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Unit1126PLL wrote: Interesting comments indeed + especially about modern game design.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making? .
Short answer....no. Because I'm not arguing it is.
However there are a few good things. Alternating choices of units to fight, for example, means you need to balance risks of toughness vs damage output. However, I think a 'better' game would have alternating activation throughout the turn - much like apocalypse and kill team does.
I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I don't mind tight coherency. The 'playing piece' in 40k is the squad, not the model. Coherency is an issue in 7th/heresy because blasts, but "I spread out 2" to not die to quad guns" was not a tactical choice, because there was little reason not to. It was a big chunk of effort required with little actual thought behind it. In 9th, random blast values with biases for big squads achieves the same but means decisions on movement focus on "What point on the battlefield am I moving towards or away from" rather than "how do I set up an inch-perfect conga-line to get there".
Movement decisions - especially movement restrictions - drive turn-on-turn strategy a lot. It's why I think space combat games like BFG and Xwing often feel more tactical - in part because clever movement can prevent opponents getting to use some or all of their firepower, which means the smartest combo-list-building falls apart if you're out-positioned and find someone crossing your T at point blank range...
I also agree about stratagems. Apocalypse stratagems are quite nice - you will have a 'hand' of, say, five stratagems from a deck of thirty available to you at one time, and once used they won't be available for a turn or so. That pushes you to actually use all the different options - most of them have a 'tactical reroll' effect, but that's way worse than their 'proper' use.
As to combo-building, I agree. Thing is, it shouldn't be. Warlord traits, psychic powers, litanies, relics and stratagems are all things layered 'on top' of an army list - so there should be no reason you can't cave the same sororitas commandery list play very differently I two different games - one game loading out characters with relic melee weapons and 'deliver holy beatings' warlord traits, whilst another game they're all about buffing their troops to hold the line and die standing. Adding that option gives you a 'sideboard' effect that lets you tailor a bit to the opponent and mission, and if only one option appeals that's the fault of the faction codes, not the core rules.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/08/19 14:40:31
Just a note: The most common definition of a "game" is something that has structured "game play" and "game play" is most commonly a series of interesting choices".
Interesting choices are choices that have consequences with non obviously favorable answers or at least answers with a cost.
Shoots and Ladders is not a game. It has no game play. You make no choices. A RNG tells you where to move and then you do what the space tell you to do and eventually someone makes it to the end and wins. It teaches little kids some fundamental game mechanics but does not in any way have any actual game play.
Tetris on the other hand has all game play. Where you place the blocks, in what orientation, destroying one line now or 5 lines later if you can, the ramping up of speed as more lines are broken.... every action you take (or don't) has consequence and thus is interesting. So tetris is ALL game play.
I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
Lance845 wrote: I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
See, I find this interesting, and I realize I'm quoting Lance845 to comment on Locarano's post.
I never paid particular attention to my squad dispersal when facing blasts. Unless I was trying to charge at something like a Demolisher. It just wasn't worth my time to measure the spread of my troops to insure 2" exactly between everyone, particularly to repeat it again and again. That is an example of something that knocks me out of the "immersion" in the game. I moved my troops vaguely in a squad formation, in coherency. The blasts, except for flamers, were random on their hits anyway, so unlikely to do massive damage. Plus, the wound rolls and such usually meant casualties weren't scooped off the board by the handful (unless you disembarked a squad of Guard or Orks into a tight space and they got a direct hit from a Battle Cannon or something).
Its also an example of something that the rules allow (measuring 2" between each and every one of your dudes) to avoid blasts being fully effective (or I should say minimally effective) while remaining in coherency, and something that the design studio guys probably never did or never thought to do, because it was gaming the game.
That being said, the difference between 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th is going to be in the eye of the beholder. Some see minimal differences, some see major issues with each one. I'm probably overlooking the major holes in 5th or 7th HH (e.g. tanking on the 2+ sarge in huge tactical squads, challenges), but to me those seemed more interesting that what I've been playing and seeing recently. Again, to each their own.
"There is rational thought here. It's just swimming through a sea of stupid and is often concealed from view by the waves of irrational conclusions." - Railguns
Unit1126PLL wrote: Interesting comments indeed + especially about modern game design.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making? .
Short answer....no. Because I'm not arguing it is.
However there are a few good things. Alternating choices of units to fight, for example, means you need to balance risks of toughness vs damage output. However, I think a 'better' game would have alternating activation throughout the turn - much like apocalypse and kill team does.
I agree with you here. I brought up LOTR in the OP, which has an interesting Alternating Phases design and would like to hear your thoughts.
locarno24 wrote:I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
I do like the degrading stats mechanic rather than the damage table, that's a good point, but I think some things are lacking: the ability to instantly kill tanks and the ability to instantly kill monsters. I think the biggest problem with earlier editions was the latter was absent from monsters as well, not that the former was present for vehicles. Having the ability to one-shot big things with a critical hit is both more realistic (it's exactly that sort of thing that discourages "bigger is better" designs since World War 2 for surface warfare combatants, for example) and helps with the realism aspect. The problem wasn't that meltaguns could slag tanks, the problem was they couldn't slag riptides equally well, IMHO.
locarno24 wrote:What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I think our desires for game scale are different. I love arcs of fire and armor facing - and crossfire/blast markers causing suppression would be awesome. But I don't think armor facing makes much sense at the Epic scale. But at the scale 40k is at, where individual guys matter? I think it's cool that the side or rear of a tank is easier to damage than the front. I think it's realistic, and it helps me write the narrative of "my squad couldn't hurt the front, so they worked their way around the side in a rotational flank and killed it". that sort of narrative doesn't emerge from gameplay in the current iteration of 40k.
locarno24 wrote:I don't mind tight coherency. The 'playing piece' in 40k is the squad, not the model. Coherency is an issue in 7th/heresy because blasts, but "I spread out 2" to not die to quad guns" was not a tactical choice, because there was little reason not to. It was a big chunk of effort required with little actual thought behind it. In 9th, random blast values with biases for big squads achieves the same but means decisions on movement focus on "What point on the battlefield am I moving towards or away from" rather than "how do I set up an inch-perfect conga-line to get there".
See, I also disagree with you here. Spreading out 2" wasn't the default choice, it has consequences. It makes your unit's frontage bigger, which helps my Daemons (for example) all collapse onto a single enemy unit with one charge, rather than piling on top of eachother to achieve same against a more tightly packed unit. It takes up more space, inhibiting the movement of your own large vehicles or monsters - in a recent game, my max-coherency-to-avoid-blasts Lasrifle Section inhibited the movement of my tanks so badly that I ended up clumping them up because there was no other way to get out of the way of the tanks - but it was too late, I'd already inhibited my own movement so badly that it was a mistake to spread out to max coherency in the first place. It also means infantry models from said squad may drag through terrain, reducing speed and charge bonuses and cutting them off from line-of-sight, reducing your firepower - indeed, there are a lot of good reasons to not spread out, and I think it's definitely a choice rather than a default.
locarno24 wrote:Movement decisions - especially movement restrictions - drive turn-on-turn strategy a lot. It's why I think space combat games like BFG and Xwing often feel more tactical - in part because clever movement can prevent opponents getting to use some or all of their firepower, which means the smartest combo-list-building falls apart if you're out-positioned and find someone crossing your T at point blank range...
I also agree about stratagems. Apocalypse stratagems are quite nice - you will have a 'hand' of, say, five stratagems from a deck of thirty available to you at one time, and once used they won't be available for a turn or so. That pushes you to actually use all the different options - most of them have a 'tactical reroll' effect, but that's way worse than their 'proper' use.
As to combo-building, I agree. Thing is, it shouldn't be. Warlord traits, psychic powers, litanies, relics and stratagems are all things layered 'on top' of an army list - so there should be no reason you can't cave the same sororitas commandery list play very differently I two different games - one game loading out characters with relic melee weapons and 'deliver holy beatings' warlord traits, whilst another game they're all about buffing their troops to hold the line and die standing. Adding that option gives you a 'sideboard' effect that lets you tailor a bit to the opponent and mission, and if only one option appeals that's the fault of the faction codes, not the core rules.
