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the_scotsman wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
You're really arguing for different levels of abstraction, and not more or less "tactics".

That was my initial point. It was countered with an argument about what "Feels like" tactics.

Returning to the example of the black templars squad that just charges in with 1 member, tying your unit up and using their "you can't run away" stratagem and you're playing Eldar, one option in the hands of the defending player is taking a vehicle that's too big for the templars to really hurt, and moving it such that it's the closest model to most of the templars squad, blocking off their ability to pile in and kill the Dire Avengers (or whatever) they're fighting.

You can choose to condemn this as "gameyness" because ohhh the black templars can then only fight the tank yeah that makes sense NOT...or, you can envision the eldar plowing their transport into the crusaders, unable to do any real damage to the power-armored marines, but able to prevent them from reaching the eldar troops they were aiming to pile into and carve up.

At the end of the day, it just comes down to "thing I don't like, I will label it as soulless and gamey, thing I do like, I will label as just smart tactics".

Someone could easily criticize bringing an allied militia detachment with heavy artillery with your slaanesh daemons as a gamey trick.

Exactly, and one approach is no more "right" than the other, and there's still tactics involved.

Quasistellar wrote:

Exactly, and one approach is no more "right" than the other, and there's still tactics involved.

Did you see my post? I feel like you'd understand my position a lot better if you did.

Gonna take a different tack on this OP.

I don't think 40k has been a game for a long time. It's a multimedia entertainment industry that bridges miniature gaming, RPG gaming, Video gaming, print (both fiction and rules), movies, serialized video, interactive campaign play and a storyline that is once again being developed in real time.

A game... Well that's just a game. 40K is a lifestyle, a rabbit hole 33 years deep.

The connections between the various multiple media will continue to grow- wait until every movie, series or video game generates a mission pack. The Dawn of War video games are in the past, but who wouldn't want a DoW Mission Pack- Crusade style?

And speaking of Crusade, it's such a huge part of 9th that I think it undercuts the 40K = Math Hammer premise of OP. I think it's true of matched play, sure. That's why I don't really play matched play.

Crusade is still an example of becoming less a miniature game and more of something else, it's just that the something else isn't math hammer.

Mezmorki i think you know where i stand.
Especially after my topic about the love for older editons


This is not 40K anymore, it is an entirely different game that is more in line with a CCG. if GW had released it as a different game it would have done fine, to sell it as a continuation of 40K is what turns off many of us who have been continuously playing the game for the last 20 years.

Like you i play many different systems. i play 40K because of the game it was that was very unique compared to the others i play, it's mechanics, lore and setting. it isn't that anymore. so like the WHFB players i went back to the older editions.

PenitentJake wrote:

And speaking of Crusade, it's such a huge part of 9th that I think it undercuts the 40K = Math Hammer premise of OP. I think it's true of matched play, sure. That's why I don't really play matched play.

I like the looks of the crusade missions for sure. They are a throwback I feel to the missions in 4th edition that had a similarly diverse range of setups and approaches.

Honestly, building a list in this editions is by FAR easier to figure out and do then it was back in 4th and 5th... I feel like I had to memorize way more before... I dunno, maybe I am just older and smarter now XD.

Maneuvering has gotten more important over the years, the game is much more tactical than in 6th and 7th edition for sure because of stratagems, and the CC phase, but overall it's still not very deep compared to something like lotr or anything with alternating activations or alternating phases.
40K always was watching fireworks and in many parts it still is.
And anyone who misses firing arcs or armor values never played 6th and 7th edition because they didn't matter at all. They were rubbish rules that made tanks worse than any other unit.

Tanks compared to monsters were sad pandas indeed. Also, they "my land raider rolled a 1 and can't take a dozer blade so now its immobilized by a bush".

Sgt. Cortez wrote:Maneuvering has gotten more important over the years, the game is much more tactical than in 6th and 7th edition for sure because of stratagems, and the CC phase, but overall it's still not very deep compared to something like lotr or anything with alternating activations or alternating phases.
40K always was watching fireworks and in many parts it still is.
And anyone who misses firing arcs or armor values never played 6th and 7th edition because they didn't matter at all. They were rubbish rules that made tanks worse than any other unit.

