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I've played meme lists where I ran Mortarion, Magnus, and three greater daemons (including a Bloodthirster) as my only non-Nurgling units in the entire game against a Space Marine list that featured a fething Repulsor Executioner as well as one of the flyers, a shooty dreadnought, and plenty of general Space Marine heavy dakka. I also lost the roll off and went second. I didn't get tabled turn 2 and won that game, though by turn five or so he was tabled and my army consisted of a full health Magnus, Mortarion with one wound, and a few nurgling bases. Neither of us ran very optimized lists and the game was crazy fun.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:

How 'bout you? Do you have a statistically-significant dataset of fully detailed battle reports proving that you can play Crusade games without getting tabled in two turns? Is it normal where you come from to write down a specific battle report of every game you ever play in case you need to win an argument on the Internet about whether your subjective experience of Warhammer is "right"? Can your battle reports prove to me that you're not an ass the way you're expecting mine to somehow overcome your preconception that I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing?

(Deathwatch, largely mechanized, 3 games, 2 vs. Guard and 1 vs. Necrons, nobody was playing a tuned tournament list of any kind, spent most of the time hiding in a corner because I didn't have expendable suicide models to do the mission and anything that poked its nose into LOS died immediately.)

What kind of Deathwatch units do you/did you run?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Secondary point here: I've got five armies, in the 5,000pts+ range, and all of them are so crap I need to go buy a new one if I want to have any chance of not just getting steamrolled in 9e. I'm aware I have a larger proportion of FW units than is average, but have I magically found the secret formula for picking all the worst books/worst units in every book? Or is the range of usable minis actually really narrow?

Well, if you'd like an answer to that, you're going to have to list an inventory of your stuff.....
Ideally all 5 armies. But start with just one.
(BTW, I find it hard to believe that in 25k pts worth of stuff you can't come up with even one or two decent enough lists.)

And you'll have to answer a few questions.
1) Do you play with the same general group of players?
2) Do you know what they use?
3) Do you know how they play?
4) What size & types of games do you play?
5) Yes yes, you're only using stuff you like. That's fine, I do that as well. But 5k pts is alot of "stuff you like". Are you open to/able to switching things up depending upon wich player & wich army you're facing?
6) These pick-up games, do you ever bother to discuss any of the details with the other player before hand?

Considering how you have to write those things down to play a crusade anyways, I assumed this data should be readily available, right?

Anyways, I have been playing games regularly since 9th dropped in my fairly laid back gaming group. Lots of good players with collections similar to yours, but you rarely see choices used more than once or twice and definitely nothing anywhere near tournament material unless it's an army that doesn't really have choice, like harlequins.
Tablings have become incredibly rare after people have found their way around 9th, and if they do happen, it's usually in turn 4 or 5. Even then, they are usually caused by exceptionally good/bad rolls or someone intentionally disregarding any safety measures to run down the field (usually accompanied by "WAAAGH!" or "Blood for the Blood God!" cheers).
The most important part is that our results match the observations goonhammer has done based on their data, armies they list as strong feel strong in our games, and armies in the "garbage tier" like TS or tau actually do lose more than they win in our games as well.

Also, "largely mechanized deathwatch" at 50 PL? By any chance were you primarily running oldmarines (likely since you are running DW)? We might have found your problem right there. In that case, the new codex might actually have quite some heavy impact on the viability of your army.

In any case, hiding in a corner is quite a horrible tactic in 9th, and actually has lead to an early tabling of one of our sisters players. The sole fact that you have to do that in the first place indicates that you are lacking terrain to me. Make sure to put that 25% terrain GW suggest on the board and have dense or obscuring terrain in the middle to reduce shooting.
In my experience neither necrons nor guard are particularly killy opponents in 9th, and I'm running silly things like infiltrating harbinger pox walkers and ork walker mobs.

 Jidmah wrote:

In my experience neither necrons nor guard are particularly killy opponents in 9th, and I'm running silly things like infiltrating harbinger pox walkers and ork walker mobs.

