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 aphyon wrote:

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

Did you have to maneuver to get there? Or just plop your model down on the appropriate turn? I kind of think maneuver means you have do more moving than "counts as having moved their full movement" on the turn you put it on the board.

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

I don't think it's "always" been about that. Remember that it was started by a group of guys who really liked RPGs - it was originally more roleplaying than anything. Rogue Trader needed a game master and even then, it was only barely playable.

That changed with second edition, but even there, the rules, combined with GW's collective personality at the time kept it way more beer and pretzels than math hammer and list building. 3rd ed was too simple to even need math hammer and you pretty much just had a couple winning formulas to deal with anyway (I do not miss the days of Rhino rush). I think the math/list building aspect really started to flourish around 4th and has only gained momentum since.

To say that "warhammer has always been about mathhammer" is to miss the point, I think.

Competitively, it was always about mathhammer. Casually, it sometimes was about mathhammer. Narratively, it really wasn't.

The difference is that back in the day it was actually quite difficult to "accidentally" be a dill weed, even if it was possible to be more of a dill weed if you were actually trying.

For example, Wolf Guard Terminators could take an assault cannon and cyclone missile launcher on every. single. model. This is clearly bonkers for competitive play - seriously wtf - but in casual and narrative play, it wasn't a problem, because it was so OBVIOUSLY dickish that you probably wouldn't get games.

In 5th with the bad wound allocation you had Grey Knight players (and, earlier, Nob Biker players) who had totally unique wargear on every single multiwound model, which monkied with the damage resolution method. But you could tell when someone did this - you'd end up with a guy with Master-Crafted Storm Bolter, a different guy with Master-Crafted Stabby Bit, and a different guy with Stabby-Bit that is Worse But Different For Wound Allocation, and it was pretty damn clear he was trying to exploit the wound allocation rules.

In 7th, Eldar scatbikes were absolutely atrocious, but if someone brought an army with four units of bikes and each individual bike had a scatterlaser, you knew that guy was a dick - compare him to the Saim-Hann player, who has all bikes but only 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 have heavy weapons, there's close combat weapons sprinkled in, etc.

These days? It's much easier for a narrative or casual army to absolutely crush a narrative or casual army simply by accident, because rather than the power disparity being due to wonky rules interactions (such as wargear options or RAW wound allocation or the a designer losing his mind for a single unit while the rest of the book is less bad), the power disparity is due to the whole of one army being dramatically better, point for point, than the whole of another army.

I can list even more examples but the point, I think, should be clear. In the old days, it was rules exploits that broke the game. These days, it's real imbalance rather than GW simply not knowing how their game works.

When I see people bemoaning the first turn alpha striking in 8th and 9th, to me that's an indicator that the physical arrangement of the board, terrain, units, and relative positioning doesn't matter as much as perhaps it once did.

Imagine a hypothetical game where we just line up our forces 12" apart in a line, without and terrain, roll off to go first and take turns blasting each other. Let's call that 100% MathHammer, because the use of terrain and position is irrelevant. At the other end of the spectrum, let's imagine a game where both sides have identical forces to deploy, there are no die rolls to determine success/failure, but the board is packed full of terrain with complimentary rules for LoS, cover, etc. In this case, the game is nearly entirely how well you deploy, move, and position your forces with respect to terrain and the objectives, let's call this 100% physical tactics.

I agree with many people here that list building has always been a central part of 40K. I've joked with my buddies that 40K is 50% list building, 25% deployment, 15% luck of the dice, and 10% actual strategy and tactics. I think the balance between MathHammer (list building, 50% of the game space) and Tactics/Deployment (35% collectively) has varied over the editions. It may be a case that I'm arguing that 8th edition is 60% list building and 25% tactics, whereas 5th is 45% list building and 40% tactics (yes, perhaps still more list building). But to me these shifts in percentages matter a lot to how the gameplay feels and my sense of how consequential my decisions are.

I'll pull in some examples current game of ProHammer, which is a 2000 point Dark Eldar vs. Lamentors game, with four objective points on the map. We're using a pseudo-4th edition mission system where each objective is worth 500 points, and you also get points for destroying or heavily damaging opposing units.

