Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
hmmm, Its almost as if they should have just brought back Independent Character rules and had characters join units. No, that would have solved too many issues. What was I thinking?...

No thanks. That was the rule that created death stars.

Only to be replaced with blobstars and conga lines.

Pancakey wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
hmmm, Its almost as if they should have just brought back Independent Character rules and had characters join units. No, that would have solved too many issues. What was I thinking?...

No thanks. That was the rule that created death stars.

Only to be replaced with blobstars and conga lines.

Which has been far more reasonable than the days of 7th.

Hmm...

So a Vindicare Assassin sitting alone, perched high on a tower, can be targeted by anyone?

Seems legit.

No thanks. That was the rule that created death stars.

Are you joking? Now you have ENTIRE ARMIES worth of rerolls instead of a unit. It's insane how you can make that point and not realize how much worse this last edition has been about buffing units.

Which has been far more reasonable than the days of 7th.

In absolutely no world is it better.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hmm...

So a Vindicare Assassin sitting along, perched high on a tower, can be targeted by anyone?

Seems legit.

Yeah, it's incredibly stupid when applied to lone characters like death jesters, solitaires, assassins, etc.

So stupid it again makes you hope that they are smart enough no to apply it to those characters. You could have a keyword that restores the old "can't be shot unless you are the closest" for a small number of characters that merit it because their whole schtick is being loners.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hmm...

So a Vindicare Assassin sitting along, perched high on a tower, can be targeted by anyone?

Seems legit.

Maybe he should? Or he gets a special rule. It's almost like hunting for these little exceptions is a hobby to some people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

No thanks. That was the rule that created death stars.

Are you joking? Now you have ENTIRE ARMIES worth of rerolls instead of a unit. It's insane how you can make that point and not realize how much worse this last edition has been about buffing units.

Which has been far more reasonable than the days of 7th.

In absolutely no world is it better.

I think you've got some nice rose colored glasses, but feel free to make a poll and we can see how many people would want to go back to 7th.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
It's almost like hunting for these little exceptions is a hobby to some people.

For some of us it's been an actual paying job. My brain is wired to find issues like this.

but feel free to make a poll and we can see how many people would want to go back to 7th

Doesn't matter how many people want to go back to that system. They threw out the baby with the bathwater. You can't just point to 7th and say it was all bad when it wasn't. 8th is just as bad, just in the opposite direction. There were plenty of good things about 7th. USR's, Independent Character rules and Morale are all examples of better rules than 8th has.

You would rather have completely needless and immersion breaking targeting restrictions than to just let characters join units? You know Invisibility doesn't exist anymore like it did. And it's not like entire eldar armies this edition didn't have functionally the same ability, just you know, on an army wide scale.

Furthermore, characters joining units doesn't equal death stars. GW not understanding how their special rules interact with each other including stacking bonuses leads to deathstars.

"It's almost like hunting for these little exceptions is a hobby to some people."

That is 40K in a nutshell. There is almost no system easier to rules lawyer.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
It's almost like hunting for these little exceptions is a hobby to some people.

For some of us it's been an actual paying job. My brain is wired to find issues like this.

I audit medical records ATM. I find issues no matter what I do. Comes with that territory I suppose.

Also there's tons more exceptions. I mean, ANY of the Assassins, Solitaires and Death Jesters, etc.

The forgeworld Avatar of Khaine expertly hiding behind a unit of scouts...

He can already do that in 8th.

Though in 9th, he can pull off the daemon prince superfriends thing with the Yncarne, if you take them in different detachments. Khaine and Ynnead sitting in a tree...

Oh I know, it's just slightly incongruous that a statue of living magma roughly twenty feet tall is somehow hard to get a clean shot on!

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

but feel free to make a poll and we can see how many people would want to go back to 7th

Doesn't matter how many people want to go back to that system. They threw out the baby with the bathwater. You can't just point to 7th and say it was all bad when it wasn't. 8th is just as bad, just in the opposite direction. There were plenty of good things about 7th. USR's, Independent Character rules and Morale are all examples of better rules than 8th has.

You would rather have completely needless and immersion breaking targeting restrictions than to just let characters join units? You know Invisibility doesn't exist anymore like it did. And it's not like entire eldar armies this edition didn't have functionally the same ability, just you know, on an army wide scale.