I did play then, but I swapped to Horus Heresy for that exact reason; GW's designers lost control of the game. Hull Points broke vehicles with how few GW handed out.

4th is my jam, with modifications.

SecondTime wrote:Tanks compared to monsters were sad pandas indeed. Also, they "my land raider rolled a 1 and can't take a dozer blade so now its immobilized by a bush".

It was less bad in like 4th when the only monsters were like 4 wounds and T6, and were lucky to have a 3+ with no invuln. It was much worse when tanks were given Hull Points. Also, incidentally in 4th, IIRC Land Raiders could get dozer blades. Inherently, there's nothing wrong with the concept of bogging down in terrain; though I never played with a playgroup that would count a bush as dangerous terrain for a tank. If it were a bush attached to rougher area terrain maybe, but then it's not the bush sticking you up, it's the rough terrain beneath!

ProHammer basically uses 4th edition vehicle rules with a few modifications. Has the separate tables for glancing vs. penetrating hits and no hull points. Hull points made killing vehicles more consistently easy regardless of what damage results you rolled.

In 4th edition vehicles were overall more durable but there was always the chance for something to get blown off the table in one shot. I liked that volatility and riskiness.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Just screen with non-infantry, problem solved. It's not as if Eldar armies these days are built around infantry blocks.

Right, like I mentioned, he used it when he was fighting a Vehicle, and neither one of us knew that was wrong. It was an error on his part. But that arguably speaks to the problem where there's so much going on he didn't even know his own rules, and I didn't even know if Psychic Awakening strats and stuff still applied to Codex units. I still don't, but I assume good faith on his part so I guess they do!

Just to come back to this for a minute... technically the answer is no, but yes - no, the PA content from Faith and Fury for BTs isn't in effect any more, as it has been superseded by the Index Astartes: Black Templars PDF (which still doesn't seem to be linked to from the FAQ page, annoyingly).

However, having checked the PDF, the stratagem in question does still exist, and is still valid.

 Galas wrote:


The answer is no. Warhammer has always been more of a game about mathhammering and lists building than anything else.
.

Not true, at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mezmorki wrote:
I think there are two threads at work here:

#1 - The influence of stratagems changing the nature of the game such that "what you see is not necessarily what you get" anymore.

And,

#2 - The overall explosion in the quantity of the "stuff" to be considered, whether it's unit types, weapon types, stratagems, special rules, etc.

FWIW, #1 I feel is skewing the game away from physical table-level tactics and towards a CP management game. CPs routinely can undermine physical decisions and render them less impactful. It's changed the feeling of the game.

This is true.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:Maneuvering has gotten more important over the years, the game is much more tactical than in 6th and 7th edition for sure because of stratagems, and the CC phase, but overall it's still not very deep compared to something like lotr or anything with alternating activations or alternating phases.
40K always was watching fireworks and in many parts it still is.
And anyone who misses firing arcs or armor values never played 6th and 7th edition because they didn't matter at all. They were rubbish rules that made tanks worse than any other unit.

I did play those editions (well i only played 6th for about a month because it was that bad) and firing arcs/AV are key to tactical play, what broke 6th and 7th in that regards was hull points.

Giving the system both a wound mechanic and a vehicle damage mechanic for the same models was asinine, then add in the fact there were to few wounds that were far to easy to strip off.

DUST uses a wound mechanic but it still maintains a form of AV in armor classes that reduce the amount of fire that can affect a vehicle as it goes up in class. as well as facings for weapons. so the system can work(they also give more wounds-6 is the normal for a medium vehicle VS 40k where the biggest thing could only get 4) if done properly.

That isn't to say 6th and 7th didn't have some great ideas(snap fire, grenade throwing, overwatch etc..), our group just finds that those rules work better in the framework of 5th edition.

Mezmorki wrote:ProHammer basically uses 4th edition vehicle rules with a few modifications. Has the separate tables for glancing vs. penetrating hits and no hull points. Hull points made killing vehicles more consistently easy regardless of what damage results you rolled.