I generally agree with everything you've said here, save one thing: The army list shouldn't have to change to make the games different. My sororitas are a narrative force; my Warlord has one trait that she picks, she owns one relic, etc. that's hers. (Her fluff name is Anita Leotine if you're curious). There's basically one way to execute my list, without changing the list.
What I would hope for is a game that challenges me. A game that says "alright, now you're fighting in a marsh, how do your tactics change given the same resources?" "Alright, now you're fighting an armored foe, how do your tactics change?" "Alright, now you're fighting at night, how do your tactics change?" And of course there's infinite variety - one game might be 'how do I beat an armored foe at night in an industrial zone' and the next might be 'how do I defeat a sneaky infiltration force in the woods when they have orbital support?' or whatever. Right now, most of my games execute the same way over and over again. Monsters are just tanks, so my enemy has "big things" that I kill the same way whether it's a Hive Tyrant, Riptide, or Baneblade. Infantry are just infantry, so I hose them down with the same guns whether they're Termagants, Fire Warriors, or Space Marines. Terrain is just terrain, so I shoot through marsh and woods and buildings exactly the same way each time, unless it blocks LOS, in which case it's just the same as a mangrove copse or forest or building that blocks LOS now.
Lance845 wrote:Just a note: The most common definition of a "game" is something that has structured "game play" and "game play" is most commonly a series of interesting choices".
Interesting choices are choices that have consequences with non obviously favorable answers or at least answers with a cost.
Shoots and Ladders is not a game. It has no game play. You make no choices. A RNG tells you where to move and then you do what the space tell you to do and eventually someone makes it to the end and wins. It teaches little kids some fundamental game mechanics but does not in any way have any actual game play.
Tetris on the other hand has all game play. Where you place the blocks, in what orientation, destroying one line now or 5 lines later if you can, the ramping up of speed as more lines are broken.... every action you take (or don't) has consequence and thus is interesting. So tetris is ALL game play.
I believe 40k is popular because of the ease to find games. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. Because it's game play is so shallow and uninteresting the vast majority of the time that it's just barely a game at all. It's complexity is massive (though significantly improved since 7th). But it's nuance is non existent. Using a example from locarano above. Blasts in HH and 7th. It isn't an interesting decision to space your guys out to avoid blasts. It's the only choice that makes any sense.
I think there's more nuance in HH than in modern 40k - and I'd stand by that (though I agree HH has room for definite improvement still). But to use my example from earlier, spacing your guys out to avoid blasts actually has some significant drawbacks, and I oftentimes ally blasts with my Daemons of the Ruinstorm specifically BECAUSE people think this way and spread out thoughtlessly, which lets several daemon units charge this huge-frontage unit, whereas if the enemy stayed tight, I wouldn't be able to fit them all in base-to-base. Just as an example. In another recent game I tried to spread out to avoid blasts and inhibited my own movement so badly that it ended up being the wrong choice.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/08/19 16:53:02
So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
I generally agree with everything you've said here, save one thing: The army list shouldn't have to change to make the games different. My sororitas are a narrative force; my Warlord has one trait that she picks, she owns one relic, etc. that's hers. (Her fluff name is Anita Leotine if you're curious). There's basically one way to execute my list, without changing the list.
What I would hope for is a game that challenges me. A game that says "alright, now you're fighting in a marsh, how do your tactics change given the same resources?" "Alright, now you're fighting an armored foe, how do your tactics change?" "Alright, now you're fighting at night, how do your tactics change?" And of course there's infinite variety - one game might be 'how do I beat an armored foe at night in an industrial zone' and the next might be 'how do I defeat a sneaky infiltration force in the woods when they have orbital support?' or whatever. Right now, most of my games execute the same way over and over again. Monsters are just tanks, so my enemy has "big things" that I kill the same way whether it's a Hive Tyrant, Riptide, or Baneblade. Infantry are just infantry, so I hose them down with the same guns whether they're Termagants, Fire Warriors, or Space Marines. Terrain is just terrain, so I shoot through marsh and woods and buildings exactly the same way each time, unless it blocks LOS, in which case it's just the same as a mangrove copse or forest or building that blocks LOS now.
I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
locarno24 wrote:What I dislike is the concept of armour facing or arcs of Fire. One of the best rules in Epic Armageddon is 'crossfire' - it instantly makes infiltrators and fast units lethal - and blast markers providing suppressive fire.
I think our desires for game scale are different. I love arcs of fire and armor facing - and crossfire/blast markers causing suppression would be awesome. But I don't think armor facing makes much sense at the Epic scale. But at the scale 40k is at, where individual guys matter? I think it's cool that the side or rear of a tank is easier to damage than the front. I think it's realistic, and it helps me write the narrative of "my squad couldn't hurt the front, so they worked their way around the side in a rotational flank and killed it". that sort of narrative doesn't emerge from gameplay in the current iteration of 40k.
locarno24 wrote:I approve of simplicity in vehicle damage. Using degrading stats rather than a damage table avoids unnecessary rolls, and means big tanks and big monsters work the same, which avoids the core rules offering baked in advantages to either walkers or monsters - which in turn means you don't have to agonize over what to model a riptide as. Personally I think AOS's 'wounds assigned' table makes more sense than 40k's 'wounds remaining' table because it saves mental arithmetic. Yes, I can work it out but why didn't you work it out ONCE when you wrote the stats, instead of making every player work it out every game?
I do like the degrading stats mechanic rather than the damage table, that's a good point, but I think some things are lacking: the ability to instantly kill tanks and the ability to instantly kill monsters. I think the biggest problem with earlier editions was the latter was absent from monsters as well, not that the former was present for vehicles. Having the ability to one-shot big things with a critical hit is both more realistic (it's exactly that sort of thing that discourages "bigger is better" designs since World War 2 for surface warfare combatants, for example) and helps with the realism aspect. The problem wasn't that meltaguns could slag tanks, the problem was they couldn't slag riptides equally well, IMHO.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that the problem wasn't that tanks could die in one shot, it was that monsters couldn't. Though I also think hull points was one of the worst changes they made to the game.
That said, of exclusively academic significance, I don't think you're right about the assertion that critical hits are something that has discouraged "bigger is better" designs, because, well.... it's definitely not true. A modern surface combatant is bigger in every way than it's WWII counterpart with about the same likelihood or more of dying to a critical hit, because in this case, a bigger ship is a better ship. The ship classes that went away and are going away have done so because there's no tactical, operational, or strategic place for them in modern combat in the face of evolving weapons and doctrine.
Same thing for tanks. An M1 tank, or Leopard, or Challenger are as large as or large than the famously too fat to be good German Big Cats of WWII and about as heavy [A M1 tank is as heavy as the famously overweight King Tiger and about as big, but an M1 is both better engineered and has the advanced of modern engine and armor and weapons technology]. The Bigger is Better didn't work for the Germans because the tanks had unresolved engineering problems, were a bear on logistics, and were fundamentally unable to meet all the tactical requirements of them for the time.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/08/19 17:26:42
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
This is fair, though I view 40k much more on the skirmish end of things than the divisional end - in fact, I generally think that about most games that track individual models. As for 30k, I'll just say that of the last 10 games of HH my group has played, only one has been Marines vs Marines; most of the time it's Daemons of the Ruinstorm, Solar Auxilia, Imperial Militia, Talons of the Emperor, Taghmata Omnissiah, Ordo Reductor, or Legio Cybernetica vs. each other or vs. Marines, lol.
To your last sentence, though, why do you feel that way? I'm just curious; I know it's an opinion, but I typically assume opinions are informed by some experience or assessment of some kind.
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Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
I think you and I are very very different people, haha. There's a very big tactical difference between a tank and a beast, predominantly in the weapons and tactics employed, imho. This gets into the "Reality" of the universe a bit, so perhaps it's just a subjective thing, but when I see a Squiggoth or a Tyranid monster of some kind, I would typically want to bring explosive weapons to bear, because overpenetration with weapons like sabot rounds would be less harmful. Machine guns and small arms are a lot more useful as well, again assuming it isn't just a tank with different aesthetics.
