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ignore baconcatbug, some people's hobby is 40k, his hobby is complaining about 40k

 SolarCross wrote:
is 9th ed any good? .

As compared to other Warhammer editions or to modern game design?

BrianDavion wrote:
ignore baconcatbug, some people's hobby is 40k, his hobby is complaining about 40k

Oh noes he used drastic language to describe the frankly insulting low standards for GW rules, quick discount his opinions wherever he may write!



The TCGification is indeed an issue Brian, just because you don't agree with the language chosen doesn't mean he hasn't some points.


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Cyel wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
is 9th ed any good? .

As compared to other Warhammer editions or to modern game design?

Now this is the real question

It's a good 40k edition.

It's not necessarily a good wargame though

Not Online!!! wrote:
The TCGification is indeed an issue Brian, just because you don't agree with the language chosen doesn't mean he hasn't some points.

Most TCGs I've played would be insulted by GW's low standards for rules and balance. They can't hide their shoddy rules behind their models.


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Not Online!!! wrote:
It's not necessarily a good wargame though

Considering what old wargaming veterans on this forum expect from a wargame, I would say that 40k has stopped being a wargame a long time ago. To me, it has turned into a rather decent board game.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
The TCGification is indeed an issue Brian, just because you don't agree with the language chosen doesn't mean he hasn't some points.

Most TCGs I've played would be insulted by GW's low standards for rules and balance. They can't hide their shoddy rules behind their models.

Absolutely hence why i stated the frankly insultingly low standard of GW's rules. Whilest i personally would prefer stratagems going the way of the dodo, i can accept their existence, what i can't though is the frankly bad standards in regards to general rules writing. Frankly GW could learn a lot from some TCG's.

Not Online!!! wrote:
It's not necessarily a good wargame though

Considering what old wargaming veterans on this forum expect from a wargame, I would say that 40k has stopped being a wargame a long time ago. To me, it has turned into a rather decent board game.

Perfectly fine assessment, doesn't change the fact that the roots still permeate though and that some of the older rulessets might offer some aleviation of issues of the game, f.e. killyness and interactivity beyond just killing or getting killed.
Alas, the maindraw imo is the universe and it is indeed a bit of a shame how gw treated APO or Killteam for that matter..

I haven't played ninth edition yet due to the current restrictions but having watched numerous battle reports on youtube and from what I've read of the games new focus on missions I'm really looking forward to it.
And whilst those complaining certainly have a point, ie. it's never really been balanced, and the codex release schedule can certainly leave some armies lagging behind, it's fun to play nonetheless.

Hehe i see Mez beat me to the punch, he and i have much the same idea. mine was far simpler with only 15 imported rules into 5th from the other editions, but he has done some fantastic looking layouts.

9th is an entirely different game if you played before 8th. some people love it, some of us don't see it as 40k any more than AOS is WHFBs.

If you want to look more into the old editions, including the set up our FLGS uses, i have a topic for it here


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

I guess I will see about picking up the main rules on ebay but I will hold off from buying any codices for now. The fact that 9th seems to be fairly well thought of compared with some previous editions makes it worth a look. In the end I will probably just try to play 7th with a view to making a patch for it, since I have the books and it is just the most familiar edition to me. I don't think it is as bad as some people say.

In the long run though I think I am make my own rule set from scratch. No edition of 40k is really that good and I have had enough fresh and neat ideas over the years that I do think I could knock something really superior together if I focused down on it. I would be looking to sell it eventually so I will have to keep it generic and free from GW's IP. But what I could do is include a faction builder rule set that would allow people to create a balanced "codex" suitable for adapting a given IP to the rules.

 SolarCross wrote:
I guess I will see about picking up the main rules on ebay but I will hold off from buying any codices for now. The fact that 9th seems to be fairly well thought of compared with some previous editions makes it worth a look. In the end I will probably just try to play 7th with a view to making a patch for it, since I have the books and it is just the most familiar edition to me. I don't think it is as bad as some people say.

In the long run though I think I am make my own rule set from scratch. No edition of 40k is really that good and I have had enough fresh and neat ideas over the years that I do think I could knock something really superior together if I focused down on it. I would be looking to sell it eventually so I will have to keep it generic and free from GW's IP. But what I could do is include a faction builder rule set that would allow people to create a balanced "codex" suitable for adapting a given IP to the rules.

