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That was the problem for me that started back with the introduction of large flyers and making Knight sized miniatures part of the core game.

They are just out of scale for the size of game 40K is when played on a normal battlefield. Cool for special scenarios, awesome models for collectors, but I think innappropriate for the size of battlefield used in the standard game of 40K. It starts to look like a kid in a sandpit or a playpen, and it breaks my immersion in the game.

The decision is made now (and not just GW but also Privateer Press went down this route) and the genie is not going back in the bottle, but I wish they had shown more restraint in this regard.

That is not really a problem with 8th though, just a big part of the reason why I never got into 6th and onwards.

Backfire wrote:

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.

That was also an issue. It seemed that the designers were aware (at least on some level) that there was a disparity between monstrous creatures and vehicles. However, rather than trying to fix it, they just made the new, shiny units monstrous creatures (regardless of whether doing so made the slightest bit of sense).

That said, there was also an issue of power-creep. Compare the Trygon and Mawloc (the biggest monstrous creatures in 5th) with the Riptide or Wraithknight. There was a massive increase in power and durability.

Backfire wrote:

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 really hope that you've mentally added 'tone down the host of ridiculous nonsense that passed for psychic powers'. I can't be the only one who remembers Invisibility and other such joys.

That said, speaking for myself I found the 7th edition psychic phase to be an exercise in time-wasting, rather than any sort of interesting tactical affair. Maybe if every army had the same number of psychic dice. However, speaking as someone who didn't play Daemons or GKs, i'd frequently find myself facing a player with 30 psychic dice and various casting bonuses, whilst I had 1 psyker (if I was lucky) and maybe 1/6th the number of psychic dispel dice to cast or dispel.

If I had a psyker, my powers were auto-dispelled without effort through sheer weight of dice. And regardless of whether or not I had a psyker, my opponents would have so many dice that the odds of my dispelling anything at all (let alone anything meaningful) were remote.

That would have been bad enough, but what made things even worse was that, even if i threw all my dispel dice away against the first spell my opponent cast, I'd still have to sit through the remainder of the phase. It basically boiled down to 10 minutes of my opponent faffing about with dice. I might as well have just gone and made a sandwich while I waited. Put simply, it was not an experience that I would recommend, nor one I would wish future editions would emulate.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

I really hope that you've mentally added 'tone down the host of ridiculous nonsense that passed for psychic powers'. I can't be the only one who remembers Invisibility and other such joys.

Oh yeah, I didn't include that as I thought it was for granted. Power creep in Space Magic was really something to behold. In early 5th edition, Psychic powers were like small guns or tricks to tinker with, then came Space Wolves codex and it was downhill from there.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

That said, speaking for myself I found the 7th edition psychic phase to be an exercise in time-wasting, rather than any sort of interesting tactical affair. Maybe if every army had the same number of psychic dice. However, speaking as someone who didn't play Daemons or GKs, i'd frequently find myself facing a player with 30 psychic dice and various casting bonuses, whilst I had 1 psyker (if I was lucky) and maybe 1/6th the number of psychic dispel dice to cast or dispel.

If I had a psyker, my powers were auto-dispelled without effort through sheer weight of dice. And regardless of whether or not I had a psyker, my opponents would have so many dice that the odds of my dispelling anything at all (let alone anything meaningful) were remote.

That would have been bad enough, but what made things even worse was that, even if i threw all my dispel dice away against the first spell my opponent cast, I'd still have to sit through the remainder of the phase. It basically boiled down to 10 minutes of my opponent faffing about with dice. I might as well have just gone and made a sandwich while I waited. Put simply, it was not an experience that I would recommend, nor one I would wish future editions would emulate.

I agree with the above in principle, but I remind you that it was WORSE in the end of 6th when Psychic powers were already insanely powerful and could be used in any phase. With Psycher-heavy armies it was pain to keep track of what powers you were going to use in which phase, and whether you had already used up your allowance in earlier phases. Also powerful armies already had plenty of Psychic counters which had to be taken account of.
People complained how Psychic phase took time, but doing all those powers separately in Movement, Shooting, Assault and whatnot phases took much more time.

Oh yeah, I didn't include that as I thought it was for granted. Power creep in Space Magic was really something to behold. In early 5th edition, Psychic powers were like small guns or tricks to tinker with, then came Space Wolves codex and it was downhill from there.

Whip of slaanesh says HY.

It always blows my mind how difficult full time game designers find it to keep the design paradigm consistent inside one edition of the game.

 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)

But 40k is a fantasy setting. It is just one that is set in the far future.

