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jivardi wrote:


You said this rule won't have much of an impact but you have been pretty hateful and vocal and argumentative about the other rules so far and not wanting to listen to other opinions that contradict yours.

All I'm saying is that to make generals assumptions like you have about the game and certain armies getting effed or nerfed to oblivion over what we KNOW of the rules is a knee jerk reaction, not civil discourse.

Burning the American flag isn't a civilized response to hating the USA; stating why you hate America and giving examples of why it sucks IS a civilized response.

I listen to everyone's opinion. That doesn't mean I necessarily agree. But unlike you, I don't make my disagreement with someone's opinion personal. Look at what you just said: "yeah, you didn't do what I said you did this time, but you have done it in the past, so I'm still going to personally attack you for it even though you literally did the opposite in this case." That isn't adding to the discussion. Can't we just discuss the game, rather than one another?

I don't want to derail the discussion any more so I'm not going to keep harping on this any more than I already have.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Lower morale across the board, make it so fearless only ignored the model lost to the initial morale check, or has a -1 to attrition rolls, make stubborn unable to fall back normally, make ATSKNF something other than a refill (maybe autopass on a 1 or a 2?) and bring back Rage as an alterns2tive2 to fearless.

That's my hot take coming out.of 8th at least.

I'd really prefer moving to a system where a failed morale check debuffs the unit rather than causing it to sustain more losses. But for whatever reason GW seems not at all interested in that. So if we're committed to a system where morale = just another way to kill dudes, I agree, it would be good to normalize it so it impacts more than a small number of edge cases.

They kinda took a step towards that with this change in that they reduced the harshness of failing a morale check for big units. But they only seem to have gone halfway, given how irrelevant morale still is for most stuff. The net result of these changes is basically just to make morale an even smaller, less relevant part of the game.

Debuffs mean bookkeeping which has its own issues.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Debuffs mean bookkeeping which has its own issues.

Well i 'd rather bookkeep then the hordes of throws i need to Make for my R&h rabble due to their "improved" morale ruleset...

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Debuffs mean bookkeeping which has its own issues.

I guess, but no more than any other debuff, and there are tons of them. It's never been a reason to shy away from something in any other aspect of the game that I can tell. You could even have little morale markers or something that you just put by a squad, no more bookkeeping than a wound counter or something like that.

Bottom line is we should wait for the new rules and associated faq docs to drop before passing judgement on anything. We don't know how much impact the morale changes will have without knowing if synapse, ATSKNF and similar rules have changed. Just like we won't know if they've fixed overwatch until we see how many units/armies have it as a data sheet ability or if they've fixed fall back or whether it still works the same as it does now.

There's just too much we don't know.

But that's no fun!

 slave.entity wrote:

gungo wrote:
They should have left the old rule in place and simply made A failed morale check into 1 casualty mandatory regardless If an armies bespoke morale rules. That’s quick clean and makes failing morale have some consequence..

Not sure I follow. The new rule states that a failed morale check causes 1 mandatory casualty exactly the way you're describing, no?

my issue is the d6 die rolling is a waste of time

gungo wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

gungo wrote:
They should have left the old rule in place and simply made A failed morale check into 1 casualty mandatory regardless If an armies bespoke morale rules. That’s quick clean and makes failing morale have some consequence..

Not sure I follow. The new rule states that a failed morale check causes 1 mandatory casualty exactly the way you're describing, no?

my issue is the d6 die rolling is a waste of time

It gives the game more levers to work with. Like Stu described a unit that would be hard to crack but could crumble to attrition as an example (kind of sounds like Necrons honestly).

And it makes morale penalize hordes less which makes them more viable than old morale systems did.

I'm not sure I like the new morale system.
It looks like they just added more rolling to the existing system.
The extra rolls aren't even dependent on the unit's leadership stat; a marine has the same chance as running away as a guardsman if his unit fails the first test.
The fact that you only lose one from the initial fail does help a lot of units, but it also means morale doesn't have that much impact.

Commissar ability seems kind of useless? I mean, IG have low LD, so even with a reroll you are probably going to lose some.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

gungo wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

gungo wrote:
They should have left the old rule in place and simply made A failed morale check into 1 casualty mandatory regardless If an armies bespoke morale rules. That’s quick clean and makes failing morale have some consequence..

Not sure I follow. The new rule states that a failed morale check causes 1 mandatory casualty exactly the way you're describing, no?

my issue is the d6 die rolling is a waste of time

It gives the game more levers to work with. Like Stu described a unit that would be hard to crack but could crumble to attrition as an example (kind of sounds like Necrons honestly).

