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Basically just curious to see whether people think that Stratagems have been a good addition to 40k overall, or if their inclusion has made the game worse.

Stratagems were a nice inclusion in the game but they quickly went for a Datasheet Ability --> Stratagem approach that made me realize how quickly they lost their initial vision of them being a tactical move/action rather than a way to have a unit be taken only for their stratagems

Yeah, I actually really like stratagems conceptually. There is obviously some frustration inherent in any system if some faction has like a really crazy stratagem, but for the most part, I like having special abilities that are limited by a central limited resource.

I especially like them now that detachments don't buy them and you get 1 each turn, encouraging you to hold on to a pool of 3-4 so you can keep using important stratagems into the later turns.

Yes, I'm a big fan of the concept and mechanism.

That said, I hate 'shoot again' type strats that break the action economy.

 harlokin wrote:
Yes, I'm a big fan of the concept and mechanism.

That said, I hate 'shoot again' type strats that break the action economy.

Eh, the only thing I wish about the "do x again" strats was that they didn't stack with other stratagems. I dislike that so many things are "until the end of the phase" allowing you to get double value for "do x again". I think "do x again" would be much less of a problem if the standard was "on your next attack" for momentary buffs instead of "until the end of the phase."

Personally I feel they were an interesting concept done poorly (par for the course with GW). Originally they seemed cool but they decided to make them a focus of armies, putting a lot of the meat in a faction behind them and taking stuff that used to be actual rules and making them limited use stratagems instead.

Worse IMO.

There are things that make sense as stratagems and it's not a bad system in theory, but they have taken a lot of things that should have been wargear and unit rules and made them stratagems.

IMO no, a lot of units had special abilities and many of those abilities are now stratagems that a unit had for free but now is a resource and many other units can now share taking the uniqueness away from such units.

Here are a few examples for DE


Eviscerating Fly-by - When a wych unit with fly advances of a unit deal X MW's
This one really makes me mad actually. This was once only on the Reavers it was their Bladevanes rules, it was taken away and given to all Wych units with fly and now costs CP as well. Making the 1 unique thing about Reavers non-unique

Crucible of Malediction - In Psychic phase on a 4+ deal D3 MW's to each Psyker within 12", once per game
Even in the index the Haemonculus has this on their datasheets, it was a 1 time item for every haemonculus, not only is it once per game regardless how many Haemonculus you have but it is 2CP when it was a free piece of wargear.

Enhanced Aethersails - Do not roll for advance for a Raider instead it advances 8"
This was once just a vehicle upgrade, now only 1 can use it and a upgrade is gone.

There are many more in many books (even more in DE like SOul trap, and others etc..), but IMO it didn't make the game better, it just took unit rules. And it also makes learning and fighting against new armies harder b.c its just more rules you have to learn that MANY units can do instead of just 1 unit (or 1 type of unit) can do.

If stratagems was there to change how armies played like the relics, WL trait, bonus Auras, buffs to certain skills, etc.. then i think it woul dbe much better, a system that you the general (The Commander) can do to make your force the style of force you want it to be.

Worse. 40k didn't need ccg style mechanics. They've taken things that should have been unit or faction abilities and turned them into stackable buffs. Then you get into the stuff that throws unit balance out of whack like shoot and fight twice strategems and strategems that break the wounding table. How do you balance units when you never know if they'll be fighting/shooting once or twice? Or weapons that can punch above their weight for 1CP? Or high strength weapons that loyalists can turn into S4 for 2CP?

Well, the right stratagem used at the right time can improve your winning changes.
I'd count on stratagems atm.

I don't think so. When 8th first came out I was alright with the core ones and perhaps uinque ones for individual missions. I'd guessed that they'd add more with codex releases (perhaps 3-5) but the sheer amount of them and the sheer power level of some of them I was not ready for.

That said they are fairly easy to largely ignore if you are looking for a casual experience.

Worse.

They lead to obliterator syndrome, in which units need to be costed accordingly to stand permanently under the effect of them and other effects, making units autopicks for specific kinds of combinations and auto non picks for anyone else.