I wouldn't waste your time, I seriously doubt anyone will pay for a homebrewed version of the rules, and the problem with them is always finding someone who's willing to use them, even when they're free.
But obviously your free to do as you please and good luck if you try.

 Huron black heart wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
I guess I will see about picking up the main rules on ebay but I will hold off from buying any codices for now. The fact that 9th seems to be fairly well thought of compared with some previous editions makes it worth a look. In the end I will probably just try to play 7th with a view to making a patch for it, since I have the books and it is just the most familiar edition to me. I don't think it is as bad as some people say.

In the long run though I think I am make my own rule set from scratch. No edition of 40k is really that good and I have had enough fresh and neat ideas over the years that I do think I could knock something really superior together if I focused down on it. I would be looking to sell it eventually so I will have to keep it generic and free from GW's IP. But what I could do is include a faction builder rule set that would allow people to create a balanced "codex" suitable for adapting a given IP to the rules.

I wouldn't waste your time, I seriously doubt anyone will pay for a homebrewed version of the rules, and the problem with them is always finding someone who's willing to use them, even when they're free.
But obviously your free to do as you please and good luck if you try.

I am not talking about a homebrew version of the rules. I am talking about a fresh and original rule set for a sci fi wargame which could be used to play in the 40k or Star Wars universe or whatever the player likes. Like Gurps but a wargame not an RPG. When I say pay I am not talking massively expensive like GW. The beta would be a free pdf. Then when it was refined enough to stand the ages it might be a £1 pdf. Then if that sold well enough maybe a kickstarter could see a softback or hardback for the price of a normal book, £10 ish. I am just one dude, not a massive corp I don't need to sell dozens of different hardbacks every few years to the same crowd of mugs.

There is a wargaming world outside GW's walled garden, check it out sometime.

 SolarCross wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Skip 9th and go to Oldhammer. There is no narrative (Space Marines with knives can and will kill a tank by stabbing it because the right people shouted at them), if you goof around you will get tabled in a turn (the lethality of the game makes "durability" more about avoiding LOS than anything else), the army rules are set up to make conversions pointless ("no option in the box? no rules!"), and the line of sight rules are set up to punish people who try ("My antenna can see the tip of your spear, I can shoot you!").

That was one of the things that put me off about 8th was when I heard that options which did not have models got scrubbed. I really like conversions. Honestly that is a deal breaker.

You can most definitely play with conversions, there is nothing against that. Some of my favorite armies to play against have been lovingly and painstakingly converted. The main difference now is that Datasheets are only produced for options that exist on models now (Some small exceptions apply) which is both a good and a bad thing.

40k as a game is fun to play in 9th edition. You aren't going to be really agonizing over things, but clever plays and gambits are possible. The game isn't deep, per se, but it is fun and there's as much play and counter play as you and your opponent are clever.

The rules are often needlessly complex... I still don't feel like strategems needed to be part of the game instead of just baked in / limited use abilities... and the layers of stacked rules feel like a tremendous waste of time when a +1/-1 to a stat or ability would likely have done the trick.

But the gameplay is fun, and engaging, the entire game. I wouldn't call it a wargame... and that's ok for me because the game is fun to play, whatever one wishes to categorize it as.

If you want to play a game of 40k, and you want to be able to play pickup games with strangers, 9th edition is the best edition for that, hands down. If you want to play with like minded friends, I'd say 9th edition is the best base-rules to build off of, if you want to tweak things.

The things I might tweak?

Points are the easiest thing for friends to tweak. Your group can probably agree that a given unit is weak for its cost, so drop the points a bit on it and play a couple of games, tweak again if necessary. No need to fiddle with rules, just change the value and take more / less stuff to compensate.

Get rid of "Chapter Tactics" and similar rules. It's an extra layer that most things don't actually need to play. It's fluffier to take units appropriate to a given play style, than to then add specific buffs that make those units "extra awesome" when you take them together.

Lastly, take a look at strategems. If you're tweaking rules, I'd suggest looking at the strategems you use *every single time* and then bake in a points cost for them. Rerolling charge distance... your CC unit of doom is going to do that *every single time* so add 20% to the points and just make it part of their rules.

That's my hot take, anyhow.

 greatbigtree wrote:
...If you want to play a game of 40k, and you want to be able to play pickup games with strangers, 9th edition is the best edition for that, hands down. If you want to play with like minded friends, I'd say 9th edition is the best base-rules to build off of, if you want to tweak things...