And it makes morale penalize hordes less which makes them more viable than old morale systems did.

They specifically said d6 die rolling Fishing for 6s for overwatch was a waste of time and slowed the game down
Then they turned around and did it for every unit that takes a casualty for morale.
It doesn’t really add much to the game from the previous version fundamentally the main thing that changes is a failed morale always gives 1 casualty and then that is followed up with a bunch of Mainly useless die rolling.

Again my issue is it adds little value and adds a ton of wasted time which they were specifically trying to remove in 9th.
As I said before keep the old system and just make it so a failed morale always results in one Casualty.

I play 2 horde armies in orks and guard.. there is plenty of morale mitigation. Orks have mob rule and breaking heads. Backed up by strats and banners. The old system only penalize hordes if you made absolutely no attempt to mitigate it or all your nobs, banners and blobs were dead and you were out of cp already. Which is the entire point of morale. This new system doesn’t really save many boys but wastes my play time immensely rolling for 20+ d6s fishing for 1s.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
More rules sillyness!

Spoiler:

Make the restriction on models, not units. Bang, solved it for you.
I mean, you are trying to rule-lawyer a rule that wasn't even written, just barely paraphrased. Sure, the summary, which is just there to give you an idea of the rules, says the unit. But why assume the worst?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
They said this would help Night Lords. I'm not seeing it. Maybe if I think a little more. Guess it's easier to make one guy run.

The new rules favor making unit lose the test just barely over making them lose by a huge margin.
Maybe the night lords negative modifiers will help more with causing a lot of barely missed tests rather than on massively failed test?

the_scotsman wrote:
Jimmy's space marine squad takes 3/5 casualties. Jimmy rolls a 6 for morale, Then rolls another 6. 1 model flees. Then he rolls another die. On a 1, 1 more model flees.

On a 1 OR a 2! Twice the chance of losing the last model!
(Ok, morale is still very irrelevant on 5-men SM squads)

the_scotsman wrote:
Leaving *checks notes* Tau, Guard, Orks and GSC to ever possibly care about morale.

Forgot Sisters. But they are kinda like CSM in that regard, I guess.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
Morale:

They said this would help Night Lords. I'm not seeing it. Maybe if I think a little more. Guess it's easier to make one guy run.

Maybe they'll update the night lords to increase the chances of combat attrition proccing.
Make it proc on a 1 and a 2 instead of just 1. If that's the case, then a half-strength unit avoids extra casualties on a 4+ as opposed to a 3+. That wouldn't be too bad.

Otherwise, yeah, its not that great.
If you cause enough casualties to cause a morale test with the current Night Lords ability, then you probably aren't going to need the LD debuff, except in the rare cases where you are exactly one casualty away from causing a failed test.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

gungo wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

gungo wrote:
They should have left the old rule in place and simply made A failed morale check into 1 casualty mandatory regardless If an armies bespoke morale rules. That’s quick clean and makes failing morale have some consequence..

Not sure I follow. The new rule states that a failed morale check causes 1 mandatory casualty exactly the way you're describing, no?

my issue is the d6 die rolling is a waste of time

It gives the game more levers to work with. Like Stu described a unit that would be hard to crack but could crumble to attrition as an example (kind of sounds like Necrons honestly).

And it makes morale penalize hordes less which makes them more viable than old morale systems did.

Or Daemons, don't care if they're winning but with enough faith and belief directed at the thought that they should be dead they start to disapate.
Whilst Orks are the opposite, constantly bleeding the odd one or two (or having them krumped by a boss) whilst charging on regardless, until things get serious and then everyone ones.

I like the system, but I hope the synapse continues to work in the current fashion, our average leadership 5 on non-synapse infantry models leaves no room for any lost models.

That would have to be completely rebalanced from scratch.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

I mean, you are trying to rule-lawyer a rule that wasn't even written, just barely paraphrased. Sure, the summary, which is just there to give you an idea of the rules, says the unit. But why assume the worst?