They were upgrades once, giving the AA missile to the missile launcher baseline would've made it truly a generalist weapon which could've been discussed as merits.
Same with ard boyz beeing once a unit even, etc. THis ties in with obliterator syndrome, making it further more difficult to actually balance an army regardless of PL or pts, since there is no pricetag attached. (same with traits)

These stratagems are not stratagems they are bs and should be treated as such.
They fundamentally alter compatibility with the edition, index vs Codex showed the disparaty nicely,so will 9th edition codex vs 8th ones.

Power disparaty, let's just don't talk around the bush, they are themselves extremely unbalanced. There's no reason fighting double in melee should cost more CP then shooting twice, yet it does. Not to mention that such double fighting stratagems, ones that modify the wounding rolls (which is also partially the issue with the wounding table) and denial tools are pretty much superior to a lot of other stratagems for no apparent reason.

I found it actually brought some decisions and ressource management into the game. While in 6th and 7th you actually, as a player, didn't do much outside of listbuilding and just watched the fireworks, 8th edition brought in actual tactics and stratagems are part of that.
They were also an answer to the formation debacle. In 7th GW put loads of special rules on every unit through formations - then they restarted the game but index 40K was extremely bland, stratagems were a way to include fluffy rules without breaking a faction because they were limited in use. Of course some stratagems were straight up too good as usual for GW and they allowed more and more CP to use which made it actually a bit similar to the formation situation in 7th. But overall it was a very good inclusion imo.

They were good when there were a few of them. These days there are far too many in general, and too many that overload the kill factor of a unit in particular. Keeping track of your own stratagems turns gameplay into exam preparation.

The game would work better and smoother if people would use just the Core Book stratagems imo.

Yes they've made the game a lot better.

Stratagems as a concept are a lot of fun and add variety. Of course come combos could be overpowered but it's just GW that couldn't (don't want to?) balance things, game mechanics have no fault.

I like stratagems and think they have improved the game.

I also think however that the design is flawed - and GW have moved away from the concept as small tactical flourishes to... just anything really.

A bad unit should be buffed (dare I say "fixed") - it shouldn't get a "use 1 CP to make it 33-50% more effective" bandaid stratagem. Its sloppy design even if I can sort of see why some people might think its cool.

There shouldn't be faction defining stratagems that warp the entire faction around them - and these certainly shouldn't be locked behind certain sub factions. In fact I'd go so far to say sub faction stratagems are definitely bad.

Perhaps weirdly I don't much mind the "this should have been wargear" stratagems - but I see the CPs as a resource that can be spent just like points. The problem, much like points, is when the exchange rates are busted.

Every army in the game should have Vect.

No. A little worse. Fiddly interrupts to bog the game down with more rules checking and wording issues weren't a particularly useful thing to add.

A bit overly complicated for the illusion of complexity. And they added so many that the divide between good (worth using) and bad filler for the sake of having more is really transparent.

On the down side, stratagems make the game more complex to play and much more difficult understand, while making it difficult to properly balance units. On the up side, they add a little bit of command and control simulation to the game, and a little bit of decision-making. On balance I think they're a net negative.

My opinion?

As is tradition with GW: Great concept, abysmal execution with massively inconsistent design philosophy.

The idea of a resource-limited number of on-demand support abilities is a cornerstone of many strategy games of various types. In that sense, Statagems aren't an awful idea. However, with 40k, we have several issues.

Stratagems range from insanely powerful capabilities that make or break units/armies to pointlessly trivial. There's far too many Stratagems in general for people to keep track of and remember/execute properly, too many that might as well not exist or are too niche/fiddly to really be of any value or that arbitrarily don't apply to the units that could really use them, and too many that are incredibly powerful or that are fine applied to some units but horrifically broken applied to others and have problems with scaling (e.g. Vengeance for Cadia isn't terribly overpowered applied to a squad of Guardsmen or Stormtroopers, applied to a Shadowsword however it's an entirely different story).

In many instances, GW seems to have removed unique unit, weapon, or army abilities and turned them into Stratagems just for the sake of having more Stratagems.

As a result we end up with a fundamentally decent idea that expressed itself as an inconsistent mess of abilities that cause all sorts of balance headaches, fiddly play problems, and game design issues. They have the potential to make the game better, but as delivered I believe they result in a worse end product.

External resource mechanics to model command and control are a generally sound mechanic that can add a lot to a game.

