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 Ordana wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


5", heck, even 3" vertical engagement range is too much. One unit standing on the ground floor and engaging units on the second floor is really awkward.

Since you can fight up floors and stacking up in a tower is bad since it makes you easy to charge/lock, and terrain effects are now either "in the terrain" or "this thing is an infinitely tall column of X for any LoS passing through it", there's no benefit to elevation, and an active detriment to occupying higher floors.

Playing it, it felt like a total mess.

If it wasn't 5" we'd be back to where we were previously. Sitting on the second floor gets your protection from being charged *if* you bother to occupy the first floor as well. Height can be an advantage for LOS, but will not always be. You might be IN the terrain, but true LOS doesn't stop being applicable.

Honestly, I think where we were was good. Defending higher floors should be generally easy to outright unassailable, because you try fighting melee through a third story window from the first floor. Even if you have a ladder, you can't really fight melee on a latter or while scaling a wall, you need your hands for that.

The only "issue" was that certain large vehicles that were taller than a rifleman couldn't engage objects at the height of their melee weapons, which is a problem that should have been solved on the model's end.

The issue was covering an entire floor meant you were immune to assault. Which is unfun to many players.
This is a simple solution to that problem.

Realism isn't an argument, this is 40k.

That's a false statement. It has to have some grounding in something relatable. This is why the fallback rule is awful as well.

I'd argue heavily that for many people that realism *IS* an argument and that without some grounding in intuitive rules that the game falls apart for many people.

If you like super abstraction, good for you. Not everyone enjoys that though.

 auticus wrote:
I'd argue heavily that for many people that realism *IS* an argument and that without some grounding in intuitive rules that the game falls apart for many people.

If you like super abstraction, good for you. Not everyone enjoys that though.

Yeah, forgot how grounded and realistic 40k is. I totally relate to the daemonculaba, hrud, and using gimp suit lobotomy patients as a steering wheel.

 auticus wrote:
I'd argue heavily that for many people that realism *IS* an argument and that without some grounding in intuitive rules that the game falls apart for many people.

If you like super abstraction, good for you. Not everyone enjoys that though.

there is a time and place for reaslism within the rules. Terrain isn't one of them. 40k has always been a game where terrain rules had to cover every possibility that players may model.

IMO the very best terrain systems 40k has ever had were the ones that were the most flexible and the most variable. You can either do that with a system that has tons of rules, allowing you to customize your terrain extremely hard, or it can be really really basic and abstracted, like the terrain system in apoc, allowing everything from an upturned carboard box to a GW ruin to work just as well.

8th was a super generic, confusing terrain system that had tons of tiny weird exploits that forced players to try and reach their fat fingers into tiny buildings to carefuly maneuver their expensive ass miniatures into optimized locations, and which somehow simultaneously made terrain not feel like it was even on the board 95% of the time.

The other 5% of the time, your opponent found some way to use terrain to make themselves weirdly invulnerable due to an exploit.

That's the very definition of a bad terrain system. 9th is a massive improvement in a "towards more customizability" direction.

I don't have an opinion of 9th edition since I have not played it. 8th edition's terrain rules were one reason I didnt play 8th edition.

If a terrain system is not intuitive it creates bad play experiences. Like thinking "gee if I'm behind this big concrete wall I should get some kind of bonus for being in cover." Thats the type of realism I'm describing.

Not the "sorry, but one of your team mates thumb is sticking out from behind the wall so all of your team can be shot now because we can see Bob's thumb."

heard a few people say re the missions is the biggest thing.

If you can get on the objectives early on and stay on them its autowin.

but i guess... thats the point of the game right

 Latro_ wrote:
heard a few people say re the missions is the biggest thing.

If you can get on the objectives early on and stay on them its autowin.

but i guess... thats the point of the game right

One would think that in a game of biting and holding ground getting there first and staying on it the whole time would win the game

The problem with the missions is that it's too easy for the person who goes first to get onto the objectives and that structural advantage produces a strong first-turn bias, something that has been a scourge of 40k for a very long time.

