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They want to be able skip rolls, too presumably. Of course, why does GW put in so many meaningless rolls?

Oh, I agree there are far too many rolls in the game as is, but until they change the rules or you make an agreement/house rule with your opponent amending them, then the rules are as they are. I find on the internet it’s usually better to discuss the official rules and leave house rules and whatnot to discussion with your own playing group unless the thread is specifically about a particular house rule or set of house rules.

My counter is that there are so many house rules in effective that discussions should be limited to GW's rules.

I think I forgot to answer OP's question, yes bloat is the problem. It's less fun to play against an army when you don't know their Stratagems and it's not fun to study Stratagems. More Stratagems makes the game worse, GW should've kept it to a limited amount. More rules like super doctrines either means more studying or more pre-game lecturing.

Martel732 wrote:
Why do you think 3% chance is worth it?

Because it adds up, I don't play timed games and when someone has to go before a game is finished it's usually before the 2 hour mark where a game could go to its full length if both players were trying to speed up the game. If you're giving your opponent 5% here, there and everywhere you're going to end up at a significant disadvantage, which is of course mitigated if your opponent does the same. For me the value of playing by the rules is more important than speed while the chances are 3% or higher, I think setting the bar at 20% is way too high because it is almost certain to have knock-on effects in terms of how the rest of your opponent's attacks will be directed. I will occasionally ask my opponent whether they want to roll attacks or just assume the attacks kill the unit if my opponent was trying to kill a limited number of my models I'd assume them to say no and roll the dice. There are tricks for speeding up FNP. Let's say I had 10 unsaved wounds with D3 damage on your Death Company, instead of making 20 individual rolls to determine whether the models are dead I can roll 10D3 once, you seperate them into piles of 3 damage, 2 damage and 1 damage. First you roll one dice for each wound that dealt 3 damage, take the failed ones into a fail pile, add the successful ones to the 2 damage pile. Roll the 2 damage pile, failed ones go in fail pile, successful ones go in 1 damage pile. Finally you roll the 1 damage pile and put the failed ones in the fail pile. A number of models are destroyed equal to the number of dice in the fail pile. 4 rolls instead of 20, now this isn't RAW how you're supposed to roll dice in 40k, but neither is using dice-rolling software which is accepted at some of the biggest tournaments.

RAW is not the end all be all.

Bloat is the problem with 8th edition, in 7th it was formations. 8th started streamlined and then replaced the bloat with a novels worth of strategems. it isn't just for GWs flagship line of space marines.


Everybody is always worried about the next update and how it will power up or down a faction. always looking for the next meta

I like that mechanicus, custodus stealer cults etc.. got put into the game proper in 7th, however the current state makes me want even more to go back to playing 5th edition(my favorite edition). all the codexes are good, they are all out, there will never be any need for FAQs or erratas, there is less complexity in re-rolls/CP/turn phases/ an unknowable stack of special stratagems and the number of dice thrown, or wounds in the game., you can use all the models you already had before the primaris plague (or use them as stand ins for normal tac marines) and even some of the newly added forces in 7th as mentioned previously are back compatable with little effort.

Mabey all this down time where i have had nothing to do but paint and evaluate my collection of minis has given my a better prospective on the game in it's current form.

 aphyon wrote:
Bloat is the problem with 8th edition, in 7th it was formations. 8th started streamlined and then replaced the bloat with a novels worth of strategems. it isn't just for GWs flagship line of space marines.


Everybody is always worried about the next update and how it will power up or down a faction. always looking for the next meta

I like that mechanicus, custodus stealer cults etc.. got put into the game proper in 7th, however the current state makes me want even more to go back to playing 5th edition(my favorite edition). all the codexes are good, they are all out, there will never be any need for FAQs or erratas, there is less complexity in re-rolls/CP/turn phases/ an unknowable stack of special stratagems and the number of dice thrown, or wounds in the game., you can use all the models you already had before the primaris plague (or use them as stand ins for normal tac marines) and even some of the newly added forces in 7th as mentioned previously are back compatable with little effort.

Mabey all this down time where i have had nothing to do but paint and evaluate my collection of minis has given my a better prospective on the game in it's current form.

I think both editions suffered from GW marketing using power creep to push sales. 7th formations started off fairly tame, then the brakes fell off with the Necron codex and GW went full steam ahead with the power creep express. Seems to me the same sort of thing is happening with 8th but with its faction traits and stratagems.