I think my opponents would disagree with you on the Necrons not being very killy.
There's two of us running Necrons in our Crusade. I'm very shooty. The other guy is alot more melee (I think. All I hear from others is how they got sliced up in melee.). We've killed alot of stuff.

My own favorite unit is Tomb Blades.
Fast, tough, 3+, 5++ saves (depends on options selected), reanimation, living metal, each model kicks out between base 4-6 str.5 shots with decent range & ok AP both increased by them being Mephrits, comes in units of 3-9..... 9 of these things throwing 6 dice each.... Things die.
And that's before any bonus hits for Tesla, CP getting spent or they earn Crusade upgrades.
Their only downsides are:
1) each shot is only D1
2) I'm neutral on the model. I don't dislike them (if I did, I wouldn't play them no matter what they could do), but they could probably look better. I've got a few ideas on that, but not enough time to re-craft them atm. Maybe after the holidays.....
My 2nd favorite are Deathmarks.
And I've gotten very good work out of my Doom & Night Scythes.

I'm not saying that necrons can't kill stuff, but compared to other armies like marines, spikey marines or eldar which can easily shoot just as well and still hold their own in combat, they simply don't feel that threatening.

I've only had one game against the new codex so far, so take that with a grain of salt.

My club was mostly AOS for a bit, but 9th edition has got us all excited, and we've been playing more 40k than before (granted, not in large groups as we used to).

We are mostly excited though for the older books to be updated. One of the guys has Grey Knights and Orks army he is struggling with, but they were built for ITC 8th edition kill/hold more missions, which doesn't translate as well to 9th.

I've played a couple games against the new marines, which I've enjoyed, and one game against the new Necrons, and I was completely blown out of the water. I definitely need to play more games against the Necrons, as they are a power house, and those necron warriors are immensely hard to shift. But, it could just be the shock from my first game against them lol.

I do play Space Wolves, as my second army, but I'm looking forward to my Harlequins getting their 9th edition book.

While I'm sure you folks like the prospect of taking someone who doesn't like 9e and helping them build a game-winning list so they can have fun with it I think it isn't particularly helpful. While we got tied up with whether my claims about the balance are or aren't supported by tournament winrates I wasn't able to then bring up the list of other gripes I personally have with the system, namely: the use of card-game combos to patch poorly-written datasheets, the math errors dating back to the 8e Indexes in how damage/wounds and AP/saves were assigned that make generalist weapons too good against everything and vehicles/monsters in general too squishy, the overuse of perfectly-reliable reserves/deepstrike to counter the excess lethality with ways to guarantee barely-interactable alpha-strikes, pretty much everything about how psykers are written, the increased irrelevance of maneuver in the face of king-of-the-hill missions/no vehicle facings/shrunken tables/vastly inflated move speeds, the design team's lack of interest in making FW units interact with the game properly, the general slowdown of needing to roll hit/hit reroll/wound/wound reroll/save/damage on large numbers of attacks (particularly against units with an FNP, against which you then need to roll damage/FNP one attack at a time), anything to do with mortal wounds, and the massive bloat that's resulted from needing to give every army slightly different versions of every USR.

Yes, most of these date back to 8th, but 9th hasn't improved any of them and has made several worse.

One thing is clear short lived editions does split up the gaming fan base quite a bit. They should probably look at keeping 9th (whatever its faults or virtues) a decently long time before chucking it out and starting again. A 2 year shelf life is just brutally short.

When I release my rule set, it will be guaranteed (or your money back) to be the current edition for at least 10 years.

The actual missions play better, but the "pre-game balance our armies for fun" conversation is even more important in 9th than it was 8th. EC vs Salamanders was miserable due to power balance, but EC vs Dank Eldar was a lot of fun. The edition is a lot closer to good if you ignore the horrendous point imbalances. The armies that are weak due to edition changes could be fixed with a few minor but impactful changes like JSJ for Tau. Rebalancing strategem costs for factions that were expected to have "plenty of CP" when they were written would go a long ways too.