*shrug* It has laser guns, killer robots, spaceships and aliens. It also has space magic, but 40K is a sci fi game in many ways.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure one can define sci-fi as "fantasy with space ships."
They're both forms of speculative fiction, its just one is set in a low-tech setting and the other is in a high tech setting. That's pretty much it.
I never understood the distinction. It seems strange to me. I mean, what happens if you introduce a UFO in a game of dungeons and dragons? Does it suddenly become sci-fi? Or a warlock in a hard sci-fi story? Is it now fantasy?

 Da Boss wrote:
*shrug* It has laser guns, killer robots, spaceships and aliens. It also has space magic, but 40K is a sci fi game in many ways.

40k is a fantasy setting that just happens to be set in the far future. It has Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Ogres etc. all reskinned for a futuristic setting, but it is still a fantasy setting at heart.

 Da Boss wrote:
That was the problem for me that started back with the introduction of large flyers and making Knight sized miniatures part of the core game.

They were introduced, though, because many people were quite vocal wanting them in the game. People who warned that they would not work were distinct minority (at least when it came to making noise) even though they were proven right.


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 vipoid wrote:

 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.

It worked fine - in the 5th edition when armies had at most 2 Psychers in the field who had 1, or maybe 2, different powers and there was not much to choose from. Back then Space Magic was, as Da Boss said, just a small flavour in the game.

By end of 6th, whole system was hopelessly broken and Psychic phase was introduced to make it slightly less broken. Which it did, in a way. It would have been better, of course, simply to tone things down again but that's not how 40k (or most continuous release games, indeed) works.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
*shrug* It has laser guns, killer robots, spaceships and aliens. It also has space magic, but 40K is a sci fi game in many ways.

40k is a fantasy setting that just happens to be set in the far future. It has Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Ogres etc. all reskinned for a futuristic setting, but it is still a fantasy setting at heart.

On the flipside, you can take golems or warforged and say they're robots reskinned for fantasy.

You can't really fit 40k into sci-fi or fantasy because it has so much of everything that any attempt to pin it down would just break apart. 40k is 40k. Its not your archetypical sci-fi or fantasy setting, it just is.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
*shrug* It has laser guns, killer robots, spaceships and aliens. It also has space magic, but 40K is a sci fi game in many ways.

40k is a fantasy setting that just happens to be set in the far future. It has Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Ogres etc. all reskinned for a futuristic setting, but it is still a fantasy setting at heart.

On the flipside, you can take golems or warforged and say they're robots reskinned for fantasy.

You can't really fit 40k into sci-fi or fantasy because it has so much of everything that any attempt to pin it down would just break apart. 40k is 40k. Its not your archetypical sci-fi or fantasy setting, it just is.

Science Fantasy is a large and surprisingly common genre.

on 8th.

I'm enjoying it, it may be as easy to min/max and bend the rules as earlier editions but you fix that by changing who you play against - wishing for the quality of the rule writing to improve is futile.

I had a few games of 6th & one of 7th, felt like a passenger, far to many "ahh but I play this special rule and now you can't do anything" or "but you can't actually hit me" stuff, combined with a lot of dice rolling that seemed to do basically nothing.

in 8th I've lost a lot but it feels like I've contributed to my own downfall, I've even won a few games, previously largely unheard of, as the removal of rubbish like "invisibility" and the general lowering of 2++ (with re-roll) type saves have helped, upping the wound count allowing death by paper cuts etc

its far from perfect but it allows me to run models I enjoy building, in a background that can be so wonderfully dark and silly at the same time (I started in 1st edition days) and so far it seems all my armies can actually be made to work.

critically the game seems to scale a lot better, have had a lot of fun with 750 point games for example.

its never going to be a perfect game, I doubt honestly any game made by a company also pushing models ever will be, but with the right people its entertaining and a way to spend time with friends laughing and joking at each others disasters and failings.

Take the game for what it is and its fun, try to expect it to be something it isn't and you may as well play other games

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
*shrug* It has laser guns, killer robots, spaceships and aliens. It also has space magic, but 40K is a sci fi game in many ways.

40k is a fantasy setting that just happens to be set in the far future. It has Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Ogres etc. all reskinned for a futuristic setting, but it is still a fantasy setting at heart.

On the flipside, you can take golems or warforged and say they're robots reskinned for fantasy.

You can't really fit 40k into sci-fi or fantasy because it has so much of everything that any attempt to pin it down would just break apart. 40k is 40k. Its not your archetypical sci-fi or fantasy setting, it just is.

Wrong. What makes something sci fi is that its based on science. A modern day detective story is fiction. A set in the future story based on science is science fiction.

Star trek, sci fi. Starwars, fantasy in space.

40k is fantasy in space.