I do think its fair to say that the core rules for 4th to 7th had a lot more meat to them than the core rules for 8th. Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

I think it is overall bad game design myself when you run out of CP your chapter/craftworld/sept world suddenly looses all of it's unique character.

I remember when one of our regulars had his 5th ed blood angels, it was tough to fight but it was fun because it had blood angels flavor to it. we joked about flying/jump pack dreadnoughts before they got their librarian dreads with the wings of sanguinius. power.

 aphyon wrote:

Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

I think it is overall bad game design myself when you run out of CP your chapter/craftworld/sept world suddenly looses all of it's unique character.

Agreed.

Though I think this could be at least partially solved by having CPs generated each turn, rather than getting them all of the start and not being able to generate any more without specific relics or such.

The game was much better when it was just indexes. Not perfect, but it felt approachable and reasonable. I haven't kept up with anything really in the last six months and now my army is a completely different size, has stratagems in multiple places and I have to explain everything pre-game endlessly.

It is better to have a few, meaningful rules that give flavour than a whole host. Personally I prefer the way AOS handles flavour. You get 1 artefact, warlord trait and unique command ability for your chapter/craftworld/cult. If additional rules take a long time to explain, they are bad. If they aren't worth explaining they probably aren't worth having (these are generalising of course!).

Stratagems are a cool idea to add dramatic and heroic moments to a game, but a few choice ones would be preferable. Only in death does duty end is a brilliant one - fun and heroic. WHen two warlords slay each other in a dramatic fashion you remember that. Giving a +1 to wound on your best shooting unit is boring and obvious. It also requires no skill. If positioning mattered for stratagem use that would add some play and counter play.

It is better for the core actions to feel meaningful and flavourful then these bolt-ons. Or have them tied to specific dataslates. Strategems to make units viable is stupid - make the unit viable instead.

Strategems to make units viable is stupid - make the unit viable instead.

You just hit on the reason why i love horus heresy. all the unit options even the generic ones are good. not- i have to take unit X because it is better than all the other options for that slot. plus they removed 7th ed formations so win/win.

 aphyon wrote:

Strategems to make units viable is stupid - make the unit viable instead.

You just hit on the reason why i love horus heresy. all the unit options even the generic ones are good. not- i have to take unit X because it is better than all the other options for that slot. plus they removed 7th ed formations so win/win.

I think another part of it is some/many model ranges are bloated and there is too much for GW to separate out distinct roles for units/choices.

Wargamers can be quite sensitive to having their units made non-legal* which I can understand but is also detrimental to the development of the game. For example, I'm convinced the game would be better if several big heavy weapons (lascannon equivalents for example) were gone from infantry. Make anti-tank scarcer. But this would piss people off. The drive to have too many options leads to escalation. Because some armies have access to too much AT in dispersed locations, tanks need to be cheaper/tougher/have gimmicks to be viable.


*These things can be handled in good and bad

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

I'll argue that deeper core rules with shallower/streamlined army rules beats shallow core rules with stacks and stacks of army-specific rules for depth, ease of play, ease of balance, and design space.

Most armies have more content in the 8th Ed indices than they did in their own codices back in 3rd/4th Ed. Without that strong core foundation though there's not much to build a game from, and then you need all those bespoke special rules and stratagems just to get something approaching depth out of it.

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

The problem is that 40K was never meant to be a truly balanced game(especially now with all the various factions added and performing in a way to represent their uniqueness on TT).

I was meant to be more of a narrative fun battle game to play with friends where some factions were better than others at certain things that you need to learn to counter.. i blame GW for ruining this back when they instituted the rougue trader and grand tournament scene back in the early 2000s. it changed the nature of the game at the same time the dev teams were still focused on the game the way it was originally intended.

In 3rd-5th there was a solid set of 3 pages of special rules in the main rule book that applied to all armies in the game. with the keyword in their entry where individual codexes gave then a slight divergence in uniqueness.

the 3.5 dark angels mini dex made deathwing and ravenwing 2 very distinct, very restricted, stand alone armies that could not be repeated by any other space marine faction. in the same way the 3.5 chaos codex is still the best chaos codex ever made because it gave the marks of the gods serious meaning in both benefits and restrictions that gave the factions flavor. same with the blood angels codex for 5th.

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

I'll argue that deeper core rules with shallower/streamlined army rules beats shallow core rules with stacks and stacks of army-specific rules for depth, ease of play, ease of balance, and design space.