We both held a sizable portion of our armies in reserve, and when units are available have had tough choices over which side of the board (and objectives) to dedicate our forces to. The ability for units to take advantage of cover or not has a huge bearing on this decision (especially for the DE who basically don't get armor saves vs marines). Decisions around when to push into the open in order to take a shot versus holding back out of Line of Sight for a more opportunistic moment has been consuming the interactions on one side of the table. My opponent (Lamentors) is moving his rhinos up to provide cover for his tac squads and minimize their exposure in the open, while I'm dancing my eldar around a couple of huge rock formations in an effort to the same and draw him in closer so I can get a charge off with my Incubi (which I'm having to screen carefully). I feel like each turn, each unit has multiple viable options for what I could do with them, what units to shoot, what charges to setup, etc. And his freaking deep striking land raider hasn't even made it down from the heavens yet!

Granted, we're playing 5th / ProHammer, with rules for declared fire and plenty of other things that we feel makes for a more interesting game. So perhaps my comparisons are a bit unfair. But doesn't feel that different from 4th/5th base rules either.

The long and short of it is that people are saying maneuver has never mattered, but I disagree. Where to commit forces via deployment, detailed positioning relative to terrain, moving in coordinated way to objectives, etc. is all important to your success and is maneuver. 40K has never emphasized maneuver as much as many other wargames, and that's okay. But what I'm interested in, is the importance of maneuver relative to the other aspects of the game (list building, die rolling, stratagem/CP tactics). And this has certainly changed from edition to edition, and that's what this thread is all about.

I will say I think 9th is better about alpha-strike. The first turn advantage now comes from being the first to MANEUVER, rather than the first to shoot, which is a good thing and is part of what does make it more tactical than 8th.

The overall importance of maneuver is quite large in 9th, though I still think too much of an army comes from the book as opposed to the player. But as we determined before, that's entirely subjective.

I've been playing 40k for close to 30 years and I think 9th is one of the most tactical editions. The de-emphasis on killing replaced by scoring objectives means the game has a lot more meaningful choices and simply killing harder will often lose you the game. This is why, for instance, Tau are doing so poorly. They can still kill really well, but they can't interact with the new tactics required in 9th.

Every edition had it's quirks. I still miss the third edition rule that a model blocked line of sight to something behind it up to twice as tall. That led to layering lines of battle where you chose what the enemy had to shoot at. But it was still mostly about killing things. In isolation, I feel this is more shallow than the objective based play we have now in 9th.

Rarely in past editions could you be tabled and still pull off a crushing victory. That is now relatively easy to do in 9th. That suggests to me the game is not about mathHammer.

RandomHeretic wrote:
I've been playing 40k for close to 30 years and I think 9th is one of the most tactical editions.

I'm going to put you on the spot if that's okay! When you say "most tactical" what kinds of things do you have in mind? Can you provide some examples? Genuinely curious - what are the "new tactics" that are required by 9th with respect to objectives or other aspects of play?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The overall importance of maneuver is quite large in 9th, though ...

What rules specifically give this impression? The more in-depth terrain rules? Something else?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
To say that "warhammer has always been about mathhammer" is to miss the point, I think.

Competitively, it was always about mathhammer. Casually, it sometimes was about mathhammer. Narratively, it really wasn't.

The difference is that back in the day it was actually quite difficult to "accidentally" be a dill weed, even if it was possible to be more of a dill weed if you were actually trying.

For example, Wolf Guard Terminators could take an assault cannon and cyclone missile launcher on every. single. model. This is clearly bonkers for competitive play - seriously wtf - but in casual and narrative play, it wasn't a problem, because it was so OBVIOUSLY dickish that you probably wouldn't get games.

In 5th with the bad wound allocation you had Grey Knight players (and, earlier, Nob Biker players) who had totally unique wargear on every single multiwound model, which monkied with the damage resolution method. But you could tell when someone did this - you'd end up with a guy with Master-Crafted Storm Bolter, a different guy with Master-Crafted Stabby Bit, and a different guy with Stabby-Bit that is Worse But Different For Wound Allocation, and it was pretty damn clear he was trying to exploit the wound allocation rules.

In 7th, Eldar scatbikes were absolutely atrocious, but if someone brought an army with four units of bikes and each individual bike had a scatterlaser, you knew that guy was a dick - compare him to the Saim-Hann player, who has all bikes but only 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 have heavy weapons, there's close combat weapons sprinkled in, etc.

