no one wanted to play with it because the stupid psychic phase took too long and no one wanted to play a mini card game inside of their game of 40k, so events in my area and players just didn't use it. chart after chart? in the rule book for the core game, i remember there being like 3 or 4 different psychology charts for failing morale checks depending on whether the unit caused terror, or just fear, or other psychological effects, or the hallucinogen grenade (i may have some of the names wrong, im so fething sorry if i do, i dont have it all completely committed to memory like you two clearly do, as the gods of 2nd edition you are/were) which had a d6 result for model after model.
hell, just jump into something was long and laborious, with scatter for every model, or my personal favorite, the smart ass space wolf player who took 20 blood claws, gave them all jump packs and smoke grenades and then jumped in, and popped smoke, which ended up with about 60+ hours of rolling scatter, and then rolling scatter for the grenade, and then, yup, you guessed it, on the next turn, you had to roll on yet another chart to see what happened with the 20 smoke grenades (whether they went away, drifted (which then incured another scatter check i think. again, not a god of 2nd edition unlike the pantheon that now stands in judgment apparently) so yeah, chart after fething chart. that was a thing. sorry, you don't remember that. i do...wait... did you actually...nevermind...
The point of all of this was that I have seen a lot of pointing to 2nd edition as some hallmark of good game design and it just wasn't. It was a fun game. The story and models brought a lot of my friends into it, as well as myself, (i can still remember being completely enthralled by the last story on the inside of the dark millennium rulebook, which was the first introduction to mckachen and stern) but it wasn't a golden age relic of excellent gameplay and design that so many seem to point it up.
Sure, I've probably conflated a lot more about that edition in my head, but who cares, it was 23 years ago, That doesn't negate my original point. Removed - BrookM
In response to all this, I'd like to chime in that 2nd Ed. gaming was pretty damn sparse when 3rd hit, and the shift in # of games being played at local stores was dramatic. We had to fight for table space then, and you'd be lucky to find more than 1 game of 2nd running at a store before 3rd dropped.
yup. we experienced the same thing in my store. some of the 2nd edition players stopped playing because "its not my warhammer" but we gained so many new players because the rules were far more simple and were quick and people could play meaningful games in half the time that we had to put in new tables in our local store.
A LOT of new tables, like 4 new tables to accommodate the new player rush, whereas they had two tables before. (also, the shift to a 4X6 instead of a 4X8 really helped too)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/11 19:13:40
I like 8th a lot for your average beerhammer casual games. It's relatively quick, easy to play and a lot of fun. But two years since release, it badly needs a rules consolidation. Either in the form of a free updated set of online core rules (yeah right...) or a new big rule book. The state of the current FAQ bloat is obnoxious
I do not like 8th in competitive terms, especially at the highest level. All of the fun is sucked out and it just devolves into who can create the most gamey lists and best abuse the lackluster aspects of the game design. I used to enjoy watching top table matches but now they are utterly boring
Top level play is all about chaff spam, smite spam, area denial and high volume shooting. Seeing 50 Guardsmen or Poxwalkers daisy chained all over the board in single file so they can contest as many objectives as possible and screen their entire deployment zone is the norm. And I'm sorry but it looks ridiculous
Seabass wrote: Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.
8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...
the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.
then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.
Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.
Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.
Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.
Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.
And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!
I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.
+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"
My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.
OK, so I did play in second, and if I have conflated the cost of an apothecary with the cost of the wargear card together, then so be it, I was 17 years old when I played and I am 41 years old now, hell, I can barely remember what wargear cards came in expansions and which ones came out of white dwarfs (which is why I mentioned the incredibly hard to get and often wanted ablative armor). WHOOPS, I'm so goddamned sorry I don't remember identically what those rules are. But it gues it's just easier to insult people. I don't think, even then, that it changes much. I mean, we could go on and point to the Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons and cyclones, and yeah, a host of other things. Also, the stupid super exarch was just dumb, having a ton of attacks, damn near unhittable, it was just bonkers. Or, just look no further than the black codex assassin, or that, at least in my area, after dark millennium came out, no one wanted to play with it because the stupid psychic phase took too long and no one wanted to play a mini card game inside of their game of 40k, so events in my area and players just didn't use it. chart after chart? in the rule book for the core game, i remember there being like 3 or 4 different psychology charts for failing morale checks depending on whether the unit caused terror, or just fear, or other psychological effects, or the hallucinogen grenade (i may have some of the names wrong, im so fething sorry if i do, i dont have it all completely committed to memory like you two clearly do, as the gods of 2nd edition you are/were) which had a d6 result for model after model.