I disagree almost completely here. 9th is the easiest game to find a pick-up game for, yes, but in my experience of 40k it's also the easiest edition in which to get accidentally steamrolled because you bought the wrong minis, which makes it terrible for playing pick-up games. I also find the card-game elements render it much harder to modify than pre-stratagem editions without breaking everything in half.

In any edition you will get steamrolled if you brought the "wrong" minis.

Or at the very least, any of the last 4 editions.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
...If you want to play a game of 40k, and you want to be able to play pickup games with strangers, 9th edition is the best edition for that, hands down. If you want to play with like minded friends, I'd say 9th edition is the best base-rules to build off of, if you want to tweak things...

I disagree almost completely here. 9th is the easiest game to find a pick-up game for, yes, but in my experience of 40k it's also the easiest edition in which to get accidentally steamrolled because you bought the wrong minis, which makes it terrible for playing pick-up games. I also find the card-game elements render it much harder to modify than pre-stratagem editions without breaking everything in half.

I'd say the 9th Edition works for pick-up games if you decide to ditch CP and stratagems altogether.

 Esmer wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
...If you want to play a game of 40k, and you want to be able to play pickup games with strangers, 9th edition is the best edition for that, hands down. If you want to play with like minded friends, I'd say 9th edition is the best base-rules to build off of, if you want to tweak things...

I disagree almost completely here. 9th is the easiest game to find a pick-up game for, yes, but in my experience of 40k it's also the easiest edition in which to get accidentally steamrolled because you bought the wrong minis, which makes it terrible for playing pick-up games. I also find the card-game elements render it much harder to modify than pre-stratagem editions without breaking everything in half.

I'd say the 9th Edition works for pick-up games if you decide to ditch CP and stratagems altogether.

If you ditch the whole card-game support-stack mechanism 9th makes for really, really dull pick-up games. There's barely any maneuver, barely any decision-making, everything is a ball of math that's efficient against too many targets, spam lists still beat all-comers lists, GW's propensity for trying to "fix" armies with the card game means that some armies just don't work, and the damage inflation is so out of control that the first player still has a huge advantage. If you're going to depart from the "tournament-standard must-be-hyper-competitive" mindset pre-stratagem editions are much more fun.

9th has a lot of promise. It takes 8th edition, tightens up some of the rules and adds a much more meaningful cover system (the lack of which was one of the biggest gripes about 8th). The missions also make a huge change to how the game plays and the game now has a much heavier objective focus rather than just being about killing everything.

For me editions of 40K tend to be made or broken by the codex balance. 8th was better than most but they still didn't manage to get it nailed down in my opinion. With the only 9th edition codexes available at the moment being necrons and various flavours of marines it is pretty hard to judge how that is going to pan out at this stage. Supposedly they wrote all the codexes at once so hopefully they should be well balanced and not vulnerable to arbitrary changes in design philosophy part way through the edition.

9th is looking pretty hopeful but I've been disappointed in the past. In any case my opinion was that 7th was the worst and most unbalanced edition of the game ever so I'd recommend 9th over it hands down. Just be aware that some of the 8th edition codexes haven't translated that well to 9th (Tau have been rightly mentioned).

Cyel wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
is 9th ed any good? .

As compared to other Warhammer editions or to modern game design?

Yeah, because 9th, what ever someone feels it is good or bad, is a lot better then 8th for example.

In the end it always breaks apart on the questions of. Is your army day good in current edition and how much do you like to paint. If you really like painting a lot, then how good or bad 9th is doesn't matter that much. If you do care about playing the game though, and your army is bad now, and gets updated in 18+ months from now, then maybe returning now is not a good idea.


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 Esmer wrote:


I'd say the 9th Edition works for pick-up games if you decide to ditch CP and stratagems altogether.

Some armies stop working if they no longer have access to their stratagems, because GW decided to put core army mechanics in those for those armies.

 Unknown_Lifeform wrote:
9th has a lot of promise. It takes 8th edition, tightens up some of the rules and adds a much more meaningful cover system (the lack of which was one of the biggest gripes about 8th)...

...Which is set up to punish large units (18W+ can't claim area-terrain LOS block, vehicles/monsters get no benefit from cover other than LOS block) and makes it much, much easier for the very few move-shoot-move capable units in the game (Tallarn tank officers, Eldar infantry) to shoot you without giving you any chance to interact with them.