Furthermore, characters joining units doesn't equal death stars. GW not understanding how their special rules interact with each other including stacking bonuses leads to deathstars.

Your assessments, I find, are revisionist both ways. I will never miss the USRs of 7th, either.

I dont find it immersion breaking at all unless you think edge cases rule the roost?

Just claiming that characters joining units would be fine without actually assessing such interactions? Not sure on that, but I guess Abaddon, Syll’Esske, and whatever else all simultaneously catching warp time, prescience, cloud of flies, and so on while hanging amongst 30 man blobs of fearless cultists would have no consequences at all...

Your assessments, I find, are revisionist both ways. I will never miss the USRs of 7th, either.

I dont find it immersion breaking at all unless you think edge cases rule the roost?

Just claiming that characters joining units would be fine without actually assessing such interactions? Not sure on that, but I guess Abaddon, Syll’Esske, and whatever else all simultaneously catching warp time, prescience, cloud of flies, and so on while hanging amongst 30 man blobs of fearless cultists would have no consequences at all...

Well that doesn't make sense. USR's are the only reasonable and responsible way to organize a game.

It definitely would have consequences. Which is why the game should be rewritten completely from the ground up because 8th was a terribly written game. Auras need to go. They are absolutely garbage.

Sure seems like 9th is adding in a lot of special rules that some might call... universal.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
USR's are the only reasonable and responsible way to organize a game.

Whereas on the contrary, I vastly prefer having all a unit's abilities written explicitly on it's own unique datasheet. It's why in casual games, I often don't play with subfaction rules or army-wide abilities, because they're not on the core datasheets.

8th was a terribly written game.

And I disagree. Core 8th was fine by me. I wasn't so keen on all the subfaction abilities, unique faction rules, and other such minutia, but the actual core 8th rules I enjoy.

Auras need to go. They are absolutely garbage.

Whereas I like auras. I like my Captains to be more than just a glorified duellist. I want them to have a direct effect on the men under their command.

Sure seems like 9th is adding in a lot of special rules that some might call... universal.

I mean, maybe?

The whole thing needs to be codified. not just snippets.

Whereas on the contrary, I vastly prefer having all a unit's abilities written explicitly on it's own unique datasheet. It's why in casual games, I often don't play with subfaction rules or army-wide abilities, because they're not on the core datasheets.

Again, this is not an argument against USR's. They can be written on a datasheet as well. There are no downsides to having USRs.

Whereas I like auras. I like my Captains to be more than just a glorified duellist. I want them to have a direct effect on the men under their command.

And thats fine. They should be able to affect a single unit within a specified range. Not a 3rd of an army.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
USR's are the only reasonable and responsible way to organize a game.

Whereas on the contrary, I vastly prefer having all a unit's abilities written explicitly on it's own unique datasheet. It's why in casual games, I often don't play with subfaction rules or army-wide abilities, because they're not on the core datasheets.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Auras need to go. They are absolutely garbage.

Whereas I like auras. I like my Captains to be more than just a glorified duellist. I want them to have a direct effect on the men under their command.

Auras are a very obnoxious way to represent that. Imo the better way to do captains is the old table-wide Rites of Battle that just pumped everyones Ld, back when Ld meant more. Something more like that where it's not encouraging the bubblehuddle. Or just give Captain models the ability to generate CPs or something, limiting it so that captain spam doesn't generate more than 1CP or whatever. The dudes-shoot-better-near-me thing is wierd.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Whereas on the contrary, I vastly prefer having all a unit's abilities written explicitly on it's own unique datasheet. It's why in casual games, I often don't play with subfaction rules or army-wide abilities, because they're not on the core datasheets.

Again, this is not an argument against USR's. They can be written on a datasheet as well. There are no downsides to having USRs.

No, I mean writing the entire rule on it, not needing to cross-reference. Plus, I quite like more bespoke rules that are written only to function for that unit.

Whereas I like auras. I like my Captains to be more than just a glorified duellist. I want them to have a direct effect on the men under their command.

And thats fine. They should be able to affect a single unit within a specified range. Not a 3rd of an army.

A 6" aura doesn't affect a third of your army unless you position a third of your army around one place. At that point, they've committed to positioning their army in that place - I think that's worth getting an aura effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Auras need to go. They are absolutely garbage.

