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Tycho wrote:

It really hasn't been anyone's experience. A lot of Bitharne's posts feel less like posts based on experience and having followed "the scene" for a bit and more like someone who's done a ton of theory hammer and drawn the wrong conclusions.

Yeah, anyone who has played 9th or just 40k recently in general will know that an "Elite" army like Marines do absolutely not give up board control in any real sense.

The only elite army you can say does is something like Custodes or Knights and even Custodes can still play the Primary game very well which is itself a major form of board control.

Honestly, with the nerfs to coherency and how ridiculously cheap Space Marines can get effective small units for, their board control is *better* than a lot of horde armies.

Things have changed pretty dramatically from back in 8th where 10 guardsmen could string out across 28 inches of board space.

Bitharne wrote:

Power Armor armies have, contrary to most whingers on this thread, have tons of issues scoring in 9th.

Depends. Are you lousy player? You have issues. Are you at least average? No issue.

I get the impression Bitharne is still trying to play an Iron Hands 8th edition list or something like that and that's what is driving these astoundingly wrong statements.

 Bosskelot wrote:

1) Vehicles are still far too easy to kill because average lethality in the game is still far too high (which is primarily a Marine issue and their prevalence skews the numbers here).

This isn't just a marines problem tbh, everything is hyper-deadly now. Especially units that got caught up in the multi-melta change. A unit of Rets demolishes a tank nearly as efficiently as a unit of eradicators.

The problem is the race to the bottom we experienced all throughout 8th is happening again in 9th - everything is so fething deadly that there's no point in fielding anything that's not a glorified warm body or one of the hyper-efficient killer units. Watching an army build EVERYTHING into absurd levels of crazy durability and then seeing it get tabled turn 4 instead of turn 3 is incredibly disheartening and makes it seem like there just isn't an easy solution at this point, it's all just hosed. too many numbers in too many books are too high and stack with too many layers of abilities.

The problem is the race to the bottom we experienced all throughout 8th is happening again in 9th - everything is so fething deadly that there's no point in fielding anything that's not a glorified warm body or one of the hyper-efficient killer units. Watching an army build EVERYTHING into absurd levels of crazy durability and then seeing it get tabled turn 4 instead of turn 3 is incredibly disheartening and makes it seem like there just isn't an easy solution at this point, it's all just hosed. too many numbers in too many books are too high and stack with too many layers of abilities.

It's funny - I think you were in the thread a few months back (right after they started announcing that marines were getting more wounds) where I made the joke that another rules writer in a completely different part of the rules dungeon was going to see that and think "I better raise the damage value on some of these weapons to compensate!" .... and ... here we are. That's EXACTLY what happened ...

As far as how this affects the secondaries - I like the idea of balancing the kill secondaries better. Killing a basic IG officer, vs a sorcerer w/a 4++ and -1 to hit really shouldn't both net the same amount of points. That's a pretty fair statement. At the same time, you shouldn't be able to score two different secondaries at the same time off of killing that one sorcerer. I also think that, killing being so easy in this edition, the kill secondaries should be worth fewer points in general, and things like deploy scramblers and raise the banners should probably be worth a little more. Really - any secondary where you have opportunity cost involved should be worth more than a secondary where it's basically "I shoot my anti-tank weapon at a tank" ...

I agree, but it's what happens when you have a 5-turn game based primarily on scoring fixed-placement objectives with limited space. You need to be able to delete anything in the game in a round of combat or shooting, or else the game just becomes about sitting on objectives with more bodies than your opponent until the game ends.

They've kind-of packed themselves into a corner on this one. The same thing happens in AOS, for example - even worse, actually, since in AOS terrain is pretty much irrelevant, so you frequently see armies effectively tabled by the end of T2.

I agree, but it's what happens when you have a 5-turn game based primarily on scoring fixed-placement objectives with limited space. You need to be able to delete anything in the game in a round of combat or shooting, or else the game just becomes about sitting on objectives with more bodies than your opponent until the game ends.

True, but that's exactly what the secondaries are supposed to help offset imo.