...The missions also make a huge change to how the game plays and the game now has a much heavier objective focus rather than just being about killing everything...

...Which are all king-of-the-hill sit-in-the-middle missions set up to punish armies that can't engage effectively in melee, either because they don't have any (Tau), or because their melee has been left behind by stat creep (Eldar), or if you don't want to be forced to buy the one model in your Codex that lets you play the game (Guard w/o Bullgryn).

...In any case my opinion was that 7th was the worst and most unbalanced edition of the game ever so I'd recommend 9th over it hands down...

You can fix 7th to the point where it's way more usable than 9th with a few quick patches (CAD only, 30k D rule, 30k LoW limit, 6e Skyfire, 30k Invisibility, allied ICs can't join units, field allowance limit on a few problem units (scatterbikes, for instance)). If you wanted to fix 9th to the same degree you'd have to a) rewrite the statlines on almost everything to address the out-of-control damage creep, b) burn the whole stratagem system down and start over to do something about the perverse incentives and combo-out phenomenon that utterly borks any attempt to balance statlines, c) rewrite the whole psychic system to account for the fact that there are all-psykers armies...

9th unmodified is less out of control than 7th unmodified, but making 7th way better than 9th is trivial and improving 9th at all requires burning it down and starting over.

Most balance can be fixed just by tweaking the point costs. And balance only matters at all in a "competitive play style" which I would argue hardly makes any sense at all for a game like 40k. You might as well play chess for the artistic outlet, or play darts down the pub in order to develop washboard abs. It's just not that kind of game.

I am completely fine with 7th being exploitable by WAACman because I will probably never play him more than once. If I tried to be WAAC man myself while trying to get my wargame-shy wife or son to play, then they will run a mile and never play again. My only hope of getting them to play is to persistently assure them "it doesn't matter who wins, it's just for the fun and the spectacle." lol.

And yet it was not fixed and 7th was so bad it came pretty close to actually killing 40k.

It is nice to think about hypotheticals, but no one is going to play your hypothetical game.

 Tyran wrote:
And yet it was not fixed and 7th was so bad it came pretty close to actually killing 40k.

It is nice to think about hypotheticals, but no one is going to play your hypothetical game.

I mean, sure, if everyone thinks in terms of "it's definitely more important to play the competitive tournament-standard than to have fun or use models I like", then sure, everyone will stick to 9th. I'm making noise about oldhammer/homebrew material because I want to tell the people who are frustrated with the general consumer-unfriendliness of GW's rules people that there is an alternative, and I want people looking to start or come back to 40k to know what they're getting into.

I honestly think 9th is worse for friendly pick-up games than 7th. Even in the days of scatterbikes and D-weapons 7e games never ended with someone getting tabled on turn 2 or 3 for me, and 8e/9e routinely ends with someone getting tabled on turn 2 or 3. I had a game of 8th I scooped top of turn one without having the chance to do anything at all because my opponent was running an artillery-spam Guard list that wiped three quarters of my army on the alpha-strike.

 Tyran wrote:
And yet it was not fixed and 7th was so bad it came pretty close to actually killing 40k.

It is nice to think about hypotheticals, but no one is going to play your hypothetical game.

GW never intended it to be a competitive game. It makes no sense at all for it to be competitive. So why should they bother with balance? Up until 8th they kept trying to tell you all to "forge the narrative", "have fun", etc. They were telling you this hobby is fundamentally an artistic pursuit, it isn't poker or chess. A balanced game is one with identical starting game states. In 40k terms that would be mirror lists. If you have a demi-company with a given load out then your opponent should have the same. Moreover the random element should be removed, because chance muddies strategy. Think about the absurdity of playing competitive snakes and ladders, lol.

I was regularly tabled in turn one or two in 7th, even before all the supplement and formation nonsense started. Absolutely nothing in 9th is as far apart as the top codices in 7th were from the bottom ones.


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 SolarCross wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
And yet it was not fixed and 7th was so bad it came pretty close to actually killing 40k.

It is nice to think about hypotheticals, but no one is going to play your hypothetical game.

