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Gadzilla666 wrote:

Could it be because sob are more likely to be souped? Certain armies lack in options and units to fill certain rules. Your example of a knight is good because sob have no super heavys. So maybe stronger mono faction bonuses for armies who can more easily go it alone like marines but weaker ones for armies with more limited resources who are more likely to be used in mixed forces like sob, harlequins, or custodes?

That doesn’t make sense.

If anything, and if this were the case, it would have to be the other way around:

Weaker mono-faction boni for faction that have more options and variety internally.
Stronger mono-faction boni for factions that are “hit harder” by not using allies.

The goal being that either faction with or without allies in any combination would end up “equally” strong (and equally attractive to players to promote diversity) on the battlefield.

A faction like Space Marines that literally has all options. Psychic, Close Combat. High Volume Shooting. High Quality Shooting. Superheavies. Super-fast units. Strong characters. More support-style Characters, etc.. should have the weakest mono-faction bonus in the game (or, in the case of Marines, perhaps even none, being the "baseline" strength as the army with the most diversity). A faction like Harlequins or mono-Khorne Daemons or some such should have the strongest mono-Faction bonus in the game, precisely to compensate for all the draw-backs and weaknesses these armies have if they were to forgo allies, making sure it still ends up "balanced" on the tabletop, irrespective of whether players bring a big Chaos, Aeldari or Imperium soup, or go mono-Harlequins or mono-Marines.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

Could it be because sob are more likely to be souped? Certain armies lack in options and units to fill certain rules. Your example of a knight is good because sob have no super heavys. So maybe stronger mono faction bonuses for armies who can more easily go it alone like marines but weaker ones for armies with more limited resources who are more likely to be used in mixed forces like sob, harlequins, or custodes?

That doesn’t make sense.

If anything, and if this were the case, it would have to be the other way around:

Weaker mono-faction boni for faction that have more options and variety internally.
Stronger mono-faction boni for factions that are “hit harder” by not using allies.

The goal being that either faction with or without allies in any combination would end up “equally” strong (and equally attractive to players to promote diversity) on the battlefield.

A faction like Space Marines that literally has all options. Psychic, Close Combat. High Volume Shooting. High Quality Shooting. Superheavies. Super-fast units. Strong characters. More support-style Characters, etc.. should have the weakest mono-faction bonus in the game (or, in the case of Marines, perhaps even none, being the "baseline" strength as the army with the most diversity). A faction like Harlequins or mono-Khorne Daemons or some such should have the strongest mono-Faction bonus in the game, precisely to compensate for all the draw-backs and weaknesses these armies have if they were to forgo allies, making sure it still ends up "balanced" on the tabletop, irrespective of whether players bring a big Chaos, Aeldari or Imperium soup, or go mono-Harlequins or mono-Marines.

Didn't say it made sense or was a good idea. I was just trying to figure out gw's thinking. Thus all the question marks.

I was really hoping the latest CA was gonna give everyone super traits to effectively remove souping from the game.

I don't think the game can really achieve balance with people cherry picking units from armies. The being said Orks, Necrons, and tau can't take allies and they don't seem very balanced

I like the concept of army-wide bonuses for taking all of one faction and not taking allies, but it would be infinitely better to give them out all at once instead of making the playerbase purchase another round of fething codex books.

So if you ask me "Should everyone get a no-soup bonus?" I'd say yes.

If you ask me "Should CURRENT GW with CURRENT GW BUSINESS PRACTICES implement no-soup bonuses in the way that they would?"

No.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

All armies should have re-rolls and modifiers severely reigned in/removed and all combat doctrines removed.

Eliminate Character Auras

Nah, but maybe they could all be like the Infiltrator type aura usage: you need to pay for a comms array or vox caster or similar to use leader abilities, with the bonus of getting the effect anywhere on the battlefield.

Except for Tau Ethereals, of course.

LoftyS wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

All armies should have re-rolls and modifiers severely reigned in/removed and all combat doctrines removed.

Eliminate Character Auras

Nah, but maybe they could all be like the Infiltrator type aura usage: you need to pay for a comms array or vox caster or similar to use leader abilities, with the bonus of getting the effect anywhere on the battlefield.

Except for Tau Ethereals, of course.

I think what's really needed is to actually integrate 40k's mechanics.