Aye. You could add five to ten more rules pages to the rulebook, do away with at least half the rules in the codexes, and come out with a better experience.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

I'll argue that deeper core rules with shallower/streamlined army rules beats shallow core rules with stacks and stacks of army-specific rules for depth, ease of play, ease of balance, and design space.

Aye. You could add five to ten more rules pages to the rulebook, do away with at least half the rules in the codexes, and come out with a better experience.

it would probably also lower the ammount off arms race that is going on with PA /supplements to a degree.

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

I'll argue that deeper core rules with shallower/streamlined army rules beats shallow core rules with stacks and stacks of army-specific rules for depth, ease of play, ease of balance, and design space.

I completely agree.

Unfortunately, 8th's core rules are as shallow as it gets.

 vipoid wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Umbros wrote:
The game was much better when it was just indexes.

It was probably more balanced and easy to keep track of but it was also bloody boring.

I'll argue that deeper core rules with shallower/streamlined army rules beats shallow core rules with stacks and stacks of army-specific rules for depth, ease of play, ease of balance, and design space.

I completely agree.

Unfortunately, 8th's core rules are as shallow as it gets.

I tought we all had fun with 10 x 1 version of deepstrike.
Or infiltration, etc.

And the 2 versions that are at first wrong / broken.......

 aphyon wrote:

Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

I think it is overall bad game design myself when you run out of CP your chapter/craftworld/sept world suddenly looses all of it's unique character.

I keep hearing this complaint, but I don't see how it is true. I can't think of a single sub-faction that loses it's Trait when it runs out of CP? And outside of Space Marines, I don't think any (or many) sub-factions get more than 1 unique Stratagem. And your sub-faction warlord traits and relics don't disappear when you run out of CP either.

So tell me, how it is that Ultramarines and Iron Hands lose their unique character and become the same when they run out of CP?

 alextroy wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

I think it is overall bad game design myself when you run out of CP your chapter/craftworld/sept world suddenly looses all of it's unique character.

I keep hearing this complaint, but I don't see how it is true. I can't think of a single sub-faction that loses it's Trait when it runs out of CP? And outside of Space Marines, I don't think any (or many) sub-factions get more than 1 unique Stratagem. And your sub-faction warlord traits and relics don't disappear when you run out of CP either.

So tell me, how it is that Ultramarines and Iron Hands lose their unique character and become the same when they run out of CP?

It's a csm issue.
Half the Units don't have traits.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

Makes the game a lot more enjoyable without needing all those reroll and stratagem gimmicks to make the game have any flavor.

I think it is overall bad game design myself when you run out of CP your chapter/craftworld/sept world suddenly looses all of it's unique character.

I keep hearing this complaint, but I don't see how it is true. I can't think of a single sub-faction that loses it's Trait when it runs out of CP? And outside of Space Marines, I don't think any (or many) sub-factions get more than 1 unique Stratagem. And your sub-faction warlord traits and relics don't disappear when you run out of CP either.

So tell me, how it is that Ultramarines and Iron Hands lose their unique character and become the same when they run out of CP?

It's a csm issue.
Half the Units don't have traits.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Once a Night Lords or Word Bearers army runs out of cp how is it different from a Black Legion army? Before Faith and Fury all the legions, except maybe Alpha Legion, were just Black Legion with a different color scheme. Now they have distinct flavor, until the cp runs out. The legions need better traits that actually affect all units and how armies are built and played.

More hyperbole. You won't see a Emperor's Children unit firing Bolters as Assault weapons when they advance, nor Black Legion unit's fighting first regardless of charging. Just because the differences aren't as great as those from later codexes (like new Space Marines) doesn't mean they don't exist.

 alextroy wrote:
More hyperbole. You won't see a Emperor's Children unit firing Bolters as Assault weapons when they advance, nor Black Legion unit's fighting first regardless of charging. Just because the differences aren't as great as those from later codexes (like new Space Marines) doesn't mean they don't exist.

Right! And no one but Word Bearers would ever reroll their morale checks. And who else would lower an opponent's leadership by -1 besides Night Lords? Except any legion using raptors. Or loyalists with reivers. Or with the fearsome aspect trait (not that anyone takes it because it's useless.)

Yup, pretty unique and impactful those legion traits.

