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 catbarf wrote:
Like HBMC said, the whole idea of the automata is that they're relatively dim-witted and slow-to-react robots; that's why the Mechanicum is keen to produce cyborgs like Thallax that can act with a greater degree of autonomy.

Lack of reactions is a suitable way to model the idea of the holder of the Cortex Controller sending them orders, rather than them being able to organically react of their own initiative.

The point of a Cortex Controller is that any programmed behaviours are eliminated in favour of direct control (sort of) by a Techpriest though. There's no changing of programming because the Techpriest has a sort of neural link to the machine, extending their will to the automata.
If automata didn't get reactions unless there was a Cortex Controller in range, then I would agree the rule makes sense but it just seems random as a flat rule that tries to bring a pretence of "balance".

If we assume that nothing about their performance or cost will be changed to offset any potential gain from this rules shift, despite this being a completely new edition of the game, then yes they could become very oppressive.

We don't even know if the switch to monstrous creature stats will actually make them tougher. They could get worse depending on how their stats are set. Making assumptions at this stage is kind of silly.

Riiiiight. So it's OK to take these rumours at face value and say they're looking amazing but if you say they might be badly written or theorise they might be bad, that's a bit no-no.

Where does it say that about cortex controllers, exactly? I want to look that up.

That said, if it is correct then you should at least wait to see if tech priests have a rule like “Cortex Controller: Friendly Automata within X inches ignore this, that, and the other part of the core rules for their unit type” or not, really. It’s not like we have the playtest army lists yet. Unless I missed something?

You know, just in case they actually want to use the Automata type for non-Adeptus Mechanicus things at some point.

So for both the Cybernetica Cortex and the Cortex Controller this is from the Mechanicum Taghmata book from FW:
Cybernetica Cortex


Cortex Controller

But again, just so its clear, people can say they like the new rules and that they are brilliant, but I am not allowed to point out flaws and possible issues because "we don't know all the rules". Seems fair.

 Gert wrote:
Riiiiight. So it's OK to take these rumours at face value and say they're looking amazing but if you say they might be badly written or theorise they might be bad, that's a bit no-no.

 Gert wrote:
But again, just so its clear, people can say they like the new rules and that they are brilliant, but I am not allowed to point out flaws and possible issues because "we don't know all the rules". Seems fair.

Nobody's saying you're 'not allowed to point out flaws and possible issues'. Criticizing rules we've actually seen is fine. Declaring that Dreadnoughts are getting an extra boost and being made tougher when we have no idea what their statline will actually look like is nonsense.

Take a standard boxnaut with AV12/12/10 and 3 HP under the current system. A S9 lascannon gets a glancing hit on a 3, and a penetrating hit on a 4+. If the boxnaut becomes T8 and W3, then it'll be approximately as hard to kill- no degradation or lucky one-hit-kills, but also no vulnerable AV10 rear either, and either way it's three successful 3+ rolls to kill. It could even be T7/W3, again, we don't know. And given what we've seen so far of breaking from convention, it's possible Wounds-based Dreads/Automata will suffer degradation in the new system. We don't know.

Now if the new rules come out and Dreadnoughts are, in fact, hellishly hard to kill and imbalanced and totally break the game wide open, then yes, by all means complain about it. But right now you are committing the classic new-codex mistake of combining snippets of new rules with what you already know of old rules. Just... chill a bit, and let's focus on what we've seen rather than what we assume the rest will look like.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
You know, just in case they actually want to use the Automata type for non-Adeptus Mechanicus things at some point.

Legions can use Automata, and both the Dark Angels & Iron Warriors have their own unique ones.

beast_gts wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
You know, just in case they actually want to use the Automata type for non-Adeptus Mechanicus things at some point.

Legions can use Automata, and both the Dark Angels & Iron Warriors have their own unique ones.

If I recall, Thousand Sons and Iron Hands can take them or at least have a variation.

 Gert wrote:

We don't even know if the switch to monstrous creature stats will actually make them tougher. They could get worse depending on how their stats are set. Making assumptions at this stage is kind of silly.

Riiiiight. So it's OK to take these rumours at face value and say they're looking amazing but if you say they might be badly written or theorise they might be bad, that's a bit no-no.

