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A.T. wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have always an advantage.

5th edition objective games, especially earlier in the power creep cycle of the edition.

Reactive deployment and final move were powerful to the point of choosing 2nd turn and even refusing to seize, though the last-gasp wins nature had significant drawbacks in of itself.

I agree 100%. I often chose to go second in 5th for a variety of situations, and it worked perfectly.

Nurglitch wrote:
.....

Game-wise, it means that while the pie is growing, the slices of that pie need to be continually cut thinner and thinner, and the requirement for precision becomes higher and higher. Too simple and soon either the new product is just a retread of a previous release, and too many moving parts and the game becomes unplayable. I haven't played since summer of 2019 when I couldn't face playing in another Warhammer tournament, or really play another game again. I don't really know why, but I'd had my fill of Warhammer, and having really enjoyed 8th I'd been trying to figure out why.

For the main part I think it's because the game doesn't work for me anymore. Despite all the extra rules and whatnot, it gets to be a bit of a repetitive experience, and it takes so long, even in a tournament. I want a game that only lasts for an hour, and is more dynamic, with combinatorial game-play rather than the stochastic fiddling with dice. Maybe it's because I don't want to play games with dice anymore?

......

Like I said, I fell off the game in 8th despite my enjoyment of the game increasing since 4th edition. I don't pretend to know the secret sauce. Maybe it's just not for me anymore and I need to work harder on moving on?

Funny

For me it was the other way round. I got really fed up with PC gaming. I used to draw a lot when I was younger. But somehow I couldn´t get myself to draw or spray just for drawings sake. 40k seemed to be a nice way to combine some art and strategy board game aspects. Maybe thats why it is not so easy to adjust. 40k is a whole different animal compared to most PC strategy games. Though it seems to close the gap with some "balance update" every half year. Frankly I would not have started it if GW would still not bother to update a codes for several edition like they used to.
Anyway maybe you just need a break as well.

Hope you´ll get back and enjoy it at a later time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blastaar wrote:
@Harlech Quinn

I see that your thoughts have elicited negativity right off the bat.

Your perspective as a new player is a valuable one- most of us here have been around GW for a long time. I agree with your points.

1. There are too many armies, especially subfaction "armies." GW has wasted resources attempting to force different SM chapters, craftworlds, etc., etc., to be "unique" by slapping band-aid chapter "tactics" and stratagems on them. It is a symptom of the shallow core rules. They do not provide enough mechanically for different armies built from the same codex to play in different ways. Play Saim-hann? Take bikes and skimmers. Iyanden? Wraiths. Your custom CW? Whatever you want! No CTs needed!

This is especially problematic with marines. There are vanilla marines, SW, BA, DW, and DA. The latter 4 all have unique units and/or organization, but they're still space marines. I think vanilla marines are a bigger problem, though. Want to play RG? Welp, here's you stratagem and pasted-on rule for -1, +1, or reroll! Like IF gunlines? Here's a different stratagem, and some -1, +1 to other stuff! How unique!

Wolves, angels and DW could all fit in that book, too. All you'd need are separate force organization for them, with different unit availability, and their wargear lists.

2.Yes. Yes. Yes! IGOUGO is terrible for this game, the primary reason there is so little tactical depth. An AA system would be a boon.

An activation could be:

Move and shoot.

Stand and shoot.

Double move.

Charge (double move to melee range and make attacks)

Move and cast psychic power.

Stand and cast long psychic power.

Go to ground.

3. Melee is a puzzle. 40k needs melee. Sword fights in the future is part of the cool, and adds to the visceral setting and nature of combat. Locked in combat sucks. Hard. Spending multiple turns rolling for attacks is neither tactical, nor fun.

I'd like to see melee reworked to: A unit charges, all models make attacks, done. "But melee units will die" you say? This is where a suppression system, better terrain and los rules, and rules, come in. Along with the fact that your opponent only gets to activate a few units before it's your turn again.