Ironically, ITC *finally* managed to get rid of first-turn bias in the 2020 pack. But GW seems to have brought it back, with a vengeance.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The problem with the missions is that it's too easy for the person who goes first to get onto the objectives and that structural advantage produces a strong first-turn bias, something that has been a scourge of 40k for a very long time.

Ironically, ITC *finally* managed to get rid of first-turn bias in the 2020 pack. But GW seems to have brought it back, with a vengeance.

I don' think so. It is pretty easy to score 10 points on primary. Only #6 is harder (2+ and 3+), but there are more objectives.

Hold 1 = 5
Hold 2+ = 10
Home More = 15

If your opponent picks up Hold More and you can't muster holding just TWO objectives after getting the benefit of a more precise response to their moves then that would merit a strong review of the lists or strategy at play.

If you go 15/10 and can then limit from getting Hold More then you only have 5 points to claw back. This is not a blow out.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The problem with the missions is that it's too easy for the person who goes first to get onto the objectives and that structural advantage produces a strong first-turn bias, something that has been a scourge of 40k for a very long time.

Ironically, ITC *finally* managed to get rid of first-turn bias in the 2020 pack. But GW seems to have brought it back, with a vengeance.

I don' think so. It is pretty easy to score 10 points on primary. Only #6 is harder (2+ and 3+), but there are more objectives.

Hold 1 = 5
Hold 2+ = 10
Home More = 15

If your opponent picks up Hold More and you can't muster holding just TWO objectives after getting the benefit of a more precise response to their moves then that would merit a strong review of the lists or strategy at play.

If you go 15/10 and can then limit from getting Hold More then you only have 5 points to claw back. This is not a blow out.

Bingo - people overlook how quickly you can get points back, and the fact someone who grabs that early lead is going to cap out at 45. If you just hold 2 (as you say) in most missions, and never once hold "more," you still will get 40. I think seeing the large point values leads to an impression that you're down by a lot more than you actually are.

MVBrandt wrote:


Bingo - people overlook how quickly you can get points back, and the fact someone who grabs that early lead is going to cap out at 45. If you just hold 2 (as you say) in most missions, and never once hold "more," you still will get 40. I think seeing the large point values leads to an impression that you're down by a lot more than you actually are.

To be fair I'm speculating. I hope to get games in this weekend.

There is going to be different dynamics between the missions with 4, 5, and 6 objectives.

If there's 4 then hold more becomes a pretty tough proposition as the forces will be more concentrated. I can see strong denial armies making this work in their favor.
With 5 objectives I can see hold more being easier for the aggressive army where there is only a 12" stretch between objectives 2 and 3.

In the 6 objective missions I can see melee armies leaning towards holding these objectives:



And ranged on these and reserves making a push up the deployment:



Terrain will play a big part as to which objectives will be favorable as well. Lots to think about.

3 of the 6 missions either have only 4 objectives, or 6 but require you to hold 2 to get 5 and 3 to get 10. So on half the maps, if someone is getting hold more, you aren't getting more than 5 points on the primary per turn. It literally is not possible to hold 2 (or 3 on that mission) each turn if your opponent is holding more on these maps. If your opponent is getting 15, you're getting 5.

A fourth mission is set up to favor going first more than any of the others (the one with the central objective). That means that 2/3s of the missions have a strong first-turn bias built into the primary scoring.

The first and fifth mission in the pack - Retrieval and Scorched Earth - are the best. They are both well-balanced, without any strong first-turn advantage.

This has me very worried about elite armies. But who knows maybe they will be some sort of catch up mechanics in different codex in 9th.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Something I’ve been catching myself on and have seen YouTube players also note is the change to how the reroll strat works. The Chaplain 3+ Litanies are not such a sure thing, for example, and you can’t roll out of a vehicle explosion. Subtle but meaningful and it will likely take me some time to get out of the 8th edition habit.