There have been some wonderful "Sci-fi" stories set in the past as well.

doesn't even really need to be based on science either, just taking the world around us and asking "what if...?" and then weaving a story around the consequences of that.

a lot of fantasy stuff goes that way in theory "What if there really were dragons?", but in practice doesn't end up as Sci-Fi because there is nothing really about what the implications of that are, there are just "dragons" and thats basically it.

the line between fantasy and sci-fi is painted using a contrast paint and not a marker pen

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure one can define sci-fi as "fantasy with space ships."
They're both forms of speculative fiction, its just one is set in a low-tech setting and the other is in a high tech setting. That's pretty much it.
I never understood the distinction. It seems strange to me. I mean, what happens if you introduce a UFO in a game of dungeons and dragons? Does it suddenly become sci-fi? Or a warlock in a hard sci-fi story? Is it now fantasy?

The distinction is "High Fantasy" and "Sci-Fi" people just drop the High part. High Fantasy is a genre just like Sci Fi... High Fantasy is LOTR, King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table and so on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Backfire wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That was the problem for me that started back with the introduction of large flyers and making Knight sized miniatures part of the core game.

They were introduced, though, because many people were quite vocal wanting them in the game. People who warned that they would not work were distinct minority (at least when it came to making noise) even though they were proven right.

The problem isn't that they were introduced. Look at the complaint - that in itself shows the problem. The problem is the scale they were introduced. Scale has always been wonky in the game. Look at a Rhino. Tell me how 10 Space Marine 1.0s fit in the whole thing let alone in the back half. Look at a Drednaught and it's sarcophagus. Does that look like it fits a Space Marine? That one is at least closer. And the Dreads have been creeping up in size more or less with each "new" version, so that's something as well. I'm assuming we all know the vehicles are not on the same scale as the infantry? Well an additional problem is the vehicles are not on the same scale with the other vehicles. Compare a Redemptor and a Knight. Compare a Repulsor that can transport Primaris, and a Land Raider that cannot but can transport terminators with a giant cyclone missile launcher on their head.. Measure those doors, and interior height. Well, don't I'm being facetious especially as the Repulsor doesn't have an interior modeled. - The Flyers especially were modeled at ground level size. Well size-ish. The Flyers should have been modeled smaller with the explanation they're modeled to represent their size at altitude to the boots on the ground. They also - or most - should have been more fragile and far more hard to hit by non-AA ground forces.

In the grim-dark future of the 41st Millenium, there is only one genre of fiction.

Aye. Though I think mini-knights would also look silly and would have annoyed players, just in a different way. It is a difficult problem to solve. Perhaps if they had managed to keep Epic alive, people would have had an outlet for that kind of stuff.

Making the tables bigger would help, but is impractical for gaming and space reasons.

Flyers shouldn't be in 40k at all. Why the hell is a hypersonic aircraft that is supposed to supply air support for hundreds of acres of space focusing on a tiny strip of land and slowly floating over it while flying low enough to even get shot at? They should have never had models, just been airstrikes a guy with a radio could call in and drop blast tempaltes.

 flandarz wrote:
In the grim-dark future of the 41st Millenium, there is only one genre of fiction.

Grimderp of course!

NOW BUTCHER THOSE SISTERS FOR THEIR BLOOD TO BE PROTECTED FROM DAEMONS!

 Wyzilla wrote:
Flyers shouldn't be in 40k at all. Why the hell is a hypersonic aircraft that is supposed to supply air support for hundreds of acres of space focusing on a tiny strip of land and slowly floating over it while flying low enough to even get shot at? They should have never had models, just been airstrikes a guy with a radio could call in and drop blast tempaltes.

Yeah but then why have long range Arty on the field then either ? Some smaller flyers for close air support is fine, as is the Arty, though large aerial units shouldn't be there, like bombers, and large long range arty like Deathstrikes and Bassies, etc.

It's why I loved the Master of Ord, and now the Naval Fleet officer, calling in air strikes and Arty strikes is very flavorful. I do mostly like the models though on the field.

I'm not and never been a fan of the very large units in the standard game, like knights, titans, etc. They can kind of render standard lists pointless in many instances.

AngryAngel80 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Flyers shouldn't be in 40k at all. Why the hell is a hypersonic aircraft that is supposed to supply air support for hundreds of acres of space focusing on a tiny strip of land and slowly floating over it while flying low enough to even get shot at? They should have never had models, just been airstrikes a guy with a radio could call in and drop blast tempaltes.

Yeah but then why have long range Arty on the field then either ? Some smaller flyers for close air support is fine, as is the Arty, though large aerial units shouldn't be there, like bombers, and large long range arty like Deathstrikes and Bassies, etc.

It's why I loved the Master of Ord, and now the Naval Fleet officer, calling in air strikes and Arty strikes is very flavorful. I do mostly like the models though on the field.

I'm not and never been a fan of the very large units in the standard game, like knights, titans, etc. They can kind of render standard lists pointless in many instances.