These days? It's much easier for a narrative or casual army to absolutely crush a narrative or casual army simply by accident, because rather than the power disparity being due to wonky rules interactions (such as wargear options or RAW wound allocation or the a designer losing his mind for a single unit while the rest of the book is less bad), the power disparity is due to the whole of one army being dramatically better, point for point, than the whole of another army.

I can list even more examples but the point, I think, should be clear. In the old days, it was rules exploits that broke the game. These days, it's real imbalance rather than GW simply not knowing how their game works.

The counter is that those aren't dick moves. Those are obvious moves. But then, I faced 120 hormagaunt guy in 2nd. Why would you not maximize your wolf guard? Wolf guard guy was sick of losing to Nids, Eldar, and Slaneesh gun line.

I think it's the terrain rules, definitely, but also combined with the way missions are scored. The mission is more board-control intensive, meaning that castling in a corner/side is no longer a recipe for victory. This forces movement, and while it can be a simple blap movement forwards, this gets into ...

... the Terrain rules. Objectives cannot be placed into terrain, which means simply moving onto the objective and plopping down is a bad idea; you'll be unprotected and in the open, ready to get mowed or cut down by whatever happens by when the enemy takes their turn.

Therefore, what you have to do is actually secure the objective; by that I don't mean have more models than your opponent, but I mean secure in the military sense. You have to sweep, clear, and then set up in nearby terrain to help keep the enemy away, you have to threaten shooting lanes to prevent the enemy from maneuvering against your unit on the objective, and you have to lock down the area where the objective is with either fire or maneuver in order to keep it, because it isn't scored till your NEXT turn.

Now, for the terrain's part, this is where things get sticky. Ninth still suffers from IGOUGO very badly if the terrain isn't there; long-range weapons can reach out and blap your unit off an objective no matter how well you maneuver, if that objective is in line of sight. So obscuring terrain is vital; if you combine this with a way to threaten open areas yourself (e.g. your own fires or fast moving melee units) then you can prevent the enemy from simply maneuvering into the open and shooting around the terrain. However, presumably you had to maneuver yourself to cover these lanes while making sure you're safe from any counter-strike and...

well, voila, really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SecondTime wrote:
The counter is that those aren't dick moves. Those are obvious moves. But then, I faced 120 hormagaunt guy in 2nd. Why would you not maximize your wolf guard? Wolf guard guy was sick of losing to Nids, Eldar, and Slaneesh gun line.

They're obvious moves if you're trying to win, and they're obvious enough to dodge if you don't want that kind of game.

Tycho wrote:

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

I don't think it's "always" been about that. Remember that it was started by a group of guys who really liked RPGs - it was originally more roleplaying than anything. Rogue Trader needed a game master and even then, it was only barely playable.

That changed with second edition, but even there, the rules, combined with GW's collective personality at the time kept it way more beer and pretzels than math hammer and list building. 3rd ed was too simple to even need math hammer and you pretty much just had a couple winning formulas to deal with anyway (I do not miss the days of Rhino rush). I think the math/list building aspect really started to flourish around 4th and has only gained momentum since.

I'm going to go with the "technically correct is the best kind of correct" approach here and argue that TECHNICALLY speaking when the game was a beer and pretzels narrative skirmish game, the game was called "Rogue Trader" rather than "Warhammer 40,000" and therefore was technically a different game. 2nd and 3rd ed. definitely had mathhammer aspects though, the fact that the community hadn't yet "solved" the game and that approach to gameplay wasn't yet commonplace doesn't mean it wasn't embedded within the design of the game.

I've joked with my buddies that 40K is 50% list building, 25% deployment, 15% luck of the dice, and 10% actual strategy and tactics.

You may joke, but this is probably a pretty good breakdown of reality. It might not be true of the current/previous edition as I've never really bothered to consider the changes from edition to edition, but this has basically been how I've thought of the game since 4th edition.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I'm going to go with the "technically correct is the best kind of correct" approach here and argue that TECHNICALLY speaking when the game was a beer and pretzels RPG skirmish game, the game was called "Rogue Trader" rather than "Warhammer 40,000" and therefore was technically a different game. 2nd and 3rd ed. definitely had mathhammer aspects though, the fact that the community hadn't yet "solved" the game and that approach to gameplay wasn't yet commonplace doesn't mean it wasn't embedded within the design of the game.