Conversely, a tank is a wholly different beast, against which electromagnetic countermeasures and weapons are more likely to be effective, and against which penetration is more important than explosive power (unless you're talking REALLY BIG explosive power) because the stuff inside isn't that fragile once you get there. A tank is also easier to outmaneuver in the tactical sense, since its unidirectional treads means that it must make turns (pivot) before it can travel in a direction and can't sidestep, and its burdensome weight makes it wary of different kinds of obstacles and terrain than the types that would hinder monsters.
For example, against elephants (the closest mental analogue I have to a carnifex), a deep ditch probably won't be as effective as a field of caltrops, while an antitank ditch can bring an entire tank platoon to a halt to wait for engineers while caltrops would probably literally go unnoticed. Some unit types blur the lines - for example a walker might move more like a monster than a tank - but that's accounted for already, at least in theory. It certainly could be accounted for in other cases.
Of course, all this assumes that the setting actually treats beasts and tanks differently. I suppose it's possible for the setting to just decide that monsters are tanks and function identically, but my personal opinion is that Carnifexes are more akin to elephants than M1A2s, and that Leman Russes (for example) are more akin to M1A2s than to elephants. Needless to say, at the company level, I would bring different weapons to bear and issue different orders if I was being attacked by a herd of elephants than a team of M1A2s and mechanized carriers.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/08/19 17:21:15
Spoletta wrote: 8th made some big steps forward when it comes to armies feeling like armies, but took some steps backwards in a few rule interactions, abstracting them to the point that they feel gamey. Reroll auras surely qualify in that.
Also, stratagems were nice for the "war" part, but only some of them. Those are mostly the stratagems which expand the army horizontally, and allow models to cover alternative roles. There are instead the stratagems which just make "x" into "x+1" like for example Veterans of the long war, which instead are fully on the "game" side. They don't feel like "Stratagems".
Stratagems aren't even something I considered when I wrote the OP, but you're right, they're not altogether a terrible idea, I suppose, though as always with GW I disagree with their overall implementation.
and if you agree that it's moved (somewhat abruptly with 8th edition) from a war(game) to a (war)game.
I definitely don't agree its abrupt. They've been peeling layers off since the transition from 1st to 2nd. Elminating stats, successive knocks to morale (before kicking it out completely), the various horrible redesigns to vehicle systems (not that I miss acceleration and deceleration, or the wacky grid charts).
I don't think its a good simulation of war, but I don't think it ever was. That doesn't make it any less a wargame though.
The 'pinnacle' of simulation wargames are the old Avalon Hill style games with hex maps, chits with NATO unit symbols, and piles and piles of look-up charts for cross-reference resolution. Those scratch an itch, but its always been a different one than the Warhammers. Especially 40k, which is Fantasy in Space! ridonkulus skirmishes.
I think it's abrupt in the sense that they've transition from (badly) simulating war in the 41st millennium to not even trying - in other words, I think the game is no longer tied to the reality which it once sought to replicate, however well. It's gone from "we suck at emulating 'reality'" to "we don't even try to emulate reality." Or do you think they are still trying / never tried in the first place? Keep in mind when I say reality I mean "the fictional universe of 40k" not literal Real Life™.
I disagree with your assertion about the "pinnacle" of simulation wargames; DOD is doing some great work now (though they typically involve computers). But even that aside, I think those games are in a whole different domain from 40k. 40k is a 'miniatures' game, which investigates a level of war far below the old Avalon Hill operational-level hex games. I think it is still possible for miniatures games to at least attempt to reflect 'reality', no?
40k was never about simulating war in the 41st millenium. Even in the older editions. Maybe rogue trader might of been but certainly not 3rd through 7th.
Back then 40k was trying (somewhat) to simulate modern convential warfare but with everything having a goofy name.
Honestly, no offence intended, but if you thought ANY edition was actually even a little bit representative of the frankly insane scale of warfare in the 41st millenia, I put that down to you transposing modern warfare film/books/experience onto what you were reading to better contextualize the raw insanity that battles in 40k are on.
And in that vein, I honestly think the more 'gamey' nature of 8th and 9th does a far better job of giving the player a window into what warfare would be like in the 41st millenium. Complete and utter nonsensical insanity. Crazy space vikings on somehow bullet proof wolves charging impossible eldritch abominations underneath the legs of city sized monstrosities duking it out with both incredibly sophisticated futuristic weapons that rend the fabric of space time through oscillating flux waves in concordance with natural resonance frequencies and also a giant fething chainsaw hand. Crazy nonsense happening out of nowhere that defies convential understanding is sort of the hallmark of the 40k universe. Why shouldn't a building somehow block a small tank from seeing a huge tank, but not the other way around?
Worrying about whether or not that bush will get caught in my tank treads, or any of the other stuff that seems like 'simulationism' to a lot of the so called 'war(game)rs, always felt stupid and, for lack of a better term, 'unrealistic' to 40k for me.
40k is and has always been a crazy Heavy Metal album cover, and the prior rulesets always put themselves at odds with that fact by pretending they were trying to 'simulate' warfare in the 41st millenium, when really it was just a(n admittedly very slipshod) rehash of rommel's north africa campaign with a sci-fi veneer.
Irkjoe wrote:Games are easier, people don't want to get bogged down in arcs, facings, etc. Most just want to slam their models together in the center of the board. Warhammer is not a simulation it's a cinematic representation of the setting, it just gives you something to do with your miniatures. The ones who prioritize realism are playing other games. Imo it has swung way too far in the game direction and would be improved by finding a middle ground between the two.
This is exactly how the game started(albeit w more RPG elements). This is exactly the appeal for me, the game is something cool to do with my incredibly detailed & well painted miniatures rather than just sitting there collecting dust.
If they're expecting something else, I don't really know what to tell them.
I collected the minis to do the table top battle simulation.
I came from RPGs and chess.
I did not begin as a toy collector who got bored looking at his toys.
Anyone who lives that way, we’ll, I don’t know what to tell them except I and the people that I came into the hobby with are not motivated by a plastic fetish and a needy imagination.
We wanted and found realism in the playing out of fictional battles in a fictional universe.
Indeed, for those who fall back on the ridiculous position that 40k cannot be realistic, ask yourselves why the miniatures have guns, stand upright, why walls should block LoS and so on... all realism imported from common everyday experience without which the game would be impossible to play.
Moreover, ask yourselves when the game would stop making sense, as 8th had stopped making sense to me.
Remove gravity?
Remove LoS restrictions?
Remove morale?
When we take away too much realism, the game stops making sense and loses appeal.
Without some realism, the game is unplayable at least because without common intuitions reflected in rules and game dynamics, players can not communicate easily and so many expectations are denied that the interactions become gamey in the sense of the OP.
40k was a tabletop battle sim.
Some abstractions are necessary, else it would be real war with real people, but by representing crucial aspects realistically, expectations from common intuitions are reinforced and the sense that a battle is being lived out on a tabletop (4x8 being the proper size for 1500pt games btw) is realized in the minds of both players, I.e. it is immersive.
8th’s excessive card gaminess plus flying tanks running contrary to deeply established background, and ridiculous marines with autocannons in jet packs (Srsly OMG stupid) completely spat in the face of the fictional reality constructed over years and years of the buildup of common expectations about what counts as reasonable in this fictional universe, and made the game unplayable for me and the hobby mostly unpalatable since.
9th at least gives us walls that mostly work like walls again, at least in some important ways. Now if the most of the card based bs and rando immersion breaking idiocy like snipers that don’t need LoS can disappear, we will have the war back in this game in a proper way.
Short story, it is a war (game) first.
It became more gamey with the rise of CCG fanatics and their video game addicted cousins, alongside the distancing of rpg enthusiasts likely due at least in part to the ccg and video addicted attitude about what counts as a good game or a reason to play 40k, e.g. collect cards/toys, look for some way to stack the deck, then look for a game system that lets them do something with this so called list of collected toys.