hell, just using jump packs was long and laborious, with scatter for every model, or my personal favorite, the smart ass space wolf player who took 20 blood claws, gave them all jump packs and smoke grenades and then jumped in, and popped smoke, which ended up with about 60+ hours of rolling scatter, and then rolling scatter for the grenade, and then, yup, you guessed it, on the next turn, you had to roll on yet another chart to see what happened with the 20 smoke grenades (whether they went away, drifted (which then incured another scatter check i think. again, not a god of 2nd edition unlike the pantheon that now stands in judgment apparently) so yeah, chart after fething chart. that was a thing. sorry, you don't remember that. i do...wait... did you actually...nevermind...
The point of all of this was that I have seen a lot of pointing to 2nd edition as some hallmark of good game design and it just wasn't. It was a fun game. The story and models brought a lot of my friends into it, as well as myself, (i can still remember being completely enthralled by the last story on the inside of the dark millennium rulebook, which was the first introduction to mckachen and stern) but it wasn't a golden age relic of excellent gameplay and design that so many seem to point it up.
Sure, I've probably conflated a lot more about that edition in my head, but who cares, it was 23 years ago, That doesn't negate my original point. Removed - BrookM
Hey man, this is the internet. If you're going to cite specifics in a strong opinion, be sure you get the specifics right.
Yeah, 2nd did have alot of charts. (I used assault squads tossing Blind Grenades, and fired Plasma Missiles a lot for maximum disruption). It did have some crazy combos, etc. But to be fair, I've never held it particularly highly in terms of design within the 40k pantheon. But it's very different than everything since, and for a lot of us older folk, the first 40k we played.
It is distinctly different in terms of it's fidelity, and I think many people prefer it for the nitty gritty details in squad interactions that were possible.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/11 19:13:50
I frequently took multiple level 2 wizards just for utility, and I played pretty competitively. The level 4's were desired more because you had a better chance of getting the highest level spell.
I don't deny that Lv2s had some utility. Usually because you could only take 1 Arcane Item on a given caster, so Lv2s tended to be the ones carrying Dispel Scrolls.
What I said was that Lv4 Wizards were worth far more over Lv2 wizards than they actually cost.
Hell, even with regard to more minor wizards, you explicitly took Lv2 wizards, not Lv1 wizards. This was part of what I was getting at - extra wizard levels (especially 1-->2 and 3-->4) were so trivially costed compared to their benefit that they were basically an auto-take.
Well, that's the main thing I'd argue for. If you're fine with that (and with toning down some of the 8e spells that I think we both agree are nonsense), I'd be happy enough using this as the basis for 40k's psychic phase.
But again, thats because of the 6th level uber spells. Not because of the design of the magic phase. This wouldn't be a problem if the spells were toned down.
Sure, but those spells were as much as part of the 8th edition magic phase as the Miscast Table and can't just be ignored when judging it.
But the whole point of this part of the discussion is that nobody's asking for the whole 8th edition magic system to be ported in and everyone's acknowledged it was by no means perfect, with those ridiculous spells being a major contributor to that. So you can ignore them in this context. A lot of the other stuff you're talking about here are details that miss the overall point. The WH magic system was interactive and involved real player decisions, while the current psychic phase is the complete opposite. Even the decision to take a level 4 wizard came with the drawback of restricting what other characters you could take, and I often found it was a perfectly valid approach to just take a single defensive wizard and spend the points you saved on other characters or more units. Of course, it also helped that WH had actual restrictions on army selection so you had to make decisions about what to take and what to leave out based on more than just the available points.
So we can see from this that just chanigng the pyschic phase would help a little bit, but the real problems are a bit more deep-rooted than that. I think army selection also needs to be looked at in 40k right now. There aren't enough meaningful restricitons on army selection right now, which makes pretty much every decision about what to take come down to points, with the occasional concession to battlefield role to fill out a detachment. Having reflected on a few tournament reports I've seen recently I think what would also be good for 40k are more missions with disruptive deployment - scenarios where you can't guarantee being able to deploy your whole army exactly how you want to. It's just too easy at the moment to come up with a basic deployment plan with all your auras and abilities nicely overlapping and never have it disrupted due to the scenario, which makes game play out in the same way far too often.
