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Karol wrote:
You know as someone who does sport, I feel offended by the "mechanical busywork" not being part of a skill it.

Skill and gaining it, is exactly that something you learn and can do over and over again is based on that "mechanical busywork".
In fact doing something with out it, is considered the opposit of skill.

That's not what I mean. You're talking about technique, I'm talking about the kind of things that probably don't have a direct correlation in sport. This may come as a surprise to you but not everything can be described as analogous to something else. I'm not even sure technique in sport has a corollary in 40k either. They're just different.

If there was to be a comparison between sport and what I'm talking about as mechanical busywork (as imperfect as it is) it'd be something like remembering to tie your shoes. It's just something you need to remember to do, pretty much entirely removed from the array of skills that determine a winner and a loser.

The closest analogue for sport is the offside rule in footbal/ forward passingnin rugby, you going to be able to gain maybe a year or two everytime you get away with it which Doesn't aound like much but over the game it will add up and result in goals and tries being scored that shouldn't.

Spacing 30 model horders at 2 inches vrs 2.5 inches makes that horde if it's daisy chaining 14.5 inches longer.
Even at 2.2 inches thats 5.8 inches esentially an entire movement phase. That bogs the game down so much in terms of checking and double checking and that before you get into the template play themselves.

The issue is in trying to simplify the issue GW did as they always do got an idea together throw it in a rule book and call that job done, they have always been bad at thinking through the consequences and such and doing mathhammer.

They also have a wierd habit of treating stats once written as sacrosanct, like Russes suck fine make jt 3d3 shots not double D6 rerollable.
Oh D6 shot weapons murder vehicals over infantry as they don't scale with unit size, maybe ditch D6 and make it shots per model.

Same with tripointing not a designed in mechanic it's esentially a bug that just so happens to have worked out as it did.

I'm sure we will find a bunch of these in 9th the one advantage of strategums beinf terrible is you atleast don't have to play them.

(Which is why it doubly sucks when fix8ng units id done via strategums.)

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Why does there need to be a downside to "grouping" my guys close together? Do you just personally hate Hordes touching bases or something? B.c to me visually its awesome, especially with nids.

Well it's just as awesome to me when I land a big fat template on a whole pile of bugs.

If you want positioning to be more impactful in the game, templates are one way to do it. It's a way to add more texture to unit dynamics.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

Karol wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Why does there need to be a downside to "grouping" my guys close together? Do you just personally hate Hordes touching bases or something? B.c to me visually its awesome, especially with nids.

because horde without being control turn some games in to, I get first turn speed 200models on to objectives and sit on them for 3 turns. gg. And anything that can deal with that amount of horde is at the same time, super efficient vs elite armies.

Thats not what i mean, he is talking about just basing them near each other. There are controls in place for them, flamers, high fire weapons, soon blasts, etc... and finally points. Even in older editions players still had 200+ models even with Large blasts and Torrent flamers.

All it did was make the game move slower.

Have you seen Tervigon spam or Daemon spam of 5th? Literally started with 3x30 Gants, and 5 Tervigons, turn 1 you summoned 5x3D6 gants, turn 2 3-4 x 3D6, turn 3 2-3 x 3D6, until they are dead or stop spawning. On average players summoned 50+ turn 1, 40+ turn 2, turn 3 was the odd ball an you might only summon 20 or 30+ (against a good player you only summoned 20). Just by turn 3 you have had 200+ Termagants on the table, and you still had 700pts left over to fill.

The point, it didn't stop players in the past and only made people mad, why will it stop them now?

PS, don't get me started on the 300 Ork Greentide

You're blaming templates for making the game slow, but not the 300+ model armies?

Templates just means i take more time to measure thats not more impactful. Impactful would be splitting units 2 ways to less their damage like you see in AoS all the time, adding in moral negatives like snap hits, flanking rules, or defensive rules for terrain (like defensive grenades in older editions). There are many things that won't slow the game down.


So what if they play 100-300 models, 90% their turn 1 and 2 is just moving and not shooting or rolling dice. My horde armies turn 1's are way faster than my opponents turn 1. Mostly b.c i don't care about spacing 2" apart.

I still gotta disagree with the general premise. If you have shooting hordes you have to decide whether you want all those guns in range, which can require bunching up. If you're charging into CC, you can wind up with big bunches of models in close proximity to one another. Nor is 'squad-diffusion' something that only affected hordes. Those AP3 Battlecannons that could wipe out a bunched up marine squad back in the day were plenty fun/terrifying, and I can recall a few games where I was able to turn the tide against Orks with some crucial Flamer shots. The 300 model remark has maybe more to do with how much the game has inflated in scale since 3rd-4th. Simply being able to field that amount of models in the first place makes a different game. I totally understand why GW switched to non-templates, but it undeniably removed some texture.