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Insectum7 wrote: ^In 6th and 7th AP values lower than 2 (1 and 0) modified the result on the damage table, which could get you a result of 7, which did extra Hull Points of damage, iirc.
. . .
Overall I like this conversation. I always felt that the more 'realistic/simulationist' versions of the game were 4th Ed and Prior. I loved 4th Ed Target Priority rules, terrain sizes, etc.
Absolutely.
Agreed that the game would be improved by more "realism", but the point was that it doesn't deliver a battle simulation at all. 40k doesn't do anything you listed well, whenever I see people touting the gameplay I just think you aren't honest about what you prioritize or you just haven't played anything else to compare it to. I'm not going to pretend that whatever's left of 40ks sim elements are what keep me buying/playing. If you don't care for the hobby side you can still like the game and recognize that it's shallow.
Can I poke in and say something about scale real quick? The increase in the size of the models is a bit disappointing to me from a "simulationist" perspective. I much prefer smaller models/armies in a big world(table) rather than larger models in a small table.
Like I totally get why GW is making bigger models. More detail, easier to paint, more impressive compared to competitors, easier to take photos to share, etc. All of that is totally understandable. But In terms of the models on the table in a gaming experience, the older, smaller ones feel more immersive to me.
The increase in base size plays into this impression, too. Most of my models are still on 28mm and I find that I still prefer a lower profile base, especially when I go back and play 2nd edition. The models "sit" into the landscape a little better, while the big bases feel more like game pieces on top of the landscape.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: So far, I wouldn't say my 9e experience has been particularly great either, but I do like 40k and I really liked 8e. I agree it's moved to include more "gamist principles", and while I will also personally rail against the proliferation of wounds and HP-like mechanics in general, I don't think that it's moved particular far from being a "simulation of war". The fundamental principles of the game as a conflict of maneuver, position, and fire are still very much present, which is what I think makes it a wargame. I don't find the abstraction a problem, because I came from and generally perfer to play divisional-scale wargames over skirmish scale, and definitely don't really like individual focused mechanics like facing or whatever.
As for alternative options, I like Flames of War, and if I could find nearly as many people willing to play with me as I can for 40k, that'd be sweet, but there's basically just Warmachine, Infinity, and 40k in places I play and of those only 40k is interesting to me.
Also, if you just want to pick up and play with people, I would highly reccommend trying to get your hands on copies of Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab Israeli Wars; old hex-and-counter wargames [real grognard's stuff ]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
As for HH, I really don't like Horus Heresy. Part of it is because well, the lore of the Heresy Era isn't really the part of 40k I like, part of it is that it's even marinier than the present day 40k, and part of it is that it's basically based on the worst of all worlds of 40k mechanics we've seen yet I think.
This is fair, though I view 40k much more on the skirmish end of things than the divisional end - in fact, I generally think that about most games that track individual models. As for 30k, I'll just say that of the last 10 games of HH my group has played, only one has been Marines vs Marines; most of the time it's Daemons of the Ruinstorm, Solar Auxilia, Imperial Militia, Talons of the Emperor, Taghmata Omnissiah, Ordo Reductor, or Legio Cybernetica vs. each other or vs. Marines, lol.
To your last sentence, though, why do you feel that way? I'm just curious; I know it's an opinion, but I typically assume opinions are informed by some experience or assessment of some kind.
Well, 5e was my past-favorite edition of 40k, and 7e was decidedly the worst. All the changes that I felt were bad were brought in in 6th: Hull Points, Flyers, Lords of War, Allies, and then 7th got even worse by doubling down on "incentives for playing 'fluffy'" with detachments.
And none of the past mechanics are something I adore enough or feel are necessary to want to go back to those days. I thought I would miss blast and vehicle facings, but... honestly, I don't. There's no real reason for them to exist at the scale of the game we play at, they didn't really add tactical value to the game. Tanks could turn freely, so like it wasn't like their facing was constrained by maneuver limitations, and the rear armor was essentially only accessible using a rule to ignore facing. Blasts were more interesting, because it was a way for low-BS armies like IG or Orks to overcome their poor Ballistic Skill, but as an area strike they didn't really mean anything anyway.unless you got really big.
And as for your versus my experience, everybody I know who did/wants to do 30k is a Loyalist Marine 1st Found Legion Fanboy who wants to field their legion's primarch and so on, and with 18 Marine factions and like 1/3'd that number of "not marine" factions, it's going to invariably be a lot of marines. I play too many Marine players in 40k, I don't need to visit the world of all marines all the time with even more mariney heroes with a world that panders to the mariney narrative even more than the modern 40k does [and also the fascist narrative, without the "hahaha fascists are stupid and funny and incompetent" that 40k has, but that's another question and another problem for another time]
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I've actually generally felt they should go the other way, and universalize more. There's no tactical difference between a tank made of flesh and armored in hardened bone than a tank made of steel and armored in composites, so vehicles and monsters should always have had the same mechanic to share between them.
I think you and I are very very different people, haha. There's a very big tactical difference between a tank and a beast, predominantly in the weapons and tactics employed, imho. This gets into the "Reality" of the universe a bit, so perhaps it's just a subjective thing, but when I see a Squiggoth or a Tyranid monster of some kind, I would typically want to bring explosive weapons to bear, because overpenetration with weapons like sabot rounds would be less harmful. Machine guns and small arms are a lot more useful as well, again assuming it isn't just a tank with different aesthetics.
Conversely, a tank is a wholly different beast, against which electromagnetic countermeasures and weapons are more likely to be effective, and against which penetration is more important than explosive power (unless you're talking REALLY BIG explosive power) because the stuff inside isn't that fragile once you get there. A tank is also easier to outmaneuver in the tactical sense, since its unidirectional treads means that it must make turns (pivot) before it can travel in a direction and can't sidestep, and its burdensome weight makes it wary of different kinds of obstacles and terrain than the types that would hinder monsters.
For example, against elephants (the closest mental analogue I have to a carnifex), a deep ditch probably won't be as effective as a field of caltrops, while an antitank ditch can bring an entire tank platoon to a halt to wait for engineers while caltrops would probably literally go unnoticed. Some unit types blur the lines - for example a walker might move more like a monster than a tank - but that's accounted for already, at least in theory. It certainly could be accounted for in other cases.
Of course, all this assumes that the setting actually treats beasts and tanks differently. I suppose it's possible for the setting to just decide that monsters are tanks and function identically, but my personal opinion is that Carnifexes are more akin to elephants than M1A2s, and that Leman Russes (for example) are more akin to M1A2s than to elephants. Needless to say, at the company level, I would bring different weapons to bear and issue different orders if I was being attacked by a herd of elephants than a team of M1A2s and mechanized carriers.
I disagree with all your points.
The exact material properties of Dorchester Chobham Armor or Ceramite & Adamant Composite or Tyranid Chitin or Necrodermis is effectively irrevelant, all that really matters is it's ability to resist shells. Tactically, a Carnifex and a Leman Russ fill the same tactical role: be a mobile heavy weapons carrier to support the infantry, fight other heavy weapons carriers, resist the fire of the things it fights, and conduct high speed operations in support of the breakthrough and exploitation.
And as far as weapons to fight them, I would say you would probably bring the same weapon. A gun that can kill an M1 tank, like a HEAT missile or a APFSDS shell, will absolutely kill an Elephant. And while part of that is that a 73 ton Abrams with 1300mm RHAe of armor isn't even in the same class as a 2 ton elephant with 0mm of armor, a hypothetical 70 ton armored elephant of abrams-like dimensions [so an M1 tank that, instead of being filled with 4 crewmen and hydraulics, was filled with a nervous system and meat] would also be concerned with being penetrated by high velocity penetrators and would also be pretty quickly killed when fragments of said penetrator tear through the flesh behind the armor shredding nerves, muscles, and vital organs in the exact same way that the fragments of said penetrator break things inside a tank.