Also - when 2nd edition was kicking around, and even 3rd edition, there likely wasn't nearly the volume of people hanging out on internet forms discussing the details of army lists and helping each other optimize every last point. People were more on their own to figure stuff out back then.

chaos0xomega wrote:
You may joke, but this is probably a pretty good breakdown of reality. It might not be true of the current/previous edition as I've never really bothered to consider the changes from edition to edition, but this has basically been how I've thought of the game since 4th edition.

Well, jokes aren't funny unless they contain a kernel of truth

 Mezmorki wrote:

RandomHeretic wrote:
I've been playing 40k for close to 30 years and I think 9th is one of the most tactical editions.

I'm going to put you on the spot if that's okay! When you say "most tactical" what kinds of things do you have in mind? Can you provide some examples? Genuinely curious - what are the "new tactics" that are required by 9th with respect to objectives or other aspects of play?

I think this sums a lot of it up well:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think it's the terrain rules, definitely, but also combined with the way missions are scored. The mission is more board-control intensive, meaning that castling in a corner/side is no longer a recipe for victory. This forces movement, and while it can be a simple blap movement forwards, this gets into ...

... the Terrain rules. Objectives cannot be placed into terrain, which means simply moving onto the objective and plopping down is a bad idea; you'll be unprotected and in the open, ready to get mowed or cut down by whatever happens by when the enemy takes their turn.

Therefore, what you have to do is actually secure the objective; by that I don't mean have more models than your opponent, but I mean secure in the military sense. You have to sweep, clear, and then set up in nearby terrain to help keep the enemy away, you have to threaten shooting lanes to prevent the enemy from maneuvering against your unit on the objective, and you have to lock down the area where the objective is with either fire or maneuver in order to keep it, because it isn't scored till your NEXT turn.

The combination of terrain rules and how the missions are scored leads to a surprisingly deep game. It is like Othello, minutes to learn but a lifetime to master.

Take Dense Terrain, for instance. If you shoot through it you take a negative to hit. If you move through it you take a negative to move. This means that the terrain hampers both shooting and hand to hand units but in different ways. This means that your decisions aren't just range and target priority, but also how do you need to move to reduce the impact of terrain, while maximizing the benefit, while still moving up to take board position, and then actually holding the positions you take. This is not simple, and small choices on placement can lose you an entire game.

In my experience past editions were more of a combat game, and were much MORE dictated by just who could kill more. 5th edition largely turned into parking lots, 4th edition was ruled by eldar skimmers not because they played the objective game well but because they just didn't die. Previous systems scored points based on how much you killed, and so killing was literally the goal of the game. Etc, etc. 9th edition is a massive evolution because you can now easily win while dying if you make good movement decisions.

I have recently been doing written battle reports, and have been criticized that I just make better decisions than my opponents. I am hardly the best player out there, and yet tactical choices matter much more than lists. If it will help answer your question, I suggest you read some of what I have written, as you asked for examples and it may help illustrate what you are looking for.

Tyranids vs White Scars:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/jbdgkx/tyranids_vs_new_codex_white_scars_9th_edition/
Tyranids vs Daemons and Death Guard:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/j2qjxp/tyranids_vs_daemons_and_death_guard_9th_edition/
Tyranids vs Knights and Admech:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/iztbu8/tyranids_vs_knights_and_admech_9th_edition_battle/
Tyranids vs Iron Hands:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/ixfhri/tyranids_vs_iron_hands_9th_edition_battle_report/
Tyranids vs Custodes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/isi6as/tyranids_vs_custodes_9th_edition_battle_report/

If you want a good example of winning while getting your forces crushed I would recommend you read the Death Guard battle report first. Note that while I am playing Tyranids, I am not playing a horde list but rather an elite style army that relies entirely on making tactical decisions.

I wouldn't say easily win. Lose too much, too quickly, and you can't lock down any objectives as described above. Killing is still VERY powerful.

PenitentJake wrote:

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.

That's not a bad idea.

What do others do? Do you write down useful strats against the units on your roster or do you just play often enough to remember them all? It would be useful if BattleScribe had the ability to list strats relevant to your force...