Stratagems just... don't do that, though. They're more like power-ups or special abilities that have an activation cost, and boost a unit's capabilities beyond what would be implied by the model or statline.

I think I'd like stratagems a lot more with a bit of tweaking:

-More generation per-turn, less up-front. Warmachine uses Focus in a similar way, with it being expended to cast spells or push your units to perform better. The difference with Warmachine is that your warcasters generate Focus each turn, making it a limited but replenishing resource rather than something you can blow on turn 1.

-Fewer extreme force-multipliers. Shoot-twice and fight-twice stratagems are particularly egregious because they make it difficult to balance a very shooty or very stabby unit, see: entire Chaos codex. Beyond that, it's a little frustrating to have units where you are incentivized to take exactly one full-size unit. Not one half-size unit, not two half-size units, not even two full-size units, but exactly one full-size unit to routinely activate a stratagem on.

-More C&C-oriented stratagems, fewer direct combat ones. Things like artillery strikes, rallying bonuses, pre-battle upgrades, and the basic re-roll stratagem to grease the wheels all fit the idea of command points representing the cohesiveness and organization of a fighting force within a greater whole. Stripping out unit abilities to turn them into stratagems makes command points a necessary resource for units to function, rather than something layered on top.

-Just not as many of them. There are way too many to keep track of, even with a 'cheat sheet' pre-made of just the ones that apply to my army. And I don't even play Marines.

I dunno, I voted for a little worse because I feel like a lot of design potential and current units had been gutted of their unique ability in order to inflate the number of stratagems for a faction. Minor example, Lychguard dispersion shields went from 3++ to 4++ (In 7th to 8th) but their unique 'bounce back enemy shots' that was in 5th was brought back as a stratagem as well as buffing them back to 3++.

To which I wonder, why couldn't this have been a once per game datasheet ability? I don't buy the tactical sense of an Overlord deciding whether to spend the last CPs on Lychguard shields or a DDA acting on the top profile. What is really stopping you from doing both besides an arbitrary design feature of the game? It just feels like false complexity/strategy and leads to imo phoned in design: A unit is bad and doesn't perform according to the lore and design niche? Slap a 2CP stratagem to make it good! A unit is nominally bad in all regards but is only good/competitive because of this one, singular exploitative stratagem? Slap a points hike on the unit and call it a day!

To be fair to GW though, they did address some of this with regards to the Rotate Ion Shields issue so give credit where credit is due.

My two cents for redesigning stratagems. I'd like for units that had unique abilities to be returned to them and pointed accordingly for such and leave maybe 5 stratagems, not including the core book, per faction with a bonus 2 for a sub-faction. Simple n easy. If you wanna take it further in matched play add a rule where players could only make a deck of 7 total stratagems from the core book, codexes, supplements etc. Tactical geniuses like Creed can net you a bonus card if you want to play the system a little to represent good commanders. As for the currency of use? I'd just remove CP all together and instead each strat has a number of times it can be used per game.

Stratagems pretty much destroyed any semblance of the possibility of balance.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Stratagems pretty much destroyed any semblance of the possibility of balance.

This right here.

It's a substitute for having actual game mechanics in the core rules which is a huge failing of the 8th edition base rules. It ends up being something that has to be layered on top of the core rules instead of being fully integrated into the rules. It means that faction stratagems can't really interact with other faction stratagems. It also means that what a stratagem does tends to be limited to mostly mechanics that the core ruleset has which is a relatively limited set of rules.

In terms of how it makes the game feel, it gives off MtG vibes which is personally something I really despise (I got out of MtG to play 40k). It makes me have flash backs of "I'll be attacking with this creature and I'll tap a land to give it +3/+3". It also has issues of limiting how many abilities your units can perform which can feel very arbitrarily. Apparently this Tau cadre has only 1 EMP grenade which I guess a logistics drone has to deliver to a fire warrior team to throw but the other units of fire warriors cannot throw a grenade as there is only 1 logistic drone.

A lot of these tend to just be increases in lethality which isn't exactly compelling gameplay and often cause weird situations due to the d6 system. Pulse rifle spam being a good Knight killer due to stratagems modifying the "to wound" being another wonky example of stratagems feeling too game like.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Stratagems pretty much destroyed any semblance of the possibility of balance.