Another way to deal with it besides lethality might be to require a clearer numerical advantage to hold objectives, and therefore generate more ties. It seems dubious both conceptually and from a gameplay point of view to have 9 guardsmen "holding" an objective against 8 cultists, or vice versa.

Like consider if you changed the holding rules to: (1) to hold an objective, you need to have double or more the amount of models as your opponent; (2) ob-sec counts double; and (3) you can never control an objective if your opponent has 5 or more models on it (with ob-sec counting double again), no matter how many you have. Probably put scoring back to the end of each player's turn, too, so that you can get control by having a good round of combat to clear them out, even if they'll come back next turn and do the same to you potentially.

I think that would produce a game where you could tone down the lethality, because the early game would be dominated by a lot of inconclusive scrums where neither player gets a clear advantage. So the strategy would then come down to how you commit your forces to each objective, because the winner is going to be the one who commits correctly and wears down the opponent enough over the course of the game to get control of enough objectives before the end of the game to win. Horde armies can deny points by just piling bodies on, but they aren't going to get any points by doing that either as long as the opponent also pushes bodies on, so the fact that you can't delete a whole army in 1-2 turns of shooting doesn't actually mean they win the game by default.

I have played in three local tournaments since 9th dropped (although we just went into a Provincial lockdown so its back to paint mode.) I am not seeing many tablings and I can't think of any during Turn 1 or 2. We did have a 1000 point event where you could get crippled since you don't have very much. I have certainly used Kill-based Secondaries to get ahead, but I have also used Action/board presences ones as well. You need to be flexible.

With the kill-based Secondaries, they seemed designed to reign-in lists that use more than three of a character, large vehicle or monster. I get that not all characters are created equal, but you take them in your list for a reason. Those cheap AM characters are giving you Orders; those various Ork characters are giving you various buffs. Psychic-based lists do suffer under Abhor the Witch, but I have seen Psychic Ritual successfully executed by players who commit to it. The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.

As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.

I have played in three local tournaments since 9th dropped (although we just went into a Provincial lockdown so its back to paint mode.) I am not seeing many tablings and I can't think of any during Turn 1 or 2. We did have a 1000 point event where you could get crippled since you don't have very much. I have certainly used Kill-based Secondaries to get ahead, but I have also used Action/board presences ones as well. You need to be flexible.

Right. The problem with responses like this is that they essentially amount to "get guud", "uSe bEtTUR taktiks", etc etc, while ignoring the fact that the secondaries, as they currently exist, are causing a swath of armies to essentially come into every single game behind on points from the jump because there's almost nothing they can do to prevent giving up max secondaries. Meanwhile, a lot of those same armies will struggle to achieve the higher scoring secondaries (which, again, tend to be the killing ones), and you end up having to take something that's not going to net you the amount of points you'll need because it's really all your army can manage. Meanwhile, other armies can pretty much deny nearly all the significant secondaries while also scoring max against you. It shouldn't be this way, and saying "You need to be flexible" is ignoring a good bit of the problems imo.

Also - on the tablings - in our area we've seen a fair bit. Not as many as you would have seen in 8th, but still a good bit. What's even more common though, is a game that continues to the end even though it was already effectively over after 3.

With the kill-based Secondaries, they seemed designed to reign-in lists that use more than three of a character, large vehicle or monster. I get that not all characters are created equal, but you take them in your list for a reason. Those cheap AM characters are giving you Orders; those various Ork characters are giving you various buffs. Psychic-based lists do suffer under Abhor the Witch, but I have seen Psychic Ritual successfully executed by players who commit to it. The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.

You can't possibly tell me you think that cheap Ork character (most of whom do very little of value) should be counted the same as a Space Marine Captain. This is where things like Assassinate fall down. There needs to be a sliding scale to account for the fact that basic Ork Warboss ≠ Space Marine Captain, and you should definitely not be able to double up on anything (as in the example of dropping an exalted sorcerer and getting points for abhor and assassinate). Let's also not forget that they nerfed Smite pretty hard for the Tsons so I don't think saying "it's because mortal wounds" is really valid.

As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.

Keep the utterly flawed secondaries that nerf multiple entire codexes just because you're salty about a single list type? What happened to "you have to be flexible"?