I use an excel list that was published on reddit which sorts all the stratagems by when you can use them.

The answer is yes. It is on purpose, so not sure what we can do about it. Play HH instead? Nevermind that it receives a lot less support. Honestly, nowadays a lot of us grognards are moving to the hobby side, with games no longer being the priority. Maybe this is what kids want nowadays.

 Jidmah wrote:
I use an excel list that was published on reddit which sorts all the stratagems by when you can use them.

That people are put in the position of having to do this sounds awful. We only have so much headspace to devote. How much headspace is consumed with cross referencing stratagems and the like instead of thinking about the physical positioning?

Grey40k wrote:
The answer is yes. It is on purpose, so not sure what we can do about it. Play HH instead? Nevermind that it receives a lot less support. Honestly, nowadays a lot of us grognards are moving to the hobby side, with games no longer being the priority. Maybe this is what kids want nowadays.

Well it's quite the opposite for me, i have a full force of minis to use, i have grown tired of building/painting. aside from that i am currently working on a premium edition collection of DUST minis that come fully assembled and nicely painted out of the box. i have actually been spending most of my effort on collecting nice finished terrain. earlier in the year i picked up loads of ESLO finished terrain and i am planning to get some of the gamematEU pre-painted resin terrain sets.

I still actively play a host of games including 40K at our weekly game group session, just not 9th edition.

Surely you could argue the first edition was down to maths if you wanted to spend enough time working out details on what was efficient?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
To say that "warhammer has always been about mathhammer" is to miss the point, I think.

Competitively, it was always about mathhammer. Casually, it sometimes was about mathhammer. Narratively, it really wasn't.

The difference is that back in the day it was actually quite difficult to "accidentally" be a dill weed, even if it was possible to be more of a dill weed if you were actually trying.

For example, Wolf Guard Terminators could take an assault cannon and cyclone missile launcher on every. single. model. This is clearly bonkers for competitive play - seriously wtf - but in casual and narrative play, it wasn't a problem, because it was so OBVIOUSLY dickish that you probably wouldn't get games.

In 5th with the bad wound allocation you had Grey Knight players (and, earlier, Nob Biker players) who had totally unique wargear on every single multiwound model, which monkied with the damage resolution method. But you could tell when someone did this - you'd end up with a guy with Master-Crafted Storm Bolter, a different guy with Master-Crafted Stabby Bit, and a different guy with Stabby-Bit that is Worse But Different For Wound Allocation, and it was pretty damn clear he was trying to exploit the wound allocation rules.

In 7th, Eldar scatbikes were absolutely atrocious, but if someone brought an army with four units of bikes and each individual bike had a scatterlaser, you knew that guy was a dick - compare him to the Saim-Hann player, who has all bikes but only 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 have heavy weapons, there's close combat weapons sprinkled in, etc.

These days? It's much easier for a narrative or casual army to absolutely crush a narrative or casual army simply by accident, because rather than the power disparity being due to wonky rules interactions (such as wargear options or RAW wound allocation or the a designer losing his mind for a single unit while the rest of the book is less bad), the power disparity is due to the whole of one army being dramatically better, point for point, than the whole of another army.

I can list even more examples but the point, I think, should be clear. In the old days, it was rules exploits that broke the game. These days, it's real imbalance rather than GW simply not knowing how their game works.

You're giving 7th edition, especially the CWE book, way too much credit. Scat bikes got the early nod for being obviously broken, but you could pretty much have thrown darts at that codex and devastated everyone at your locals.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey40k wrote:
The answer is yes. It is on purpose, so not sure what we can do about it. Play HH instead? Nevermind that it receives a lot less support. Honestly, nowadays a lot of us grognards are moving to the hobby side, with games no longer being the priority. Maybe this is what kids want nowadays.

What kids play this game?(Game here referring to the type of competitive or semi-competitive pickup or tournament style game this thread and comment are complaining about.) What parent who doesn't play warhammer themselves would shell out the amount of money they would need to to actually build a large enough force to play an incursion game, let alone a strikeforce game?

The hobby side is where 'kid' purchases come in. Cool box-arts and a chance to play with glue and paint and spend time with dad(or mom) on their day off. Which is perfectly noble in its own right, but has no bearing on the game.