Whereas I like auras. I like my Captains to be more than just a glorified duellist. I want them to have a direct effect on the men under their command.

Auras are a very obnoxious way to represent that. Imo the better way to do captains is the old table-wide Rites of Battle that just pumped everyones Ld, back when Ld meant more.

I can't really ever remember a time where I ever cared about Leadership stats.

Something more like that where it's not encouraging the bubblehuddle. Or just give Captain models the ability to generate CPs or something, limiting it so that captain spam doesn't generate more than 1CP or whatever. The dudes-shoot-better-near-me thing is wierd.

Now, generating extra CPs, I can get behind, but I'd also very much want that "direct command" experience too.

In my personal opinion, Kill Team does it well - the Kill Team's leader always generates a Command Point while alive, and more advanced Leaders can also pick up aura effects. Basically, I don't agree with "all auras are bad and terrible game design".

No, I mean writing the entire rule on it, not needing to cross-reference. Plus, I quite like more bespoke rules that are written only to function for that unit.

But we now need to cross reference things more than ever because everything interacts differently with each other. Whereas USR's will always interact in the same manor because they are all codified properly. So you cross reference once, maybe a couple times if you forget and now you've learned the rule. You need to check constantly with the bespoke rules because everything is different, it takes far more time to memorize and makes it far more difficult to build off of an existing structure of rules without running into inconsistencies with another rule.

It's like constructing a building. Would you want all of your workers using different scaled measuring tapes or would you want the using the same consistent measurement? It's the same thing that applies here. Keep everything consistent.

A 6" aura doesn't affect a third of your army unless you position a third of your army around one place. At that point, they've committed to positioning their army in that place - I think that's worth getting an aura effect.

disagree, it incentivizes gunlines (the worst) and slows the game down with it's re-rolls.

like, why are we re-rolling absolutely everything? Is this a game of chance or not? That combined with IGOUGO and bespoke rules that need to be checked literally every 2 min to see what a special snowflake rule does, were looking at a good 20 min downtimes where I can mentally check out while my friend rolls some dice at me. Cool. Good Game I guess?

I don't think they're all bad, but the emphasis of them for Space Marine play feels very wrong. Elite troops ought to be able to perform reasonably on their own.

The Ld thing is for editions past, where morale meant more and was harder to ignore, and for freely being able to choose what units could shoot at, which required an Ld test.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Your assessments, I find, are revisionist both ways. I will never miss the USRs of 7th, either.

I dont find it immersion breaking at all unless you think edge cases rule the roost?

Just claiming that characters joining units would be fine without actually assessing such interactions? Not sure on that, but I guess Abaddon, Syll’Esske, and whatever else all simultaneously catching warp time, prescience, cloud of flies, and so on while hanging amongst 30 man blobs of fearless cultists would have no consequences at all...

Well that doesn't make sense. USR's are the only reasonable and responsible way to organize a game.

It definitely would have consequences. Which is why the game should be rewritten completely from the ground up because 8th was a terribly written game. Auras need to go. They are absolutely garbage.

That's just kind of rank hyperbole.

Let's go check out the Heldrake of 7th edition.

Here it is!


But wait that isn't the full profile - ah, more on page 52!


But what are Daemon, Daemonforge, and It Will Not Die? Those are on another page. Ok, well what does the Hades Autocannon do?

Ahh. Pinning! Wait I forgot what that does. Scratch that. Let'ts take the Baleflamer. Effin'...Torrent and Soulblaze?! Well, surely I can reference the page numbers...nope...those are in a different rule book.

It isn't USRs that solve problems. And GW uses USRs, still. It's well written and organized rules. I get that you guys don't like the variety that Warhammer has, but that is part of the draw of the system for a lot of people. Your Deepstrike might have a different name, but we all instinctively know what that means and have access to the rule immediately - pretending otherwise is just being disingenuous.

And even if you wanted to "rebuild the whole thing" - Warptime is not an aura. Prescience is not an aura. None of the deathstar effects of 7th were auras, either. You just have a scape goat that you like to use for why you don't like 8th to keep you from needing to look any deeper at the issues.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

like, why are we re-rolling absolutely everything? Is this a game of chance or not? That combined with IGOUGO and bespoke rules that need to be checked literally every 2 min to see what a special snowflake rule does, were looking at a good 20 min downtimes where I can mentally check out while my friend rolls some dice at me. Cool. Good Game I guess?