But the whole point of this part of the discussion is that nobody's asking for the whole 8th edition magic system to be ported in and everyone's acknowledged it was by no means perfect, with those ridiculous spells being a major contributor to that. So you can ignore them in this context. A lot of the other stuff you're talking about here are details that miss the overall point. The WH magic system was interactive and involved real player decisions, while the current psychic phase is the complete opposite.
And this is why the uber-spells can't be ignored - because they entirely defeat your point. They made the 8th edition magic phase point-and-click. It did a good job of *appearing* tactical, but all it really was was a lot of false-choices.
Yes, you could use 6 dice to almost guarantee the casting of a minor spell and at the same time risking blowing your wizard's head off . . . but why would you want to?
Yes, you could use too few dispel dice to possibly counter an enemy spell . . . but why would you want to?
Yes, you could abstain from taking Lv4 wizards . . . but why would you want to?
The actual """tactics""" were, quite frankly, no better than those of the current 40k psychic phase - i.e. almost nonexistent.
Also, if you want me to stop talking about the uber-spells and similar, perhaps you should stop praising the 8th edition magic phase in the full context of that game?
Slipspace wrote: Even the decision to take a level 4 wizard came with the drawback of restricting what other characters you could take, and I often found it was a perfectly valid approach to just take a single defensive wizard and spend the points you saved on other characters or more units.
A decision that, strangely, never made it into any tournament lists. Because, whilst a wizard did indeed cost points, those points were utterly negligible compared to the power and utility he brought.
So we can see from this that just chanigng the pyschic phase would help a little bit, but the real problems are a bit more deep-rooted than that. I think army selection also needs to be looked at in 40k right now. There aren't enough meaningful restricitons on army selection right now, which makes pretty much every decision about what to take come down to points, with the occasional concession to battlefield role to fill out a detachment. Having reflected on a few tournament reports I've seen recently I think what would also be good for 40k are more missions with disruptive deployment - scenarios where you can't guarantee being able to deploy your whole army exactly how you want to. It's just too easy at the moment to come up with a basic deployment plan with all your auras and abilities nicely overlapping and never have it disrupted due to the scenario, which makes game play out in the same way far too often.
On this at least we agree.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/10 09:00:03
Lance845 wrote: My opinion is that 8th started in a great place with their simple rules and the indexes.
It's gone exponentially down hill from there. The sheer volume of documents needed to play a currently legal game is staggering and draconian and confusing as feth for anyone just getting started. GWs poor rules writing has only exacerbated the issues and there is no end in sight. 8th is an ever bloating mess at this point that has grown to large and unwieldy to actually fix.
Put it out of it's misery and try again.
Precisely how I, and most of my friends still playing, feel.
We're currently thinking of just going back to the indices, with a few home-tweaks.
Lance845 wrote: My opinion is that 8th started in a great place with their simple rules and the indexes.
It's gone exponentially down hill from there. The sheer volume of documents needed to play a currently legal game is staggering and draconian and confusing as feth for anyone just getting started. GWs poor rules writing has only exacerbated the issues and there is no end in sight. 8th is an ever bloating mess at this point that has grown to large and unwieldy to actually fix.
Put it out of it's misery and try again.
Precisely how I, and most of my friends still playing, feel.
We're currently thinking of just going back to the indices, with a few home-tweaks.
Yeah even I have to admit the indices weren't that bad and absolutely superior to the gakshow that was 7e. But 8e as of right now is starting to feel more or less even with 6e, although still superior to 7e's plug and play formations.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Wyzilla wrote: Yeah even I have to admit the indices weren't that bad and absolutely superior to the gakshow that was 7e. But 8e as of right now is starting to feel more or less even with 6e, although still superior to 7e's plug and play formations.
Good, succinct summary of 8th.
I am feeling that 8th is due for a 2nd edition update since the document creep is getting to be a bit much.
They may have had the right idea with the Chaos Codex.
I am just trying to get my AM/IG army painted fully before some major reboot of them kicks in.
The nerf hammer is working pretty good with them so-far.
A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Seabass wrote: Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.
8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...
the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.
then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.
Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.
Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.
Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.
Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.
And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!
I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.
+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"
My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.