There seemed to be a design philosophy in 8th that HQs - especially non-psychic HQs - needed to do something other than melee. And that's an idea I can get behind.

8th also introduced the idea of Stratagems - commands that could enhance squads or give them extra abilities or movement for a turn. Okay.

So with those two things in mind, it was only natural that HQs in 8th would . . . get auras.

Put simply, HQs and Stratagems should be completely intertwined. HQs should be the ones generating CPs and also the ones 'casting' Stratagems. This would still give them an actual function, but would also serve to both tie Stratagems into the core mechanics of the game and also stop the stupidity of everything and its dog rerolling 1s.

LoftyS wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

All armies should have re-rolls and modifiers severely reigned in/removed and all combat doctrines removed.

Eliminate Character Auras

Nah, but maybe they could all be like the Infiltrator type aura usage: you need to pay for a comms array or vox caster or similar to use leader abilities, with the bonus of getting the effect anywhere on the battlefield.

Except for Tau Ethereals, of course.

If GW changed CP generation to per-turn, then 'leader' units could provide additional CP generation while on the table.

So you'd get three different roles for characters, depending on their abilities:

-Direct combatants who are fighters, but don't benefit the rest of the army
-Specialists who give you access to stratagems to spend your CP on (inc those army-wide stratagems)
-Leaders who give you more CP to work with

And then of course some models would be a mix of the roles.

I think it might give you a very different feel between, say, an Astra Militarum commander who just generates an extra 1CP, versus a SM Infiltrator character who is good at combat and lets you use a unique stratagem but doesn't actually contribute the command ability to make use of it.

 Argive wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Sisters of battle are the one new CODEX we've gotten since codex space Marines came out, and they had a "mono codex bonus" so I think we can comfortably assume this will indeed be the case going forward.

Ohh we know its happening. Power creep is real bro. Anyone who thinks otherwise .. I don't know what to tell ya lol.

The two are quite different though. Marine mono-codex bonuses were instrumental in spawning such horrors as the Irons Hands gunline, whereas Sisters mono-codex bonuses are a trade off between being able to take something better as an ally or actually being able to use any of their deny the witch rules.

Going to need a few more books to see which direction GW is taking it, or if there is any coherent direction in it at all.

A.T. wrote:

 Argive wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Sisters of battle are the one new CODEX we've gotten since codex space Marines came out, and they had a "mono codex bonus" so I think we can comfortably assume this will indeed be the case going forward.

Ohh we know its happening. Power creep is real bro. Anyone who thinks otherwise .. I don't know what to tell ya lol.

The two are quite different though. Marine mono-codex bonuses were instrumental in spawning such horrors as the Irons Hands gunline, whereas Sisters mono-codex bonuses are a trade off between being able to take something better as an ally or actually being able to use any of their deny the witch rules.

Going to need a few more books to see which direction GW is taking it, or if there is any coherent direction in it at all.

I can tell you from four editions of experience that they 1 billion percent do not.

The space marine supplements that drastically boosted the power of primaris space marine armies right as they finished releasing a new model wave of primaris stuff on the cusp of the holiday season (Where they sold multiple limited edition space marine army bundles) definitely did not have anything to do with GW wanting to unleash a new coherent game design philosophy.

 Psionara wrote:
I was wondering if it would be practical to get every faction out there something akin to the Space Marines combat doctrines (devastator, tactical, assault)? Thoughts?

I made combat doctrines for every faction, they don't shift through states throughout the game but here they are: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/780052.page#10564535. I read a cool suggestion for Death Guard that had the three states, but trying to put every one of these abilities into a box of "this is the beginning doctrine, this is the middle doctrine and this is the end doctrine" is IMO a bad idea. If I was forced to do it I'd say Necrons could be raid/harvest/eradicate. The idea of free rules is a bad idea in the first place (I just made up Doctrines for every faction to say I'd done it). Mono-codex armies should be rewarded with CP or Stratagems or soup armies should be punished by having them taken away.

 vipoid wrote:
IMO the real issue is that the base game has absolutely no tactical or strategic depth and nothing that can be expanded on. What's more, many of the core mechanics in the game appear to have been thrown together at the last minute so that there's virtually no synergy or interaction between them. The scale-creep has continued unabated, naturally, yet even the largest, most complex models still play like walking bricks.

