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So while I'm sure it won't calm anyone down about anything, GW did mention back when they did the initial announcement (and maybe again during the Q&A) that the updated rules will have pictures to show how certain mechanics work, as well as appendix stuff to handle edge cases (which likely came up during playtesting but didn't justify an overhaul of the rules).

Chances are a lot of the questions regarding terrain people currently have will be resolved in those parts of the rulebook.

It's a nice theory, and I hope it turns out to be right.

FWIW, Reece (yes, yes, I know) also said today that when they said on the stream "there are no rules for placing terrain and assigning traits, you just agree on what's fair with your opponent and that's it" that wasn't really accurate, either, and that more info would be revealed at some point to give people the full picture of how terrain placement works.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Latro_ wrote:
someone posted this on the WH40k facebook thread for the preview, another legend.

bloodletter is safe

The bloodletter is clearly not safe. If the Knight moves to the right or the left, it will be able to shoot the bloodletter. If the knight goes to the front, it will be able to charge and kill the boodletter.

Yep. And who knows, maybe three turns from now a model you can't even see in the photo could get him too.

I mean, in the grim-dark world of the 41st millenium, nobody is ever really safe!!! Am I right or am I right, guys???

In the forty-first millennium -everybody- needs an adult.


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yukishiro1 wrote:
It's a nice theory, and I hope it turns out to be right.

FWIW, Reece (yes, yes, I know) also said today that when they said on the stream "there are no rules for placing terrain and assigning traits, you just agree on what's fair with your opponent and that's it" that wasn't really accurate, either, and that more info would be revealed at some point to give people the full picture of how terrain placement works.

The WHC article showed us that there are terrain templates, which I can imagine will be how most people assign rules going forward.

And the four pillars mission had some rules for placing terrain (the pillars), and I'm willing to bet there are Narrative missions that will too.

But I could see GW going a bit loose on forcing terrain to be one way or the other so people can do what they like with the sandbox too.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
I am ok with these terrain rules. Except for one big cavaet. Did they consider how weapons like thunderfires and basilisks basically ignore all LOS and obscuring rules ?

Imperium has a lot of weapons that can ignore LOS. Not all xenos factions have much of those. In fact, Chaos doesn't either unless we are going into forgeworld.

We don't know if melee blocking is going to be a thing. But if it isn't, Basically, if I am playing a knight army, my knights will still be easily stopped from moving up the table by sacrificial small units of infantry halting my movement, while basilisks out of LOS rain fire on me, while I cannot shoot them at all. So, knight armies are going to be auto lose against imperium now? :X

I wouldn't worry about this, on a couple counts. First, if someone has actual proper LoS blocking terrain in 8E or is playing with ITC rules or whatnot, that scenario isn't really anything one couldn't already run into. Second, under the current rules and assuming no changes to stats/weapons/etc in 9E, it takes a trio of Basilisks an average of 4 turns to kill a single 24 wound T8 Knight. Unless an opponent's fielding an army composed entirely of basilisks and is managing to hide it all behind LoS blocking terrain, I don't think it'll be an issue.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Voss wrote:
Well, in theory, if you're a game designer trying to limit the power of shooting by breaking up line of sight... Letting big stuff (with more guns) shoot whatever they want just might be counter to the design decision.

Firstly that implies that they're trying to limit the power of shooting. The new blast rules say otherwise. But even putting that aside, why shouldn't a towering engine of destruction that can see over buildings be allowed to, y'know, see over buildings?

Arguably they could be trying to limit the ability for units to be focused down while making weapons that were almost never used because of how bad they were more appealing to players.

Like they don't want to make shooting bad, but they want to spread the damage out so people have to make choices instead of focusing down units in turn.

Just a guess though, because i don't really now what goes on in their minds.