Well, the supposed leaks show Contemptors are going to T7 6W, but we can't see the armour save.
This would appear to be a substantial increase in durability if AT guns remain at 1 wound a pop.
Allegedly they have some rule that means they're affected by Melta and Haywire, but we don't know what or how.

I think give that information, combined with how we know the new system is most similar to current Heresy, it's appropriate to voice concerns with the information we have.
Monstrous Creatures are notorius for being a bit overly strong compared to vehicles based on core rules alone, and what we've seen suggests that's not changing.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Well, the supposed leaks show Contemptors are going to T7 6W, but we can't see the armour save.
This would appear to be a substantial increase in durability if AT guns remain at 1 wound a pop.
Allegedly they have some rule that means they're affected by Melta and Haywire, but we don't know what or how.

I think give that information, combined with how we know the new system is most similar to current Heresy, it's appropriate to voice concerns with the information we have.
Monstrous Creatures are notorius for being a bit overly strong compared to vehicles based on core rules alone, and what we've seen suggests that's not changing.

IIRC the rumour was that there will be wargear which gives immunity to instakill but makes vulnerable to melta & haywire. That would actually mean that dreads without this wargear could still be instakilled, regardless of wounds, unless they hapoen to be eauipped with said wargear.

It wasn't an option, that's just an effect of the Dreadnought keyword/special rule.

Where are the pics of all of the new minis already?

 catbarf wrote:
Nobody's saying you're 'not allowed to point out flaws and possible issues'. Criticizing rules we've actually seen is fine. Declaring that Dreadnoughts are getting an extra boost and being made tougher when we have no idea what their statline will actually look like is nonsense.

I didn't say Dreadnoughts, I said Leviathans. Do we seriously expect that Leviathans won't still be very very good in this new edition?

tneva82 wrote:
Difference is he's not assuming to know everything. Points, stats etc are changing. Have you seen points for units? You can't say is unit good or bad before seeing points. Just for ridiculously obvious example. Automatons 1 pts per model weapons included. They would be super powerful whether or not they get reactions.

The army lists are changing. You can't look at old points and consider how they are because you know what? Old points won't be used.

I'm not assuming to know everything. I'm assuming a Leviathan will still be good because it's a Leviathan.
It could very well be that Boxnoughts will gain a slight boost and Contemptors will get even better but I wasn't talking about them.

But I'd just like to point out that nobody has been told "You're being too positive about the rules you don't know the full picture of", just people who aren't happy with what they've seen.

 Gert wrote:
Do we seriously expect that Leviathans won't still be very very good in this new edition?

If it's switching to a plastic kit, then yes - otherwise whatever plastic kit they want to push will be OP...

 Gert wrote:
Do we seriously expect that Leviathans won't still be very very good in this new edition?

 Gert wrote:
I'm assuming a Leviathan will still be good because it's a Leviathan.

You've lost me, I don't understand what logic is going into this at all.

Anyone who's witnessed an edition change in a GW game before has seen units that were very good become useless overnight.

The argument that Leviathans were good in the last edition, so they must be good in the new edition, and therefore the switch to T/W will assuredly make them brokenly hard to kill, makes no sense.

 Gert wrote:
But I'd just like to point out that nobody has been told "You're being too positive about the rules you don't know the full picture of", just people who aren't happy with what they've seen.

Because, again, the difference is not that you're being negative and others are being positive, it's that you're making assumptions about rules you haven't seen while others are commenting on the rules as presented.

 catbarf wrote:
You've lost me, I don't understand what logic is going into this at all.

Anyone who's witnessed an edition change in a GW game before has seen units that were very good become useless overnight.

The argument that Leviathans were good in the last edition, so they must be good in the new edition, and therefore the switch to T/W will assuredly make them brokenly hard to kill, makes no sense.

Actually, the argument, in this case, would be that Leviathans were broken when introduced into HH, nerfed a bit to extremely good, got ported to 40k, and were one of the highlights of 8th Ed tournament cheese. For a Leviathan to not be an amazing unit you'd have to double the points sink or make the weapons utterly worthless, something that I don't particularly see happening.

Because, again, the difference is not that you're being negative and others are being positive, it's that you're making assumptions about rules you haven't seen while others are commenting on the rules as presented.

My assumption is based on a unit that hasn't been bad since it was introduced into both HH and 40k.