Pretty big statement with no follow up?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Stratagems pretty much destroyed any semblance of the possibility of balance.

Pretty big statement with no follow up?

Because it's pretty self evident? Especially since the majority of stratagems are "balanced" around the 8th edition way of generating command points. A 1CP Custodes stratagem is orders of magnitude more powerful than a 1CP Imperial Guard stratagem. It also adds a huge amount of complexity, requiring you to keep track of every possible stratagem possibly being used on any unit on the board, as opposed to unit abilities.

Personally, I would remove stratagems and bring back one-time use abilities for units. That way you can actually balance units and keep track of when their super-secret-tech has or hasn't been used.

Also, the huge difference in the effectiveness of some stratagems means some are "use every turn, no thought needed" to "totally and utterly worthless why would I bother ever using this".

Like, why would I spend 2CP to give a single Basilisk re-roll to hit or spend 2CP and reinforcement points to re-spawn a unit or causing a single mortal wound on a 6, when I could instead spend those 2CP on Overlapping Fields of Fire?

 Amishprn86 wrote:
IMO no, a lot of units had special abilities and many of those abilities are now stratagems that a unit had for free but now is a resource and many other units can now share taking the uniqueness away from such units.

Here are a few examples for DE


Eviscerating Fly-by - When a wych unit with fly advances of a unit deal X MW's
This one really makes me mad actually. This was once only on the Reavers it was their Bladevanes rules, it was taken away and given to all Wych units with fly and now costs CP as well. Making the 1 unique thing about Reavers non-unique

Crucible of Malediction - In Psychic phase on a 4+ deal D3 MW's to each Psyker within 12", once per game
Even in the index the Haemonculus has this on their datasheets, it was a 1 time item for every haemonculus, not only is it once per game regardless how many Haemonculus you have but it is 2CP when it was a free piece of wargear.

Enhanced Aethersails - Do not roll for advance for a Raider instead it advances 8"
This was once just a vehicle upgrade, now only 1 can use it and a upgrade is gone.

There are many more in many books (even more in DE like SOul trap, and others etc..), but IMO it didn't make the game better, it just took unit rules. And it also makes learning and fighting against new armies harder b.c its just more rules you have to learn that MANY units can do instead of just 1 unit (or 1 type of unit) can do.

If stratagems was there to change how armies played like the relics, WL trait, bonus Auras, buffs to certain skills, etc.. then i think it woul dbe much better, a system that you the general (The Commander) can do to make your force the style of force you want it to be.

Understood, but then how do you point those things to keep them from being junk or auto-take? Was there really a choice?

And what of abilities that don't fit an upgrade or special rule?

Should my TS always get +2 to cast or pick spawn abilities?

As is tradition with GW: Great concept, abysmal execution with massively inconsistent design philosophy.

I feel like that could almost be the GW mission statement at this point. Like so many other things, it was a fantastic concept that went horribly, horribly wrong.

I liked the idea of having a few core strats that everyone got in the main book, on or two mission specific ones where appropriate, and then a small handfull for each army in the codex.

Instead, what developed was just so lopsided and odd - Loyalist marines - Here's half a million fantastic strats for everything you could ever possibly need ...

DG: "Hey, what about us?" GW:"Shut up and use your cloud of flies and be grateful you got it!"

I think where they ended up, there are too many over-all, they slow the game way down, too many are dedicated to re-rolls (which further slows the game), and too many armies have only a very small number of useable strats while for other armies, it's an embarrassment of riches ...

TL;DR

Love the idea, hate the actual execution.

My issue is some of the Stratagems just not being army wide or Faction wide. True Grit is the biggest offender here. Not only do even Grey Knights not have access to it, SOMEHOW during the battle only one squad of Grey Hunters said "Hey this is a good idea".

It adds complexity to the game... which is good.

But it also makes it a lot harder to implement in a balanced fashion, and it has created some armies which basically have no uses for their CP (Eldar have gak stratagems outside of a couple) or some armies which literally chug them as fast as humanly possible (ex: Custodes) because they are incredible.

I think they also haven't learned how to price some of them properly. You'd be hard pressed to convince me Chapter Master is costed as much as hit on 5s for Orks, but here we are.