Plus, being bunched up or concentrated is very 'real-world'. It works well from a simulationist sense, because weapons capable of obliterating whole sections of a force are a real thing. It's a mechanic that directly involves spatial relationships, which is half of why we're using models on a table to begin with.

Slipspace wrote:

Yes, because it was the presence of templates that made those 300 model armies that much slower. Moving 300 models takes a while regardless, but doing so in such a way to maximise the 2" gap between each model takes much, much longer and the only reason to do that in editions that had blast templates was to reduce incoming damage. It's not even like it's a skill to space your models out. It's just mechanical busywork mandated by the rules, much like tri-pointing in melee.

I bet you could design a sub-rule system that prevented people from doing the 2" measuring-every-model thing. You could have a rule where measuring coherency wasn't allowed by the moving player, and then the opposing player gets to question a single model in a unit. THEN you measure that single model. If the single model is out of coherency, then the owning player loses a command point. Apply some risk to the opposing "calling out" player, too. Like a bad callout means they lose a command point. Essentially design a system that doesn't allow the bogging down with precise measurement of coherency, but still has a soft enforcement. Ideally you'd wind up with dispersed squads that are roughly 1 3/4s away from each other most of the time, and no bogged down unit coherency measuring.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
As for hordes not caring about cover, that's generally not my experience, especially back in the days when cover meant a 4 or 5++. But it's sorta beside the point. You'd be facing hard choices with a bunch of marines facing off against Battle Cannons and Plasma Cannons too.

Yes, but that's not what cover does anymore.

Against AP0, Cover DOUBLES MEQ survivability.
It increase GEQ survivability by a third.

Yeah, but its an INFINITE improvement for Gaunts against an AP-1 save mod of nothing to a 6+! Or it's just a 16.blah% improvement across the board. Or cover can be a +2 save because you're playing Cityfight. Or maybe the terrain rules are changing and we'll get something more interesting than 8th. (please, please, please). Personally I'll be disappointed if we don't see some 'Hard Cover' in 9th.

Gants can get a 6++, why do they care about a normal 6+? At this point i'm just going to keep disagreeing with you. PS: Don't bring real world into a game....

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Gants can get a 6++, why do they care about a normal 6+? At this point i'm just going to keep disagreeing with you. PS: Don't bring real world into a game....

In cityfight they can have a 4+ save, and that's a big friggin deal.

Re: "Don't bring real world into a game."
There's a time and a place. The game is still built around abstracting a simulation, more or less. Model placement is inherently part of the game already, and blasts add to the importance of it, obviously, since you spent a bunch of time spacing out your dudes when blasts were a thing.

I posted the "intent" thread partly because of this thread. Just state "my units are 2" apart by intent" and, if they're even close, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on close partial hits with templates.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Gants can get a 6++, why do they care about a normal 6+? At this point i'm just going to keep disagreeing with you. PS: Don't bring real world into a game....

In cityfight they can have a 4+ save, and that's a big friggin deal.

Re: "Don't bring real world into a game."
There's a time and a place. The game is still built around abstracting a simulation, more or less. Model placement is inherently part of the game already, and blasts add to the importance of it, obviously, since you spent a bunch of time spacing out your dudes when blasts were a thing.

And guess what? 6+ to 4+ is a 67% improvement. STILL less than Marines.

More importantly, its 50% wound clearage. That's easy to power through in 8th. Always look at change in failure rate, not passage rate.

Who plays cities tho? I tried to get people to play it and no one does. Events for sure don't.

What if overwatch becomes a 1CP stratagem? That wouod even things out.

Amishprn86 wrote:Who plays cities tho? I tried to get people to play it and no one does. Events for sure don't.

That's why some of us are hoping that those more in-depth terrain mechanics are being folded into mainstream 40K. We already know that 9th is bringing in obscuration, so if it also has distinctions between soft cover and hard cover then we are pretty much there.

Although I wouldn't be at all opposed to a total rework, given how the current obscuration/cover mechanics in CoD greatly favor high-accuracy, high-armor armies with widespread rerolls.