I too think that the game could benefit from dividing the activations into smaller pieces. Whether that is by alternate activation or just allow units less actions in a single turn and increase the number of turns in a game. Since every unit is only going to act 5 times in a single game the natural instinct is to frontload as much destruction in a single turn as possible. Especially if yout army is not resilient enough to tank the enemy offensive power. It would be nice if you would have more options of forgoing offensive actions for a benefit in a later turn. Or as was mentioned earlier, have the option to fire for another effect than just removing the enemies models. Maybe allow some form of limited interrupt outside the melee phase.

I do think that while you aren't completely wrong, your view is heavily warped by playing an army which really only gets to play in a single phase. The design of the tau army is (and always has been) multiplying issues of the core game. If shooting became too strong, they have been horrible overbearing, when shooting dropped off in power they were struggling to hold their own.

GW really needs to put some thought into tau to find a middle ground between point&click to delete unit and getting slaughtered in combat. For example, all the smaller suits should have some way to interact with melee combatants in an interesting way by using their guns in melee rather than dedicated melee weapons.

 Jidmah wrote:
I do think that while you aren't completely wrong, your view is heavily warped by playing an army which really only gets to play in a single phase. The design of the tau army is (and always has been) multiplying issues of the core game. If shooting became too strong, they have been horrible overbearing, when shooting dropped off in power they were struggling to hold their own.

GW really needs to put some thought into tau to find a middle ground between point&click to delete unit and getting slaughtered in combat. For example, all the smaller suits should have some way to interact with melee combatants in an interesting way by using their guns in melee rather than dedicated melee weapons.

I would be finde with something like this. Unfortunatly the recent Armor Compendium updates don´t show anything like this on any of the suits.

I must agree with the OP. By the end of 7th, rules bloat was ridiculous and when 8th came along, it effectively wiped the slate to a much simpler game. By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

AOS in contrast is a far, far simpler game.

This is not to say we should apply AOS to 40k, but their path of ever-increasing complexity has one big downside - you're going to lose your appeal to new players.

Humble82 wrote:
By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

The only reason to believe this is because you have lost track of how bloated 7th had gotten in the end.

 Jidmah wrote:

Humble82 wrote:
By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

The only reason to believe this is because you have lost track of how bloated 7th had gotten in the end.

I agree in part, until you look at the SM dex and realize there are doctrines, super doctrines, angles of death, bolter discipline, chapter tactics, auras... How many different 7th ed special rules is that equivalent too?

I don't think 9th as a whole is AS bloated. But it's running towards it as fast as it can.

If you play a former standalone chapter (BA, SW, DA) current 40k is extremely bloated. And it's just the first months of the edition, do we really think that SM will keep these rules for 3ish years?

Other factions should be ok though, 7th was really a mess.

My suggestion regarding the issues repeated in this thread and many other similar threads is to take some time away from the GW roller coaster of new editions and codex updates, and instead use your models to play one of the following better rule sets with static rules:

Apocalypse
Kill Team
8th edition Indexes only (preferably with points from Chapter Approved 2019)
4th/5th edition hybrid

I play all of these now instead and enjoy them much more than the bloated stratagem card game that 40k has turned into.

 Jidmah wrote:

Humble82 wrote:
By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

The only reason to believe this is because you have lost track of how bloated 7th had gotten in the end.

I think it can also depend on the army you are playing. From what I understand GK for example didn't even have a 7th ed supplement book. So for a 7th ed GK player the end of 8th and start of 9th could feel like there is bucket loads of books and rules to buy.

Karol wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Humble82 wrote:
By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

The only reason to believe this is because you have lost track of how bloated 7th had gotten in the end.

I think it can also depend on the army you are playing. From what I understand GK for example didn't even have a 7th ed supplement book. So for a 7th ed GK player the end of 8th and start of 9th could feel like there is bucket loads of books and rules to buy.

Nope, sorry.

As GK right now, you need to buy two books currently plus whatever your basic ruleset is to have all the rules.

In 7th you had to get Codex:GK, the Angel of Death Supplement, Blood Oath, Imperial Agents and Gathering Storm III, assuming you didn't want to include things like assassins. And I'm actually not sure where you'd get Voldus' rules from, but it wasn't in the codex.