Hence, all GW can do is pile on more and more special rules and pretend that that amounts to depth.

How are the core mechanics not tied together? Movement and advancing is tied with shooting, charging and fighting because moving can harm a units shooting and advancing prevents most units from charging or shooting most weapons, on the flipside being in melee prevents a unit from advancing and going into melee can help you surround a unit and prevent it from moving entirely, thereby preventing shooting as well. Shooting is tied with melee as well, because most weapons cannot be fired in melee. The psychic phase interacts with the movement phase because of ranges and positioning relative to enemy units being relevant to what powers can be used and how effective they'll be, it can also be tied to shooting or melee depending on the individual power, psychic powers can be used against units in melee, potentially freeing up a unit tied in melee to shoot. Morale does nothing on its own, it's just the result of damage done in other phases and as such is linked with the other phases. Please give an example of how the game could be more closely tied together or even just a phase that doesn't interact with other phases.

The game is deep, deeper than 6th and 7th combined and also deeper than 5th which is the most popular of previous editions as far as I remember from a previous thread. It's less complicated, but the actual number of tactics available is much larger. Gone is the minutiae of having to carry out the artificial stupidity and the simulationist aspects of the game and instead it's the players that decide everything, from how a unit piles in to how models are removed, to how they fall back. I liked the simulationist aspects and everything being in the player's hands does mean that it can get gamey in ways that the artificial stupidity baked into previous editions prevented to a degree.

 Psionara wrote:
I was wondering if it would be practical to get every faction out there something akin to the Space Marines combat doctrines (devastator, tactical, assault)? Thoughts?

Players were asking for a mono-codex bonus to make soup less of an auto-take so yes, I think in future codexes there will be some form of mono-codex bonus. Probably it will look different to the Combat Doctrines, as we see with the new Sisters codex, but a bonus for not mixing factions will be there in some form.

 vipoid wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
No.

Adding more paragraphs of special rules doesn't fix the massive math errors the designers made when writing the statlines in the Indexes.

I don't think the issue is necessarily math errors (that's certainly an issue, just not the issue).

IMO the real issue is that the base game has absolutely no tactical or strategic depth and nothing that can be expanded on. What's more, many of the core mechanics in the game appear to have been thrown together at the last minute so that there's virtually no synergy or interaction between them. The scale-creep has continued unabated, naturally, yet even the largest, most complex models still play like walking bricks.

Hence, all GW can do is pile on more and more special rules and pretend that that amounts to depth.

I keep bringing up math errors in the core books because I find a large part of the lack of tactical or strategic depth in the core rules comes from stats (particularly Wounds and Damage) written such that they negate any need to consider target priority or flexible list-building, instead pushing players to pick the one or two most efficient things they have and spamming them.

I see the gripe about auras pretty consistently and I don't get it. The only reason I've seen is that it reduces or eliminates risk in dice rolls. But like, 6th/7th had that too. It was called taking multiples of a unit.

So now instead of bringing 2 or 3 of a unit to ensure it does what I want it to, I just have to keep an HQ nearby to boost it.

I don't see how this is worse, just seems like a lateral move that is slightly more fluffy.

No.

If anything, we need less rules.

Its not exactly fun having to sift through layers of rules to basically end up auto hitting/wounding (or so dang close to it might as well be auto) for one army while the other doesnt get a single reroll outside of a specific unit.
I cant even keep track of the vanilla marine codex atm. Way too may rules that affect each other in weird ways. A marine player could blatantly lie to me and as long as it wasnt something outlandish like flat 6 damage or so i probably wouldnt be able to retort how it actually works w/o spending 10-15m in their codex.
It feels worse right now than in previous editions where it was all keywords in the BRB. Atleast back then rules that altered other rules were not that common, there was just a ton of them to remember.

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
I see the gripe about auras pretty consistently and I don't get it. The only reason I've seen is that it reduces or eliminates risk in dice rolls. But like, 6th/7th had that too. It was called taking multiples of a unit.

So now instead of bringing 2 or 3 of a unit to ensure it does what I want it to, I just have to keep an HQ nearby to boost it.

I don't see how this is worse, just seems like a lateral move that is slightly more fluffy.