SolarCross


It's pure marketing now. 3rd actually lasted the longest out of the army game version of 40K i think it was 6 years, then they got on this 4 year rotation to get all the books released and them BAM they release a new edtion and start it all over again. it seemed to take about 4 years for 4th, 5th, and 7th. 6th is the special child lasting only 14 months before GW killed it with the fixed version of 7th (which they then killed with formation spam). i thnk the much heralded "final edition" known as 8th was about 3 years.

Pretty sad all around when you consider that classic battletech has basically had the same rule set with only a few minor optional changes to some charts for going on something like 30 years.

and no matter which era you play (compared to say 30K, old editions or 9th in 40K) the same rule set is used in all of them. only the gear/equipment changes to represent the tech level.

Do remember that 3rd edition also had a half edition update in the middle as well. I would agree 9th is pretty good and I like it myself.

I would like to think they'd push tenth to a 4 year gap due to Rona but it will probably be three like 7th and 8th

In a way it is even shorter than 2 years because the BRB is only half of the rules, the rest are in the respective codex for your army. So for most people they are playing with an old codex, possibly out of whack with the new edition, and then if an updated codex is released playing with a codex that will be out of whack in a much shorter time than 2 years.

True. Especially impactful in this edition where foundational changes like wound and weapon profiles are being rolled out book by book.

 Mezmorki wrote:
You're going to get a lot of different responses to this question. I'll share mine...

Personally, I think 40K was "best" back in 5th edition. It was not as complex or fussy as 7th edition, but not as sanitized (and as oddly bloated) as 9th edition is.

FWIW, 8th and 9th edition is a HUGE change from the trajectory the game was on for nearly 20-years (3rd edition to 7th edition). Some people like the new direction more, but others don't. The core rules are admittedly more simple now (especially in comparison to 7th), but much of the gameplay depth that I enjoyed has been removed and replaced with things that I don't enjoy as much. For example:

- Removed vehicle armor facings and vehicle damage tables. Vehicles are just normal units with toughness and lots of wounds now.

- Morale greatly simplified, and failing morale tests just removes models instead of causing fallback moves, regroup moves, etc.

- Shooting is much more lethal, with individual models able to fire individual weapons at whatever they want. There are less interesting choices and tradeoffs to make now.

- While the rules are simpler, the game is now bloated with rules for stratagems and a whole command point resource system, a ridiculous number of units and weapon types.

- The 9th edition missions are pretty good seeming, except for a rather significant first player advantage (which has plagued all of 8th and 9th to varying degrees).

All in all, 9th edition gameplay feels less about the choices and tactics you employ on the battlefield. Instead, your success seems to be even more about how well you built your army roster and how well you can remember and use dozens of stratagems over the course of the game. It's not what I want out of the game.

So.... my group has gone back to playing a heavily modified version of 5th edition (ProHammer, see the signature) which we've made compatible with all codexes from 3rd-7th edition. Players can use what they want and the modified rules makes it all work together. You can get a 5th edition book used for cheap, and still use your 7th edition codexes that you have and go to town.

Exalted.
If I were buying in now, I would start with RT and 2nd Ed books eBay style, and then add from there.
After some study you should be in a better position to judge 9th.
Hasbro ification is my word for it. Turning a war game into a CCG board game.

 SolarCross wrote:
I am getting back into 40k, so is 9th ed any good?

I first jumped in when 7th ed was current but didn't quite get to the point of actually gaming when 7th was upstaged by 8th. I was nonplussed about buying more books so I sort of lost interest a bit since. So now 9th has been out for a bit I am torn between trying to make some use of my old 7th ed books by playing some retro hammer or getting down with what is hip with the kids now, that being 9th.

Forget 9th and do your retro hammer thing with the Battle Bible which you can get for free from the interwebz by using google-fu.

4th and 5th are supreme for simclipicty

I have no issues with 9th - but the game does work better at smaller points. 40k has always been like this. 1500-1750 work far better than 2k+

 Stevefamine wrote:
4th and 5th are supreme for simclipicty

I have no issues with 9th - but the game does work better at smaller points. 40k has always been like this. 1500-1750 work far better than 2k+

I seem to remember a lot of bellyaching about 7th was how big an army had to be to include all the formations. If one actually reads the book it says:

"It is worth noting that games with LARGER points limits, say 2000-3000 points, can take the better part of an afternoon to play, while games of 1000-1500 points can usually completed in a few hours."