Talking about the electronic warfare and feet versus tracks versus wheels is also an academic problem at basically any wargame scale. How fast does it move, and are there any special restrictions on doing so? That's really what matters. You can get into it, but if you get into it realitically then there's the problem of "Katherine, you're no fun. I wanna have a big stompy robot fight a big stompy monsters and you're here prattling on about ground pressure and front area and stabilization. Let the robot and monster fight." which really also isn't in the realm of wargames.
So anyway, I don't think any of the specific engineering differences between a Carnifex and a Leman Russ inherent to whether it made of meatiness with chitin plating or has a crew of 5 with adamatine composite plating is actually relevant. They have similar tactical roles [though a Carnifex is also a bit of a lighter unit than a Leman Russ, but anyway], similar behaviors, and similar effects on the field, and similar properties and appearance to the simulation at a higher level.
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Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
^I was just thinking about the shockwave damage caused by a high velocity shell going mach 4 through living tissue. I'm sure I could find a slow-mo video of that being simulated and it looking pretty rough on the internals.
Funny i think HH actually is a better rule set than 7th since FW basically went in and fixed most of the things wrong with 7th. having been a fan of the lore and having read all the books i also love the setting.
If i were to ever build a HH army from the ground up it would be mechanicum not marines.
When it comes to 40K game scale. it was always set as a small portion of the greater battlefront your force was fighting on. so while it may not be skirmish level of say infinity for 40K a 1,500 to 2,000 point game actually is a skirmish game in 40K scale.
If i want to go for the entire battlefront and not spend a fortune on overpriced GW minis no matter how good they look, i can play epic scale using the 8th ed index rules set with halved ranges and it works just fine with the necessary reduction in detail needed for that scale.
A side note, some games scale up or down easily. 40K had a system in 4th ed to go from kill teams to combat patrol, to standard games, to apocalypse using the 28mm scale.
Similarly DUST scales very well from a base game of 25 points all the way up to 200+ with a well written rule set with alternating activation. on the flip side infinity at its original core is designed in such a way that the game cannot function above the skirmish level.
. There's no real reason for them to exist at the scale of the game we play at, they didn't really add tactical value to the game. Tanks could turn freely, so like it wasn't like their facing was constrained by maneuver limitations, and the rear armor was essentially only accessible using a rule to ignore facing.
Wow, could not disagree with this more, were we playing the same game?
People had to trade off effective shooting for moving and defense against close combat as well as getting better LOS positions, there were very clear maneuver limitations, especially with the risks involved with difficult terrain.
Also pulling off a flank maneuver to get to the thinner side or rear armor was a reward for better tactics, or sometimes players not paying attention to where all their opponents forces were.
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GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
aphyon wrote: Funny i think HH actually is a better rule set than 7th since FW basically went in and fixed most of the things wrong with 7th. having been a fan of the lore and having read all the books i also love the setting.
Still has hull points, still has lords of war, still has flyers, so like, that's 3 points still against it and nothing really going for it mechanically, IMO. Being "somewhat better than the worst" isn't really a huge step up, particularly when that just makes it based on the second worst edition of 40k I've played.
As for wargame scale, I prefer the scale of 40k and up. Technically, I guess, Kill Team & Infinity and stuff we call "skirmish" wargames would be firefight scale, "company scale" wargames like 40k and bolt action would be at the skirmish scale, and then the miniatures pretty much stop and give way to hexes and counters at the divisional scale and then risk-like stuff at the operational and strategic scale.
The important things for a wargame I think is to be scale consistent. 40k is on the scale of platoons and companies. At this scale, it can be assumed that the tank commanders or squad sergeants are managing the details like exactly which rock Private Jimmy is hiding behind or which way the tank is facing, and the company commander is more concerned about where exactly the unit is and what it's engaging.
Wow, could not disagree with this more, were we playing the same game?
People had to trade off effective shooting for moving and defense against close combat as well as getting better LOS positions, there were very clear maneuver limitations, especially with the risks involved with difficult terrain.
Also pulling off a flank maneuver to get to the thinner side or rear armor was a reward for better tactics, or sometimes players not paying attention to where all their opponents forces were.
Uhh,,, I think we were, but sometimes I'm not sure. There is a 90 degree arc in which the AV10 rear of a tank could be engaged. I can put my tank most places on the board except like "in the middle of your army" and have my rear be unreachable. Like, the rear armor engagement cone of a tank was small and virtually only theoretically accessible to deep strike [but not practically accessible, since if it's at the front of or in the middle of my army, my army's there, and if it's at the back of my army, the board edge is there], so like, it essentially never came into play for me.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2020/08/19 18:51:20
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
As a human test subject I 100% left playing anything related to 40K/KT by mid 8th and am now playing mostly historic with a smattering of fantasy, but nothing hammer. GW does not provide quality rules for war gaming as a universal deficit so they have been ghosted by my Benjamins.
Paradigm for a happy relationship with Games Workshop: Burn the books and take the models to a different game.
Could Locarno or Cyel, if you have the time, show me what 8th/9th does that is more "modern" and de-emphasizes randomness and complexity in favor of elegance and player decision making?
Right now, to me (and admittedly I am biased), it seems like most of the decisions are made at listbuilding, and really only Stratagems are the choices you make - everything else is just executing a combo developed in listbuilding. Even a Stratagem sometimes.
Well, I said that they WANTED to move in the direction of more modern design, but rather (IMO) FAILED at this. As much as I would like WH40K to be more about players playing the game rather than what I call "the game playing the players" (the game is constantly saying what players have to do*) They failed at creating depth (multitude of meaningful options) trying to limit complication. But in the end they didn't even remove this, just think of the number of different sources of rules you need to play a game with some factions.
So, yeah, I basically agree with your opinion about WH40K being broad, but shallow, with decisions limited and often obvious and resolution much too long. While a game of, say, Warmachine, resembles a duel of two fencing swordmasters, WH40K is more like two giants standing in front of each other exchanging hits to the head with huge clubs.
*Game - "Now roll this bunch of dice. Now take all ones. Now roll them again. Now take all those 3 or more results. Now roll them again, then ..."
Player [getting bored] - "Hey, when will I do something I WANT to do!?
Game - "in about 20 minutes. Be patient. Now pick up all those 4+ results and...
aphyon wrote: I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
I mean, there were plenty of ways of killing a Knight or a Night Scythe or a whatever in 6th and 7th too. That didn't make them good introductions to the game IMO.
5th had problems, like wound allocation with multiwound model units, but all in all I would say it was okay, because it didn't have much I didn't like.
6th brought in the downhill slide, with a mechanic I didn't like [Hull Points], stuff out of scale like Lords of War and Flyers, and Allies. And also newer larger monstrous creatures that were really vehicles like Riptides but using the much better Monstrous Creature rules to just be better, and really highlighted the entirely arbitrary distinction between MC's and Vehicles.
7th decided that "fluff matters" and more special rules need to be a thing, and brought in formations and "rewards for being fluffy", which was a terrible mindset.
8th made a couple of positive change, notably entering into a self-consistent level of abstraction at a slightly higher level than before , which is a positive change even if it still has Lords of War, Flyers, and Allies. Then SM2.0 happened and Psychic Awakening happened, which were going into 7e territory, and now we're in 9th which IMO is looking to be to 8th what 7th was to 6th.
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
Absolutely, 40k is becoming more of a board game than a war game.
Why? Perhaps they think it will sell more that way. But I also think that the board game approach gives them far more flexibility (read doing whatever the heck they want without any regards for internal coherence or realism).
They have greatly simplified the realism aspects (turret and armor facing, armor, close combat mechanics) in favor of adding depth via gamey elements (aka stratagems).
I am not sure the game is simpler, in the end, it just emphasizes a different sort of aspects.
Personally, I prefer the simulation (approach), and I profoundly dislike stratagems. But, sadly, 30k isn't really a mainstream viable option these days.
PS . In favor of GWS; they did tone down a bit some super gamey elements in 9th (untargetable characters, conga lines, bad touching).
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Insectum7 wrote: Can I poke in and say something about scale real quick? The increase in the size of the models is a bit disappointing to me from a "simulationist" perspective. I much prefer smaller models/armies in a big world(table) rather than larger models in a small table.