From what I have been told in 7th GK were so bad comparing to other factions, that it didn't matter what you actualy got, because the good armies were so much better, meaning you could very well survive on a rulebook. Or the GK lists was some sort of soup list that felt more like marine list with GK added just to have Gate for a big unit making up most of the army.

The bloat isn't in number of books in 9th, that's a deceptive comparison.

The bloat is in number of rules.

Whether you had the GK from Imperial Agents, Gathering Storm 3, or the codex, they had a consistent set of special rules:
- Psyker (ML X)
- Universal Force Weapons
- Deep Strike

etc.

modern 40k, those same GK still are psykers, but force weapons work differently (d3 damage, right)? and not all of them have Deep Strike, iirc. But there's a gazillion stratagems to also remember (they have Transhuman or something like it, right? Do they have a "you can't fall back from me" stratagem or is that regular Marines? How does their anti-Daemon stratagem work, or do they not have one the way Deathwatch has specific anti-Xenos stratagems? And do GK get Superdoctrines? I honestly don't know. What about Shock Assault? I guess they do, but the rules aren't on the datasheet so I'm literally just guessing because they're "Adeptus Astartes" etc)

They may not have lots of books going on, but especially with Marines it's a ton of stuff to keep track of, i.e. bloat. There's what, 180 Space Marine stratagems?

Karol wrote:
From what I have been told in 7th GK were so bad comparing to other factions, that it didn't matter what you actualy got, because the good armies were so much better, meaning you could very well survive on a rulebook. Or the GK lists was some sort of soup list that felt more like marine list with GK added just to have Gate for a big unit making up most of the army.

No ruleset is bloated if you chose to ignore the vast majority of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The bloat isn't in number of books in 9th, that's a deceptive comparison.

The bloat is in number of rules.

Even by that metric, 7th far outpaced 9th.

modern 40k, those same GK still are psykers, but force weapons work differently (d3 damage, right)?

Force weapons being regular weapons with regular statlines is a reduction in bloat, not an increase.

and not all of them have Deep Strike, iirc. But there's a gazillion stratagems to also remember (they have Transhuman or something like it, right? Do they have a "you can't fall back from me" stratagem or is that regular Marines? How does their anti-Daemon stratagem work, or do they not have one the way Deathwatch has specific anti-Xenos stratagems? And do GK get Superdoctrines? I honestly don't know. What about Shock Assault? I guess they do, but the rules aren't on the datasheet so I'm literally just guessing because they're "Adeptus Astartes" etc)

All of those questions only arise because you haven't concerned yourself with GK rules. You would have just as many questions in 7th if you hadn't read any GK rules, except you would have no way of finding out how many exist in what books.

They may not have lots of books going on, but especially with Marines it's a ton of stuff to keep track of, i.e. bloat. There's what, 180 Space Marine stratagems?

34 Stratagems, plus up to 16 from a supplement. Grey Knights have 31. These include the default stuff everyone has(like relics) and any unit upgrades.

In 7th Grey Knights had access to 35 psychic powers and "Angel of Death" added another 28 psychic powers.

I actually tried to count the number of formations available to space marines to provide facts, but I found it impossible to do without wasting my entire afternoon on tracking down and reading all the documents.
1d4 chan lists 47 across all chapters and publications.

Ok, 7th bloat was bad. 9th is getting bad though. Knowing what an army is capable of is still a lot.

Honestly, it doesn't feel that way though. I have little to no knowledge about armies I rarely or never face (Dark Eldar, Sisters, Ad Mech or Blood Angels, for example), but in general the game has gotten much more consistent, so even if I don't know all the stratagems, I know what to ask for so I don't run into gotcha moments. There are few stratagems or unit rules which do something completely unexpected, and even if there is, I won't get caught by them a second time or I have at least heard about them before.
I couldn't tell you what defensive stratagems marines or eldar have for which units off the top of my head, but I do know that they have some, so I can ask for them.

Many stratagems are also linked to a specific unit or only make sense to use with a small hand full of units. Those are basically just abilities of that unit's datasheet which require CP to use. And really, they should just be printed that way.

More and more I think Stratagems and CP are the formations of the post 7th ed world. Those things are a pox on the game.