GW is effectively saying 1000 to 1500 is what they expect for a typical or causal game which I would say carries the implication that 500 ish is appropriate for a small game.

Formations came into being to allow small games that could be something a bit different from a HQ + 2 troops every time. The super-formations, like the gladius, just sort of exist for those special occasions when vets with big collections could throw down like an apocalypse game. They are not for a typical play.

 Stevefamine wrote:
4th and 5th are supreme for simclipicty

I have no issues with 9th - but the game does work better at smaller points. 40k has always been like this. 1500-1750 work far better than 2k+

One thing I have really liked about 9th, was that they broke up tablesize and missions for diffrent game sizes. I found this helped quite a bit for lower points.

I'm having a blast at 1500 points honestly

Yeah, we've been playing 500, then 1000, now 1500 pt standard games with my group.

I have some quibbles, but for me the game is a lot of fun right now.

I think GW at a game design crossroads where they have realized that alternating activation (kill team) and smaller armies (combat patrol) is a more efficient and less onerous system to get people actually rolling dice and are struggling to manage this data with the history of how warhammer is played (2000points and four hours).

 SolarCross wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
4th and 5th are supreme for simclipicty

I have no issues with 9th - but the game does work better at smaller points. 40k has always been like this. 1500-1750 work far better than 2k+

I seem to remember a lot of bellyaching about 7th was how big an army had to be to include all the formations. If one actually reads the book it says:

"It is worth noting that games with LARGER points limits, say 2000-3000 points, can take the better part of an afternoon to play, while games of 1000-1500 points can usually completed in a few hours."

GW is effectively saying 1000 to 1500 is what they expect for a typical or causal game which I would say carries the implication that 500 ish is appropriate for a small game.

Formations came into being to allow small games that could be something a bit different from a HQ + 2 troops every time. The super-formations, like the gladius, just sort of exist for those special occasions when vets with big collections could throw down like an apocalypse game. They are not for a typical play.

That's not really a good indicator. 1,500 was the number that was most often found in the UK between 3rd/4th while in the US it was 1,750 then 1,850 the 4th ed rulebook also had quite a section on different sized games-kill teams, combat patrols (250 point games) , anything 2,500+ was considered apocalypse level after 5th dropped and the FOC went right out the window. 2k was the max limit they had set for the old FOC to work. it also had a lot to do with how familiar people were with the game. from 3rd through 5th even with the points change my games usually lasted between 1-1/2 to 2 hours even with the increase in points because of how the game mechanics worked and how well i got to know my army/rules.

With our local hybrid 5th ed games at 2K we still can wrap it all up in about 2 hours or less and we regularly get done with 6 or 7 turns in the time it takes the people at the tables playing 9th to get through 2 or 3 turns. 40K was always seen as the "faster & simpler" game that you played when you didn't want to get to deep in the woods with games that had far more complex rules like battletech, infinity, B5 wars (did a huge narn VS centari fleet battle one time that took 12 hours) etc...

In 5th there were 1500, 1750, 1850, 2000 and 2500 point games. I remember well, because there was a discussion here on dakka about certain ork builds not scaling well to certain point levels because they ran out of slots or units to take. Kan wall, for example, was a powerful 1500 points build that stopped working at 1750, while you couldn't play battlewagon bash with less than 1850 because you couldn't fit in the fourth battlewagon without dropping essential support.

 Jidmah wrote:
In 5th there were 1500, 1750, 1850, 2000 and 2500 point games. I remember well, because there was a discussion here on dakka about certain ork builds not scaling well to certain point levels because they ran out of slots or units to take. Kan wall, for example, was a powerful 1500 points build that stopped working at 1750, while you couldn't play battlewagon bash with less than 1850 because you couldn't fit in the fourth battlewagon without dropping essential support.