We have seen the Terrain rules and the Cover rules

as this will be still a "simple" set of core rules with just some more pages than 8th, I don't expect there to be more rules than what we have seen

but there might be LOS rules which help to get around some problems
not that mixing 3 different types of terrain rules and LOS rules is a good thing in the first place but it might be not as worse as it looks now

but:
the whole stuff feels more like a 2D game with 2 levels, ground and aircraft
and if you expect that everything is on either of those levels and no one is using terrain were the 3rd dimension will important, it might work

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It may very well be that obscuring terrain still functions normally for knights/flyers, as in line of sight must be drawn the same way it is now.

this is how other games work, but they have usually a "height" value or something similar.
terrain can be obscouring or not, if it is obscouring it blocks LOS for everything with the same height or smaller, if it is not obscouring you get cover unless the shooting model is heigher than the terrain and the target is more than the height of the terrain piece away from it.

than such kind of rules work well as it is clear

but if GW mixes TLOS with the obscouring it gets tricky as "terrain at least 5" high blocks LOS for everything with less than 18 Wounds, unless you can draw a clear Line of Sight to the main part of the model"
would just make the rule useless as the main intend is to block LOS no matter how many windows are there

there is just no solution to get TLOS to mix with "5" height = obscouring" that makes those rules work (and even talking about that those rules need to work better than the current "ground level blocks LOS" to hold the promisse that the new terrain rules will help melee armies)

I don't think any mount of terrain is really going to make people spread the damage out, it's just too inefficient a strategy. At most, with enough terrain, you could force someone to deploy all their anti-tank on a particular side and wipe all the stuff in that area before moving somewhere else. I really doubt you're gonna see anybody deploying one tank on this side, one tank on that side kind of thing.

Especially not if 9th remains as castle and aura-heavy as 8th is. (I really hope it isn't, aurahammer 40kastle is not good gameplay).

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't think any mount of terrain is really going to make people spread the damage out, it's just too inefficient a strategy. At most, with enough terrain, you could force someone to deploy all their anti-tank on a particular side and wipe all the stuff in that area before moving somewhere else. I really doubt you're gonna see anybody deploying one tank on this side, one tank on that side kind of thing.

Especially not if 9th remains as castle and aura-heavy as 8th is. (I really hope it isn't, aurahammer 40kastle is not good gameplay).

I won't argue that it is impossible that it won't work. It just struck me as a possibility that by breaking up LoS to most of the board from any one position that armies will have to split their targets more.

Granted it's not like that's new, but 8th's weak terrain rules had broken that.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if there was some way to write the rules so you were actually encouraged to have lots of little sub-engagements between different sub-forces in different areas of the board, each isolated by terrain from the other, rather than the current way of playing 40k where 90% of the action is usually one big hammer going against the other, typically in the middle of the board.

But I just don't see there's any way to make that happen. Bringing overwhelming force to bear on a particular area of your opponent's army is always going to be the competitive strategy, unless you simply make that impossible.

I mean maybe if those 10+ tank armies come back, that would be so many tanks that you might have to split them into two groups and go after two different areas of the board at once. But with the new points values I don't think you'll realistically be able to take that many tanks anyway, so it's unlikely to come up except in really skew lists like ridgerunner spam or something like that.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if there was some way to write the rules so you were actually encouraged to have lots of little sub-engagements between different sub-forces in different areas of the board, each isolated by terrain from the other, rather than the current way of playing 40k where 90% of the action is usually one big hammer going against the other, typically in the middle of the board.

But I just don't see there's any way to make that happen. Bringing overwhelming force to bear on a particular area of your opponent's army is always going to be the competitive strategy, unless you simply make that impossible.

I mean maybe if those 10+ tank armies come back, that would be so many tanks that you might have to split them into two groups and go after two different areas of the board at once. But with the new points values I don't think you'll realistically be able to take that many tanks anyway, so it's unlikely to come up except in really skew lists like ridgerunner spam or something like that.

If they bring back target priority it could help, but I agree, it's hard to tell at this stage.

I was expecting 5th ed City Fight levels of terrain density, but GW proved my assumptions wrong so I'm not too sure what to think at this stage.

Hopefully next week's previews are focused around shooting and melee so we can see how combat it supposed to play out over a turn to get a better idea where this bus is taking us.

In the meantime I guess i'm going to keep building Templars and hope GW doesn't shoot my army in the foot when I'm not looking.

My only issues so far are that I hope they day 1 faq so that if 2 models are elevated higher than the obscuring terrain they can see each other & obscured reverts to tlos when a target clears the requirements for not being obscured.

Lots of people spent lots of time whiging terrain did nothing and that gw terrain was useless due to all the windows etc. So they've gone and made it have a purpose, LOS blockong terrain will be everywhere and now the demands of the audience have been met, its time to whinge about the exceptions.