In 4th edition vehicles were overall more durable but there was always the chance for something to get blown off the table in one shot. I liked that volatility and riskiness.

4th was the skimmer edition. i love the vehicle assault rules and defensive weapons rules(and we imported them into our games of 5th) , they were very tactical, but 5th had a better damage table that didn't favor skimmers.

Tanks compared to monsters were sad pandas indeed. Also, they "my land raider rolled a 1 and can't take a dozer blade so now its immobilized by a bush".

Some land raiders could take dozer blades or siege shields to deal with dangerous terrain....but thats also a reason to bring a tech marine along. he serves many purposes in those editions.

Back when you could only bring 2 or at most 3 HQs with allies you really had to think about that choice.

Most of us also agree that the more a MC in those editions took damage they should have also lost abilities like a vehicle loosing weapons of mobility-not being able to fire a second weapon, loosing CC attacks and the like. however there was no rule for that to import so we left it alone as our improved version of 5th sticks to only using pre-existing rules from compatible editions.

I think vehicles having the same rules and datasheets as other units is one of the best things about the current game. Stratagems and CPs I'm less sold on. There are far too many stratagems. I think I'd rather any special rules were just built in to unit abilities with an appropriate points adjustment.

 Mezmorki wrote:
I've been mulling over a question about the nature of 40K for a while, and with the 9th edition changes and the new codexes, I'm prompted to pose my question to a broader group. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but these are some impressions that I have about the direction of the game:

Basically, my question is whether or not the entire direction of 40K over the past 2-3 editions has shifted away from being a "tactical miniature" game (where you what you do on the table - chiefly position and maneuver - is the most important factor to your success) and is increasingly a game of "MathHammer", where victory is predominately a function of list building and probability management - aided by stratagems and a growing array of special powers that mitigate die rolling and risk and tactical plays.

40K has never been about maneuver. This is actually the closest its ever been, but its still not about maneuver, its about standing on more MacGuffins with more bodies than the other guy. To a VERY limited extent Fantasy was about maneuver. Because you had ranked up units with a side and rear that were both vulnerable and unable to fight as effectively

Brother Castor wrote:
I think vehicles having the same rules and datasheets as other units is one of the best things about the current game. Stratagems and CPs I'm less sold on. There are far too many stratagems. I think I'd rather any special rules were just built in to unit abilities with an appropriate points adjustment.

How can there be too many strategems when you only use the ones you like?

If you only want there to be five strategems, read your codex, pick your favourite five, write them out on index cards and never look at the pages from your dex that contain strats again. Those five strats are now the only strats that exist for you. Another player using the same dex might pick a different five; they might also pick fewer strats or more than you did- everyone has different preferences. The more strats there are, the more likely it is that everyone will be able to play according to their preference.

The design of this game has always been use what you like, and only worry about the rules for the things you use.

Breton wrote:

 Mezmorki wrote:
I've been mulling over a question about the nature of 40K for a while, and with the 9th edition changes and the new codexes, I'm prompted to pose my question to a broader group. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but these are some impressions that I have about the direction of the game:

Basically, my question is whether or not the entire direction of 40K over the past 2-3 editions has shifted away from being a "tactical miniature" game (where you what you do on the table - chiefly position and maneuver - is the most important factor to your success) and is increasingly a game of "MathHammer", where victory is predominately a function of list building and probability management - aided by stratagems and a growing array of special powers that mitigate die rolling and risk and tactical plays.

40K has never been about maneuver. This is actually the closest its ever been, but its still not about maneuver, its about standing on more MacGuffins with more bodies than the other guy. To a VERY limited extent Fantasy was about maneuver. Because you had ranked up units with a side and rear that were both vulnerable and unable to fight as effectively

That is absolutely not true. maneuver was HUGE in 4th and 5th edition(not as huge as say infinity where infantry cannot see behind them without the proper gear) because of armor facings and terrain effects- especially when outflanking became a thing. it is one of the reasons why bike armies tended to be popular.