It's true. In 5th there wasn't a unique universal standard like the current 2000 points format.

In my area 1500 points was the most common format for both casual and competitive games. I mostly played wagon bash at 1500 but with 3 BWs: worked well since a single KFF was enough to cover all of them, and in fact the 3 wagon list was one of the most powerful and common 1500 points lists in early 5th edition.

I know I'm late to the party, but had to mention this:

What a load of BS. The horrible balance of 7th did nothing to competitive play ...

I don't think I've ever seen a more incorrect statement on Dakka. With respect Jidmah - you have to have been pretty out of touch with the competitive scene to say that. 7th damaged the competitive scene so badly that it nearly killed it in the states. It is literally the thing that gave rise to the ITC as, without an independent body organizing and policing that trash pile of a rule set, there would literally have been no one left to put tournaments on. 7th very nearly killed competitive 40k in the U.S.

As far as whether 9th is good or not? I've been fortunate to play a lot of socially distanced garage hammer. We have a group of about 20 people and have broken in to groups of 4 and each play regular games and have a semi-regular Zoom session with everyone to talk about it. We've had literally several hundred games so far, so my two cents is at least coming from someone who's really played it.

Pros:
1. Terrain is much better than it was in 8th. It is still a little sloppy and needs some clean-up and a few more FAQs, but they 100% did a much better job of making the terrain mean something in this edition.

2. The missions are generally much better than they used to be. I would recommend the Grand Tournament missions over those in the BRB, but over-all they are more fun to play, and they did a good job of shifting the emphasis away from just "kill everything". If you're a narrative player especially, some of the missions really lend themselves well to that style of play.

3. Crusade (admittedly some will have this in the cons, but the nice thing is, if you aren't into it, it can be completely ignored). They have given us a pretty cool way to build an army and experience it as it gets better and bigger. It's a lot of book keeping, and there are things that can make for unfun games if you aren't in the right mind set, but it's over all a pretty cool system.

4. Some will disagree with me here, but I at least feel like CC is in better shape now than it was in 8th., and if you like mid-board action, 9th has that in excellent supply.

Cons:
1. The missions have a strong first turn bias. The tournament stats we have back this up, as do the win rates in my own group. Going first gives you an advantage in turn 1 and turn 5, and you can actually completely eliminate player 2's chance to score on turn 5 with no ability for them to counter play. This needs fixed.

2. The missions do get old after a bit. The mission design is much better, but it's still just mostly some variation of "get your dudes to the spot" which can lead to a lot of fairly predictable "samey" games. Mosh-pitting is also a thing.

3. Game length - Similar to when they said "8th was the fastest playing version of 40k ever" and it turned out not to be - they also promised us a more streamlined "even faster than 8th" game for 9th. This has also not panned out. The key things causing games to take longer were stuck in the core mechanics, and they've only doubled down on those, so games of 9th generally take about the same amount of time. Sometimes slightly faster, sometimes slightly longer, but over-all, it is 100% NOT the "faster game" we were promised.

4. Still a pretty glaring difference in design approach between Marines and Necrons. Crons got a lot better but that's only by virtue of having been so amazingly bad in 8th, and this edition has essentially outright broken Tau, GSC and DE. The promise that "8th ed books would be 100% compatible" really didn't pan out (not that I expected it to), as these armies are all borderline unplayable.

Neither good nor bad:

1.Some will tell you that "movement really matters now". It doesn't. Not like those people think it does. With the smaller board size and the speed of most units, there's no longer really a question of "can I get to the right spot". Pretty much every unit in almost every army can get where it needs to be without question, and the pre-set objectives means you generally know which units are going where, so there's not really a lot of in-depth maneuver like you might be led to believe. I think a lot of folks here are just used to playing gunlines and aren't used to seeing things move at all. What really matters is timing. They've done a somewhat decent job of making you time things correctly.

2. The game feels really good at 1000-1250pts. It feels really bad at anything much bigger than that, and 500pts is still a total crap shoot. You have to have a conversation before playing a 500pt game as there's a wild amount of variance in what certain armies can bring.