I CBA continuously arguing about this. I think generally these leaks aren't good. There are bits I like such as Psychic Powers going to Ld checks instead of dice pools and in theory, the Reactions could be cool but overall I'm not impressed with what I've seen.

That's why I'm keeping myself from buying second Telemon. Might be gak in new edition. Honestly, I'm avoiding of buying anything now as they might also make gak units even more gak, like Coronus. Or, heck, they might as well make Sagittarum and Venatari actually good...

Threats of the new edition hasn't affected what I've bought for my army, I've bought the models and units that I think are cool and fit my theme.

Well, I'm slightly lying, rumours of modelless units have put the brakes on my buying some Ultramarines Locutarus.
I'm not that interested in them, so doing was a maybe anyways, but once I heard those rumours it quashed any ideas I had.

I do agree there's little point discussing how competitive things will be.
For all we know the devs were just as concerned with Leviathans as Gert and they're riding in as LoW and 500pts...

But it is appropriate to discuss mechanics. For however balanced they may be, MCs in 40k feel strange in that they can reliably tank several powerful AT shots.
It's possible they have added a damage characteristic in some way to AT guns, but I've seen nothing to suggest they have and what we have seen suggests to me they wouldn't have.
That means a 6W Contemptor is going to be soaking lascannons like it's fine wine (up to and including collapsing after they've downed one too many). That's not right to me, not right at all.

We shall have to see. Alas, I believe the leaks have stopped for the foreseeable future.

Also not a fan of landspeeders switching to wounds/toughness. Javelin speeders are huge and one of the cooler units in the game, I never once thought I'd like them to be more like bikes.

Landspeeders are a strange one.
It's openly stated that the marine's armour is a major component of it's defence (hence they're not Open Topped). That opens the question - if a marine is T4/3+, why is a Landspeeder AV10?

Especially with the jetbikes being flipping huge and almost the same size as a Landspeeder, making the landspeeders essentially just attack jetbikes.

I get you've got to draw an arbitrary line between "toughness" and "armour" at some point.
But my point is MCs have proven in past editions to be quite unsatisfactory in "feel" compared to vehicles IMO.

If I had my way I'd overhaul the whole attack/defence system and use a system more like DUST'47, which has an organic transition being unarmed infantry all the way through up to heavily armoured vehicles without there ever being a hard "switch" of stats. But I don't so we won't

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Landspeeders are a strange one.
It's openly stated that the marine's armour is a major component of it's defence (hence they're not Open Topped). That opens the question - if a marine is T4/3+, why is a Landspeeder AV10?

Especially with the jetbikes being flipping huge and almost the same size as a Landspeeder, making the landspeeders essentially just attack jetbikes.

I get you've got to draw an arbitrary line between "toughness" and "armour" at some point.
But my point is MCs have proven in past editions to be quite unsatisfactory in "feel" compared to vehicles IMO.

If I had my way I'd overhaul the whole attack/defence system and use a system more like DUST'47, which has an organic transition being unarmed infantry all the way through up to heavily armoured vehicles without there ever being a hard "switch" of stats. But I don't so we won't

It might have been stated to death already, but if mc's were the problem (and they are), I'm not sure why they've chosen to mess with everything else.


There's a direct conflict of interest between wanting the game to get some love in the form of like updated faq/errata and selling us new stuff. I can't state how much I wish they just focused the plastic releases everyone wants and left the game alone if change is just going to be for the sake of it. It's the same way I feel about video game sequels that want to re-invent the wheel, throw the baby out with the bath water, but still use and abuse every once of good will a franchise/established ip/name brings to it. I'd rather they slightly refine than re-invent the wheel.

Oh I agree.

I've always been a proponent of merging MCs into vehicles. Are they not both large heavily armoured things with squishy bits on the inside?

But that's clearly not happened. GW clearly heard people complaining that MCs were so much better than walkers and, in classic "completely misunderstanding the problem", have just made walkers MCs to solve it! Hurray for us...

I don't think 7th edition was a perfect ruleset, not at all, so I can understand why they might want to fix it.
Some changes, notably adding 'reactions' are clearly intended to be a direct improvement to some of the worst problems of 7th edition.
Great, more of that.

However, the leaks concern me. The execution seems way off. How can react and when, and what those reactions can be, seem to be really bad for the game from what I've seen.