PenitentJake wrote:
...And speaking of Crusade, it's such a huge part of 9th that I think it undercuts the 40K = Math Hammer premise of OP. I think it's true of matched play, sure. That's why I don't really play matched play...

I think for that to be true you need to be able to play Crusade without paying attention to the mathhammer. People who play bring-whatever throw-down-minis-we-like lists to a Crusade game will still get tabled in two turns because the simple facts of what the miniatures do are so wildly unbalanced, independent of what the mission pack says (before you ask I've been on both sides).

 aphyon wrote:


That is absolutely not true. maneuver was HUGE in 4th and 5th edition(not as huge as say infinity where infantry cannot see behind them without the proper gear) because of armor facings and terrain effects- especially when outflanking became a thing. it is one of the reasons why bike armies tended to be popular.

Except Outflanking isn't maneuver warfare, it's just another version of Deep Striking. You don't have to go to Point A, then Point B, then Point C to enable it, nor, do you have to do so afterwards to get in position. You just come onto the board from a different place, and you're in the Rear Armor Facing.

Breton wrote:

 aphyon wrote:


That is absolutely not true. maneuver was HUGE in 4th and 5th edition(not as huge as say infinity where infantry cannot see behind them without the proper gear) because of armor facings and terrain effects- especially when outflanking became a thing. it is one of the reasons why bike armies tended to be popular.

Except Outflanking isn't maneuver warfare, it's just another version of Deep Striking. You don't have to go to Point A, then Point B, then Point C to enable it, nor, do you have to do so afterwards to get in position. You just come onto the board from a different place, and you're in the Rear Armor Facing.

You and i sir have a very different definition of maneuver warfare-

Maneuver warfare suggest that strategic movement can bring the defeat of an opposing force more efficiently than simply contacting and destroying enemy forces until they can no longer fight. Instead, in maneuver warfare, the destruction of certain enemy targets, such as command and control centers, logistical bases, or fire support assets, is combined with isolation of enemy forces and the exploitation by movement of enemy weaknesses.

If you want interesting objectives, they already existed in the game, and by my reckoning were far more interesting when they were tallied up at the end of the game not calculated up every game turn so that playing beyond a certain point was meaningless if you were so far ahead the other player could not catch up.

 aphyon wrote:
That is absolutely not true. maneuver was HUGE in 4th and 5th edition(not as huge as say infinity where infantry cannot see behind them without the proper gear) because of armor facings and terrain effects- especially when outflanking became a thing. it is one of the reasons why bike armies tended to be popular.

There was nothing tactical about armor facings in those editions. Artillery tanks just drove their rear against the board edge or terrain or another vehicle to hide their weak spots, and the main use for rear armor was close combat and something appearing from a board edge or deep strike to delete your tank with an anti-infantry gun with zero counter-play.

Terrain reduced shooting damage significantly, but it added absolutely nothing to maneuvering. In over a hundred games of 5th, my battle wagons never once did anything but drive at their intended targets in a straight line, going through solid walls, ruins and minefields, re-rolling those ones that tried to immobilize them. Meanwhile, a landraider could immobilize itself on a piece of barbed wire when pivoting to line up those two sponsons.

The only real "maneuvers" 4th and 5th had was a denied flank and split deployments, whose only purpose was to not engage parts of your opponent's army. Everything else was just the same combo-tricks we have now in a different dress.
Honestly, 9th edition's need to engage the enemy and start playing the game turn 1 is vastly more tactical than "killing stuff is the only thing relevant until the very last turn" of 5th.

I don't think 40k has ever been a "tactical game". I've always* seen it more as a set of haphazardly bolted-together guidelines that let you play (as in "have fun moving around" not "engage in decision-based gameplay") and do pew-pew noises with toy soldiers.