They're just doing what people asked for, they're breaking narrative and logic slightly to make the game function a certain way on a rules level. It smacks of pandering to try and make it competitive at the expense of immersion imo but thats what people seem to want.

yukishiro1 wrote:

But I just don't see there's any way to make that happen. Bringing overwhelming force to bear on a particular area of your opponent's army is always going to be the competitive strategy, unless you simply make that impossible.

this is a scenario thing, having 4 objectives, each one isolated by LOS blocking terrain so that units can only support one at a time and to score you need to control more objectives than your enemy at the end of the turn (add in that units of 11+ models have ObSec)

so you need to split your forces, as going with everything to one or 2 objectives won't work

problem is:
"if you destroy your enemy you get full points/major win" is still a thing, we are back to default were tabling the opponent is the better option anyway and all those rules have the opposite effect

I mean maybe if those 10+ tank armies come back, that would be so many tanks that you might have to split them into two groups and go after two different areas of the board at once. But with the new points values I don't think you'll realistically be able to take that many tanks anyway,

there is no information that tanks will increase in price as well
and I guess the opposite, playtesters said at 2k they are missing one Marine Squad, which indicates that Marines/Infantry got more expensive while tanks stayed the same or got cheaper

Dudeface wrote:
My only issues so far are that I hope they day 1 faq so that if 2 models are elevated higher than the obscuring terrain they can see each other & obscured reverts to tlos when a target clears the requirements for not being obscured.

Lots of people spent lots of time whiging terrain did nothing and that gw terrain was useless due to all the windows etc. So they've gone and made it have a purpose, LOS blockong terrain will be everywhere and now the demands of the audience have been met, its time to whinge about the exceptions.

They're just doing what people asked for, they're breaking narrative and logic slightly to make the game function a certain way on a rules level. It smacks of pandering to try and make it competitive at the expense of immersion imo but thats what people seem to want.

Ideally that'll be covered in the rulebook, but we'll see in the future.

I know they were talking about how they imagine the ruins to be these places choked with debris, smoke and dust (not to mention plant life, corpses or other stuff) that get in the way, so I could see the infinite cylinder thing being a thing, but at the same time they may have more rules in there regarding TLoS that explains it further.

Either way we know that the terrain has always been more of an abstraction to represent the real thing so having the rules operate on a more abstract level makes sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

But I just don't see there's any way to make that happen. Bringing overwhelming force to bear on a particular area of your opponent's army is always going to be the competitive strategy, unless you simply make that impossible.

this is a scenario thing, having 4 objectives, each one isolated by LOS blocking terrain so that units can only support one at a time and to score you need to control more objectives than your enemy at the end of the turn (add in that units of 11+ models have ObSec)

so you need to split your forces, as going with everything to one or 2 objectives won't work

problem is:
"if you destroy your enemy you get full points/major win" is still a thing, we are back to default were tabling the opponent is the better option anyway and all those rules have the opposite effect

I mean maybe if those 10+ tank armies come back, that would be so many tanks that you might have to split them into two groups and go after two different areas of the board at once. But with the new points values I don't think you'll realistically be able to take that many tanks anyway,

there is no information that tanks will increase in price as well
and I guess the opposite, playtesters said at 2k they are missing one Marine Squad, which indicates that Marines/Infantry got more expensive while tanks stayed the same or got cheaper

I can imagine that tabling won't win games anymore, score will which will take some pressure off of the combat side of the game in favor of missions. 4 pillars for example has no points for killing units in the primary rules.

And we know blast weapons will see a points hike, and every faction is getting points hikes, we just don't know how extreme they all are.

I mean a Marine squad is anywhere from 60 points for 5 barebones Tacticals to around 200 for a fully kitted out 10 man Intercessor squad. And some factions may lose more out of their armies while others lose less.

 Red Corsair wrote:

It's as if the height restriction tied to wounds is some veiled way of clipping certain models like knights, but they should have just called them out as an exception. I mean, I thought bespoke rules only benefit was just that. You can specifically target certain models with rules. Instead they tried to be very none specific and we get absurd situations.


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How on earth did that survive play testing?

Or dare I suggest it: SIZE characteristic.