100% this, one of the reasons I stopped playing 8th and moved onto other systems for now.

When my 10 man unit of Death Company can roll roughly 50 dice to attack, reroll to hit, roll to wound, reroll 1's to wound... And than have the survivors do it again at the end of the fight phase, it is just silly to end up rolling/rerolling 100+ dice for ANYTHING in 40k.

I am tired of rolling that many dice in a game. So many other games can achieve just as much with their combat systems (often more) with fewer dice.

That's just kind of rank hyperbole.

Let's go check out the Heldrake of 7th edition.

Here it is!
Spoiler:


But wait that isn't the full profile - ah, more on page 52!
Spoiler:


But what are Daemon, Daemonforge, and It Will Not Die? Those are on another page. Ok, well what does the Hades Autocannon do?
Spoiler:

Ahh. Pinning! Wait I forgot what that does. Scratch that. Let'ts take the Baleflamer. Effin'...Torrent and Soulblaze?! Well, surely I can reference the page numbers...nope...those are in a different rule book.

It isn't USRs that solve problems. And GW uses USRs, still. It's well written and organized rules. I get that you guys don't like the variety that Warhammer has, but that is part of the draw of the system for a lot of people. Your Deepstrike might have a different name, but we all instinctively know what that means and have access to the rule immediately - pretending otherwise is just being disingenuous.

And even if you wanted to "rebuild the whole thing" - Warptime is not an aura. Prescience is not an aura. None of the deathstar effects of 7th were auras, either. You just have a scape goat that you like to use for why you don't like 8th to keep you from needing to look any deeper at the issues.

What does any of that have to do with proper USR organization? GW couldn't organize a 2 car parade. Sure, reference pages and showing the rule on the datasheet are all well and good. GW didn't do USR's correctly in 7th edition either, leading to people like you to falsely believe that USRs are bad. They aren't. They are literally the only proper way to organize a game.

8th is not well written or organized in any way shape or form. Have you seen the main rulebook? Deepstrike, is Deepstrike, is Deepstrike. Why have a different name and different rule. You say you all instinctively know what the rule means. then why have different rules for it?

I don't at all dislike variety. But I love organization and consistency. Both of which GW is severely lacking.

You know full well that Death Stars just expanded to literally the whole army with the implementation of Auras. And yet you condemn Death Stars because they were relegated to a single unit? That's disingenuous. So you are completely fine with entire armies re-rolling literally everthing, but casting prescience on a unit that contains a character is your hill to die on?

Common man, think about what you are saying. None of this makes sense.

Because you're way overstating auras. Warptime on multiple daemon prince level characters is STRONG not to mention all the other force multipliers available.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
[That's just kind of rank hyperbole.

Let's go check out the Heldrake of 7th edition.

Here it is!

Spoiler:

But wait that isn't the full profile - ah, more on page 52!

Spoiler:

But what are Daemon, Daemonforge, and It Will Not Die? Those are on another page. Ok, well what does the Hades Autocannon do?

Spoiler:

Ahh. Pinning! Wait I forgot what that does. Scratch that. Let'ts take the Baleflamer. Effin'...Torrent and Soulblaze?! Well, surely I can reference the page numbers...nope...those are in a different rule book.

It isn't USRs that solve problems. And GW uses USRs, still. It's well written and organized rules. I get that you guys don't like the variety that Warhammer has, but that is part of the draw of the system for a lot of people. Your Deepstrike might have a different name, but we all instinctively know what that means and have access to the rule immediately - pretending otherwise is just being disingenuous.

And even if you wanted to "rebuild the whole thing" - Warptime is not an aura. Prescience is not an aura. None of the deathstar effects of 7th were auras, either. You just have a scape goat that you like to use for why you don't like 8th to keep you from needing to look any deeper at the issues.

Part of that layout was made to stop any idiot with a camera leafing through a codex and taking pictures of the rules for the units they were planning to buy. Also, once you know what Daemonforged, Daemon, and IWND do you never need to look at that page again, you'll see it on a unit's entry.

I can't even imagine how Magic the Gathering would look if we ditched keywords like Trample, Fly, Hexproof, and went back to the old days when having a single basic effect took up half a card's text box... We'd end up with YGO cards where you get a small novel's worth of 4-point text to explain a very simple interaction.