OK, so I did play in second, and if I have conflated the cost of an apothecary with the cost of the wargear card together, then so be it, I was 17 years old when I played and I am 41 years old now, hell, I can barely remember what wargear cards came in expansions and which ones came out of white dwarfs (which is why I mentioned the incredibly hard to get and often wanted ablative armor). WHOOPS, I'm so goddamned sorry I don't remember identically what those rules are. But it gues it's just easier to insult people. I don't think, even then, that it changes much. I mean, we could go on and point to the Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons and cyclones, and yeah, a host of other things. Also, the stupid super exarch was just dumb, having a ton of attacks, damn near unhittable, it was just bonkers. Or, just look no further than the black codex assassin, or that, at least in my area, after dark millennium came out, no one wanted to play with it because the stupid psychic phase took too long and no one wanted to play a mini card game inside of their game of 40k, so events in my area and players just didn't use it. chart after chart? in the rule book for the core game, i remember there being like 3 or 4 different psychology charts for failing morale checks depending on whether the unit caused terror, or just fear, or other psychological effects, or the hallucinogen grenade (i may have some of the names wrong, im so fething sorry if i do, i dont have it all completely committed to memory like you two clearly do, as the gods of 2nd edition you are/were) which had a d6 result for model after model.
hell, just using jump packs was long and laborious, with scatter for every model, or my personal favorite, the smart ass space wolf player who took 20 blood claws, gave them all jump packs and smoke grenades and then jumped in, and popped smoke, which ended up with about 60+ hours of rolling scatter, and then rolling scatter for the grenade, and then, yup, you guessed it, on the next turn, you had to roll on yet another chart to see what happened with the 20 smoke grenades (whether they went away, drifted (which then incured another scatter check i think. again, not a god of 2nd edition unlike the pantheon that now stands in judgment apparently) so yeah, chart after fething chart. that was a thing. sorry, you don't remember that. i do...wait... did you actually...nevermind...
The point of all of this was that I have seen a lot of pointing to 2nd edition as some hallmark of good game design and it just wasn't. It was a fun game. The story and models brought a lot of my friends into it, as well as myself, (i can still remember being completely enthralled by the last story on the inside of the dark millennium rulebook, which was the first introduction to mckachen and stern) but it wasn't a golden age relic of excellent gameplay and design that so many seem to point it up.
Sure, I've probably conflated a lot more about that edition in my head, but who cares, it was 23 years ago, That doesn't negate my original point. Removed - BrookM
I played 2nd 40K 17 years ago It doesn´t matter when you played 2nd 40K. What matters is that you posted a bunch of nonsense and I called you red-handed while doing so.
Op Exarch You still didn´t answer my question why your example of the op exarch was also totally wrong.
Psychic phase, jump packs and smoke grenades took too long Well, there is one universal truth to all tabletop rules: If you know what you are doing then it takes only a slight amount of time. It seems that this wasn´t the case in your games.
Who cares that I post stuff about 2nd 40K that isn´t true I can´t speak for every dakka dakka member but I CERTAINLY DO.
Vile language You have been reported. And another thing: Consider yourself ignored.
Not Online!!! wrote: Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.
Especially AA missiles, infact csm and sm missile launchers should just have them considering the pricetag.
Grenadiers should be an upgrade for guardsmen, etc.
The movement orientated stratagems i don't mind, as do i with morale or Reserve (recycling) ones, but why the feth aa missiles are a stratagem and other such nonsense is beyond me.
Honorary mention of ard boyz, just stupid...
Situational gear - AA missiles, anti-pysker weapons, anti-demon ammo, melts bombs and the like I think are best done as stratagems. Relics though - those ought to cost points, especially since some are more useful than others - and some are just plain must-haves.
Can’t comment on ‘ard boys, but if all it does is give a +1 bonus to armor, that’s silly.
I've watched some battle reports from 8th recently and correct me if I am wrong here, but seems to me that getting first turn is always a massive advantage, especially with shooting armies.
I know it also depens on what terrain is on the board, but the staggering amount of damage first turn shooting can do seems a little unbalanced to me or am I missing something here?
Not Online!!! wrote: Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.
Especially AA missiles, infact csm and sm missile launchers should just have them considering the pricetag.
Grenadiers should be an upgrade for guardsmen, etc.
The movement orientated stratagems i don't mind, as do i with morale or Reserve (recycling) ones, but why the feth aa missiles are a stratagem and other such nonsense is beyond me.
Honorary mention of ard boyz, just stupid...
Situational gear - AA missiles, anti-pysker weapons, anti-demon ammo, melts bombs and the like I think are best done as stratagems. Relics though - those ought to cost points, especially since some are more useful than others - and some are just plain must-haves.