The type of game this thread is complaining about is done only by adults who can afford the cost of play in both time and dollars. Most areas even getting a game requires a car, a messaging/group app(discord, facebook, etc), several hours free on a weekend, and likely some amount of cash for either food/drink and table fees. And that's AFTER spending anywhere from 300-800 USD on a 2000 point force, and god knows how many hours on assembly, learning the rules, learning the missions, getting all the peripherals you need to actually play the game, etc. Sure, there are kids out there who are dedicated enough and focused enough(and have rich enough parents) to do all that, but the overall impact they have on the direction of the game is nil.

You don't like the current direction of 40ks design, that's fine. That's a totally valid opinion to have, it's clearly not to everyone's taste and it's very different from what came before it. Pretending it has anything to do with 'kids these days' is utter nonsense.

TL: DR, Ok Boomer.

Pretending it has anything to do with 'kids these days' is utter nonsense.

Uh dude that was obviously a coloquial term used as a well known joke "whatever you kids call it thses days" try not to take it to literally. we know most players are over 20 (and for those of use over 40 they literally could be our kids) and have a steady job to be able to afford the game. while some are kids that play because their parents or friends got them into it. in fact that very thing happened in our game group one of the guys has a 14 year old son that plays and his son got some of his school friends to start playing with him.

The cry that is all about mathhammer is sort of like saying card games are all just about picking decks. I mean yeah... but no.

Mathhammer is just about saying "if you were going to take unit X, don't, taking unit Y, because it will always give you a better chance to succeed". You can say such should never happen, there should be neither good or bad units, but that's highly unlikely given the vast roster of available units. Some will be better than others at any given moment in time.

2nd level mathhammer is a bit more interesting (i.e. how many shots from unit X do I need to fire to give myself say an 80-90% chance of killing that unit?) - but that's not what people usually mean.

In my experience casual lists are far less likely to destroy other casual lists in 8th compared to 7th, where whole books were trash. A non-optimised Dark Eldar list (which was basically reavers, reavers and yet more reavers) had almost no chance against Eldar/Marines/Tau/Magnus+friends/Knights/Necrons assuming the other person was vaguely awake. Ditto for Tyranids without 5+ Hive Tyrants, Orks, basic CSM etc.

Most of the hard competitive skews in 8th were not *natural* combinations of units. "I just like running my 3 Leviathan Dreadnoughts, how do you do fellow kids?" is not really a thing. Someone going "here's my list, its the loyal 32, the bloody 17 and a Castellan I spray painted for 20 seconds. Yeah, no you see it totally is fluffy, here's my extensive backstory...." is being that guy.

For clarity: I meant that 40k seems to be catering more to a crowd that prefers “games” to “simulations”; yes, often the players are adults. But the approach is clearly more an abstraction than an attempt to simulate (good buy armor facings and so on, welcome stratagems).

I too think some of the simulation elements were a bit tedious, but there hasn’t been streamlining just removal. I find it more tedious to have to worry about silly combos with the closest unit and heroic intervention And some odd stratagem and what not. Rules at have been a bit much, but stratagems are just ad hoc rules, which to me means they are worse since the break immersion.

Grey40k wrote:
For clarity: I meant that 40k seems to be catering more to a crowd that prefers “games” to “simulations”; .

I'm not sure. For a person who plays "gamey" games, like heavy euro economic strategies, Warhammer rules are all over the place, too random, too imbalanced, too Pay-2-Win to even be considered games by some. For example my regular gaming group calls wargames (and similar RNG-heavy titles) "social activities" and refuse to call them games, because of the almost total lack of "brain-provoking gamey-gaminess" and the predominance of pew-pewing and vroom-vrooming with toy soldiers.

Even among wargames there are titles that cater to "gamey-gamers" more, like Warmachine (still a badly outdated design now), Guild Ball, new skirmish boardgames like Super Fantasy Brawl etc. They have neat, concise rules with theme bolted on, not the upside-down design of a theme with rules invented as an afterthought, molded to fit said theme at the cost of their mathematical consistency and elegance.

For example my regular gaming group calls wargames (and similar RNG-heavy titles) "social activities"

The social activity is the act of playing the game with friends because you are doing social things with others. that isn't a reflection on the model of the game.