Oh feth... explosions... my dredd mob army, all packed together even on 8th Ed bigger boards... didn’t think about that... Noooooooooooooo !!!!!!

yukishiro1 wrote:
3 of the 6 missions either have only 4 objectives, or 6 but require you to hold 2 to get 5 and 3 to get 10. So on half the maps, if someone is getting hold more, you aren't getting more than 5 points on the primary per turn. It literally is not possible to hold 2 (or 3 on that mission) each turn if your opponent is holding more on these maps. If your opponent is getting 15, you're getting 5.

A fourth mission is set up to favor going first more than any of the others (the one with the central objective). That means that 2/3s of the missions have a strong first-turn bias built into the primary scoring.

The first and fifth mission in the pack - Retrieval and Scorched Earth - are the best. They are both well-balanced, without any strong first-turn advantage.

There is one with 5. There interesting thing about that one is that it doesn't allow any models into no man's land before turn 1.

Two have four and the remaining three have 6. Of the three with 6 only mission #6 does 2/3/hold more. And in that mission you are not required to keep models on the objective. It seems like it'd be easy enough to settle to either side. The distances are great enough that the opponent can't competently hold them all. And if they expose themselves or go too thin the two top objectives are pretty close to the board edge for reserves to grab.

Of course these are still not the "proper" missions. Hopefully we see some of those this weekend.

Well, so we have the free core rules of the new ed.
But we are still lacking the rule book and particularly the terrain rules and the pt costs of the units.
So when you watch a 9th-ed battle report, what are the things you are primarily looking at?

Right now without points it's a challange, but consistent secondary picks and also just picking up on small ordeing changes as some of them have some impactful changes when at first read it seems trivial.

Karol wrote:
This has me very worried about elite armies. But who knows maybe they will be some sort of catch up mechanics in different codex in 9th.

Right now, it looks like almost everything is benefiting elite armies moderately to strongly. The major nerfs so far almost exclusively hit horde armies, and hit fairly hard from max damage blasts against horde units and rank fighting be reduced to 2 ranks for 32mm and 25mm bases.

The new detach system punishes fielding larger forces and incentivises fielding a smaller number of more capable units, and horde armies are losing up to like 8CP while elite armies are gaining like up to 5CP.

Cover was already drastically stronger for MEQ+ units versus GEQ-, and the new terrain rules further benefit elite units.

ITC type secondaries also favor elite armies, which yield fewer to the enemy and require the enemy to take more difficult secindaries to achieve full [and thus equal] score on them. And hold/holdmore kill/killmore scoring also benefits elite armies since they're not at as much of a disadvantage by not being able to attack every point simultaneously and have a much easier time of kill more since they have less to give and are harder to kill.

The points we've got a glimpse of so far also seem to favor elite units with horde units getting a proportionally larger price hike.

The only real downside might be non-blast tanks firing in melee, since a lascannon fired in melee cooking a intercessor is marginally worthwhile maybe while a lascannons cooking a boy is less so, but like the whole vehicles shooting in melee thing is a small deal and I would classify as a booby prize rather than a meaningful buff.

I wouldn't be worried for elite armies.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, so we have the free core rules of the new ed.
But we are still lacking the rule book and particularly the terrain rules and the pt costs of the units.
So when you watch a 9th-ed battle report, what are the things you are primarily looking at?

We have terrain. Efficacy won't be part of the picture. I don't worry if X beat Y. I'm most interested in decision making opportunities, which is why I thoroughly enjoy Tabletop Titans as they talk about their choices.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


The new detach system punishes fielding larger forces and incentivises fielding a smaller number of more capable units, and horde armies are losing up to like 8CP while elite armies are gaining like up to 5CP.

Orks are not forced into multiple battalions or a brigade and can still get enough CP to feed more elite units. Just by way of preventing CP rerolls on the SSAG the Orks probably have about the same CP.