Can’t comment on ‘ard boys, but if all it does is give a +1 bonus to armor, that’s silly.
I disafree vehemently on the equipment.
Csm an army that heavily lacks AA capability has to use stratagems to get missiles for aa use?
Imagine the champion of the havocs running back and forth to ask the Lord or head honcho if he is allowed TO FIRE ONE BLOODY MISSILE? To do his damn Job.
Especially because gamewise SMaswell as CSM lack basic AA capability, spending CP especially for Chaos is no no considering that you also need to spend CP to stand a decent fighting chance.
SO scuse, me situational Equipment should be part of the models, and or weapons they use (sometimes with a small pricetag) .
Also just a mention ONE AA stratagem costs for Chaos in the best case 36.125 pts due to CP / point.
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Tiberias wrote: I've watched some battle reports from 8th recently and correct me if I am wrong here, but seems to me that getting first turn is always a massive advantage, especially with shooting armies.
I know it also depens on what terrain is on the board, but the staggering amount of damage first turn shooting can do seems a little unbalanced to me or am I missing something here?
At this point i have rarely place enough for a Leman russ to maneuvre through the map because of that.
THe new cover rules are also bad.
Added salt in the wounds, double attack phase shenanigan stratagems.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/06/14 08:47:29
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
I don't want to quote the giant wall of text but I will say that I've watched a bunch of 8th ed batreps and every army(that had a snowballs chance of actually winning) had a level 4 sorceror and that every player had the exact number of dice they were going to devote to casting/unbinding every spell set in stone the moment they rolled them. It REALLY wasn't tactical or interesting.
My own 2 cents? The psychic phase SHOULDN'T be complex or intricate in 40k because of how radically different the ways each army participates in it are. In 8thed fantasy, every army had wizards except dwarves who had enough 'wizard like' stuff that they were still plenty involved.
In 40k you have necrons, tau, DE, admech, etc who have NOTHING in the psychic phase, up through Guard, orkz, and marines who have some psychic presence sometimes, tjrough Eldar who have a fair amount of psychic reliably, into armies like Chaos and SoB who have like 20 spells or Denies respectively. With that gamut, keeping the psychic phase simple is just better.
I like 8th a lot more than 7th where you either bought the right models or lost. I also like that the main rules are free and they update points regularly. I just hate Imperial Knights no matter which edition so...
ERJAK wrote: I don't want to quote the giant wall of text but I will say that I've watched a bunch of 8th ed batreps and every army(that had a snowballs chance of actually winning) had a level 4 sorceror and that every player had the exact number of dice they were going to devote to casting/unbinding every spell set in stone the moment they rolled them. It REALLY wasn't tactical or interesting.
My own 2 cents? The psychic phase SHOULDN'T be complex or intricate in 40k because of how radically different the ways each army participates in it are. In 8thed fantasy, every army had wizards except dwarves who had enough 'wizard like' stuff that they were still plenty involved.
In 40k you have necrons, tau, DE, admech, etc who have NOTHING in the psychic phase, up through Guard, orkz, and marines who have some psychic presence sometimes, tjrough Eldar who have a fair amount of psychic reliably, into armies like Chaos and SoB who have like 20 spells or Denies respectively. With that gamut, keeping the psychic phase simple is just better.
The psychic system does need work though, at least in terms of counters. Dwarfs had no wizards, but they had really good anti-magic defense to compensate. You don't see that in 40k. Tau got nothing against Psykers, and necron and Dark Eldar psi-defense is just pathetic. You'd think it would be common sense to give the races with no psykers some sort of actual counter so they can do something in the psychic phase instead of watching their opponents buff/smite at will.
Tau need Nicassar or some other sort of psychic auxiliary race.
Crypteks need to come stock with gloom prisms because why wouldn't they? There's a bit in the 5th edition codex about Crypteks protecting their work with warp blocking tech, so you'd think they would have a personal psychic countermeasure. Hell, give the C'tan deny too, because they are the reasons why the Necrons won the war against the Old Ones. How it would work is the Psyker would try to manipulate reality with the warp, the C'tan would go "yeah, no" and try to use its natural physics manipulation ability to counteract it.
Dunno what Dark Eldar would get. Apparently experimenting with psychic powers is forbidden by Vect, so no Haemonculi abominations.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/06/15 00:08:43
What I have
~4100
~1660
Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!
