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 Lance845 wrote:
The only value is emotional for the people who really like to have their own unique datasheet. Mechanically and practically there is none.

Further this can get applied to war gear as well. It has been argued that having power axe, power sword, power spear, etc etc... is a waste. Just have a singular stat line for power weapon and then the player is free to model whatever weapon they want onto the model to flavor it however they see fit.

The extra granularity isn't actually helping anything and doesn't actually make that big of a difference while the modeling options would become vastly better.

Thanks. You are rock solid evidence that I was correct when I respond to the OP back on page 1.

 Lance845 wrote:


Thanks. You are rock solid evidence that I was correct when I respond to the OP back on page 1.

You thank yourself for supporting your point.

No. I quoted myself to show it to you. I was speaking to you. Sorry if that was confusing for you.

Sunny Side Up wrote:



I dont know. Perhaps so there is an army in 40K for people like Lance845 and yourself that appreciate a more austere approach and would be turned away by things like bespoke rules for Catachans vs. Cadians?

Thus far, the argument was that 40K has allegedly too many minutia, now you're saying it has not enough?

Cadians getting to reroll hits and catachans having +1S is the bespoke rules they get....

 Lance845 wrote:
No. I quoted myself to show it to you. I was speaking to you. Sorry if that was confusing for you.

Ahh, ok.

As I said. I was there when 40K was in 4th Edition and did exactly that. Generic power weapon rules. Generic daemon rules. Etc...

It sounds somewhat plausible on paper, but ultimately destroys the immersion and richness of the game as too many players in turn settle for the bland minimum. I prefer 9th Ed.

Perhaps in some part because there are too many people in 40K that don't put sufficient effort into the hobby aspect. Maybe the simpler-rules-for-hobby-freedom-approach can work in some distant future when the community as a whole puts significantly more effort to the hobby/narrative side and each and every army I ever meet at a local RTT is a genuinely hobby-feast for the eyes and the lore enthusiast in me without needing minutia-prompts from GW?

I suspect the issue in 4th is that like today GW fethed it up.

SSU, I'm not sure you got my point.

My ideal for 40k is a tight, well-balanced game, that still has plenty of customization. But! I acknowledge that that is not GW's goal, and relatedly, not likely to ever happen.

But, with that in mind, what I'd like that's more realistic, is for there to be lots of customization. But there isn't-not for everyone. My Nurgle Daemons, across a dozen datasheets, have 10 options. 10. Total.

4th was a fantastic edition, I think, and one of the "peaks" of GW's market share ownership.

5th rode it out, but GW's marketshare dropped in 6th and 7th.

Then it climbed again in 8th, primarily due to the accessibility of the new edition and the promise indexes would bring back old models (e.g. from 4th edition) that people had lying around who ducked out of 6th or 7th...

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
No. I quoted myself to show it to you. I was speaking to you. Sorry if that was confusing for you.

Ahh, ok.

As I said. I was there when 40K was in 4th Edition and did exactly that. Generic power weapon rules. Generic daemon rules. Etc...

It sounds somewhat plausible on paper, but ultimately destroys the immersion and richness of the game as too many players in turn settle for the bland minimum. I prefer 9th Ed.

Perhaps in some part because there are too many people in 40K that don't put sufficient effort into the hobby aspect. Maybe the simpler-rules-for-hobby-freedom-approach can work in some distant future when the community as a whole puts significantly more effort to the hobby/narrative side and each and every army I ever meet at a local RTT is a genuinely hobby-feast for the eyes and the lore enthusiast in me without needing minutia-prompts from GW?

GW is just as likely to create immersion breaking rules by being specific, though. Probably more so, because they have to write MOAR rules. 3rd ed might be the best version of 40K, and they achieved that by stripping out a lot of nonsense.

I suspect the secret to the success of 8th and 9th (even in the face of a pandemic that would've wiped the company in a month 10 years ago) is that GW today got it largely right.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
I suspect the secret to the success of 8th and 9th (even in the face of a pandemic that would've wiped the company in a month 10 years ago) is that GW today got it largely right.

I don't think they got it largely right. I think they got it so catastrophically wrong in 6th and 7th that the improvements in 8th look right by comparison. They took HUGE strides forward. But the shiniest turd still goes in the toilet.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
I suspect the secret to the success of 8th and 9th (even in the face of a pandemic that would've wiped the company in a month 10 years ago) is that GW today got it largely right.

I think they got it right enough to tempt players in - that's what I mean by accessibility. But I don't think there's any sign the game is actually retaining players - at the end of 8th, event attendance was relatively stable, after a huge boom at the beginning of the edition.