Triumph is funny one. 6 sisters is somehow seein through obscuring terrain at will but 15 sisters isn't. Lol

if they follow AoS regarding the tabling system. You don't stop playing when one is tabled, so you use those turns to score some more points. But the winner is the one with the most points, no matter if that person has no more models left. Personaly I like at, as it forces you to think about how you can play the mission

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

Then they couldn't show something from every part or they would leak entire rulebook that way. Bad for book sales.

Besides you get enough info this way already.

tneva82 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

It's as if the height restriction tied to wounds is some veiled way of clipping certain models like knights, but they should have just called them out as an exception. I mean, I thought bespoke rules only benefit was just that. You can specifically target certain models with rules. Instead they tried to be very none specific and we get absurd situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
How on earth did that survive play testing?

Or dare I suggest it: SIZE characteristic.

Triumph is funny one. 6 sisters is somehow seein through obscuring terrain at will but 15 sisters isn't. Lol

Or, you can spot the Triumph, but the Triumph can't spot 30 Ork Boyz.

terry wrote:
if they follow AoS regarding the tabling system. You don't stop playing when one is tabled, so you use those turns to score some more points. But the winner is the one with the most points, no matter if that person has no more models left. Personaly I like at, as it forces you to think about how you can play the mission

Blow the enemy up, score points after

tneva82 wrote:

terry wrote:
if they follow AoS regarding the tabling system. You don't stop playing when one is tabled, so you use those turns to score some more points. But the winner is the one with the most points, no matter if that person has no more models left. Personaly I like at, as it forces you to think about how you can play the mission

Blow the enemy up, score points after

that means you'll need to blow up the enemy fast enough, if you manage to do it, its a stratagey that can sometimes work

ClockworkZion wrote:
I was expecting 5th ed City Fight levels of terrain density, but GW proved my assumptions wrong so I'm not too sure what to think at this stage.

At the moment I see the rules working on the table GW showed us as "how it should look like"
there are not many pieces by default so remembering which one has 4 keywords, and which one 6 keywords is not that hard and there is not much going on that would need to be discussed during the game as there is enough room between

while going with something like this won't work at all

ClockworkZion wrote:
I can imagine that tabling won't win games anymore, score will which will take some pressure off of the combat side of the game in favor of missions. 4 pillars for example has no points for killing units in the primary rules.

it doesn't need to be a scenario rule but can be somewhere in the core rules as it was before "if there are no models left on the table at the end of a turn the game is lost"
and such a rule was there in every edition until now

and as soon as you get full points at a tournament for tabling (as they usually ignore the "the game ends" rule and assume that you get all the scenarion points as the game going on) there is a problem as those rules spill over to normal games as well (eg like the discussion why one should use the default missions if there is ITC that used by everyone else) and tournament results are used to balance the game (so CA point changes are going to solve a problem that is not there in the standard missions breaking the game if you don't play with tournament rules)

ClockworkZion wrote:
And we know blast weapons will see a points hike, and every faction is getting points hikes, we just don't know how extreme they all are.

I mean a Marine squad is anywhere from 60 points for 5 barebones Tacticals to around 200 for a fully kitted out 10 man Intercessor squad. And some factions may lose more out of their armies while others lose less.

we had something similar at the start of 8th, points were changing a lot of free stuff was removed etc.
and people complained that we need to play 2000 points because their 1750 point army now cost 500 points more

on the other hand, my 1750 point army fell short by 100 points as I did not include a lot of free stuff or those units that got more expensive

hence if we are changing from an infantry based game to a "large model" based game I expect that the current "meta" lists are well beyond the 2k while something like a tank company or Carnifex heavy list will be cheaper
(and add in some wild speculation but from the Necron promo picture I would say that most of the big stuff shown there will fit in a 2000 point game)

another possibility is that people are now going from 2000 points to 3000 points to compensate for the price increase as they don't want to put stuff on the shelf


Automatically Appended Next Post:

terry wrote:
if they follow AoS regarding the tabling system. You don't stop playing when one is tabled, so you use those turns to score some more points. But the winner is the one with the most points, no matter if that person has no more models left. Personaly I like at, as it forces you to think about how you can play the mission

which leads to people try to table their opponent by turn 1 or 2 (or going second, hoping for a double turn to end the game)

I don't see us moving to 3k or even over 2k as the tournament scene is already bloated enough at 2k and GW has made it clear they're upping the points to bring the game down in size so people can actually get more games in a timely manner.