Because:
a) I have basic pattern recognition and experience of literally decades of seeing GW screw up.
b) Ben Crowshaw's Gamer Matrix. You can never be disappointed if you always assume everything is going to be crap.

gungo wrote:

It doesn’t really add much to the game from the previous version fundamentally

It allows me to experiment with 10+ model count squads of elite units without feeling like I'm trolling. For the entirety of 8th edition, I wanted to try out 20-man CSM squads, but couldn't because the god awful morale system meant catastrophic losses if the unit could be chunked in a turn and I didn't feel like guzzling CP to ignore the tests. The one time I was dumb enough to take 10-man rubric squads I lost 3 squads in a single morale phase due to each squad getting chipped down by guard vets in the shooting phase. That's garbage. That should never happen. Rolling lucky on smite and killing six models should not result in the remaining 80 points of the squad just vanishing into thin air.

Any faction that has the capability to take elite infantry in big squad sizes benefits from the changes. That includes at minimum all CSM factions, Daemons and Necrons.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

gungo wrote:

It doesn’t really add much to the game from the previous version fundamentally

It allows me to experiment with 10+ model count squads of elite units without feeling like I'm trolling. For the entirety of 8th edition, I wanted to try out 20-man CSM squads, but couldn't because the god awful morale system meant catastrophic losses if the unit could be chunked in a turn and I didn't feel like guzzling CP to ignore the tests. The one time I was dumb enough to take 10-man rubric squads I lost 3 squads in a single morale phase due to each squad getting chipped down by guard vets in the shooting phase. That's garbage. That should never happen. Rolling lucky on smite and killing six models should not result in the remaining 80 points of the squad just vanishing into thin air.

Any faction that has the capability to take elite infantry in big squad sizes benefits from the changes. That includes at minimum all CSM factions, Daemons and Necrons.

Except that can still happen. Hell, it's theoretical WORSE-lose 2 Daemons, and the remaining 28 go POOF.

Highly unlikely, but possible.

"It can still happen" is always preferable to "it will happen the majority of the time." In 8th if you killed 10 berzerkers out of a 20-man squad that would statistically be 5 more dead berzerkers. In the new rules if you lost 10 berserkers out of 20 you would lose 1 model to the leadership test and then, statistically, 2 more models. That by its self justifies the existence of the new rules.

edited for typos. phone-posting sucks.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
"It can still happen" is always preferable to "it will happen the majority of the time." In 8th if you killed 10 berzerkers out of a 20-man squad that would statistically be 5 more dead berzerkers. In the new rules if you lost 10 berserkers out of 20 you would lose 1 model to the leadership test and then, statistically, 2 more models. That by its self justifies the existence of the new rules.

edited for typos. phone-posting sucks.

3 more, actually. For a total of 4.

gungo wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

gungo wrote:
They should have left the old rule in place and simply made A failed morale check into 1 casualty mandatory regardless If an armies bespoke morale rules. That’s quick clean and makes failing morale have some consequence..

Not sure I follow. The new rule states that a failed morale check causes 1 mandatory casualty exactly the way you're describing, no?

my issue is the d6 die rolling is a waste of time

Eh. Its wasteful of time (with yet more dice rolls), but it does produce results that the old system didn't. In that sense it isn't a waste.

The old system was easily finessed to lose no models to morale almost ever. But if you did go big, there was a casualty threshold significantly smaller than the unit size where you just lost the unit no matter what. Depending on their LD, once you caused 13, 14 or whatever casualties, the 20 man unit was simply dead, so you could just stop shooting at them content in the knowledge that the rest would just fall over and vanish.

With this system, there is no automatic win state against large units (well, unit size -1). Its still too indifferent to MSU squads (particularly unit sizes of 3 or 5), but the enemy doesn't get to blast larger units 'just enough' and move on. If they really want to make the unit dead for sure, they have to keep shooting. That's largely positive, even if its more clunky dice rolls for a game that doesn't really need more dice rolls.

It seems like the consensus is that it seems like a lot of extra work for minimal return. Perhaps there is more to affect morale than what we are currently seeing otherwise I agree it doesn't seem to add much to the game.

not really... its pretty great for big mobs. a couple of models will survive now, instead of a 100% wipe of the entire squad (unless you command point them to stay)

Thats a plus in my book

 bullyboy wrote:
It seems like the consensus is that it seems like a lot of extra work for minimal return. Perhaps there is more to affect morale than what we are currently seeing otherwise I agree it doesn't seem to add much to the game.

It's a bad "concensius" (and an even worse claim since a number of people in this thread are arguing that it's a [i[good[/i] change) since it means we finally have an edition that doesn't screw over hordes via moral and, if we're lucky (you know, since GW has a track record of good ideas that don't stick the landing), GW can back off of some of those "ignore morale" effects so we can see more interesting game scenarios.

There is a lot more design space in the new system, and I sincerely hope GW uses it properly.