Like I totally get why GW is making bigger models. More detail, easier to paint, more impressive compared to competitors, easier to take photos to share, etc. All of that is totally understandable. But In terms of the models on the table in a gaming experience, the older, smaller ones feel more immersive to me.
The increase in base size plays into this impression, too. Most of my models are still on 28mm and I find that I still prefer a lower profile base, especially when I go back and play 2nd edition. The models "sit" into the landscape a little better, while the big bases feel more like game pieces on top of the landscape.
Agreed! I think this has been particularly bad in the transition from WHFB to AoS.
I think sometimes 40k bogs down in model-level complications which make little sense to me; use the squad as the basic unit, not the miniature (what unit touches what, allocation of wounds, etc.).
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Oooh. Someone said Panzer Blitz and Panzer leader. In the same sentence no less! I have those on my shelves.
I'm also getting into Empires of Apocalypse at the moment. There's a shade under 4,000 counters, and I don't even have the 4th part yet...
Someone said earlier, 'Would you play Warhammer 40k if it was just a Hex and Counters game?' - I have been desperately stalking the internet for _Years_ for someone to make a good hex & counter varient of 40k, or more specifically a good divisional scale of game. The best they've done is Final Liberation in the 90's, and its all been downhill since, and Final Liberation had some glaring flaws. [Like being based on the Epic 40k system, and not the far superior Epic Armageddon system, for example.]
Speaking of Epic Armageddon, without a doubt one of the best games I've played. I was crippled inside when they disbanded specialist games, I was always more of a BFG and Epic & Modenhiem player than I was a Fantasy player, and I was more a Fantasy player than a 40k player.
Unfortunately GW seem hellbent on blowing up whatever system I enjoy playing and suggesting one with even more space marines, and then repeatedly re-writing that one to be less good.
I never got the chance to play seventh, but from what I vaguely understand, its problems were the players, not the system, much the same as 5th. The wound allocation rules wern't a huge problem, the problem was how mind bogglingly easy they were to exploit and break - The same is true of the detachment system, the principle is fine, the execution was dire and the loopholes you could drive a landraider through.
I have a feeling GW writes simplier and simplier rules systems because they're less easy to screw up. The more simplistic the system, the less likely you are to write a rule that blows it up. Couple this with the supposedly tiny pool of testers referenced earlier, and its no wonder they want to make everything as basic as possible. When you're dealing with a balence sheet as big as GW's, you can't afford to have your rules writers experiment with complex design.
I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling.
I miss flamer templates, but likewise feel the newest implimentation [I'd of gone with 10 inch, not 12, but there we are] is probably a fine balence between praticality and realism.
I try to re-write GW's rules every now and again. Somewhere on Dakka is the complete Imperial Guard 5th edition codex I re-wrote cover to cover after the garbage they gave me. But it's a lot of work for little gain - If I go anywhere actually wanting a game, it's matched play current edition 40k or nothing, even debating the validity of legends units is painful, much less going 'Why don't we try this instead?'
Dakka's mentality seems focused on 'Good' and 'Winning' not 'Fun' or 'Narrative', because what we're selling is a 'Game' and games are played to be won, where as I think I signed up for a 'Story' that should be 'told and enjoyed'. Battlefleet Gothic was a terribly fun and narrative system of giant space cathedrals blasting bits out of each other and made for a great story. You could actually _Run Away_! There was incentive to not have your horrifically expensive battleship destroyed rather than blindly fighting to the last man every game. Likewise, Epic dealt very well with complex millitary situations with its pinning/blast markers mechanic, even handling flanking in a system with no real concept of facing.
When I play a good old hex and coutners wargame, it's a simulation and a story defined by decision making. What happens if I try this? Or did this instead of this? If I did this where historically we did this, how does this change the story?
40k is muchly about 'How do I win this game?' To which the answer is 'Roll better dice than your opponent and copy a list off the internet.' I don't know if it's just me that notices in the 'debates' on Dakka about changes to the game, much of the discussion is entirely centered around 'This now makes my faction Win Less, or it makes my opponents Win More.' not, 'Well this doesn't make for a compelling game system because it doesn't properly reflex XYZ in the narrative.'
Precious few people care that the new change to 2 Wound Mini Marines is the first time they've ever been really consistant with the fluff - They care about the impact of D2 and D1 weapons on them, how competative they'll be next to primaris, and how many dice more Imperial Guard players will need to roll to kill any of them.
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/08/19 21:19:54
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
The "line across the front" is definitely better than the former implementation in 40k.
Actually, I just like Flames of War in general, and if I could get Flames of Warhammer 40k I would be a happy Katherine.
AdmiralHalsey wrote:Oooh. Someone said Panzer Blitz and Panzer leader. In the same sentence no less! I have those on my shelves.
Speaking of Epic Armageddon, without a doubt one of the best games I've played. I was crippled inside when they disbanded specialist games, I was always more of a BFG and Epic & Modenhiem player than I was a Fantasy player, and I was more a Fantasy player than a 40k player.
I never got the chance to play seventh, but from what I vaguely understand, its problems were the players, not the system, much the same as 5th. The wound allocation rules wern't a huge problem, the problem was how mind bogglingly easy they were to exploit and break - The same is true of the detachment system, the principle is fine, the execution was dire and the loopholes you could drive a landraider through.
I love Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, and Arab-Israeli Wars. unforuntately, I don't own a copy of Arab-Israeli Wars, but I do own the others. I also own a bunch of other wargames, but PL/PB are my favorite.
The problem with 7th wasn't players breaking it, it was very much with the rules. It was the stuff like "if you bring X set of units, you get a free dedicated transport for all of them!" so the suddenly a quadrillion points of free razorbacks wasn't "breaking the system" it was "working at intended".
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
AdmiralHalsey wrote: ...I'm not convinced 'Rear' armour was a good innovation. There's not a lot of difference shooting at a Panzer Mk III from the side or the rear - The point is you're not shooting at the front. Cutting rear armour would have been fine. I'd also abstract the blast templates, and stick with the current [9th] implimentation for 'Small Blast' and the Template version for large blasts. The point of large blasts is that where-ever they land they're going to do _Something_ possibly something dangerous to you, where as where a frag grenade explodes isn't important enough to be worth the extra dice rolling...
I've seen people suggest Flames of War armour facings (draw a horizontal line across the front of the vehicle, shots from in front of that line hit the front AV, shots from behind hit the side AV, and the really weak top/bottom AV is used against mines, indirect-fire artillery, and occasionally in melee) as a way to make armour facings easier to use. I hadn't considered using templates for larger weapons/random hits for smaller weapons but it would fix some things about the templates (volume of small blasts taking a long time to resolve, disproportionately long scatter distance on short-ranged weapons).
The "line across the front" is definitely better than the former implementation in 40k.
Actually, I just like Flames of War in general, and if I could get Flames of Warhammer 40k I would be a happy Katherine.
I agree. I'm not completely sold on Flames of War, though I do own a few armies, and it would need some tweaking to fit the 40k verse, [Rules for Skimmers, specifically, and probably walkers.] but it would definately be a significantly better game. Unfortunately the scales off - Flames is played at a proper scale, and 40k has no idea what scale it is.
'Yes, this single imperial guard junior officer is a unit. He has a sword and a pistol.
This Warlord Titan is also a unit. It can level an entire city.
So is this Thunderhawk gunship, which is space flight capable.
Also this INTERCONTENTIAL BALLISTIC MISSILE PLATFORM. After five turns you can fire it at the Imperial Guard officer! Don't worry though, it has very little chance of injuring him.
aphyon wrote: I have no problem with titanic vehicles or creatures, or flyers for that matter. especially in HH. there are plenty of things that do a fine job of killing them. i do have a problem with hull points and the fantasy style magic phase. both of which our group agrees to house rule out of the game. we use the old school 3rd-5th rules for psykers.
I do think the progression of D weapons got a little silly in 7th. i prefer the original apocalypse rules-very simple to the point that titans were not really that scary but did add some flavor to the game.