The problem is that once you remove the haze of the rules bloat it becomes glaringly obvious how bland, shallow and uniteresting the underlying, basic game is.

With a solid, interlocking net of player-driven relations in the basic rules, you can add as much or as little extra rules bloat and still get an engaging game. Simpler or more complex, depending on what you want the game to be, but in both cases an interesting puzzle to unlock.

Games are for fun.

40k is a game.

It's truly a life changing realization when you come to understand this.

Until then, try something else.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Games are for fun.

40k is a game.

It's truly a life changing realization when you come to understand this.

Until then, try something else.

I'd like to point out that you are telling people they are having fun the wrong way.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Games are for fun.
40k is a game.
It's truly a life changing realization when you come to understand this.

now just accept that people bought that game and invested a lot of money and now are pissed because that promise (40k is a game, and games are fun) did not hold true for them

Being a game means it is supposed to be fun. Games are little engines designed to produce fun. The problem is some little engines don't do their job.

40k does = game.
40k does not necessarily = fun.

It's not inherent. 40k actually has to do the job first.

The point is that people seek different things from the same game. Yes it's bloated, there are conflicts in the rules and some factions are more powerful than other ones but if you play the game against a long time buddy (or even a semi-stranger that shares the same attitude) toning up or down the lists in order to have a balanced match all those issues actually don't exist.

Some people instead want to play against a random opponent and prove their skills. It's a completely different mentality and leads to a completely different idea of having fun playing the game.

 Blackie wrote:
The point is that people seek different things from the same game. Yes it's bloated, there are conflicts in the rules and some factions are more powerful than other ones but if you play the game against a long time buddy (or even a semi-stranger that shares the same attitude) toning up or down the lists in order to have a balanced match all those issues actually don't exist.

Some people instead want to play against a random opponent and prove their skills. It's a completely different mentality and leads to a completely different idea of having fun playing the game.

Different people do seek different things. My issues with the game are deeply rooted in the mechanics. It's not bloat and it's not opponents. The game itself just isn't good.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd like to point out that you are telling people they are having fun the wrong way.

I think its more the counter to the miserabilist comments we get here which seem to amount to "I've hated 40k for 5, 10, 20 years, but somehow I still regularly spend time posting about it online".

I don't feel 9th is that bloated - and, for a time at least - it may grow less so as PA is incorporated or dismissed into new faction codexes. (Until the inevitable "PA2, we want £30 for 4 competitive stratagems")

Lance845 wrote:More and more I think Stratagems and CP are the formations of the post 7th ed world. Those things are a pox on the game.

Yes they are, formation broke 7th edition, stratagems/CP are what is breaking the current game.
40K was always the fun, fast and simpler game to play. it had to be once it became an army game in 3rd ed. skirmish games cannot scale up and stay with the same complex rules.
9th ed has to much to keep track of, and there are many things that unreasonably bog/slow the game down. there doesn't need to be 7 phases to a game turn that used to have everything intuitively wrapped up in 3

Gnarlly wrote:My suggestion regarding the issues repeated in this thread and many other similar threads is to take some time away from the GW roller coaster of new editions and codex updates, and instead use your models to play one of the following better rule sets with static rules:

Apocalypse
Kill Team
8th edition Indexes only (preferably with points from Chapter Approved 2019)
4th/5th edition hybrid

I play all of these now instead and enjoy them much more than the bloated stratagem card game that 40k has turned into.

Bingo!-that's why i have a dedicated topic on all things older 40K editions/specialist games

Lance845 wrote:Being a game means it is supposed to be fun. Games are little engines designed to produce fun. The problem is some little engines don't do their job.

40k does = game.
40k does not necessarily = fun.

It's not inherent. 40k actually has to do the job first.

It is the same as it has always been. fun for some people is assembly and painting, or converting models (the hobby aspect) fun for others is game play or immersion in the universe through it. some more competitive players only find it fun to utterly crush their opponents so if they loose a game they are not having "fun" .

Building a 40k army has lots of temporal, emotional, and finanical investment.

Saying "just don't play, durr" when someone has a problem with the direction the game is heading is unhelpful. It's like telling someone "just sell your house, durr" when they complain that their ancestral home has bad insulation or something.