A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble
I think the Psyker phase would be fine if they just let Ethereals, Tech Priests, and whatever the other non-Psykers have, operate as Psykers. Have Canticles and that Sense of Stone thing that Tau get work like Psyker Powers, able to be Denied, requiring a roll, etc. But the units that can use them would also be allowed to Deny Psyker Abilities. Seems easy peasy to me.
Psychic phase, jump packs and smoke grenades took too long Well, there is one universal truth to all tabletop rules: If you know what you are doing then it takes only a slight amount of time. It seems that this wasn´t the case in your games.
Jump packs did take too long, deviating 10 models individually was a little irritating. Deviating all 10 with one roll would have been better.
I miss psychology. I miss Close Combat swarming. I don't miss 9+2D6-1D8+1D10-1D12+3 Armor Pen + 5 different location charts (And yes I'm exaggerating. A little.).
I REALLY miss Terminator Armor on 2D6 instead of 2+ potentially even without an invuln. I don't miss Instant Death on characters.
8th edition has a lot of 2nd Edition to it. It could use a little more.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/15 05:51:39
8th edition at top end of competitive is about as crap garbo as 40k has always been at the highest levels. Bland flavorless lists smashing each other for glory.
Only difference from now till the most recent edition prior, is instead of formations, we have stratagems and now detachments, which basically will end up morphing into formations in time.
Now on the flip side, on the casual end the game is a whole lot of fun as someone else mentioned. Depends on where and how you play, you either love it, or it's just as bad as its ever been in all new ways.
Dunno what Dark Eldar would get. Apparently experimenting with psychic powers is forbidden by Vect, so no Haemonculi abominations.
I think DE are supposed to use the stored screams of tortured psykers to inflict great pain and disruption on enemy psykers. However, in the current rules it's represented as a once-per-game stratagem that lightly tickles nearby psykers.
To be honest, I'd prefer DE getting their own psykers and using an equivalent of the Lore of Dark Magic (or whatever the Dark Elves used to use in WHFB). I know I'm dreaming here but still.
blood reaper wrote: I will respect human rights and trans people but I will never under any circumstances use the phrase 'folks' or 'ya'll'. I would rather be killed by firing squad.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"
Argive wrote: GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.
You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.
Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
Dunno what Dark Eldar would get. Apparently experimenting with psychic powers is forbidden by Vect, so no Haemonculi abominations.
I think DE are supposed to use the stored screams of tortured psykers to inflict great pain and disruption on enemy psykers. However, in the current rules it's represented as a once-per-game stratagem that lightly tickles nearby psykers.
Yeah, that's not great. I really don't understand GW's obsession with stratagems. There should be fewer stratagems, but more unit upgrades. Ditto with the free relics. And the free squad leaders. There are quite a few design choices in terms of army building that don't feel right in 8th, really.
To be honest, I'd prefer DE getting their own psykers and using an equivalent of the Lore of Dark Magic (or whatever the Dark Elves used to use in WHFB). I know I'm dreaming here but still.
Maybe a Lore of Pain would fit. Like, they get all of that pain energy (or whatever its called) and use it as a weapon. Technically its not using the warp as its using some weird arcane empathetic tech, so it wouldn't break Vect's laws. There would have to be a special gimmick to differentiate it from standard Physic powers though. C'tan Powers gimmick is that its used in the movement phase, it can't be denied, there's no casting value, but they can only use one power per turn, there is a roll you have to make to see if it goes off on a D6 (mathetically I think psi powers have a higher success chance on average), there's no buffs and they are fairly short ranged.
Maybe Pain Powers wouldn't need casting values and they go off automatically, but every target has a chance to resist them with a leadership test. Buffs cannot be resisted, but has a chance to deal damage to the receiving unit due to sensory overload. Users of Pain Powers get deny, but risk taking a wound. The idea is that they hurt themselves to generate the will power needed to combat the warp. Or something like that, idk, magic is weird. C'tan are easier to understand and explain.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2019/06/15 13:21:57
What I have
~4100
~1660
Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!
A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble
Having a whole phase dedicated to Psychic stuff was always a bit weird. Magic is intrinsic to Fantasy as a genre but Psychic powers are certainly not as important for Sci Fi. The 3rd edition solution of making them interesting weapons or buffs used in the shooting phase is my favourite solution. Making an entire phase and set of systems is needless overcomplication in my view. (And yeah I was playing in 2e)
Yeah, that's not great. I really don't understand GW's obsession with stratagems. There should be fewer stratagems, but more unit upgrades.