They ignore cover and armor, but not invul saves. insta kill anything not T6 or greater (or eternal warrior) and do an auto pen hit on a vehicle with a +1 on the damage chart roll.
You can always go back to the 3rd ed rules for titans where a turbo laser destructor fired a small blast S9/AP2 shot....so a template las-cannon.
I mean, there were plenty of ways of killing a Knight or a Night Scythe or a whatever in 6th and 7th too. That didn't make them good introductions to the game IMO.
5th had problems, like wound allocation with multiwound model units, but all in all I would say it was okay, because it didn't have much I didn't like.
6th brought in the downhill slide, with a mechanic I didn't like [Hull Points], stuff out of scale like Lords of War and Flyers, and Allies. And also newer larger monstrous creatures that were really vehicles like Riptides but using the much better Monstrous Creature rules to just be better, and really highlighted the entirely arbitrary distinction between MC's and Vehicles.
7th decided that "fluff matters" and more special rules need to be a thing, and brought in formations and "rewards for being fluffy", which was a terrible mindset.
8th made a couple of positive change, notably entering into a self-consistent level of abstraction at a slightly higher level than before , which is a positive change even if it still has Lords of War, Flyers, and Allies. Then SM2.0 happened and Psychic Awakening happened, which were going into 7e territory, and now we're in 9th which IMO is looking to be to 8th what 7th was to 6th.
Sounds to me you played on tables with far to little terrain where you could gun line from the back of the table (as an infinity player i tend to go terrain heavy to force maneuver even if it is not to the infinity level.), or you didn't have many scout/outflank/drop pod units to worry about.
Formations were also not what i would classify as "being fluffy" it was a way to break core game mechanics by buying a specific set of models. it was more of a marketing play than anything else. 3rd/4th ed and for some armies 5th were the editions where "fluff/lore" were a key part of game play. where factions could both be effective and play according to fluff without breaking core game mechanics I still have great love for many of the codexes form those editions -chaos 3.5, demon hunters, witch hunters, dark angels mini dex, armageddon codex etc....and we still incorporate them into our 5th ed games.
As an old school battletech player i am a big fan of combined arms play so bringing in flyers and superheavies is not game breaking to me. i always build my forces as all around army builds to deal with a bit of everything. and often times i could just ignore those units unless opportunity presented itself to work on other targets in the enemy force as prior to 6th they just were not that scary using their original FW rules.
Played FOW in MK1 back in the day. it never really grew on me. i much prefer forces of valors "battle tactics" skirmish level game or DUST to get my WWII fix.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/08/20 02:15:22
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
This has been one of the best threads I've read in a while.
I'm curious though about something that's cropped up between conversations and that's player choice (including lack-thereof) and one thing that has also been on my mind now with the new Action system in 9th, is that units may quite possibly be doing too much in a single turn.
As it stands some units, and even armies, are able to operate in the Movement, Psychic, Shooting and Charge/Fight phases of the game and that's not even including things like Warptime and Endless Cacophony. Units IMO are simply doing too much in one turn of the game. When there's no restriction, tactical choice or agency, of course you're going to do everything.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Bonus thought is that now things like the SM Captains 'Rites of Battle' and other like it can be changed from reroll Aurahammer to something like "At the beginning of your Command Phase, select a friendly Adeptus Astartes <Chapter> unit within 9". That unit can now make 3 Operations during this Battle Round."
To be clear, my intention is not to somehow nerf Jack-of-all-trades staple units like the ones I mentioned but to actually create a system that rewards them for being Jack-of-all-trades by not only allowing them to be flexible, but flexible at the Players discretion. Just thought I'd add some of my musing to this discussion.
The Qarnakh Dynasty - Starting Again From scratch...Once again
kirotheavenger wrote: People like straws, and they're not willing to give any up even as the camel begins to buckle.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Agreed! I would add that I think that the best way to do that would be to reintroduce "realism" in the game. By that I mean that the limitations to actions should be "realism" based, like they had been in the past for 40k.
For example, SM choosing between double tapping (rapid fire) or fire and charge; that's meaningful and strategic. Another example: in HH, terminator armors prevent you from certain combat actions.
Simulation can add depth to the game in a way that "makes sense", as opposed to some of the current strategies employed (aka stratagems).
7th flaws weren't formations, they were in the core rules. HH tried to save it and made the best of it, but it would be much better of with a stronger and more tactical base system like 9th edition has.
The AP system was bad because it resulted in every AP below 3 being irrelevant, tank rules didn't Work because of hull points and only made tank a downgrade for a unit (in HH most tanks can equip Upgrades to ignore many tank rules, and because of that they're viable there, in 40K the best antitank weapons were plasmaguns, Autocannons, Assault cannons and Eldar jetbikes) universal special rules were not so universal and partly dumb, psychic powers were a problem and the whole psychic phase was bad in that you never could defend against it and most psykers were reduced to being batteries. Unit types were very fiddly (I think at the end of 7th I had finally memorized the differences between Jet and jump).
Close combat had zero player interaction or tactics and was very hard to get to, imo the biggest improvement in 8th.
All characters were basically 100 shades of hitting people better (or shooting people better in the case of Tau). Auras aren't perfect but at least they represent Leader capabilities that simply didn't exist prior to 8th.
The terrain rules were arguably better compared to 8th, but basically you threw dozerblades on every tank to ignore them .
Morale had better rules but was totally ignored in 40K, only HH made use of them.
Didn't you start a thread some time ago where you came to the conclusions that 40k is not a wargame anymore?
In any case, WH40k has always been a complex board game for me.
I came from a background of being a competitive MtG player, playing complex board games (all the FFG stuff) regularly and enjoying RTS games like StarCraft, Warcraft 3, C&C, Red Alert and DoW a lot. Warhammer 40k seemed like a perfect fit for me as a complex strategy board game with cool miniatures and deck building elements(=army list writing). I split a box of AOBR with a friend at college and was having fun playing 5th edition in no time, rapidly increasing my collection of orks into a full blown battlewagon bash army.
When I started 40k, I also was playing P&P games twice a week, but despite veterans insisting that it was very similar, I never saw the connection between the two. The only thing 4th/5th edition and the P&P rulesets I know had in common was the low quality rules writing full of giant loopholes. Except in 40k there never was a DM/GM to whack a player insisting on exploiting a loophole in the heard with a book and tell you to stop being an idiot. I still have my 4th edition ork codex with an entire list of rules I need to clarify before the game.
Missions were(are) bland, there was no useful system to string games together and at the end of the game, the winner takes it all.
Mechanics like tank-shocks, fast skimmers, open topped and suicide meltas were what won games and not immersive at all. Neither was the need to properly space out your orks 2" because otherwise those blasts and flamers would simply pulverize your army before it did anything.
Having played most of my games at that time with orks against eldar, armor facings were one of the least immersive things. An eldar autarch standing directly in front of a battlewagon would take a small step to the right and suddenly would almost be guaranteed to destroy it in one blow, while he had almost no chance of hurting it before. And don't get me started on facings on eldar hover tanks. The rules were clearly unfit for anything that wasn't an imperial box-shaped vehicle.
The vast majority of interaction with rules many of you fondly remember like blasts, facings, fall back moves and scatter dices were arguments about how to resolve them - how many models were hit, which facing the melta guy was standing it and what not.
The closest 40k ever got to immersive rules at that time were the Imperial Armor books. Great story, great units, with missions to re-enact those stories. I still read IA:6 some times today.
Sadly the mission design was written in a way that pretty much no one but the authors themselves could hope to ever play them due to extremely specific army and unit requirements.
It certainly didn't help that veteran faction who wanted this kind of immersive play did everything alienate new players. There was this completely irrational hatred towards named characters, while legendary creatures in magic were something awesome and fun in magic. As soon as you did something that was working well in the game, like bringing a full units of lootas, having deff rollas for all of your battlewagons or if you put boarding planks onto your battlewagons from the trukk kit suddenly you were doing something "beardy". Some even insiste that, as an ork, you had to blindly rush into the enemy and die, anything else was breaking their immersion
Of course, can immerse yourself into a game of WH40k if you really want, but that is true for pretty much every game ever. I remember a drunk session of "Ticket to Ride" escalating into a full blown roleplay dispute between me (russia) and the french and british players over who would get build the railroad from Moscow to Berlin, all flinging insults at each other with faux accents.