If you're playing a game of 7e most of the time you're rolling two or three dice to see what your attack does (hit, wound/AP, save if the target's non-vehicle and you don't ignore it).

If you're playing a game of 8e you could easily need to roll eight or nine sets of dice to see what your attack does (hit, hit reroll, exploding hits, exploding hits reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, damage, FNP).

People complaining about auras may think that being able to reroll everything all the time makes the game take a lot longer, or that the increased reliability of everything makes the game a lot more lethal/the alpha strike a lot more important.

No, extra rules just aren't the best way to achieve fluffy gameplay.

What would really help would be a deeper core ruleset that doesn't need to add-on chapter tactics/doctrines.

Marines were 40ish %WR army...and they got practically no point changes to put them at their current win rate. GW opted to give them rules to make the perform better at no cost. Also if you look at the win rate of armies like salamanders/ultrmarines/black templars...they aren't OP in the slightest. Sure if you want to add a doctrine type rule to every army go ahead and increase their point cost too.

Part of peoples reaction to marines actually being decent is them being used to walking over marines like they weren't there (because they were dang atrocious before). The other part is Ironhands are just busted.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

All armies should have re-rolls and modifiers severely reigned in/removed and all combat doctrines removed.

Agreed. I'll add to that. Eliminate Character Auras and make Strategems one use per battle.

So just an excel spreadsheet then?


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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
I see the gripe about auras pretty consistently and I don't get it. The only reason I've seen is that it reduces or eliminates risk in dice rolls. But like, 6th/7th had that too. It was called taking multiples of a unit.

So now instead of bringing 2 or 3 of a unit to ensure it does what I want it to, I just have to keep an HQ nearby to boost it.

I don't see how this is worse, just seems like a lateral move that is slightly more fluffy.

If you're playing a game of 7e most of the time you're rolling two or three dice to see what your attack does (hit, wound/AP, save if the target's non-vehicle and you don't ignore it).

If you're playing a game of 8e you could easily need to roll eight or nine sets of dice to see what your attack does (hit, hit reroll, exploding hits, exploding hits reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, damage, FNP).

People complaining about auras may think that being able to reroll everything all the time makes the game take a lot longer, or that the increased reliability of everything makes the game a lot more lethal/the alpha strike a lot more important.

If you're playing 7th you still have plenty of rerolls to hit, the entire space marine meta was built around rerolling to hits and to wounds( doctrines and grav amps.).

The difference was that of defense you had saves, reroll saves, fnp, and it will not die. 7th had just as many, if not more rolls than 8th.


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 vipoid wrote:

LoftyS wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

All armies should have re-rolls and modifiers severely reigned in/removed and all combat doctrines removed.

Eliminate Character Auras

Nah, but maybe they could all be like the Infiltrator type aura usage: you need to pay for a comms array or vox caster or similar to use leader abilities, with the bonus of getting the effect anywhere on the battlefield.

Except for Tau Ethereals, of course.

I think what's really needed is to actually integrate 40k's mechanics.

There seemed to be a design philosophy in 8th that HQs - especially non-psychic HQs - needed to do something other than melee. And that's an idea I can get behind.

8th also introduced the idea of Stratagems - commands that could enhance squads or give them extra abilities or movement for a turn. Okay.

So with those two things in mind, it was only natural that HQs in 8th would . . . get auras.

Put simply, HQs and Stratagems should be completely intertwined. HQs should be the ones generating CPs and also the ones 'casting' Stratagems. This would still give them an actual function, but would also serve to both tie Stratagems into the core mechanics of the game and also stop the stupidity of everything and its dog rerolling 1s.

You could call them 'command abilities' and then you could use them in some sort of 'hero phase'. Yunno, like how AoS already does?

I think that the core rules have been stretched past what they can properly accommodate. That's likely the core issue, since 8th edition at its core is very basic ruleset.

Nothing should be brought up to the broken level of SM where you plainly ignore ground rules constantly, making of an exception a rule.

 vict0988 wrote:

How are the core mechanics not tied together? Movement and advancing is tied with shooting

I wish Advancing was tied with logic instead.

Does it not seem odd to you that a unit that spends its entire turn running is easily overtaken by a unit that first stops to shoot and then stops again to fight?

 vict0988 wrote:
on the flipside being in melee prevents a unit from advancing and going into melee can help you surround a unit and prevent it from moving entirely, thereby preventing shooting as well.