Ditto with the free relics. And the free squad leaders. There are quite a few design choices in terms of army building that don't feel right in 8th, really.
Definitely agreed about fewer stratagems, more unit upgrades.
I'm usually not so bothered about free squad leaders, as they were so overpriced in past editions that no one took them unless forced to.
However, it is rather odd when you have Exarchs and other squad leaders who are markedly better than the other squad members (much more than the standard +1A +1Ld).
Oh, and I'd much prefer that Relics go back to being equipment you pay for normally.
Maybe a Lore of Pain would fit. Like, they get all of that pain energy (or whatever its called) and use it as a weapon.
Technically its not using the warp as its using some weird arcane empathetic tech, so it wouldn't break Vect's laws. There would have to be a special gimmick to differentiate it from standard Physic powers though.
C'tan Powers gimmick is that its used in the movement phase, it can't be denied, there's no casting value, but they can only use one power per turn, there is a roll you have to make to see if it goes off on a D6 (mathetically I think psi powers have a higher success chance on average), there's no buffs and they are fairly short ranged.
Maybe Pain Powers wouldn't need casting values and they go off automatically, but every target has a chance to resist them with a leadership test. Buffs cannot be resisted, but has a chance to deal damage to the receiving unit due to sensory overload.
Users of Pain Powers get deny, but risk taking a wound. The idea is that they hurt themselves to generate the will power needed to combat the warp. Or something like that, idk, magic is weird. C'tan are easier to understand and explain.
I like the idea of Pain Powers being resisted by the target's Ld, rather than having a cast value.
I wonder if this could also be tied into Power from Pain somehow, as I think the current rules are lacklustre, to say the least. Not necessarily bad (though they're pretty awful for Kabalites and not much better for characters) but very boring.
Da Boss wrote: Having a whole phase dedicated to Psychic stuff was always a bit weird. Magic is intrinsic to Fantasy as a genre but Psychic powers are certainly not as important for Sci Fi. The 3rd edition solution of making them interesting weapons or buffs used in the shooting phase is my favourite solution. Making an entire phase and set of systems is needless overcomplication in my view. (And yeah I was playing in 2e)
Yeah, I thought 5th edition's method of just having psychic powers cast at appropriate times during the turn (movement phase for buffs, shooting phase for psychic shooting attacks, Assault phase for melee-buffs, Force Weapons etc.) worked fine.
blood reaper wrote: I will respect human rights and trans people but I will never under any circumstances use the phrase 'folks' or 'ya'll'. I would rather be killed by firing squad.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"
Argive wrote: GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.
You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.
Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
I never liked 8th in the first place. I hate current vehicle and morale rules. They are too generalized and now 40k feels like an abstracted, RTS-style game, instead of actual battle with actual explonsions, wrecks, people running away in terror.
8th pretty much killed 40k in my small subarea. It was ailing already towards end of 7th because of all the stupid codices GW was churning out. Some of my friends greeted 8th with enthusiasm at first, but in reality they haven't played it. It is too bland and boring.
Backfire wrote: I never liked 8th in the first place. I hate current vehicle and morale rules. They are too generalized and now 40k feels like an abstracted, RTS-style game, instead of actual battle with actual explonsions, wrecks, people running away in terror.
The rts example is pretty good, and I share your sentiment. Why take all the time to play a game that involves interacting with dozens or possibly hundreds of models if none of the detail is going to matter?
Also I REALLY hate Command points. Such mechanics always come up like contrived and unintuitive attempt to add 'depth' to the game. I bet that they were added as an afterthought, at some point during the test games they realized that the game had become too shallow, oh we need to add some new mechanism here so we can have actual skill element.
AngryAngel80 wrote: 8th edition at top end of competitive is about as crap garbo as 40k has always been at the highest levels. Bland flavorless lists smashing each other for glory.
Only difference from now till the most recent edition prior, is instead of formations, we have stratagems and now detachments, which basically will end up morphing into formations in time.
Now on the flip side, on the casual end the game is a whole lot of fun as someone else mentioned. Depends on where and how you play, you either love it, or it's just as bad as its ever been in all new ways.
I actually see it the other way around, I do not really think a poorly thought out list that follows some dubious fluff that mostly comes down to hope it works on the battlefield is much fun.
And I think it’s just where GW has a lot of poor design. They spent a lot of time trying to make 40k fit kill team and apoc that it’s scale is all way off. And often the casual games just end up being as little fun as the competive is at times.