So is it fun? Yeah, it's not bad. We were staring to really dislike it so we gave it a break until the new books started coming out. It does feel better with the new books, so that's a good sign, and there's a lot of potential here. It's really going to depend on what they do with the codexes honestly. It all hinges on that, but as editions go, it's decent enough.

Tycho wrote:
I know I'm late to the party, but had to mention this:

What a load of BS. The horrible balance of 7th did nothing to competitive play ...

I don't think I've ever seen a more incorrect statement on Dakka. With respect Jidmah - you have to have been pretty out of touch with the competitive scene to say that. 7th damaged the competitive scene so badly that it nearly killed it in the states. It is literally the thing that gave rise to the ITC as, without an independent body organizing and policing that trash pile of a rule set, there would literally have been no one left to put tournaments on. 7th very nearly killed competitive 40k in the U.S.

ITC was a thing way before 7th, and it's fairly safe to say that 7th killed gameplay independent of the level of competitiveness. There was a huge GW store near here, which used to have 20 full sized tables to play on - when I commented about GW downsizing them to just 7 tables, one of the employees told me that GW didn't meddle too much with them because their numbers were great, but during 7th they had 4-5 tables in use at most (including LotR and AoS), so they decided to move the store to a smaller place which was just a qarter of the rent. My own group basically died with shortly after the release of the eldar codex, there were two games in all of 7th afterwards.

 Jidmah wrote:

Tycho wrote:
I know I'm late to the party, but had to mention this:

What a load of BS. The horrible balance of 7th did nothing to competitive play ...

I don't think I've ever seen a more incorrect statement on Dakka. With respect Jidmah - you have to have been pretty out of touch with the competitive scene to say that. 7th damaged the competitive scene so badly that it nearly killed it in the states. It is literally the thing that gave rise to the ITC as, without an independent body organizing and policing that trash pile of a rule set, there would literally have been no one left to put tournaments on. 7th very nearly killed competitive 40k in the U.S.

ITC was a thing way before 7th, and it's fairly safe to say that 7th killed gameplay independent of the level of competitiveness. There was a huge GW store near here, which used to have 20 full sized tables to play on - when I commented about GW downsizing them to just 7 tables, one of the employees told me that GW didn't meddle too much with them because their numbers were great, but during 7th they had 4-5 tables in use at most (including LotR and AoS), so they decided to move the store to a smaller place which was just a qarter of the rent. My own group basically died with shortly after the release of the eldar codex, there were two games in all of 7th afterwards.

ITC was indeed before something allready in existence, but 7th did hike it's popularity, mostly because it offered a better experience then mainline GW did for 7th , atleast for competitive inclined players in the states.

Both positions can be true, that comp really took off in the states with ITC and people migrating to it because it offered a better experience aswell as in some regions where the alternative didn't exist that people just stopped.

Granted , it seems that in europe or atleast in the german language sphere 7th did lead to a breakdown in regards to player population, and over here it never really recovered. Otoh we now got more differing gamessystems and by extension a healthier scene overall.

That has a lot to do with the local scene 6th pretty much was dead at our FLGS after the first month. most people switched to infinity, malafaux, warmachine and the like. when 7th dropped games started picking up again for 40K.

6th was a problem, 7th was a hotfix that got it working again for some time but became a problem again soon after

the ITC-FAQ/Errata (US) and T3-Grundmann-FAQ/Errata (Germany) was the reason that kept things going

Tycho wrote:

3. Game length - Similar to when they said "8th was the fastest playing version of 40k ever" and it turned out not to be - they also promised us a more streamlined "even faster than 8th" game for 9th. This has also not panned out. The key things causing games to take longer were stuck in the core mechanics, and they've only doubled down on those, so games of 9th generally take about the same amount of time. Sometimes slightly faster, sometimes slightly longer, but over-all, it is 100% NOT the "faster game" we were promised.

this is a problem since 6th for the same reason, GW does not understand what game mechanics are time consuming and which are not and they are focus on the wrong ones