Basically I see us staying at 2k and hopefully we see more points hikes in 9th than points drops.

Personally I would go back to 1500 points maximum but with the table size of 2k and the restrictions of 1k

and from past experience it is much easier for people to buy something and get to the next level, than go back one step and put stuff on the shelf

If GW would have wanted to scale down by points, the steps would have been 1000/1500/2000 and not 1000/2000/30000

the game will be scaled down, as in "less models on the table" but because taking a lot if infantry will be a bad choice and not because points per model increased or people take a step back


TLDR someone who spend 1000$ for a 2k army (which is considered a budget for some factions) and painted it, he won't put half if it away to play 1500/2000 points

The system imo feels just a bit too halfmeasurey.

And has some really wonky interactions.

I also doubt that it'll be the saving grace for light infantry.

Ice_can wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Latro_ wrote:
someone posted this on the WH40k facebook thread for the preview, another legend.

bloodletter is safe

The bloodletter is clearly not safe. If the Knight moves to the right or the left, it will be able to shoot the bloodletter. If the knight goes to the front, it will be able to charge and kill the boodletter.

You realise that's a Warlord Titan Not a Knight right? Like the thing is like 4ft tall and still can shoot what it can clealry see.

I’m really not sure why you need things to be “realistic” when the example is, “the giant semi-sentient cybernetic death machine can’t see the extra dimensional demon.”

All that should matter is if the rules are easy to keep track of and don’t bog down the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Voss wrote:
Well, in theory, if you're a game designer trying to limit the power of shooting by breaking up line of sight... Letting big stuff (with more guns) shoot whatever they want just might be counter to the design decision.

Firstly that implies that they're trying to limit the power of shooting. The new blast rules say otherwise. But even putting that aside, why shouldn't a towering engine of destruction that can see over buildings be allowed to, y'know, see over buildings?

Because it’s not fun for everyone else, and that’s the main point of a game- to be fun.

So it is not fun for the opponent to get shot by a Knight and therefore rules are needed to change that.

but it is fun for the Knight player to get shot by invisible units he cannot shoot back?

I would say the target is that the game is fun for both players and not in one edition player A has fun while in the next edition player B

Not sure if anyone has already put this on but just noticed that on the photo at the bottom of yesterday’s article on terrain you can see the new Primaris bikers the new captain and the new and yet unannounced tank/skimmer thing.

Is that not an impulsor.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Is that not an impulsor.

Don’t think so. Looks like side sponsons and there’s no troop carrying section at the back

 kodos wrote:
So it is not fun for the opponent to get shot by a Knight and therefore rules are needed to change that.

but it is fun for the Knight player to get shot by invisible units he cannot shoot back?

I would say the target is that the game is fun for both players and not in one edition player A has fun while in the next edition player B

Aren't knights tanky enough to not get focused down in a single turn? I think the knight player has time to reposition and open fire.
Or just position in such a way as to always be able to fire.

Weren't knights an absolute terror in 8th ed? Why are we resisting the idea of limiting their offensive output?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 kodos wrote:
So it is not fun for the opponent to get shot by a Knight and therefore rules are needed to change that.

but it is fun for the Knight player to get shot by invisible units he cannot shoot back?

I would say the target is that the game is fun for both players and not in one edition player A has fun while in the next edition player B

Aren't knights tanky enough to not get focused down in a single turn? I think the knight player has time to reposition and open fire.
Or just position in such a way as to always be able to fire.

Realy people could one turn a 28 wound 3++, 6+++save Castellen in 8th. As a faction they are now are limited to a 4++ save at best.
And most of them have 24 wounds. Nothing is tanky in 40k, not to mention smaller board means staying out of Psyhcic power range etc just become harder.

To address your edit, No they weren't it was due to how ITC insisted on codifying armies as the refused to accknowledge Soup as a faction and made it purely yout larges point in a single detachment.

You could take 700 point of Faction Knights, 650 Faction B guard and 650 Faction C blood angles and stilk be reported in ITC results as Knights army.

It's similar issues with them including each Space marines chapter as it's own faction and artificially lowering the win percentage. As every marine vrs marine fight is 50%50.