Of course they exist. The point is that they don't really do anything. Which is why the legions need strategems for flavor. If every faction had a good strong trait we wouldn't need all these pages on pages to differentiate them. Flavor should come from traits and units. That would cut down on rules bloat.

So the problem isn't bloat or CP, but bad faction Traits for CSM Legions. It would be better to complain about the problem, not the symptom.

 alextroy wrote:
So the problem isn't bloat or CP, but bad faction Traits for CSM Legions. It would be better to complain about the problem, not the symptom.

"Bloat" to me means "irrelevant and unnecessary rules that don't make the game more interesting." It's possible for something to be bad and be bloat. Or to be good and be bloat.

 alextroy wrote:
So the problem isn't bloat or CP, but bad faction Traits for CSM Legions. It would be better to complain about the problem, not the symptom.

No, not just csm legions, everyone. Strategems shouldn't define factions. We didn't need them before 8th to define factions. Horus Heresy doesn't need them, either. Strategems shouldn't be something you build armies around, or buy books for.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
So the problem isn't bloat or CP, but bad faction Traits for CSM Legions. It would be better to complain about the problem, not the symptom.

No, not just csm legions, everyone. Strategems shouldn't define factions. We didn't need them before 8th to define factions. Horus Heresy doesn't need them, either. Strategems shouldn't be something you build armies around, or buy books for.

Exactly. all the special rules for a faction/special unit used to be in the unit entry. with just enough divergence from normal to make them stand out as unique without being game breaking. it was also something that could not be re-produced by any other army/faction. but the later is what GW is using to push sales and it is at the same time a form of power creep.


A thing to keep in mind also, away from the forums, many players i run into have never played any other edition other than 8th or possibly 7th so they do not understand how much of a change 8th was for the game. for 12 of the last 20 years the game followed a similar format, slightly altered for an additional 5 or so years (6th&7th) and then completely changed in the last 2 years or so for 8th. to the point where it feels less like your playing a TT strategy war game reliant on the luck of the dice (without massive re-roll options) planning your movements, or prioritizing targets and more like your building a magic gotcha deck of special combos.

8th uses many of the same minis but it is quite simply a different game. and in my personal view not a better change. some rules changes were good in the various editions including 8th, but the overall mechanics are not for standard 28mm play (8th scales up nicely for epic with reduced ranges and movement stats combined with limited stratagems)

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
I will try to use your RPG analogy, awkward as it is. The factions are not pregenerated characters but rather classes. Picking a class means some things are open and others are closed. Call the standard Fighter the Space Marines and the Dark Angels are the Paladin. You want to allow a player to take a Fighter but cherry pick stuff from the Paladin and others.

Actual factions are indeed classes. Orks are like a class, you can make any ork warbands you want with the orks rule, that are clearly very different from other faction rules, and your own faction lore. Imperial Guard is like a class, for the same reason. Necrons. Sisters of Battle. Genestealer cults.
Dark Angels? Dark Angels rules are 97% the same as space marines, and you don't get to make your own faction lore, the Dark Angel faction lore is already predefined.

If I correct your analogy, the standard fighter is the Space Marine codex, but they cannot use hammer weapons, and if you want to make a warrior with a hammer, you need to take the special "hammer fighter" class, that works the same as the fighter except they can only use a hammer, and can't use shields, AND on top of that they have to be called Angus McFife, or be a direct descendant of Angus McFife XIII, and come from Scotland and so on and so forth.
Let me freaking make a freaking warrior that use a one-handed hammer and shield, and that is called Eddie the 'ead if I want to for heaven's sake!

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
An individual desire to make a fringe or home-brew Chapter is good and should be encouraged, but not at the expense of the more popular established Chapters.

It's the opposite. It's good that the established chapter can be represented, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the ability for players to create their own chapters.
If you want to play with other people's characters and factions, go play Horus Heresy, you can even use all your current models!

In the end we come back to the terrible but sadly fact of life about GW : it's a stock company "in the miniatures selling business".

They cannot release full rules and indexes at the beginning of an edition and not release any new books for new units,
They need to maintain cash influx all trough the year to make stockholders happy.

We can talk and complain however long we want about it, in the end, simple ruleset the beginning = expand the customer base, and codex/rules bloat after that is designed to keep the customer base paying for new books and units.

At this point each expansion feels like a world of warcraft expansion : they seel you bells and whistles pre-release ("we've changed"), then it becomes a grind, because that's the only way to keep people paying their monthly sub.