With moral fixed there are two things I need to see for hordes: bonus attacks for large units since hordes usually don't have a massive number of attacks on a model by model basis (and even when they do they have trouble getting the entire unit into melee), and missions that encourage us to see larger units on the table top for scoring purposes, like the Four Pillars mission that only scores after your opponent has had a chance to uproot your unit off the objective while you take your action.

If we get those two things then I think hordes will have enough in their favor, with good use of the new terrain rules, for us to see them early in the edition and not see the meta go MSU heavy like some have claimed.

The consensus is right though - it's a new rule that results in a lot of extra dice rolling that achieves only a small result. The question then becomes whether that small result is worth all the bother of the new rules. IMO, it is, because whilst the majority of units won't give two gaks about the new morale mechanics, those that suffered greatly from the current ones will no longer, as failing a morale check won't wipe out the rest of your unit.

GW could have written a different rule that takes all the faffing about out of it, but they didn't. Thankfully, despite their continued attempts to complicate things, it was a net gain here. Hooray for us.

Now we just go back to waiting to see whether they've fixed Fall Back.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The consensus is right though - it's a new rule that results in a lot of extra dice rolling that achieves only a small result. The question then becomes whether that small result is worth all the bother of the new rules. IMO, it is, because whilst the majority of units won't give two gaks about the new morale mechanics, those that suffered greatly from the current ones will no longer, as failing a morale check won't wipe out the rest of your unit.

GW could have written a different rule that takes all the faffing about out of it, but they didn't. Thankfully, despite their continued attempts to complicate things, it was a net gain here. Hooray for us.

Now we just go back to waiting to see whether they've fixed Fall Back.

It may be a smaller result, but it's also a more consistent one (at least on average because we all know how fickle dice can be at times). It's probably the first rule of this edition I've seen that doesn't punish hordes more than it hurts MSU (at least in the limited context we've seen) and honestly I don't know how they could have accomplished that with less die rolling unless we're just going to reduce all morale casualties to some weird scale of something like "1 model for every 5 casualties this turn" or something. A rule of that nature falls right back into the gaminess of the old morale system and makes it too easy to know when you can stop shooting a unit because it'll die to morale without any extra effort on your part, something the die rolling mitigates.

I'll be honest, I get that some people hate rolling dice, especially a lot of dice since it takes control away from them, but honestly I like it. Taking some cards out of the player's hands and forcing them to choose between risking trying to focus down units until they're completely dead (or maybe only have a model left) versus spreading the damage around to chip damage multiple units with extra casualties without knowing the definite outcome will lead to more interesting game moments and less gaming the system.

At least that's my take, but I rather like when a game system can resist being easily gamed.

As for Fall Back, Reese claimed in today's "Signals from the Frontline" that tri-pointing is a thing, but it's also drastically changed. I suspect that might be tied to how falling back works, but I can't be sure until we know more.

Anyone know what tomorrow's preview is on?

Edit: Read 1 rule with 2 clauses as two seperate rules, don't mind me.

I like the changes. Most help my daemons out.

The Slaanesh daemons benefit a lot from new terrain rules, new morale rules and even though I haven't figured it out yet I'm sure reserves help daemons too.

I'm sure 9th will benefit my Sisters and DG as well. I just haven't taken the time to play out "what if" scenarios in my head.

If they killed the insane bravery strat it would make morale matter more instantly.
With what we have it doesn't seem like an important change. I guess they have to translate all the morale buffing rules and everything that gives penalties to leadership a bit. Then we can see how it works out.
Like Nightlords for example. Due to their ability to stack Leadership debuffs they could often kill a single model in the squad and make the rest run. Now they'd need some rule for attrition to keep that.

They still could have done it easier:

Moraltest: D6+lost models VS LD
if lost: units up to 6 models: D3 models flee
6-10 model units: 2D3 models flee
11+ model unit: 1+D6 models flee

not exactly the same but faster with a similar outcome

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

I mean, you are trying to rule-lawyer a rule that wasn't even written, just barely paraphrased. Sure, the summary, which is just there to give you an idea of the rules, says the unit. But why assume the worst?

Because:
a) I have basic pattern recognition and experience of literally decades of seeing GW screw up.
b) Ben Crowshaw's Gamer Matrix. You can never be disappointed if you always assume everything is going to be crap.

Your disappointment is yours to handle, take it somewhere else. its off topic. The company (GW) has no obligation to you, likewiese you should have no loyalty to it. You take what it offers or you walk.