Oh good, I'm glad the 'can't shoot into combat' mechanic is still around. Boy would I hate it if 40k had rules that actually made the slightest bit of sense.

 vict0988 wrote:
The psychic phase interacts with the movement phase because of ranges and positioning relative to enemy units being relevant to what powers can be used and how effective they'll be

God, we're reaching with this one, aren't we? Might as well say that psychic powers interact with shooting because both involve rolling dice.

 vict0988 wrote:
it can also be tied to shooting or melee depending on the individual power, psychic powers can be used against units in melee, potentially freeing up a unit tied in melee to shoot.

I think you completely misunderstood my point, as you're now talking about the effects of specific powers, which wasn't what I was referring to at all.

 vict0988 wrote:
Morale does nothing on its own

You probably could have ended that sentence after the third word.

 vict0988 wrote:
Morale does nothing on its own, it's just the result of damage done in other phases and as such is linked with the other phases.

This is not what interaction means.

 vict0988 wrote:
Please give an example of how the game could be more closely tied together or even just a phase that doesn't interact with other phases.

Off the top of my head.

1) Morale. There is absolutely no interaction beyond 'did this unit lose models? Y/N'.

If you want an example of how it could be more closely tied, don't just have morale as being a few extra wounds (maybe). You could instead make it possible to break a unit's morale, which could inflict penalties to shooting and melee, force it to fall back and/or move away from enemies etc. (with Ld tests at the end of each turn to try and restore its morale). You could also have stuff like suppressive fire, where a unit effectively exchanges damage for a good chance of breaking a given unit's moral and preventing it from effectively retaliating.

2) The Psychic Phase. You could literally remove it wholesale from the game and the rest of the core mechanics would play exactly the same. Hardly a core mechanic that has been intertwined with the others. It's understandable to an extent (as not all armies have psykers), but still very wonky.

3) Stratagems. Again, you could remove these from the game without affecting the core mechanics one iota. Unlike with the psychic phase there is absolutely no excuse for this sort of shoddy design, as *every* faction has access to CPs and at least some Stratagems. As for how it could be improved, make resource-management a core part of the game. Tie available Stratagems and CPs to units actually on the field - not to list-building.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself very well, so let me try a different route. Are you at all familiar with Warmachine/Hordes? If so, consider the magic in the magic (i.e. Focus/Fury) in those games. You couldn't just remove those mechanics because they're intrinsically tied to both the core mechanics of the game and the key elements of such (you need them for warlocks/warcasters - which are the most important models in the game - and you also need them for the warbeasts/warjacks that form their battlegroup). Now imagine removing the psychic phase or stratagems from 40k. A few units will be affected, sure, but by and large the game will still function just fine, and you wouldn't even need to edit the rules for the movement, shooting or assault phases.

40k has many mechanics but they're just sort of there. They're not tied togethe in any meaningful way; especially when you get beyond the movement, shooting and assault phases - which are as rudimentary as you can get in a strategy game. 40k needs to pick something (that is, something beyond those 3 basic phases) to actually build around and have as a core element of the game. One that you couldn't remove and still leave behind a perfectly functional game.

So just an excel spreadsheet then?

Did you say this about literally every other edition of the game? Not having re-rolls out the ass doesn't mean you don't roll dice. Chance is still a thing in the game, you don't always roll statistically average. In fact, having re-rolls increases the odds of rolling statistically average over the course of the game so your excel comment is actually more accurate when making a case for Character Auras.

I see the gripe about auras pretty consistently and I don't get it. The only reason I've seen is that it reduces or eliminates risk in dice rolls. But like, 6th/7th had that too. It was called taking multiples of a unit.

So now instead of bringing 2 or 3 of a unit to ensure it does what I want it to, I just have to keep an HQ nearby to boost it.

I don't see how this is worse, just seems like a lateral move that is slightly more fluffy.

Have you ever played against World Eaters with a Lord and a Champion near by? Does sitting through 3 activations of 50+ attacks with re-roll everything excite you? Maybe you should think about taking up Yatzee instead of 40K?

Speaking for myself, I enjoyed the game when a single die roll was important because it could make or break the game. That creates tension, and excitement. Re-rolls creates a giant slog of dice rolling.