Other changes like Dreadnoughts to MCs again seem really bad.
Dreadnoughts are an absolutely classic and just don't work as MCs imo.

So I do worry this is going to be a change for the worse.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Oh I agree.

I've always been a proponent of merging MCs into vehicles. Are they not both large heavily armoured things with squishy bits on the inside?

But that's clearly not happened. GW clearly heard people complaining that MCs were so much better than walkers and, in classic "completely misunderstanding the problem", have just made walkers MCs to solve it! Hurray for us...

I don't think 7th edition was a perfect ruleset, not at all, so I can understand why they might want to fix it.
Some changes, notably adding 'reactions' are clearly intended to be a direct improvement to some of the worst problems of 7th edition.
Great, more of that.

However, the leaks concern me. The execution seems way off. How can react and when, and what those reactions can be, seem to be really bad for the game from what I've seen.

Other changes like Dreadnoughts to MCs again seem really bad.
Dreadnoughts are an absolutely classic and just don't work as MCs imo.

So I do worry this is going to be a change for the worse.

The reactions thing bothers me to a core level, 30k is already made worse by certain things like a faction made entirely of knights or other silly crap. These ruin matched play just as much as narrative stuff and I've seen it first hand. Just some 40k player usually double dipping, I get the value of an obnoxious army that works in 2 games but ya, don't the rest of us just love it. Either way it's gw's fault, but thinking of stuff like that the reaction thing just seems stupid. It really messes with the scale of the game, not to mention larger mega battles or 2 v 2's or whatever. Also, one of the things I like most about 30k is it's relatively easy to document without too much interruption, outside of the odd intercept it's pretty straight forward to make a battle report out of. The reactions thing just throws a wrench into that. A lot of mega battles are a bit absurd in their dimensions, like the board might be 12x4. I'm not sure what good the reactions do there other than just make something that already take likely a lot of coordination and make it even messier. You already see rules being bent to allow for simultaneous things that won't affect causality at either end of the board to be rolled at the same time to save time.

I don't know when everyone decided turn based gaming was always in need of weird initiative stuff or alternating activations, those systems have just as many faults and arguably less flexible. If people have a problem with overwhelming firepower or alpha strikes that can be addressed with more los blocking terrain or as always with 30k breaking out the wallet and buying and fielding the exact same unit your opponent has that's pissing you off. That's been one of the only recourses to balance in 30k and one of the added benefits of so many units existing in so many places/lists.

I think I'd want to see more of the rules and how the various factions interact with those rules before making sweeping 'it's awful' sorts of statements, but that's Dakkadakka for you.

In almost every case of people overblowing rules changes between editions or game modes, the reality is not nearly as bad as people make it.

Like, 9th ed had a great starting ruleset. Only later on, when powercreep wasn't the normal 10% more effective but more like 50% more effective did we start to see a lot of the issues of the edition.

drbored wrote:
I think I'd want to see more of the rules and how the various factions interact with those rules before making sweeping 'it's awful' sorts of statements, but that's Dakkadakka for you.

In almost every case of people overblowing rules changes between editions or game modes, the reality is not nearly as bad as people make it.

Like, 9th ed had a great starting ruleset. Only later on, when powercreep wasn't the normal 10% more effective but more like 50% more effective did we start to see a lot of the issues of the edition.

That last part sure sounds like a sweeping awful sort of statement of opinion presenting as fact. Regardless, I agree that you should see the rules reviewed in their entirety before making a judgement (if you're ok with the rumored/leaked changes) or spending a penny (if you're not ok with them).

 warboss wrote:

drbored wrote:
I think I'd want to see more of the rules and how the various factions interact with those rules before making sweeping 'it's awful' sorts of statements, but that's Dakkadakka for you.

In almost every case of people overblowing rules changes between editions or game modes, the reality is not nearly as bad as people make it.

Like, 9th ed had a great starting ruleset. Only later on, when powercreep wasn't the normal 10% more effective but more like 50% more effective did we start to see a lot of the issues of the edition.

That last part sure sounds like a sweeping awful sort of statement of opinion presenting as fact. Regardless, I agree that you should see the rules reviewed in their entirety before making a judgement (if you're ok with the rumored/leaked changes) or spending a penny (if you're not ok with them).

