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It's no secret that I think the CCG mechanic is a ing stupid idea, but before I kill it off completely in my games I'd like to get some opinions on what cards, if any, are required for the game to function properly. Obviously psychic powers would need some kind of replacement, but is there anything else? Any cards that are genuinely essential to having a complete army and not just random buffs?

Not sure if they are essential per se but all the faction and sub faction cards are what gives each army a bit more flavor.

The datasheets alome are functional if bland. The tyranid cards help make a nid force stand out distinctly from any other. The jorm cards give my nids a little situational edge that others dont have.

Outside of psychic powers you may need to reintroduce a more distinct faction rule and subfaction rules.

Many of the factions are balanced around having weak units but powerful card abilities such as chaos daemons. I really don't think it is possible to remove the cards from the game as they are an internal balancing mechanic. Nor should you, the cards add a refreshing randomness to the game that is fairly non-random. HQs are extra PL for the fact that they draw you cards in addition to their other abilities.

 Lance845 wrote:
The datasheets alome are functional if bland.

I consider this a feature not a bug in a game at the scale of 40k. I didn't like the introduction of sub-faction rules in 8th, and I'm not going to miss a much worse CCG version of the concept in my new 9th edition game. Are there any sub-faction rules you consider absolutely essential to the point that the game wouldn't function well if they weren't available?


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urzaplanewalker wrote:
Nor should you, the cards add a refreshing randomness to the game that is fairly non-random.

The entire purpose of this is to remove idiotic RNG and put the weight back on player agency, where it belongs and never should have left.

As long as you are fine with the idea of not differentiating between chapters (including BA, DA, SW, etc...) then I see no issue not doing the same for hive fleets or septs or whatever.

SM are SM. Tau are Tau.

However, Grey Knights for example gained a lot of their unique features in the form of the cards. Especially their 2 feature cards. Use this to do grey knight thing against deamons or second effect against anyone. Its a good way to not pigeon hole the army.

This is why I'm asking, because I'm not familiar with every army. For example, the IG faction cards are mostly either overpowered nonsense (Armageddon Banesword batteries), useless (giving free actions to our very weak infantry units), or bland dice manipulation that adds power but isn't really necessary if nobody else is getting dice manipulation cards. None of that is essential, especially when you're relying on RNG to have those faction rules available at all.

There is no CCG element. You might want to research that term.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There is no CCG element. You might want to research that term.

I am truly alarmed at the possibility that my dismissive insult towards an idiotic game mechanic might not be 100% literally true, I will go and research this immediately.

urzaplanewalker wrote:
Many of the factions are balanced around having weak units but powerful card abilities such as chaos daemons. I really don't think it is possible to remove the cards from the game as they are an internal balancing mechanic. Nor should you, the cards add a refreshing randomness to the game that is fairly non-random. HQs are extra PL for the fact that they draw you cards in addition to their other abilities.

Daemons definitely do not have weak units.

Their pure aura-givers are entirely in line with other factions, the Lesser Daemons are directly comparable to other similar units (Bloodletters deal slightly more damage in melee than Ork Boyz but lack shooting, Daemonettes and Hormagaunts are fairly comparable (Daemonettes deal more damage per PL, Hormagants give up fewer PLs per blast put on them), and the greater daemons combine stats in line with other big gribbly beasts with the ability to fill HQ slots and draw you cards, which is nice.

Some daemon units are even exceptional - 30x Plaguebearers most likely hold the medal for single most durable unit for the points in the entire game, given that they lack the weakness to a single small blast that other units like Gretchins have.

Why not just make the deck 15 cards and have access to all of them at once? Or give each card a CP cost like stratagems and you start with 1/10th of your PL in CP.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Why not just make the deck 15 cards and have access to all of them at once?

Because I'm not convinced that having unrestricted access to your best stratagems is balanced, and even making them one-use-only still encourages loading up a game-winning alpha strike. And because I don't like GW's trend of making off-table buff effects an important part of the game.

Or give each card a CP cost like stratagems and you start with 1/10th of your PL in CP.

This would in theory be a much better system but would require spending a ton of effort on coming up with balanced costs for a system I'm already unenthusiastic at best about. Dumping the cards entirely at least has the virtue of being straightforward.

Here's the way I would design this system:

For each unit in your army with the PSYKER keyword, you may take 1 psychic power command asset of your choice. Each of these command assets can be used at any time, and you do not need to manifest the particular asset you selected with the PSYKER keyword unit that allowed you to take that asset, but each can only be played one time.

This adds a little more reliability to psykers as compared to the base game, but reduces their overall power by giving them (effectively) only one cast. Given the relatively low cost of psyker models compared to aura-granting characters, I think this is fairly justified. I would definitely trade "you definitely will have Da Jump in your hand on turn 1" for "You can include multiple psychic assets in your deck and you may get several casts with your Weirdboy"

Armies with large contingents of PSYKER keyword models like daemons grey knights and thousand sons will have a very potent pool of options, but like in the case of army-wide deep strike factions ala GSC, will see diminishing returns as they hit the hard limit of the number of psychic command assets that exist.

Do I anticipate I'll play a lot of games without the deck? Probably not. I think command assets provide a nice little bit of extra interaction between you and your opponent during the game, and I think they keep the game from being too pillow-fisted on the whole. They also provide a handy answer for some of the more spammy/abusive army build setups you could come up with, like the aforementioned "Draw the deck and double tap baneblades" setup with the DKOK - the way that army is forced to deploy massively increases the potential damage of the cards that allow you to pick a point and roll for each unit within X". An opponent that draws just one or two of those cards turn 1 could wipe nearly the entire card draw engine out in a single turn.