GW never intended it to be a competitive game. It makes no sense at all for it to be competitive. So why should they bother with balance? Up until 8th they kept trying to tell you all to "forge the narrative", "have fun", etc. They were telling you this hobby is fundamentally an artistic pursuit, it isn't poker or chess. A balanced game is one with identical starting game states. In 40k terms that would be mirror lists. If you have a demi-company with a given load out then your opponent should have the same. Moreover the random element should be removed, because chance muddies strategy. Think about the absurdity of playing competitive snakes and ladders, lol.

What a load of BS. The horrible balance of 7th did nothing to competitive play, but ruined regular games. Some armies were so powerful, players couldn't bring them anymore. Some other were so horrible, you would auto-lose when trying to bring them. You cannot put the blame on players for creating such a gakky game as 7th was, especially for casual players.

Competitive card games are also based on chance, by the way. It's also a well know fact that a healthy balance benefits both top level and casual play. You simply have no clue what you are talking about.

 Jidmah wrote:
I was regularly tabled in turn one or two in 7th, even before all the supplement and formation nonsense started. Absolutely nothing in 9th is as far apart as the top codices in 7th were from the bottom ones...

Imagine, for the moment, that my subjective experience of seeing people get tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 8th-9th and your subjective experience of seeing people getting tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 7th are both based on actual practical experience and are well-tested.

That suggests to me that 8th/9th are just as bad as 7th from a balance standpoint, only different Codexes are at the unrecoverable bottom of the heap this time. Which doesn't say much for the basic ideal form of a tabletop wargame, in which we all get to bring models we like, throw down, and have a good time.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I mean, sure, if everyone thinks in terms of "it's definitely more important to play the competitive tournament-standard than to have fun or use models I like", then sure, everyone will stick to 9th. I'm making noise about oldhammer/homebrew material because I want to tell the people who are frustrated with the general consumer-unfriendliness of GW's rules people that there is an alternative, and I want people looking to start or come back to 40k to know what they're getting into.

It is more about the terms "9th edition is a game that actually exist". Oldhammer/homebrew require having a very close-knit gaming group that is willing to compromise and experiment without the direction of a standardized rule-set. Sure that is possible, but also very hard and rare. It also means such groups are mostly closed ecosystems that are unlikely to interact with players outside that group, like new and returning players.

 SolarCross wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
...I have entertained the idea of doing a "patch" for 7th edition which would aim to fix its balance issues and do up some datasheets for the newer releases. I do feel weirdly attached to that edition given I never really had a chance to play it. And as you say old editions are not in flux the way new editions are, and after years of field testing by the community the issues are sort of well known. Then again I am not sure I could justify spending the time doing that given monetising the labour would be iffy with GW jealously guarding their IP...

That's closer to a description of my homebrew rewrite (link in signature) than Mezmorki's.

I'll take a look.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:

As to 9th generally it's fine if you're a tournament player, or don't mind spam lists, or don't mind having to netlist to play even basic pick-up games, but I really dislike it due to the emphasis on tournament play and the masses of bloat GW constructed to make up for the fact that they pulled all the interesting gameplay out of the core rules.

I guess that is GW responding to the long running bellyaching from the community about "balance". A competitive game does want to be balanced, but the trick is that balance gets harder the more complex the game is. It becomes a combinatoric problem that is virtually insoluble. Only really simple and symmetrical games have a chance of being balanced. Games like chess, go or backgammon but even then after thousands of years of rigorous playtesting and statistical analysis it turns out white has a slight advantage over black in chess and black has a slight advantage over white in go... so..

In fairness to GW I don't think they really wanted to write balanced rules, they wanted a "fun" game based on drama and silliness rather than hard nosed gamey competition. 40k shouldn't even be properly considered a game at all given 28mm is just a stupidly huge scale for a wargame with tanks as game pieces. Really at 28mm scale 40k is more of a beauty pageant for hobby skills or some sort of LARP but with models. But the ThatGuys among us didn't understand that.

I don't really care about competitive playing. I play go, and that is a proper game for competitive gaming. I want to play 40k for the narrative, the goofying around and showing off my hobby skills.

So.... if you kept everything exactly the same but shrunk it down to 10mm or 15mm scale you'd then say 40k is a game?

If you enlarged your Go set to 3' pieces etc would it no longer qualify as a game?

I'm sorry, but I find your idea that scale determines whats a game to be sillier than 40ks current terrain rules.