Cover was already drastically stronger for MEQ+ units versus GEQ-, and the new terrain rules further benefit elite units.

There are now fewer safe places to hide, which is dangerous for elite units.

ITC type secondaries also favor elite armies, which yield fewer to the enemy and require the enemy to take more difficult secindaries to achieve full [and thus equal] score on them. And hold/holdmore kill/killmore scoring also benefits elite armies since they're not at as much of a disadvantage by not being able to attack every point simultaneously and have a much easier time of kill more since they have less to give and are harder to kill.

Kill more worked well when everyone had to take 3x5 scouts or 3x10 grots. Now we're not forced into those units and hordes are far and away not easy to grab for kill more. Killing 20 out of 30 boyz won't guarantee you a wipe now.

The points we've got a glimpse of so far also seem to favor elite units with horde units getting a proportionally larger price hike.

And blast weapon platforms getting an even larger hike so far.

I’ve watched every 9th Ed battle report I have been able to find. It’s hard to get a solid grasp of it because everyone is still using their old terrain. I think this edition is going to need people to dip back into making lots of new terrain to make this work. One thing I know I don’t like is the touching terrain thing. I understand the idea but it looks goofy especially on larger terrain pieces were you just touch the back of the terrain and then magically can shoot through it. You should at least need to move completely into the terrain piece.

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’ve watched every 9th Ed battle report I have been able to find. It’s hard to get a solid grasp of it because everyone is still using their old terrain. I think this edition is going to need people to dip back into making lots of new terrain to make this work. One thing I know I don’t like is the touching terrain thing. I understand the idea but it looks goofy especially on larger terrain pieces were you just touch the back of the terrain and then magically can shoot through it. You should at least need to move completely into the terrain piece.

The terrain doesn't go away. TLOS doesn't cease to be a thing - the terrain will still physically block sight. What people choose to use for that type of terrain will govern how that game flows. GW terrain? We'll tons of windows. Monolithic solid L-blocks? You won't see much.

First let me say I only got two small games in, but I have watched like 8 9th edition battle reports on YouTube. Two, I also am the kind of person who has been playing since 2nd edition and I loved 8th. That said I think 9th is the best rule set GW has ever produced. Reasons:

- Detachments; Second best improvement in my opinion. You are no longer pigeon holed into having to play a battalion just to get to 8 CP. And, sorry guard players, cheap armies can no longer get 18+ command points in a 2000 point game. I also like that it costs CP if you want to not play troops. I have a list right now that is all daemon engines just because I think it would be cool to play it like a dark mechanicus army. However I do need to pay 3CP for the privileged of bring 6 heavy support and no troops. I think that is a really fair trade-off, and I think 9th is going to open up a lot of different style lists because you don't have to bring a battalion. Also, In 8th I would have gotten 4CP with this list. Also, even though I play Thousand Sons, good riddance to the supreme command.

- Terrain; The best improvement in my opinion. You could have a board filled with ruins and buildings and forest in 8th edition, and due to true line of sight with windows etc., it was like playing on a board with no terrain at all. In 8th, the best games always had a large LOS blocking piece of terrain in the middle that forced armies to have to do some kind of movement to get LOS to shoot etc. But other than that, and maybe a few guys in a ruin getting +1 save, it felt like terrain was meaningless. Now, it feels like terrain is part of the game. I watched a Winters battle report where they played with basically all jungle terrain with a few small rock pillars. In 8th that would be equivalent to playing on an open board for the most part. In 9th, the dense cover had a clear effect on shooting in the game. That is just one example, and if you go though YouTube you will see the effect the new Terrain rules have on the game.

- Smaller board: You can see the effect in battle reports and feel it playing. It makes the game faster and really helps melee armies. Gun lines are going to have a hard time in most games.