Even among wargames there are titles that cater to "gamey-gamers" more, like Warmachine (still a badly outdated design now)

I disagree MKIII game mechanics are actually some of the best the game has ever had(except themes, a bad idea that should never have been continued). the problem has been with the behavior of the community, and missteps by the company in production, support/marketing

They have neat, concise rules with theme bolted on, not the upside-down design of a theme with rules invented as an afterthought, molded to fit said theme at the cost of their mathematical consistency and elegance.

I think the original design direction is where you have this issue. warhammer(fantasy) and by extension 40K has its roots in an RPG setting where theme was the starting point and rules were made to fit that theme. heroquest, the root of it all, while being a board game was also very much an archtype roleplaying game. the early changes to 40K specifically was an attempt to turn that RPG into more of a strategy game and then a full on TT miniature wargame. you really see it in earlier editions like RT/2nd where a DM was needed to keep things straight. even with 3rd and a little less so 4th the story/theme aspect of the game was the core the rules were attached to. people now who see 40K as this competitive wargame ever in seach of "balance" for sanctioned play miss the point that the game was never intended to be balanced in that way. lore/theme was the driving factor making some matchups between factions seem uneven/imbalanced that had to be countered by actions on the TT in addition to list building. for this to work it required players to stay within the set themes. We all know how well that works out when players with a certain mindset go about squeezing ever ounce of advantage out of the rules in a way the designers never intended.

classic battletech by comparison started out with a very complex but tight concise rule set that has changed little in 30 years because it was so well thought out and the theme/lore was attached to the rules in that setting. this was achieved by keeping the game small so it could be complex, where as GW started small and went big where model sales became the driving factor with a game attached to them.

The "roots in an RPG setting" have been dead for decades now though.

 aphyon wrote:

Even among wargames there are titles that cater to "gamey-gamers" more, like Warmachine (still a badly outdated design now)

I disagree MKIII game mechanics are actually some of the best the game has ever had(except themes, a bad idea that should never have been continued). the problem has been with the behavior of the community, and missteps by the company in production, support/marketing

Well, I also agree when compared to other wargames - WM&H is actually my firm favourite! I love this game! Player agency and decision making aspects of the game are top notch, compared to GW games.

But when compared to the state-of-the-art design of modern boardgames, WM&H lags behind with inelegant, bloated rules, full of micro-rules, exceptions, interactions that require multiple pages of FAQs...

The design philosophy of "more is more" can certainly be considered outdated in the world of more modern game design.


As for my friends' opinion about wargames, it's that they mean it's ONLY a social activity. The "game" part of it is non-existant for them, as they do not see themselves caring about the outcome of something affected by so many factors outside of their control (aforementioned randomness, Pay2Win, inherent imbalance).

For comparison, favourites with this group are Brass:Birmingham, Food Chain Magnate, Imperial, Age of Discovery so actually ruthless cutthroat competition games !!! (definitley not barely interactive euros about gathering wood and transforming it into sheep)

 Jidmah wrote:
The "roots in an RPG setting" have been dead for decades now though.

Only about 8 years actually. the release of 6th edition was the final nail in the coffin. 5th had started moving away in the rules and army books but had a few codexes that still strived to hold to the original lore based rules. it was really dependent on which writer was assigned to which codex. 3rd was probably the closest to holding to the origins with army restrictions and build requirements with 4th still having a large (not all..) percentage of armies in that same design direction as it was a progression from 3rd.

This is also about the time(4th ed) Andy Chambers left the company after 14 years as the lead game designer.

I've played and observed games of 4th and started with 5th, and plenty of the codices at that time dated back to 3rd edition. At that time I was already a P&P veteran and had lots of role-playing experience. In all those rules 40k never had any real aspects of an RPG in it, people role-playing the game are really no different that people role-playing their characters in World of Warcraft or GTA. You can immerse yourself into the game and have fun doing so, but the game has never offered any real support for it outside of a setting and customization options.

In fact, 9th edition crusade is probably the closest thing to an RPG I've ever experienced in 40k.

Does the fact that a game has very neat, nicely trimmed, mathematically elegant rules prevent the game from being an immersive, narrative experience in your opinion ?

I enjoy the narrative aspect of games I play, but there's this idea that it requires a tangled mess of a multitude of ambiguous and imbalanced rules loosely bolted together, like in RPG systems of yore. Does it have to be like this ?