*-well, it is not true. 25years ago this kind of design beat Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly and I was full of admiration. But for quite some time tabletop game design has been in an entirely different dimension to what GW is proposing.

the_scotsman wrote:


mhm, and when I started in 4th edition every single one of my wolf guard could have any number of the following optional items:

Upgrades that don't have to be represented on the model, but easily could:

auspex
belt of russ
bionics
frag grenades
krak grenade


Upgrades that should be represented with appropriate model/conversion/paintjob:

mark of the wulfen
master crafted weapon
runic armor
runic charm
wolf helm of russ
wolf tail talisman
wolf tooth necklace
wolf totem

Upgrades that must be represented with appropriate model:

jump pack
space marine bike
terminator armor
great company banner

In addition, there were only generic power weapons, power fists, thunderhammers and lightning claws. This made it easier for you to say ' the axes are master crafted' or 'blue swords are frost blades'
However, the wolfguard were a specialist unit. They weren't your entire army. And like the Thousand sons legion Chosen that could ALL be sorcerers and ALL take psychic powers and 20 mutations, and cost 600 points for a 10 man unit of 1 wound models: you could but you wouldn't.

In over a hundred games of 5th

Yes, and i probably played over 6 times that many when 5th was the current edition (and nearly as many games of 4th) and i still play it now with and against multiple different armies.

And i always started playing on turn 1. where i needed to move and shoot to counter or eliminate the largest threats to my force or negate a chance to take a future objective or use terrain to reduce fire at a specific unit- planning ahead for future turns, although the dice didn't always cooperate. . i rarely found players up against the table edge, i also rarely saw anything short of a lucky bolter hit taking out vehicles aside from landspeeders and the like, 5th especially was about bringing the right tool for the job. anti- infantry guns rarely if ever did damage to armor aside from the odd bolter against AV10. otherwise heavy weapons were needed, the heavier the target the heavier the gun in an immersive setting.

Scoring at the end also meant you would never know who would win until the very end, keeping both players in the fight. so even being down on kills you could still pull off an upset victory. i have had to many games to count where things swung from a win to a loss or tie or the other way around because we rolled to play that random turn 6 or 7.

There was less overall lethality compared to 8th+ but the game was a lot cleaner thanks to USRs and limited special rules locked to certain units instead of a deck of cards full of stratagems, by comparison to 9th it was lightning fast. a 2k game was taking on average 1 1/2 to 2 hours for a full 7 turns (depending on how much distraction and banter was going on in the FLGS).

Unlike the people who have been under lockdown and unable to play. i have at least had the opportunity to engage with a small group of around 10 active players who plays both 5th and 9th (among other games) for at least the last 4 months every weekend, some of them are GW simps and cannot do anything but praise whatever GWs newest "thing" is. i have seen and experienced everything we debate in speculation on the forums.

It is not better or worse 40K, it is a different game style all together, in a way i guess it is like comparing chess to magic, it is the "something else" that Mezmorki started this topic about.

However, the wolfguard were a specialist unit. They weren't your entire army.

Unless you take Logan Grimnar as your HQ then they become troops and can take whatever they darn well please...bikes, jump packs, terminator armor. and every weapon in the armory.

 aphyon wrote:
And i always started playing on turn 1. where i needed to move and shoot to counter or eliminate the largest threats to my force or negate a chance to take a future objective or use terrain to reduce fire at a specific unit- planning ahead for future turns, although the dice didn't always cooperate. . i rarely found players up against the table edge, i also rarely saw anything short of a lucky bolter hit taking out vehicles aside from landspeeders and the like, 5th especially was about bringing the right tool for the job. anti- infantry guns rarely if ever did damage to armor aside from the odd bolter against AV10. otherwise heavy weapons were needed, the heavier the target the heavier the gun in an immersive setting.

Scatter lasers, multi-lasers, autocannons, assault cannons and similar S6-S7 weapons were good against pretty much everything and easily wrecked many vehicles.
Everything else is pretty much just a more beautiful description of "nothing but killing matters".

Don't get me wrong, 5th was one of the best editions that GW has made, but it was far from a flawless playground for tactical maneuvers - and I stand by the point that 9th rewards and punishes movement much more than any of the five editions that came before.

Scoring at the end also meant you would never know who would win until the very end, keeping both players in the fight. so even being down on kills you could still pull off an upset victory. i have had to many games to count where things swung from a win to a loss or tie or the other way around because we rolled to play that random turn 6 or 7.