Note that there's nothing fluffier about 8th and 9th vs 4th in terms of options - some options are new, but other options have been removed (lemme mount my Chaos Lord on a Slaaneshi Seeker, like I could every edition before 8th- oh, oh I see..)

I never found generic power weapons to be flavorless or an issue in that regard, especially when most of the non-powered equivalents weren't differentiated, and I much preferred just being able to stick whatever weapon I thought looked coolest on instead of having to worry about which weapons did what and what weapon combo is now illegal or underpowered and whatnot. The differentiation at that level just isn't worth it, particularly when most of the time you'd have two nearly matched options and one clearly standout worst option if given a choice.

Generic Daemons were an issue because the various daemons genuinely had very divergent profiles and uses and there wasn't any unit options for differentiation or purpose, only size, and there really wasn't an actual daemon unit that really fit the profile offered.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
4th was a fantastic edition, I think, and one of the "peaks" of GW's market share ownership.

5th rode it out, but GW's marketshare dropped in 6th and 7th.

Then it climbed again in 8th, primarily due to the accessibility of the new edition and the promise indexes would bring back old models (e.g. from 4th edition) that people had lying around who ducked out of 6th or 7th...

That's not what the numbers say.




4th released at one of the historic (laughable today, but so what) highpoints in 2004 at around 750 GBX, having just recovered from the "post-LotR"-hole and dropped GW into it's biggest whole at that point, dropping the share price down to sub-200 GBX.

5th Ed. launched in 2008 and started a 6-year climb through 5th and 6th that quadrupled the shareprice again (before the 7th-Ed. dip in 2014, which rightly killed off Tim Kirby, but was a fraction of the crash GW saw post 4th Edition).

Can I ask for a source and an uncropped version of that picture with a legend, please?

I don't know whether to look at the red and green bar graph, or the blue squiggly line, and you asserting it says what it says is something I'd like to verify myself.

What I see there is a calamitous plummet (the low point of the blue squiggly) when 5th released. I see a dip before that presumably due to LOTR's trilogy completing... but I just don't know what I am looking at.

Anything allowing you to chart historic share price.


https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/LSE-GAW/

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GMWKF/

Etc.. (click on interactive full-page visuals for each of those, once you're on the page)

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Anything allowing you to chart historic share price.


https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/LSE-GAW/

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GMWKF/

Etc.. (click on interactive full-page visuals for each of those, once you're on the page)

Ah, I wash hoping you'd find something that differentiated the games. LOTR's reign of terror in early 2000s, combined with its subsequent loss of popularity due to GW's inept handling, is almost impossible to differentiate from the success or failure of 40k or fantasy. But I'll take a look.

additionally, there's a reason I said market share and not stock; there has been a recent surge of popularity in gaming in general, and you'd have to differentiate GW's success with 8th between "it's a better game" and "more people are getting into this previously niche hobby." Because you could say 8th is the most popular indisputably, but that doesn't have to mean it's a better game.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


additionally, there's a reason I said market share and not stock; there has been a recent surge of popularity in gaming in general, and you'd have to differentiate GW's success with 8th between "it's a better game" and "more people are getting into this previously niche hobby." Because you could say 8th is the most popular indisputably, but that doesn't have to mean it's a better game.

Perhaps. Just saying there is a strong correlating (not necessarily causation) with 4th edition and a deep dive in GW share price, and a strong correlation with 5th / 6th and stock going up (also simultaneously to early-days-Kirby going scorched earth on the retail-chain, etc..).

Right, which doesn't mean anything.

Based on my experience as someone who has been playing in communities across the US, I would say that the community was strong and vibrant in 4th and 5th (which didn't differentiate power weapons), then plummeted in 6th and 7th, though by the end of 7th even I was playing HH to get away from the badness, and then picked up again in 8th, and seems to have stabilized in 9th.

What that generally tells me is that rules quality and community support has far more to do with the popularity of the game than philosophical distinctions about game design. GW could delete all power weapon type differentiation tomorrow and it wouldn't suddenly cause people to depart the hobby in droves, IMO.

We had one table flip and four quits over just conscript armies in 8th ed. I told the guy don't play the other guy with your conscript army, but he wouldn't listen...

Letting that get through testing (among other things) is why I don't give them many props for 8th.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I never found generic power weapons to be flavorless or an issue in that regard, especially when most of the non-powered equivalents weren't differentiated, and I much preferred just being able to stick whatever weapon I thought looked coolest on instead of having to worry about which weapons did what and what weapon combo is now illegal or underpowered and whatnot. The differentiation at that level just isn't worth it, particularly when most of the time you'd have two nearly matched options and one clearly standout worst option if given a choice.

Agreed- as is often said, meaningful choice is good, but the illusion of choice (a bunch of weapons that all have the same role and one is best) is bad.

Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

I mean, I agree, which is why I brought them up. People hyperfocus on the idea of nitty-gritty wargear options conveying flavor when there are some really basic, high-level things that ought to be distinguishing units and factions but are currently absent.

The gameplay flavor to a Space Marine Captain shouldn't reflect in whether he's carrying an axe or a sword; it should be in the fact that he's a centuries-old combat veteran with perfect tactical coordination with his subordinates. A Drukhari Archon's flavor doesn't come from what kinds of grenades he's packing, it's from his superhuman speed and delight in killing. Even at the novels' most bolter-porny, they spend a lot more time talking about the capabilities of the characters than the raw mechanical nuances of their weapons; and if a weapon is singled out it's usually more about quality, not type. The sword of Hieronymo Sondar is important because it's a Master-Crafted Power Weapon and a badge of office, not because it's a sword rather than an axe which slightly reduces its strength but gives it +15% effectiveness against stop it I don't care.

If the game engine supports the variables that distinguish the factions in the lore, then it's trivial to represent those differences through gameplay without needing to get down in the weeds with wargear. A hero's characterization shouldn't stem from exactly what flavor of bladed implement he's carrying.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

I mean, if we were to move to a D8 or D10 system line I want we could totally propose an evasion stat

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

I mean, if we were to move to a D8 or D10 system line I want we could totally propose an evasion stat

Why is the dice size change related to the evasion stat?

Just make a comparative table like Strength and Toughness but have it be BS and Evasion. You could even have the tables be identical if you wanted to suffer badly as a game designer. This would have the added bonus of having a higher BS mean something, rather than only having 6 BS values. (So like BS 10 vs evasion 5 hits on a 2+, BS 10 vs evasion 6-9 hits on a 3+, BS10 vs Ev 10 hits on a 4+, etc).

This would also allow for units that rely on an Ev (evasion) stat to be durable without being outwardly "durable" in the armor/toughness/wounds sense. You could have Guardsmen be BS3 Ev 3, SM be BS4 Ev 3, Eldar BS4 Ev 5, Orks BS 2 Ev 3, Necrons BS5 Ev 2, etc. Then, stratagems such as "Lightning Fast Reflexes" or the old Raven Guard army bonus could be "Unit gets +X Ev vs [whatever]" which means their stealthyness might help them against Guardsmen but less so against SM (e.g. going from 5-6 Ev would help Eldar evade fire from Guardsmen and Necrons but not SM).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

I mean, if we were to move to a D8 or D10 system line I want we could totally propose an evasion stat

Why is the dice size change related to the evasion stat?

Just make a comparative table like Strength and Toughness but have it be BS and Evasion. You could even have the tables be identical if you wanted to suffer badly as a game designer. This would have the added bonus of having a higher BS mean something, rather than only having 6 BS values. (So like BS 10 vs evasion 5 hits on a 2+, BS 10 vs evasion 6-9 hits on a 3+, BS10 vs Ev 10 hits on a 4+, etc).

This would also allow for units that rely on an Ev (evasion) stat to be durable without being outwardly "durable" in the armor/toughness/wounds sense. You could have Guardsmen be BS3 Ev 3, SM be BS4 Ev 3, Eldar BS4 Ev 5, Orks BS 2 Ev 3, Necrons BS5 Ev 2, etc. Then, stratagems such as "Lightning Fast Reflexes" or the old Raven Guard army bonus could be "Unit gets +X Ev vs [whatever]" which means their stealthyness might help them against Guardsmen but less so against SM (e.g. going from 5-6 Ev would help Eldar evade fire from Guardsmen and Necrons but not SM).

Like, did you forget about all the complainers about modifiers to begin with? We're now at the pendulum balance of nothing over -1 to hit because GW is infinitely wise.
On a larger scale you can create more granularity with -1 to hit Eldar and then the extra sneaky ones after that with an additional -1 to hit. Modifiers themselves aren't a problem, but they are on the D6 no matter how many people say "Oh you can get the same effect....", except not without a bunch of garbage Dakka×3 on a BS5+ becoming basically almost BS4+. Is it terribly necessary?

 catbarf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, I think gamers pointing to things like that and complaining about lack of flavor is just a superficial, knee-jerk reaction to taking away an option, no matter how pointless the option was to start with. You'll hear people say that it ruins the flavor to treat power mauls and power axes the same, but somehow it's never been a problem that a Space Marine and a Grot are equally quick to react to the enemy and equally easy to command, or that an Eldar Aspect Warrior is no harder to hit than a Titan- simply because the game has never featured differential C&C or differential hit profiles to begin with.

I mean I'll complain about the latter two things, but I won't get anywhere except yelled at.