Tyel wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd like to point out that you are telling people they are having fun the wrong way.

I think its more the counter to the miserabilist comments we get here which seem to amount to "I've hated 40k for 5, 10, 20 years, but somehow I still regularly spend time posting about it online".

I don't feel 9th is that bloated - and, for a time at least - it may grow less so as PA is incorporated or dismissed into new faction codexes. (Until the inevitable "PA2, we want £30 for 4 competitive stratagems")

I would say: «I have loved 40k for 5, 10, 20 years, but somehow I still unable to accept it isn't a game good like I would love».
I knew some true W40k haters and trust me: no one of them is able to articulate critics like the ones made by Harlech Queen. Those kind of critics can't come from an hater, they come from a lover who isn't able to enjoy the object of his love.

Humble82 wrote:
I must agree with the OP. By the end of 7th, rules bloat was ridiculous and when 8th came along, it effectively wiped the slate to a much simpler game. By the start of 9th, the bloat is much bigger than 7th ever was and the more recent codexes have continued that trend.

AOS in contrast is a far, far simpler game.

This is not to say we should apply AOS to 40k, but their path of ever-increasing complexity has one big downside - you're going to lose your appeal to new players.

One of the more important differences I find in AoS is that a lot of the units get their "unit specific stratagems" assigned to their datasheets as bespoke abilities that can cost command points. 40k, for some reason, decided to take all those abilities and make them into stratagems which just creates a sea of stratagems where only a percentage of them can actually be applied in a more agnostic manner. It creates excessive bookkeeping for players and designers appear to add stratagems at a whim as they don't appear aware of all the existing stratagems.

Take for example the stratagems in War of the Spider. A few of them explicitly say "Pick Plague Marine unit" so they could just as easily been an ability on the Death Guard Plague Marine sheet. Now, whether the datasheet itself becomes too big if all the stratagems gets added is another discussion, but I think it would better illustrate the excessive bloat in abilities some units get in comparison to other.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Building a 40k army has lots of temporal, emotional, and finanical investment.

Saying "just don't play, durr" when someone has a problem with the direction the game is heading is unhelpful. It's like telling someone "just sell your house, durr" when they complain that their ancestral home has bad insulation or something.

However, also telling a player that maybe they should change the insulation (such as house-ruling) is often met with as vitriol as stop playing. There are a few Dakkanuats that would argue that the ancestral home should have had good insulation from the beginning. Games Workshops games have been pretty consistent in their quality, or lack of, for much of the decade or so I have been aware of them. While 8th and 9th are better for platoon/company sized games to 7th (which I think would be fine at more a squad level which all its micromanaging), it still pales to pretty much any other miniatures war game I have played.

And I am fine with that for the most part. I certainly understand what I am getting into playing it. For the most part 40k and AoS give the run-of-the-mill armies I and my opponents play a fighting chance to win. Sometimes that fighting chance is more uphill than other times. Other times it isn't there at all. Which is a shame and shouldn't be there. I am fortunate that I play with a group that if someone's army is taking a beating the rest of the group will try and figure out ways to make the next game more balanced. My Primaris space marine army was down to 15-20% less points, no supplements and sometimes no roll-off to determine who when first with my opponent deciding when I was playing the second 8th ed C:SM. If that didn't work, I could always play my Chaos Space Marine army. Or if an opponent really wanted 40k on easy mode, I could break out my GSC army which is a combination of poor rules, a weak model collection and me competing for the worst GSC player in the world title.

I am sure pretty much everyone gets that their ancestral home has bad installation and for almost everyone the only real installers are the same that put the original bad stuff in. It would take great effort and money to get better, out-of-town installers to replace it. Which really isn't feasible for most. At the same time, I don't think it is healthy to endless gripe every winter and every summer about how it is too cold and hot. Especially, since GW games aren't actual necessities and should be fun, and griping endlessly apparently hasn't affected any change. Nor does it look like it ever really will to a large degree. So the best I can tell you is put on an extra sweater in the winter and open up all the windows and get some fans for the summer if you can't move on or afford to get a new installation company in your home town.