Cool if that's your thing, but essentially having a game decided by a single roll neither player has control over is horrible game design. Might as well flip a coin at the start of the game, shake hands and free-style some RP.

The parts of 5th that I remember most fondly was when my regular eldar opponent was forced to commit in turn 5th and tank-shocked 24" from safety onto objectives and the game went on two more turns. Everything up to that point just served to randomize what units players had left up till the game really started.
To me 9th feels like playing turns 5-7 in 5th every single turn, and I love it.

 Jidmah wrote:
There was nothing tactical about armor facings in those editions. Artillery tanks just drove their rear against the board edge or terrain or another vehicle to hide their weak spots, and the main use for rear armor was close combat and something appearing from a board edge or deep strike to delete your tank with an anti-infantry gun with zero counter-play.

This basically. I feel 5th nostalgia is this fantasy of "guy with melta gun" spending 3-4 turns creeping across the board, then he snaps that shot into the rear armour of a tank, blowing it up. Game is won, everyone goes home thinking very tactical, very strategic.

But at least in my experience that isn't what happened.

I think the major issue with 40k (if its an issue, and I'm not convinced it is), which is true in all editions, is that you don't actually get that many opportunities to do anything because there are a relatively small number of turns. A unit only gets to act say 5 times (maybe more if you fight back/consolidate in your opponents turn - but broadly speaking - and a lot get less due to being destroyed). So I feel the dream of complex counter-play is impossible to realise. The game isn't designed to be an intricate system of parries until one side wins. Its two guys with hammers, and one swings a bit faster than the other. 8th/9th is *faster* because the hammers can go in turn 1 (table/army depending) rather than turn 2 or 3, but its the same basic premise.

There may have been more depth in older editions because it was harder to optimise. As said, you couldn't split fire. Moving brought massive penalties for shooting - potentially prohibiting it entirely. Basic infantry could move 6", so could often find themselves isolated for multiple turns - especially if trying to push through difficult terrain or something like that.

But players being players, this just meant lists were designed to get around this. Which is why our guy with a melta gun doesn't spend 3 turns sneaking across the table in a brilliant undetected rear attack. He outflanks/deep strikes in and hopes for the best.

Don't get me wrong, 5th was one of the best editions that GW has made, but it was far from a flawless playground for tactical maneuvers

i am well aware. that's why both my group and mezmorkis group have come up with fixed versions of (4th or)5th to address some of it's shortcomings.

Cool if that's your thing, but essentially having a game decided by a single roll neither player has control over is horrible game design. Might as well flip a coin at the start of the game, shake hands and free-style some RP.

Not even close, you still have to both play those extra turns to see what happens, it is not a forgone conclusion like a dice toss.

I think the major issue with 40k (if its an issue, and I'm not convinced it is), which is true in all editions, is that you don't actually get that many opportunities to do anything because there are a relatively small number of turns

I think that is the reason why many posters here on DAKKA want an alternating activation version of the game. an incredible amount of back and forth happens for both players in DUST, classic battletech and infinity who all use various forms of alternating actions, simultanious actions or reaction mechanics.

Basically, my question is whether or not the entire direction of 40K over the past 2-3 editions has shifted away from being a "tactical miniature" game (where you what you do on the table - chiefly position and maneuver - is the most important factor to your success) and is increasingly a game of "MathHammer", where victory is predominately a function of list building and probability management - aided by stratagems and a growing array of special powers that mitigate die rolling and risk and tactical plays.

40K has never been a tactical miniatures game, especially not according to your definition that prioritizes position and maneuver. These two factors are and have almost always been largely irrelevant to gameplay even though there were times when the rules created the illusion of these things being relevant factors (i.e. the presence of armor facings, etc. ).