I also didn't have to sit through half an hour of re-rolls with modifiers. Literally kill me.

I find it similarly ironic that the people who complained about 7th edition "Death Stars" are the ones who like Character Auras. As if this didn't exacerbate the issue with Death Stars. Only now, instead of making one unit super powerful. It's every fething unit within 6".

It's fine to want Characters to be more than beat sticks. Just make them buff a single unit per turn within X distance.

 Emicrania wrote:
Nothing should be brought up to the broken level of SM where you plainly ignore ground rules constantly, making of an exception a rule.

A bonus for going mono faction doesn't have to be as op as sm. It just needs to be good enough to make going mono faction look like a good option, preferably while being fluffy. Gw can do this, the sob mono faction bonus and most of the faction bonuses from hh shows that.

Of course knowing gw it will be a haphazard mix of some factions getting good fluffy rules (sob) while others get overpowered rules that don't really make the faction feel much more like they should based on the lore than if they didn't have them (ih).

This. 40k's ruleset is not an interconnected, holistic one. Contrast with MEDGe, where everything is tied to everything else, and the difference is stark. MEDGe doesn't need "doctrines" or "chapter tactics" either. Just a few unique special rules/wargear for certain armies, but all functioning within a complex, decision-based structure. One that allows units to suppression fire, hit-and-run (not merely breaking from combat) and allows the bug guys to overrun enemy units, unable to pinned down.

Darsath wrote:
I think that the core rules have been stretched past what they can properly accommodate. That's likely the core issue, since 8th edition at its core is very basic ruleset.

sadly back in the days of 7th this is what people wanted. you heard complaints that 40k was too complex, nevermind even 7th edition was drop dead simple to some of the games on the market

ERJAK wrote:
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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:
I see the gripe about auras pretty consistently and I don't get it. The only reason I've seen is that it reduces or eliminates risk in dice rolls. But like, 6th/7th had that too. It was called taking multiples of a unit.

So now instead of bringing 2 or 3 of a unit to ensure it does what I want it to, I just have to keep an HQ nearby to boost it.

I don't see how this is worse, just seems like a lateral move that is slightly more fluffy.

If you're playing a game of 7e most of the time you're rolling two or three dice to see what your attack does (hit, wound/AP, save if the target's non-vehicle and you don't ignore it).

If you're playing a game of 8e you could easily need to roll eight or nine sets of dice to see what your attack does (hit, hit reroll, exploding hits, exploding hits reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, damage, FNP).

People complaining about auras may think that being able to reroll everything all the time makes the game take a lot longer, or that the increased reliability of everything makes the game a lot more lethal/the alpha strike a lot more important.

If you're playing 7th you still have plenty of rerolls to hit, the entire space marine meta was built around rerolling to hits and to wounds( doctrines and grav amps.).

The difference was that of defense you had saves, reroll saves, fnp, and it will not die. 7th had just as many, if not more rolls than 8th....

In my experience of 7th you had a bunch of rerolls on your deathstar if you built a specific list around doing that (meta Eldar lists didn't usually go in for the pile of endless rerolls, for instance). In my experience of 8th you have a bunch of rerolls on everything all the time in every list.

 vipoid wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

How are the core mechanics not tied together? Movement and advancing is tied with shooting

I wish Advancing was tied with logic instead.

Does it not seem odd to you that a unit that spends its entire turn running is easily overtaken by a unit that first stops to shoot and then stops again to fight?

 vict0988 wrote:
on the flipside being in melee prevents a unit from advancing and going into melee can help you surround a unit and prevent it from moving entirely, thereby preventing shooting as well.

Oh good, I'm glad the 'can't shoot into combat' mechanic is still around. Boy would I hate it if 40k had rules that actually made the slightest bit of sense.

Did you want logic or did you want interconnected rules? You basically ceded the point by only finding problems with the rules not being simulationist enough for your taste, 8th isn't meant to be simulationist which is good and bad, but that has nothing to do with the interconnectedness of rules.

 vict0988 wrote:
The psychic phase interacts with the movement phase because of ranges and positioning relative to enemy units being relevant to what powers can be used and how effective they'll be

God, we're reaching with this one, aren't we? Might as well say that psychic powers interact with shooting because both involve rolling dice.