Brutus_Apex wrote:But we now need to cross reference things more than ever because everything interacts differently with each other.

I don't have to cross reference anything for what's right there on the datasheet. Regarding chapter tactics and such? Yeah, that takes cross-referencing (which I'm not over keen on, and would be happy to play without any kind of faction traits), but I don't need to cross reference for things like Disgustingly Resilient. I apply it on a case-by-case basis as and when I see it, without needing to flip back and see what that rule means.

Whereas USR's will always interact in the same manor because they are all codified properly.

And? What's so hard about reading the datasheet of the unit you're already using, and most likely referencing?

So you cross reference once, maybe a couple times if you forget and now you've learned the rule.

You read the rule in your army, and remember it for the future. If you don't, you only have to pull up the datasheet of the unit you're already fielding, so should have on hand anyway.

You need to check constantly with the bespoke rules because everything is different, it takes far more time to memorize and makes it far more difficult to build off of an existing structure of rules without running into inconsistencies with another rule.

But you *should* be checking with datasheets, so that you know you're being correct. It's not hard to have the datasheet for the unit you're already attacking with on hand. And memorisation will also come into effect.

It's like constructing a building. Would you want all of your workers using different scaled measuring tapes or would you want the using the same consistent measurement? It's the same thing that applies here. Keep everything consistent.

By that same logic, do I want all my workers using exactly the same tool for every job, because having bespoke, tailored equipment is too hard to learn, and they might not be able to remember the difference between a coping saw and a hack saw?

disagree, it incentivizes gunlines (the worst) and slows the game down with it's re-rolls.

I didn't say auras had to be rerolls. I'm talking about the concept of auras overall - they could be anything from +1 Ld, +1 BS, always striking first, gaining a certain keyword, etc etc.

like, why are we re-rolling absolutely everything? Is this a game of chance or not? That combined with IGOUGO and bespoke rules that need to be checked literally every 2 min to see what a special snowflake rule does, were looking at a good 20 min downtimes where I can mentally check out while my friend rolls some dice at me. Cool. Good Game I guess?

Well, I enjoy that mental checkout. We chat, we drink, we plan ahead. I don't *need* constant back and forth. I have Kill Team for that.

Yeah, that's just my own opinion and preferences, but they're as valid as yours.

Brutus_Apex wrote:They are literally the only proper way to organize a game.

I mean, patently untrue, as Kill Team doesn't use USRs, and it's a perfectly fine game in my opinion.

Again - stop it with this "the only proper way to play" BS. That's your opinion. It's not objective, it's not fact.

Deepstrike, is Deepstrike, is Deepstrike. Why have a different name and different rule. You say you all instinctively know what the rule means. then why have different rules for it?

If it's so easy to know what it is, why not keep it as is? Let players make their own connections. They'll quickly understand similar effects - but if those effects involve extra nuances, they can be applied in a bespoke manner.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Because you're way overstating auras. Warptime on multiple daemon prince level characters is STRONG not to mention all the other force multipliers available.

It's a good thing that DPs usually ended up as monstrous creatures and unable to join units with the IC rule then, isn't it?

Also, why are you only looking at 7th edition when it comes to the rules layout and USRs? Look at older editions of the game like 3rd or 5th edition and you'll see a very different less bloated game that had fewer stacking buffs and other proper absurdities. That said, there were a few particularly nasty lists that did need nerfs.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Also, once you know what Daemonforged, Daemon, and IWND do you never need to look at that page again, you'll see it on a unit's entry.

But you're still looking on the unit entry - which is where *all* the rules for various effects are in 8th (except the faction specific ones, which I've already said I mostly just ignore) - which makes things a lot easier for beginners, and in the case of disputes as to what the rule means/says/does. All in one place, right where it's relevant at the moment of play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Look at older editions of the game like 3rd or 5th edition and you'll see a very different less bloated game that had fewer stacking buffs and other proper absurdities. That said, there were a few particularly nasty lists that did need nerfs.

Must say, I'd love a return to 5th, with a good deal of 8th's ruleset, keyword systems, and datasheets. Also a fan of modern force organisation charts, the one in 5th wasn't fun.

Basically, a less *lethal* feeling game. I want to have models on the table by Turn 3.