Gods no on a return to the "Cover Saves" being a different thing again. It resulted in some of the dumbest interactions in the game where anti-air stuff got "Ignores Cover" because of Jink Saves being Cover.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Gods no on a return to the "Cover Saves" being a different thing again. It resulted in some of the dumbest interactions in the game where anti-air stuff got "Ignores Cover" because of Jink Saves being Cover.

That sounds like absolutely nothing to do with cover saves as a mechanic to represent cover, and entirely a problem with labeling things 'cover saves' that shouldn't be.

Would there be any awful interactions if it were treated like another type of invulnerable save? Get shot, pick the best out of your armor, normal invuln(s), and cover saves?

I still insist that cover should be a flat reduction of incoming fire so it helps everyone equally. It shouldn't modify existing armor OR hand out invulns, which the game needs less of anyway. Light cover just takes away 20% of your hits. That's it. Done.

Martel732 wrote:
I still insist that cover should be a flat reduction of incoming fire so it helps everyone equally. It shouldn't modify existing armor OR hand out invulns, which the game needs less of anyway. Light cover just takes away 20% of your hits. That's it. Done.

What happens if you get hit once?

Martel732 wrote:
I still insist that cover should be a flat reduction of incoming fire so it helps everyone equally. It shouldn't modify existing armor OR hand out invulns, which the game needs less of anyway. Light cover just takes away 20% of your hits. That's it. Done.

And how would that work with single shot weapons? Cover saves worked fine in previous editions. You just hate invuls in general.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I still insist that cover should be a flat reduction of incoming fire so it helps everyone equally. It shouldn't modify existing armor OR hand out invulns, which the game needs less of anyway. Light cover just takes away 20% of your hits. That's it. Done.

What happens if you get hit once?

Usual round rules. 0.5 goes up, 0.49 goes down. I guess AT guns are a problem. I guess that would require a rewrite. I guess for single shots we could roll dice. Break out your D10s. I just want fewer dice at this point for sure.


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 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I still insist that cover should be a flat reduction of incoming fire so it helps everyone equally. It shouldn't modify existing armor OR hand out invulns, which the game needs less of anyway. Light cover just takes away 20% of your hits. That's it. Done.

And how would that work with single shot weapons? Cover saves worked fine in previous editions. You just hate invuls in general.

Yes, I do. Cover saves were NOT fine. Free refractor fields/conversion fields were not fair.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Gants can get a 6++, why do they care about a normal 6+? At this point i'm just going to keep disagreeing with you. PS: Don't bring real world into a game....

In cityfight they can have a 4+ save, and that's a big friggin deal.

Re: "Don't bring real world into a game."
There's a time and a place. The game is still built around abstracting a simulation, more or less. Model placement is inherently part of the game already, and blasts add to the importance of it, obviously, since you spent a bunch of time spacing out your dudes when blasts were a thing.

And guess what? 6+ to 4+ is a 67% improvement. STILL less than Marines.

I don't see what the point of that statement is. Yes, Marines start with better armor to begin with, and are more expensive per wound.

 catbarf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Gods no on a return to the "Cover Saves" being a different thing again. It resulted in some of the dumbest interactions in the game where anti-air stuff got "Ignores Cover" because of Jink Saves being Cover.

That sounds like absolutely nothing to do with cover saves as a mechanic to represent cover, and entirely a problem with labeling things 'cover saves' that shouldn't be.

Would there be any awful interactions if it were treated like another type of invulnerable save? Get shot, pick the best out of your armor, normal invuln(s), and cover saves?

Yes. Because inevitably what would happen is things that aren't cover saves would likely get classified as such.

All seriousness: did you not pay any attention to the complaining from Eldar players regarding the old FW Hydra rules? It specifically disallowed Jink saves while not messing with Cover saves...you would have thought it was the end of the damn world.

People want to talk about how "bespoke rules are bad! USRs good!" need to understand that no, they aren't always. That was a perfect example of such.

USRs are fine as long as game terms are properly defined and used.

And again, that's got nothing to do with the cover save as a mechanic, and everything to do with poor implementation.

Did you understand none of what catbarf just said?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Gods no on a return to the "Cover Saves" being a different thing again. It resulted in some of the dumbest interactions in the game where anti-air stuff got "Ignores Cover" because of Jink Saves being Cover.

That sounds like absolutely nothing to do with cover saves as a mechanic to represent cover, and entirely a problem with labeling things 'cover saves' that shouldn't be.

Would there be any awful interactions if it were treated like another type of invulnerable save? Get shot, pick the best out of your armor, normal invuln(s), and cover saves?