That's not the same thing. One finds that the rules are relevant to eachother and therefore connected, the other finds that the mechanics for resolving the rules are connected which is absurd because you could argue that between entirely different games.

 vict0988 wrote:
Morale does nothing on its own, it's just the result of damage done in other phases and as such is linked with the other phases.

This is not what interaction means.

It's the dictionary definition of interaction. "Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another." Rules from Warmachine do not directly interact with rules from 40k, actions taken in the Shooting and Fight phase directly interact with eachother and the Morale phase.

 vict0988 wrote:
Please give an example of how the game could be more closely tied together or even just a phase that doesn't interact with other phases.

1) Morale. There is absolutely no interaction beyond 'did this unit lose models? Y/N'.

If you want an example of how it could be more closely tied, don't just have morale as being a few extra wounds (maybe). You could instead make it possible to break a unit's morale, which could inflict penalties to shooting and melee, force it to fall back and/or move away from enemies etc. (with Ld tests at the end of each turn to try and restore its morale). You could also have stuff like suppressive fire, where a unit effectively exchanges damage for a good chance of breaking a given unit's moral and preventing it from effectively retaliating.

That's not tying things together, that's making the game more simulationist, if your problems with 8th is that it's a poor simulation of real life and/or the 40k universe I'd agree on both counts. Does it make sense in the 40k universe that SM need to hug cover more than Astra Militarum? No. Does it make sense in a real world sense that individual troopers flee one by one? No. So think about it again, is your problem that you feel that 40k does not simulate 40k as you want it to be simulated (whether closer to books or real life or personal preference) or that it's not interconnected enough?

2) The Psychic Phase. You could literally remove it wholesale from the game and the rest of the core mechanics would play exactly the same. Hardly a core mechanic that has been intertwined with the others. It's understandable to an extent (as not all armies have psykers), but still very wonky.

Yes I wonder why the part of the game that not all factions have access to is not a necessity in every game. How was 5th or 7th any better?

3) Stratagems. Again, you could remove these from the game without affecting the core mechanics one iota. Unlike with the psychic phase there is absolutely no excuse for this sort of shoddy design, as *every* faction has access to CPs and at least some Stratagems. As for how it could be improved, make resource-management a core part of the game. Tie available Stratagems and CPs to units actually on the field - not to list-building.

You mean the rule that is purely for matched play? The game mode for people that want to play 40k as a game not a simulation? Whether it's on a stick or not does not tie it to other game mechanics, it's just a personal game design preference you have.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself very well, so let me try a different route. Are you at all familiar with Warmachine/Hordes? If so, consider the magic in the magic (i.e. Focus/Fury) in those games. You couldn't just remove those mechanics because they're intrinsically tied to both the core mechanics of the game and the key elements of such (you need them for warlocks/warcasters - which are the most important models in the game - and you also need them for the warbeasts/warjacks that form their battlegroup). Now imagine removing the psychic phase or stratagems from 40k. A few units will be affected, sure, but by and large the game will still function just fine, and you wouldn't even need to edit the rules for the movement, shooting or assault phases.

Because the game is designed so you can use whatever models you own and don't need to design your army around a single model in your army? How again, exactly, is this a bad thing. If I remove those abilities from warlocks/warcasters why wouldn't I be able to play the game? As far as I can see they're just buffs and I'd be able to play WarmaHordes without it just like you'd be able to play 40k without HQ buffs just like we did in previous editions. Captains letting you re-roll 1s to hit does not connect him with more phases of the game, it just changes his combat role from entirely combat-oriented to a mix between combat and support.

40k has many mechanics but they're just sort of there. They're not tied togethe in any meaningful way; especially when you get beyond the movement, shooting and assault phases - which are as rudimentary as you can get in a strategy game. 40k needs to pick something (that is, something beyond those 3 basic phases) to actually build around and have as a core element of the game. One that you couldn't remove and still leave behind a perfectly functional game.

I've already proved that the by the dictionary definition the phases do interact, your personal design preference for a more complicated or a simulationist game does not change this fact. I find the need for adding a new mechanic or phase entirely unnecessary. If you want something extra you can make a custom mission that includes extra rules and if you want to add more simulationist elements like running away or broken morale you can make a new game mode like cities of death. 40k is a shell with several options you can build on top and crowned by whatever mission you play, that's a good thing.