Hey, I did say this was dakkadakka. I wouldn't be a proper dakkaite if I didn't participate in the same behavior that I'm decrying.

Crablezworth wrote:I don't know when everyone decided turn based gaming was always in need of weird initiative stuff or alternating activations

It really started to take off in the '90s, so it's not exactly a new trend.

Historical and realistic wargames do it to provide some semblance of friction, where you cannot act with impunity before your opponent gets a chance to respond and throw a wrench in your plans. More casual games do it to increase player interaction, keep both players in the game, and provide more major decision points. There are lots of ways to skin that cat, but straight IGOUGO is a rarity nowadays and with good reason.

It's not about limiting alpha strikes. That's a useful side effect, and one of the reasons it gets proposed for 40K, but the core reason for activation/reaction mechanics is to add some depth to the command-and-control aspect of the game and produce more simultaneity than thirty-minute pendulum swings.

In any case the proposed mechanic is so limited in scope (compare to Dust or Starship Troopers, where any unit can react, not just one per phase) that I want to see how it actually plays out before judging.

It would have been more surprising to me if GW had taken over HH from FW but left the rules as is to keep the niche-within-a-niche 30K community happy.

This is the price of getting new plastics, etc. GW will want to grow that market, not just sell the new kits to the existing small community. And whether you agree with it or not, there are a lot of potential players/customers who feel that the v7-based HH ruleset is stale.

Hell, even if no one felt that way, we all know that rules churn is how GW sparks interest in new editions of 40K.

 gorgon wrote:
It would have been more surprising to me if GW had taken over HH from FW but left the rules as is to keep the niche-within-a-niche 30K community happy.

This is the price of getting new plastics, etc. GW will want to grow that market, not just sell the new kits to the existing small community. And whether you agree with it or not, there are a lot of potential players/customers who feel that the v7-based HH ruleset is stale.

Hell, even if no one felt that way, we all know that rules churn is how GW sparks interest in new editions of 40K.

This is very true. Many players stopped playing around the 7th edition time. Source? How many people came back for 8th or even 9th that hadn't played in 3+ years. 8th was a huge launch, both because of how many new people it brought in and how many returning people came in.

Advertising 30k as more of 7th isn't going to inspire a lot of people to try the game out. It'll make people that loved 6th and 7th happy, but that's a small and shrinking group of people.

Remember that successful 30k means more long-term support for the game. More plastics, more characters, more upgrades, more modeling and collecting opportunities.

At least they're not treating it like Age of Sigmar where they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They're clearly keeping some of the fundamentals of 7th edition to keep the game feeling different enough from 40k.

The main thing is that 7th Edition did need to be updated and fixed. Too many people like to think that formations were the only problem with 7th. They were a problem, yes, but they would have been a problem regardless of whatever edition they came out in so they weren't an inherently 7th Edition problem. 7th Edition still had many of the same problems that 6th had, that 5th had before that, and so on. I was very disappointed when they released the "updated" rules for HH and it had all of (I think) two changes to it. They had the opportunity to pick and choose from all of the best rules that had come out from 3rd to 7th, and they blew it.

drbored wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
It would have been more surprising to me if GW had taken over HH from FW but left the rules as is to keep the niche-within-a-niche 30K community happy.

This is the price of getting new plastics, etc. GW will want to grow that market, not just sell the new kits to the existing small community. And whether you agree with it or not, there are a lot of potential players/customers who feel that the v7-based HH ruleset is stale.

Hell, even if no one felt that way, we all know that rules churn is how GW sparks interest in new editions of 40K.

This is very true. Many players stopped playing around the 7th edition time. Source? How many people came back for 8th or even 9th that hadn't played in 3+ years. 8th was a huge launch, both because of how many new people it brought in and how many returning people came in.

Advertising 30k as more of 7th isn't going to inspire a lot of people to try the game out. It'll make people that loved 6th and 7th happy, but that's a small and shrinking group of people.

Remember that successful 30k means more long-term support for the game. More plastics, more characters, more upgrades, more modeling and collecting opportunities.

At least they're not treating it like Age of Sigmar where they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They're clearly keeping some of the fundamentals of 7th edition to keep the game feeling different enough from 40k.

This. A mature and nuanced view of whats going on, very refreshing.