"But jidmah, you could have done X, Y and Z to make the game more immersive!" - sure, I could have. But I saw about as much need to turn Warhammer 40k into an immersive roleplaying experiences as I did for MtG.
TL;DR: Warhammer 40k might have been a game trying to immerse yourself akin to a roleplaying game in its early years, but by the time 4th edition was written there clearly wasn't anything left for someone like me to find. It was lacking everything that makes a good roleplay system except piles of rules and stats.
As for the "modern board game" topic, I full agree with locarno24's analysis.
GW is clearly trying to move into the direction of modern gaming, because many modern games do lots of things right that 40k does wrong. And that is a good thing IMO, despite them having moderate success. It has never been a very immersive game in the first place to me, so the most expensive board game in the world might as well try to be the best one.
In the end, there will always be issues where realism is in direct contradiction to having a fun game. Having your vehicles' survival primarily solely based on luck like it was in 5th removes player agency and has absolutely no counter.play and therefore makes the game less enjoyable for most people.
Many things in the game right now are not inherently flawed mechanics, but instead just done in a bad way. In my opinion GW's ability to write decent rules is that of a four year old small studio, not that of a decades old behemoth. Which makes sense when you think about it, before 8th they never actually incorporated feedback from any of their customers into the game, they have had no proper release cycles and no long term marketing attached to their releases.
For example, let's take stratagems. No modern board game puts 20+ cards in your hand and tells you to use them at the proper time, I'm puzzled as to why GW thought this would be a good idea. Right now both my armies (Orks and DG) have been drowned in stratagems of variable quality and function. Some upgrade units before the game, some react to enemy actions, some just buff your units' damage, defense or movement and some activate an ability for a specific unit. After pretty much every game, I realize that I have forgotten to use one or the other, because they are now scattered across two books and there is no longer a card deck with all of them inside.
I think upgrade stratagems are fine, things kustom jobs, scarboyz, exalted greater daemons, prototype weapons, chosen of nurgle, contaminated monstrosity, extra relics and warlord traits and similar are great and it's fine that there is a limited resource for them which is different from points. You use those during list building and they don't bother you anymore during the game and you get more diverse armies onto the table as a result.
Stratagems that react to enemy actions are actually the best kind - it allows you to actually do something during your opponent's turn while you have to consider your opponent's possible actions during yours. Of course, this only works with a maximum of six to eight stratagems of this kind, anything beyond that will become a chore (someone above mentioned a "hand" of actions.
Abilities should just be part of the datasheet, and nothing prevents GW from having abilities on datasheets costing CP when activated. Something like "'eadbut(1CP): After this model has moved, it automatically crashes and burns. No other unit can use 'eadbut during this turn". You could even have different CP costs attached to different units, so you no longer have awkward PL thresholds which don't work.
The flat buffs? Yeah, those should go away. Turning CP into damage was a major flaw of multiple armies which severely limits how much power they can put into baseline units - for example when creating a new chaos infantry unit it always has to be designed around being shot twice.
If you go through with these changes you would have a list of upgrades you can take while writing your list and a small hand full of reactive stratagems which actually reflect a commander taking direct action. Both compete for resources with powerful abilities on some of your units so they create interesting choices, plus they return some of the realism as units don't suddenly "power up" out of nowhere and shoot three times as good as the same guys standing next to them.
On the topic of realism, I think things which are clearly counter-intuitive and going against all reason should be fixed. For example 8th edition's character targeting rules were such a case.
However, going down to a detail level like where you are arguing whether a missile has more impact on a carnifex or a LRBT? Way too detailed.
In 40k bright lances, dark lances, ork rokkits, battle cannons, missiles, lascannons, heavy venom cannons and ion cannons all have and always had a very similar impact on armor or monsters they hit despite their lore making them out as completely different weapons. There really is no point in differentiating between carnifex and LRBT if you don't have enough design space to differentiate between a rokkit and a heavy venom cannon.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks actually do not think that purple makes them harder to see. The joke was made canon by Alex Stewart's Caphias Cain books. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
Mixzremixzd wrote: This has been one of the best threads I've read in a while.
I'm curious though about something that's cropped up between conversations and that's player choice (including lack-thereof) and one thing that has also been on my mind now with the new Action system in 9th, is that units may quite possibly be doing too much in a single turn.
As it stands some units, and even armies, are able to operate in the Movement, Psychic, Shooting and Charge/Fight phases of the game and that's not even including things like Warptime and Endless Cacophony. Units IMO are simply doing too much in one turn of the game. When there's no restriction, tactical choice or agency, of course you're going to do everything.
I think dialling back on what units can do within a single turn can actually go a very long way in reintroducing relevant decision-making. If units were only allowed to operate in only 2 phases of the game like Moving and Shooting, Psychic and Shooting, Shooting and Fighting (For this example I'm counting the Charge and Fight Phases together) that might not make much of a difference for specialist units like a Necron Doomsday Ark, Aeldari Dark Reapers or Genestealers, but I feel like all of a sudden things like Intercessors, Nu Immortals with 2A, Chosen etc. that often are good at every phase of the game available to them become less of a no-brainer in terms of what they can do and what they should do.
Bonus thought is that now things like the SM Captains 'Rites of Battle' and other like it can be changed from reroll Aurahammer to something like "At the beginning of your Command Phase, select a friendly Adeptus Astartes <Chapter> unit within 9". That unit can now make 3 Operations during this Battle Round."
To be clear, my intention is not to somehow nerf Jack-of-all-trades staple units like the ones I mentioned but to actually create a system that rewards them for being Jack-of-all-trades by not only allowing them to be flexible, but flexible at the Players discretion. Just thought I'd add some of my musing to this discussion.
From a design perspective, the kind of system you propose does reward specialists over jacks of all trades- adding a rifle to a character that needs to move and melee isn't very useful, for example. But the game could be balanced with that in mind; maybe tacking on a couple of psychic powers to an otherwise fighty character isn't super useful, but would come cheap, and give it some flexibility.
In general though this is a system a lot of games use; but rather than tie it to phases in an IGOUGO system, they're often 'actions' performed during a unit's activation in an AA system. Dust Warfare is a good example, where each unit gets two actions they can use during their activation; it combines seamlessly with a reaction system that allows you to take an action immediately after the enemy at the cost of an action later.
You can also go a step further and allow spending multiple actions on the same activity. Move twice and then you don't need an Advance mechanic, you just have double movement at the cost of an opportunity to shoot. Spend two actions on shooting and some systems will let you shoot twice, while others have you only shoot once, but at +1 to hit.
Then you can start playing with mechanics that add or reduce actions. Maybe becoming 'suppressed' as a morale effect reduces you to just one action, and then becoming 'pinned' removes both of your actions (temporarily). Maybe units that are intended to be highly mobile and fight on the move get a single free Move action in addition to their other actions for the turn. If you want C&C to play a bigger role, it can be modeled as giving out free actions, allowing better-commanded armies to be faster and more reactive than worse-commanded armies.
On top of all that, things like abilities to repair friendly units or scenario-specific actions to complete objectives integrate seamlessly into the core mechanics as actions a unit can perform.
This is a perfect example of a way that wargames have innovated on mechanics over the last few decades, while GW has been slow to catch up.
Legio Suturvora 2000 points (painted)
Daemonhunters 1000 points (painted)
Flesh Tearers 2000+ points (painted) - Balt GT '02 52nd; Balt GT '05 16th
Kabal of the Tortured Soul 2000+ points (painted) - Balt GT '08 85th; Mechanicon '09 12th
Greenwing 1000 points (painted) - Adepticon Team Tourny 2013
]; they're both fun and easy to learn and play, which makes them my personal favorite of the old-fashioned wargames I own.
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