- All the other changes: I have liked every rule change, both watching games and playing. The overwatch change is great, just for the fact that there is not a silly number of "my captain fires his bolt pistol" overwatch eliminating what were 90% of the time wasted dice rolls. I don't feel like the coherency rules or the engagement range changes are all that dramatic, but I never really daisy chained units, or tr-pointed, and don't really use big squads so maybe I am off there.

- The missions: love them. They reward aggressive play, maneuvering and moving, planning how you are going to hold an objective, where, etc. I love the secondaries, it lets you get some control over how you play to score in that fashion (I play aggressive and in your face so I can tailor my secondaries around that). The idea that the kill secondaries are going to reward gun lines who can just ignore the primaries is just flat wrong. Go and watch 9th games on YouTube and the winner between an aggressive mobile force and a gun line type force is almost always the mobile force. The fact that all the scoring has a points cap was a brilliant move which really helps balance any skew toward scoring, and you really need to score multiple ways.

I think based on what I have watched and played that gunlines and hoard armies are going to have a tougher time than before. Personally I never liked playing with or against gunline armies as I feel if you are not going to move around the board with your models in any meaningful way, we might as well play yatzee as we are just rolling dice at one another, but I get it that some people like those armies, and this will hurt that style of play. And I get that people like big units of hoards (I never cared for them just because I hate moving them) and this edition is going to hurt that style of play as well. So if that turns you off to this edition, that is fair.

In my opinion, the only way that 9th could get really crappy is if they really screw up the points. Blast is good. Shooting vehicles are much much better, as are other units that use heavy weapons that are not infantry. Some things are not better. Monsters or vehicles that don't shoot (like Lord of Change) basically didn't gain anything from the new Big Guns rule and hopefully their points will reflect that. Non-LOS shooting is really really effective in this edition (well it has always been but more so now) due to ignoring the much more prevalent obscuring and dense rules, and really need to be pointed as such. So if GW gets the points down in at lest a not completely F-ed up way, I think 9th is going to be great.

Obviously more games in time will tell, but right now, I can't wait to play more. I hate COVID

 xeen wrote:
I hate COVID

Yep - this may be the year of garage hammer with close friends.

Does non-LOS shooting ignore the -1 for dense cover? i don't think it does.

 Galas wrote:
Does non-LOS shooting ignore the -1 for dense cover? i don't think it does.

It would not. You still have to draw a line and if it passes through you'll get the -1.

 Galas wrote:
Does non-LOS shooting ignore the -1 for dense cover? i don't think it does.

Yea I saw that to that even though it can shoot units it can't see, it would still suffer from dense. However, i don't think it is 100% clear and an FAQ to make it so (hopefully applying the -1) is needed

Here's a thing I've noticed lately that needs to change for 9th and that's that a lot of people build boards so that the vast majority of terrain is in the deployment zones and the middle is one big piece in the center with a huge shooting gallery on either side.

With being IN terrain often being less useful than being BEHIND terrain, the center of the board should be seeing quite bit more coverage than it does in a lot of the games I've seen.

I do the opposite. My terrain gets focused just outside of the deployment zones and there's a centrepiece but the deployment zones themselves have very little and what there is is small.

Both the center of the board and the deployments zones should have good terrain, to both have terrain matter in the game and be able to hide in your deloyment zone agaisntt alpha strike.

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’ve watched every 9th Ed battle report I have been able to find. It’s hard to get a solid grasp of it because everyone is still using their old terrain. I think this edition is going to need people to dip back into making lots of new terrain to make this work. One thing I know I don’t like is the touching terrain thing. I understand the idea but it looks goofy especially on larger terrain pieces were you just touch the back of the terrain and then magically can shoot through it. You should at least need to move completely into the terrain piece.

People are surprisingly bad at reading.

Obscured says you a unit is 'seen and targeted normally' while inside it. Normal targeting requires LoS. Walls do not disapear just because you walked into a piece of terrain.

Likely a combination of bad reading, wishful thinking and memories of the old area terrain that did work like that. Except those rules specifically said that LoS should be ignored.
Which Obscured in 9th does not.