 Tyran wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I mean, sure, if everyone thinks in terms of "it's definitely more important to play the competitive tournament-standard than to have fun or use models I like", then sure, everyone will stick to 9th. I'm making noise about oldhammer/homebrew material because I want to tell the people who are frustrated with the general consumer-unfriendliness of GW's rules people that there is an alternative, and I want people looking to start or come back to 40k to know what they're getting into.

It is more about the terms "9th edition is a game that actually exist". Oldhammer/homebrew require having a very close-knit gaming group that is willing to compromise and experiment without the direction of a standardized rule-set. Sure that is possible, but also very hard and rare. It also means such groups are mostly closed ecosystems that are unlikely to interact with players outside that group, like new and returning players.

Which is where posting standardized Oldhammer projects like the one in my signature and outreach on forums comes into the mix.

ccs wrote:


So.... if you kept everything exactly the same but shrunk it down to 10mm or 15mm scale you'd then say 40k is a game?

If you enlarged your Go set to 3' pieces etc would it no longer qualify as a game?

I'm sorry, but I find your idea that scale determines whats a game to be sillier than 40ks current terrain rules.

I will clarify my point.

A pure game piece just has to communicate its game identity and something of its game state which usually comes from its position on the board. It does not have to be as large as a shoebox, cost £50 unbuilt and require dozens of hours of exquisite paint work to make it pretty.

Now wargames, any wargame is not an abstract game like chess they are more like simulations. So looks matter somewhat but a simulation should simulate and for a tabletop wargame that should mean having a model scale that is not too distorted from the table ground scale. For that 6mm is closest, with 10mm and 15mm being fairly reasonable distortions. So 28mm is too big on that count. But more than that 28mm makes the game more expensive and logistically more awkward. The ONLY benefit to 28mm is that it makes a nice big canvas for painters to freehand tattoos and freckles and whatever else.

SolarCross wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
And yet it was not fixed and 7th was so bad it came pretty close to actually killing 40k.

It is nice to think about hypotheticals, but no one is going to play your hypothetical game.

GW never intended it to be a competitive game. It makes no sense at all for it to be competitive. So why should they bother with balance? Up until 8th they kept trying to tell you all to "forge the narrative", "have fun", etc. They were telling you this hobby is fundamentally an artistic pursuit, it isn't poker or chess. A balanced game is one with identical starting game states. In 40k terms that would be mirror lists. If you have a demi-company with a given load out then your opponent should have the same. Moreover the random element should be removed, because chance muddies strategy. Think about the absurdity of playing competitive snakes and ladders, lol.

1. 6th was the edition that came close to killing the game. even GW realized they dropped the ball killing the edition after 14 months, up until formation spam started killing the game 7th was actually far more popular than 6th. it lasted almost the full 4 year normal edition run that became the GW standard as of 4th.

2. the competitive side of the game is GWs fault for pushing official tourneys back the days of rougue traders and grand tournaments (between 3rd and 4th ed). one can only imagine that the push for larger armies and comp play helped sales. but you are correct. armies originally were not meant to be balanced for that scene. they had in-built flaws you could exploit on the table for a more "in the universe" feel because thats how the armies were supposed to behave. you see much of that in the 3rd, 4th and for some specific codexes 5th ed where the factions had specific design and build restrictions that made them both viable and also lore based. one has to only look at the 3.5 chaos codex or the index astartes books (that did much the same for loyalist space marines). the guard doctrines in the 4th ed codex that made each sub faction operate differently rather it was steel legion, catachan, mordians etc... it is a game so there is a winner or a looser(or sometimes a tie) but the "getting there" was the most important and fun part.

AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I was regularly tabled in turn one or two in 7th, even before all the supplement and formation nonsense started. Absolutely nothing in 9th is as far apart as the top codices in 7th were from the bottom ones...

Imagine, for the moment, that my subjective experience of seeing people get tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 8th-9th and your subjective experience of seeing people getting tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 7th are both based on actual practical experience and are well-tested.

That suggests to me that 8th/9th are just as bad as 7th from a balance standpoint, only different Codexes are at the unrecoverable bottom of the heap this time. Which doesn't say much for the basic ideal form of a tabletop wargame, in which we all get to bring models we like, throw down, and have a good time.

We so do miss Andy Chambers being at the helm of GW game design don't we? one has to only look at the other stuff he has done since he left to see what could have been.-
DUST, dropfleet commander, bolt action etc...