I would say I am fairly casual and a narrative player, GW should still be upping its game design. The shake up of 8th should have been them setting up for long term improvements.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/06/15 14:35:51
AngryAngel80 wrote: 8th edition at top end of competitive is about as crap garbo as 40k has always been at the highest levels. Bland flavorless lists smashing each other for glory.
Only difference from now till the most recent edition prior, is instead of formations, we have stratagems and now detachments, which basically will end up morphing into formations in time.
Now on the flip side, on the casual end the game is a whole lot of fun as someone else mentioned. Depends on where and how you play, you either love it, or it's just as bad as its ever been in all new ways.
I actually see it the other way around, I do not really think a poorly thought out list that follows some dubious fluff that mostly comes down to hope it works on the battlefield is much fun.
And I think it’s just where GW has a lot of poor design. They spent a lot of time trying to make 40k fit kill team and apoc that it’s scale is all way off. And often the casual games just end up being as little fun as the competive is at times.
I would say I am fairly casual and a narrative player, GW should still be upping its game design. The shake up of 8th should have been them setting up for long term improvements.
Well I can only speak for what I've seen and experienced but they've all been fairly tight games. I mean bad lists still aren't going to do well casual or competitive but mostly I've seen really tight games in the casual venue and ones that went to the wire. I even really tested the system by taking lists that would be pretty bad vs certain ones and while the outcome wasn't surprising they could have gone either way at points in the game.
I feel like the game suffers the most at the bleeding edge of list design. Though to be honest at this point I don't think GW is capable of an actual balanced rules either by choice or by inability to do it with the skills they have.
TheFleshIsWeak wrote: Not going to post all my thoughts on 8th, but I'd like to weigh in on a couple of points:
Weapon Immunity
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for certain units to be immune to weapons. e.g. for tanks to be immune to small-arms fire. However:
- 6th and 7th edition 40k buggered this concept entirely - most notably with the concept of Knight Armies. Basically, you could have armies that would be entirely immune to huge swathes of enemy weapons. That's not a fun game.
- There was also the issue of units being made immune to weapons that should be their weakness. In 7th, we had the Wraithknight being made virtually immune to Poison, which completely invalidated the main strength of DE and what is supposed to be a weakness of monstrous creatures. In 8th we have a similar issue with many large vehicles and monsters being given invulnerable saves, which invalidates the high AP value on weapons that are supposed to be effective against such.
- Also, there were many weapons that were supposed to be effective against vehicles but which just weren't. Dark Lances and Blasters were utterly abysmal in 7th, made worse by the fact that DE had almost no access to alternate anti-vehicle weapons.
HUGE problem in 6th and 7th edition was that stupid Codex designers began to add models like Riptide and Wraithknight which were vehicles in all aspects, but were implemented in Monstrous Creature rules, which made them immensely more powerful with no logical reason.
Hey, I shoot your tank with my Railgun, a weapon which fires hyperfast projectiles which go through almost any armour and destroy vital subsystems of the target. You cower in fear, knowing that your tank might blow up, or it might lose a track, or a gun, or get stunned for a round, all which present you different challenges.
Hey, I shoot your Monstrous Creature with my Railgun, a weapon which fires hyperfast projectiles which go through almost any armour and destroy vital subsystems of the target. You laugh at my puny weapon, knowing that at best, I might knock out 1 wound which does not handicap your unit in any fashion. Regardless of dice rolls, your MC is guaranteed to move, shoot and attack next turn with full power.
This was usually presented as a knock on core rules, but in reality it was inability of the Codex writers to maintain any semblance of common sense and internal logic in their game system.
Regarding the psychic phase, please, for the love of God, don't bring back the 7th edition version. It was one of the least fun mechanics I've ever seen in a game. People talk about risk vs. reward but that's a complete lie. The rewards were so game-changing and the risks so pitiful that it barely even constituted a decision. Not to mention the fact that armies able to spam psykers could simply steamroll armies unable to do so by sheer volume of psychic dice. It was a terrible system from every angle and one we should be grateful is dead and buried.
Personally I found 7th edition Psychic rules improvement over previous ones (which had really got out of control), if they had fixed 2 things:
-random Psychic powers - in a way this was cool and I see what they were going with this, but this slowed down a game a lot and was generally a huge annoyance when playing psychic-heavy armies like Eldar.
-Perils of the Warp table - this was really pointless, again slowed down the game and Perils seldom seemed to actually do anything.
I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"
~4100
~1660