Because a mortar vehicle might be on the frontline or an artillery gun could get ambushed and be forced to act as an AT gun. But planes are too fast and shoudln't even be on the bloody board. Every single aircraft in TT could cross the board in less than a second because of how small it is. Even CAS is extremely fast for 'subsonic' (and 40k CAS isn't subsonic, but hypersonic) and thus shouldn't even be visible.

Yes but aside from the rare game played where the arty battery is ambushed they would rarely be on the field.

Lower range mortar tanks would be there, or mortars in general, but not such long range arty at least not in most battles.

Perhaps but then the units that can VTOL should be able to be on the board, so maybe rules for fly bys and others for if they drop into hover which most imperial flyers tend to be able to do.

I get where you are coming from though, just some arguments could be made for some flyers, maybe not flyers going super sonic but the models none the less could be there. Wish the rule set was robust enough to explain such.

Even a VTOL craft akin to a helicopter would still be moving so fast it would zip off of the board. Issue is that VTOL's only make sense on something the scale of Epic.

I know the Flyer thing doesn't make sense, but I enjoy playing with them for the most part so I don't really care!

Just another thing on the long list of suspension of disbelief really.

They ruined the visual of the battle for me, dominating the scene too much. Same with the Knights and Wraithknights and Riptides and so on.

I think those things are really cool and exciting for a special one off game or big event, don't get me wrong. The sort of thing that is at the right scale. When the Stompa originally came out it was for Apocalypse games only, basically a collectors item. Same with the Baneblade.

It was the decision to make them a standard part of basic 40K that I dislike. If you are playing on a 6' by 4' table, only Epic scale minis can really capture that feeling properly.

 Da Boss wrote:
They ruined the visual of the battle for me, dominating the scene too much. Same with the Knights and Wraithknights and Riptides and so on.

I think those things are really cool and exciting for a special one off game or big event, don't get me wrong. The sort of thing that is at the right scale. When the Stompa originally came out it was for Apocalypse games only, basically a collectors item. Same with the Baneblade.

It was the decision to make them a standard part of basic 40K that I dislike. If you are playing on a 6' by 4' table, only Epic scale minis can really capture that feeling properly.

Agree 100%. Just remove them from the standard game. I frankly don't give a feth if people have invested money in them (because let's face it we know who is going to chime in with this counter argument...) models are deleted from the game all the time, and not just in 40k. Suck it up homeboy. They have damaged the game for worse by making the whole game have to fit around them. Stick them in Apocalypse where they should have stayed and stop making 40k into Epic in 28mm.

Or they could have just introduced the flyers as skimmers, like they did with Valkyries

LoW in normal games is silly though. Those should really have stayed in Apoc-Level games.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
They ruined the visual of the battle for me, dominating the scene too much. Same with the Knights and Wraithknights and Riptides and so on.

I think those things are really cool and exciting for a special one off game or big event, don't get me wrong. The sort of thing that is at the right scale. When the Stompa originally came out it was for Apocalypse games only, basically a collectors item. Same with the Baneblade.

It was the decision to make them a standard part of basic 40K that I dislike. If you are playing on a 6' by 4' table, only Epic scale minis can really capture that feeling properly.

Agree 100%. Just remove them from the standard game. I frankly don't give a feth if people have invested money in them (because let's face it we know who is going to chime in with this counter argument...) models are deleted from the game all the time, and not just in 40k. Suck it up homeboy. They have damaged the game for worse by making the whole game have to fit around them. Stick them in Apocalypse where they should have stayed and stop making 40k into Epic in 28mm.

An Apocalypse game type would probably have been much more useful than the 3 game types GW actually gave us.

Has anyone ever used Open Play?

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
They ruined the visual of the battle for me, dominating the scene too much. Same with the Knights and Wraithknights and Riptides and so on.

I think those things are really cool and exciting for a special one off game or big event, don't get me wrong. The sort of thing that is at the right scale. When the Stompa originally came out it was for Apocalypse games only, basically a collectors item. Same with the Baneblade.

It was the decision to make them a standard part of basic 40K that I dislike. If you are playing on a 6' by 4' table, only Epic scale minis can really capture that feeling properly.

Agree 100%. Just remove them from the standard game. I frankly don't give a feth if people have invested money in them (because let's face it we know who is going to chime in with this counter argument...) models are deleted from the game all the time, and not just in 40k. Suck it up homeboy. They have damaged the game for worse by making the whole game have to fit around them. Stick them in Apocalypse where they should have stayed and stop making 40k into Epic in 28mm.

Eh, better for it to be an option for people want it than not at all? Just comes across a bit spiteful otherwise. Each to their own I guess!

Units are removed pretty rarely if you don't count ones that didn't have an official kit anyway.

I want to play with Knights and Flyers, but have no interest in playing over 2k (outside of special events). However I do understand wanting to play an infantry focused game with limited vehicles sometimes. Maybe that needs to be the alternative play mode? Something that feels more like 2e in scale.