40k is a very basic game, and the core mechanic to the game is arguably listbuilding (i.e. MathHammer) rather than anything you actually do once you're at the table. The design of the games resolution system also means that its highly subject to RNG, moreso than most other dice based games, enough to neutralize or overcome all but the most egregious disparities in skill. In truth, the game is simply a resolution engine that requires a lot of manual inputs, the game would basically play itself otherwise as theres little in the way of actual meaningful choices you can make in the game that don't boil down to the outcome of a dice roll.

maneuver was HUGE in 4th and 5th edition(not as huge as say infinity where infantry cannot see behind them without the proper gear) because of armor facings and terrain effects- especially when outflanking became a thing. it is one of the reasons why bike armies tended to be popular.

Manuever was hardly huge in 4th and 5th edition,"maneuver" in 40k has basically always boiled down to basically one thing and one thing only: "do I get a cover save?" and any other effects involved harken back to that illusion of relevance I mentioned earlier - oh you have to make a difficult terrain check to see how far you can move through this feature? such tactic, very maneuver, wow.

In 5th edition, you could get a 4+ cover saves just for standing in the open as long as there was another unit, friend or foe, between you and the thing shooting at you - any discussion of maneuver mattering at that point flies right out the window.

4th edition was better in this regard owing to the more complex terrain system and miniature size vs terrain size interaction, but ultimately it still boiled down to a binary - you had cover or you didn't, you were in range or you weren't. Other than that rolling a fistful of dice multiple times and coming up with lots of 6s meant a hell of a lot more to what the outcome of the game would be than whether or not you were maximizing the benefits of terrain.

You and i sir have a very different definition of maneuver warfare

You do know that the definition of maneuver warfare doesn't actually mean maneuver in the physical battlespace, right? If you think maneuver warfare is literally about positioning on the field of battle, then your understanding of the definition of maneuver warfare is at best inadequate, and at worst outright wrong - what you're describing is the concept of "tactical maneuver", whereas the "Maneuver warfare" is used in a less literal/more figurative sense as a key aspect of maneuver warfare is the concept of distributed battle/decentralized command and execution and evading combat so that you can engage in battle at a time and place of your choosing against a focal target that carries some critical importance.

Honestly, I find that theres an undercurrent of "we demand to be taken seriously" or inferiority/superiority complexes involved in most of these discussions. People want their little slice of nerdom to mean something and give them some sort of status in the pecking order of gamer hierarchy, etc. but ultimately its just a game, and not necessarily a well designed one. In 40k, this behavior manifests itself in arguments about how tactical gameplay is or how skillful gameplay is, etc. but this gak isn't that complicated, Sun Tzu and Clausewitz aren't really applicable here, nobody is ever going to speak your name next to Eisenhower, Zhukov, or Rommels for your mastery of rolling dice. Its just a game.

Unlike the people who have been under lockdown and unable to play. i have at least had the opportunity to engage with a small group of around 10 active players who plays both 5th and 9th (among other games) for at least the last 4 months every weekend, some of them are GW simps and cannot do anything but praise whatever GWs newest "thing" is. i have seen and experienced everything we debate in speculation on the forums.

It is not better or worse 40K, it is a different game style all together, in a way i guess it is like comparing chess to magic

Oh, there it is.

 Jidmah wrote:
There was nothing tactical about armor facings in those editions. Artillery tanks just drove their rear against the board edge or terrain or another vehicle to hide their weak spots

Side armour tended to be the killer in 5th. Facing bunched up missile launchers with AV13-14 was relatively safe, but a flanking unit shooting AV11-12 was bad news.

In terms of tactics though, while 5th editions missions were decidedly questionable in a few areas of design it was the last edition where I considered going 2nd to be an advantage at times (outside of later null deployment shenanigans).

But it was also an edition where heavy weapons were getting cheaper and units were getting faster leading to more and more alpha-striking and higher lethality. There was a degree of logic in the old FoC between the troops with their limited radius of threat and movement and the other non-scoring slots but 5th ed really started rolling that back.

Almost none of the relevant vehicles had a difference between side and front armor though.
Predators were placed in corners, so you couldn't shoot their sides, and for battlewagons the 6" move of an infantry units usually was plenty to get out of their narrow front arc, ignoring all the rules issues deff rollas caused.

The only vehicle I remember actively attacking in their side arcs was the chimera.