Yes. Because inevitably what would happen is things that aren't cover saves would likely get classified as such.

All seriousness: did you not pay any attention to the complaining from Eldar players regarding the old FW Hydra rules? It specifically disallowed Jink saves while not messing with Cover saves...you would have thought it was the end of the damn world.

People want to talk about how "bespoke rules are bad! USRs good!" need to understand that no, they aren't always. That was a perfect example of such.

GW screwing up USRs is not a reason to say USRs are bad.

An ideal system might have nothing but USRs, but in a system like 40k, some bespoke rules are fine. The Monolith's anti-charge rule (Gate Of Eternity, I think it is) can be bespoke, since it's not used anywhere else. Its Deep Strike, though, should be a USR, since it's literally the same as every other Deep Strike, just with one number changed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And again, that's got nothing to do with the cover save as a mechanic, and everything to do with poor implementation.

Did you understand none of what catbarf just said?

Of course he does, he's just playing internet contrarian. Again.

Hey Kan, I really like disagreeing with people on the internet. how bowt you?

Orkimedez_Atalaya wrote:
What if overwatch becomes a 1CP stratagem? That wouod even things out.

Not even close, fallback needs to become a stratagem or better, a stratagem to keep people locked in combat.

 Brutallica wrote:

Orkimedez_Atalaya wrote:
What if overwatch becomes a 1CP stratagem? That wouod even things out.

Not even close, fallback needs to become a stratagem or better, a stratagem to keep people locked in combat.

Night Lords say "hi".

Or we could not keep taking stuff out of the game and making it into stratagems.

Because when two identical units charge into another two identical units under identical circumstances, it doesn't make any sense that only one of those charged units remembers it can shoot at people running at it and only one of the charging units thinks that letting the charged unit run away is bad.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Or we could not keep taking stuff out of the game and making it into stratagems.

Yes. The game should be well authored and balanced before Stratagems come into play. Stratagems should be the icing on the cake.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Or we could not keep taking stuff out of the game and making it into stratagems.

Yes. The game should be well authored and balanced before Stratagems come into play. Stratagems should be the icing on the cake.

I was more going for the argument that it is really disheartening when you flip open your new book and all those cool, army-defining abilities your army used to have now cost CP and are limited by only being able to be used once per turn, or only able to be used by a specific subfaction of your army, or by wargear etc.

Slipspace wrote:

Karol wrote:
You know as someone who does sport, I feel offended by the "mechanical busywork" not being part of a skill it.

Skill and gaining it, is exactly that something you learn and can do over and over again is based on that "mechanical busywork".
In fact doing something with out it, is considered the opposit of skill.

That's not what I mean. You're talking about technique, I'm talking about the kind of things that probably don't have a direct correlation in sport. This may come as a surprise to you but not everything can be described as analogous to something else. I'm not even sure technique in sport has a corollary in 40k either. They're just different.

If there was to be a comparison between sport and what I'm talking about as mechanical busywork (as imperfect as it is) it'd be something like remembering to tie your shoes. It's just something you need to remember to do, pretty much entirely removed from the array of skills that determine a winner and a loser.

I do wrestling at a sports school. Techinque understood as being to perform moves, the same way they were trained with different sizes and type of opponents is exactly the thing wrestling is about. then being able to fit those techniques within fights, then training regimes etc Being able to move and deploy your army with in time of a game is in many ways the same. Moving quick and where you want the models to be is very much a thing I had to learn. See we pay for tables for 1 hour of playing, so there is even a monatery entice to play faster.

And yeah if someone move sloppy and doesn't strive, they should be punished. And to use a sports example, if I come to an event with the wrong gear, the seal is broken or I didn't pass a weight test, or forget documents, you know what happens? I get disqualifed. And no one cares if this is my 2ed year in my weight division and technicly the judges do know my name, from what school I am and that I came on the same bus as the rest of the team.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Or we could not keep taking stuff out of the game and making it into stratagems.

Yes. The game should be well authored and balanced before Stratagems come into play. Stratagems should be the icing on the cake.

I was more going for the argument that it is really disheartening when you flip open your new book and all those cool, army-defining abilities your army used to have now cost CP and are limited by only being able to be used once per turn, or only able to be used by a specific subfaction of your army, or by wargear etc.

Ah. I was responding in the framework of Fall Back and Overwatch becoming stratagems, but yes, army/unit specific abilities that were just part of existing in prior editions suddenly becoming stratagems is also disappointing. Totally agree.