I mean, I agree, which is why I brought them up. People hyperfocus on the idea of nitty-gritty wargear options conveying flavor when there are some really basic, high-level things that ought to be distinguishing units and factions but are currently absent.

The gameplay flavor to a Space Marine Captain shouldn't reflect in whether he's carrying an axe or a sword; it should be in the fact that he's a centuries-old combat veteran with perfect tactical coordination with his subordinates. A Drukhari Archon's flavor doesn't come from what kinds of grenades he's packing, it's from his superhuman speed and delight in killing. Even at the novels' most bolter-porny, they spend a lot more time talking about the capabilities of the characters than the raw mechanical nuances of their weapons; and if a weapon is singled out it's usually more about quality, not type. The sword of Hieronymo Sondar is important because it's a Master-Crafted Power Weapon and a badge of office, not because it's a sword rather than an axe which slightly reduces its strength but gives it +15% effectiveness against stop it I don't care.

If the game engine supports the variables that distinguish the factions in the lore, then it's trivial to represent those differences through gameplay without needing to get down in the weeds with wargear. A hero's characterization shouldn't stem from exactly what flavor of bladed implement he's carrying.

I was going to agree with you, but upon second thought, I actually don't think I do.

Weapons, and particular the type of a cc weapon are one of the more defining visual characteristics of a character, and so people like to have discrete options there. I mean, I get the "power weapon is a power weapon" thing from 3rd and 4th too. But I think having interesting options to give your hero is ultimately good.

Grenades less so, but "batmanning" your way out of a situation with something fancy from your tool belt can be fun to. If ever there was a place to lean in to RPG-lite customization, it would be your warlord/command group.

. . .

That said, I'm all for better "leadership role" representation, don't get me wrong. I just think allowing some nitty gritty customization of certain characters is a good thing too.

It's extra fun going back to 2nd edition and kitting characters out with wargear cards.

 Insectum7 wrote:


I was going to agree with you, but upon second thought, I actually don't think I do.

Weapons, and particular the type of a cc weapon are one of the more defining visual characteristics of a character, and so people like to have discrete options there. I mean, I get the "power weapon is a power weapon" thing from 3rd and 4th too. But I think having interesting options to give your hero is ultimately good.

The problem is that they're ultimately not actually that interesting, "wound you on 4's and you save on 6's vs wound you on 3's and you save on 5's vs the option you're never going to take because it's objectively inferior to the other two" isn't really worth splitting out into separate options, especially when most characters only have few attacks and may only swing once or twice a game. Yes there are circumstances in which the differences can be made more profound, but they're still niche enough to not really justify needing the different types power weapons.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


I was going to agree with you, but upon second thought, I actually don't think I do.

Weapons, and particular the type of a cc weapon are one of the more defining visual characteristics of a character, and so people like to have discrete options there. I mean, I get the "power weapon is a power weapon" thing from 3rd and 4th too. But I think having interesting options to give your hero is ultimately good.

The problem is that they're ultimately not actually that interesting, "wound you on 4's and you save on 6's vs wound you on 3's and you save on 5's vs the option you're never going to take because it's objectively inferior to the other two" isn't really worth splitting out into separate options, especially when most characters only have few attacks and may only swing once or twice a game. Yes there are circumstances in which the differences can be made more profound, but they're still niche enough to not really justify needing the different types power weapons.

TBH thats more a problem of AoS were you have a ton of +3 to hit /+4 to wound vs +4 to hit/+3 to wound weapons but with 40k and SvsT and armor and invulnerables things become more interesting. At the end of the day, they are better for different kind of enemies.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


I was going to agree with you, but upon second thought, I actually don't think I do.

Weapons, and particular the type of a cc weapon are one of the more defining visual characteristics of a character, and so people like to have discrete options there. I mean, I get the "power weapon is a power weapon" thing from 3rd and 4th too. But I think having interesting options to give your hero is ultimately good.

The problem is that they're ultimately not actually that interesting, "wound you on 4's and you save on 6's vs wound you on 3's and you save on 5's vs the option you're never going to take because it's objectively inferior to the other two" isn't really worth splitting out into separate options, especially when most characters only have few attacks and may only swing once or twice a game. Yes there are circumstances in which the differences can be made more profound, but they're still niche enough to not really justify needing the different types power weapons.

Ah, but my argument isn't really about the utility of the options. It's about the experience of explicitly defining your characters image. I agree that the actual in-game difference is minimal, and could easily just be "power weapon". But I think giving the player the explicit choice is honestly more "choice for the sake of choice", and I think in some places that's justified.

I know, it's weird. This is coming from my experience with customization in video games though, in which cosmetics are literally doing nothing, and people still love having the explicit choice of customizing their stuff.