The truth of the matter is tabling's happen quite frequently when armies are forced to actually interact. It depends on dice rolls for sure but pretty much no army can take 3-4 rounds of sustained damage.

If one army has a good turn 1 in damage and the other doesn't return a lot - that game will likely be a table. Even if both armies are rolling reasonably average if there is consistent contact there is going to be little to know modles left at the end of turn 4-5.

My last 3 games with crons
Tabled a melee cron army - something like 75- 60
Won a game by 2 points where I only had 3 units left (5 tomb blades a cyptec and a triarch stalker)
Tabled an Imperial Gaurd army (was a majority mech list).

Kill secondaries make no sense in a game this brutal. The secondaries don't make me make any choices ether. I can pretty much execute my battle plan and not even think about the secondaries and then magically I max them out...

I'm still putting thoughts together for a "ProHammer-ized" version of 9th , and this thread has given me lots to think about in terms of the overall balance and pacing of the game.

IMHO, the victory system used in a game (any game) is one of the most important things to get right because it dictates everything else (at least when you're viewing things through a competitive lens). The victory conditions and scoring criteria need to support and incentivize the kind of gameplay that is desired.

I think, in many ways, 40k is struggling to find it's purpose and the kind of gameplay it wants to emphasize. Right now, given the importance of secondary objectives and the lethality overall, the game feels more about list building and countering your opponent before anyone has even placed a model on the table.

Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.

FWIW, I think one could start with just the primary objective plus require the scenario/mission specific secondary to be used. Beyond that, maybe you could have a bonus secondary to choose. This bonus would be based on performing some feat intrinsic to your army, rather than being contingent on some element in your opponent's list.

In 40K, the principal strategic fulcrum is routinely between whether or not you optimize destroying your opponent versus pursuing a strategic objective. That's the crux of the gameplay, and that should be reinforced and better balanced.

The companion to all of the above, is that in order for the the strategic choice you make to be "tactically interesting" in its execution, the system must provide multiple choices and means of accomplishing whatever strategic moves you design. Right now, the game is too one-dimensional in this regard - mostly because it's too lethal. It's hard to take risks, either big or small, when failure is outright destruction. Units not being durable enough means that there is no back and forth to movement or board position. The whole game becomes whether your strategy is "alpha-strike" to cripple the enemy right away, or "rush the objective" and get an insurmountable lead in points early on.

Anyway, I think the gameplay can be improved both both ends - that is from the victory conditions on one hand, and the detailed nuances of tactics and attack resolution on the other. The game needs to be less lethal, players need to have more tools and choices at their disposal, and the victory system better designed.

ProHammer (in my biased opinion) provides a blue print for how to get there. I don't think many of the ideas are fundamentally incompatible with 9th edition - but it does mean 9th edition will need to be more complex in some areas, and will likely take a bit longer to play. That's a fine trade-off IMHO.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.

As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.

Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.

Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.

The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.

 Mezmorki wrote:
I'm still putting thoughts together for a "ProHammer-ized" version of 9th , and this thread has given me lots to think about in terms of the overall balance and pacing of the game.

IMHO, the victory system used in a game (any game) is one of the most important things to get right because it dictates everything else (at least when you're viewing things through a competitive lens). The victory conditions and scoring criteria need to support and incentivize the kind of gameplay that is desired.

I think, in many ways, 40k is struggling to find it's purpose and the kind of gameplay it wants to emphasize. Right now, given the importance of secondary objectives and the lethality overall, the game feels more about list building and countering your opponent before anyone has even placed a model on the table.

Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.

FWIW, I think one could start with just the primary objective plus require the scenario/mission specific secondary to be used. Beyond that, maybe you could have a bonus secondary to choose. This bonus would be based on performing some feat intrinsic to your army, rather than being contingent on some element in your opponent's list.

In 40K, the principal strategic fulcrum is routinely between whether or not you optimize destroying your opponent versus pursuing a strategic objective. That's the crux of the gameplay, and that should be reinforced and better balanced.

The companion to all of the above, is that in order for the the strategic choice you make to be "tactically interesting" in its execution, the system must provide multiple choices and means of accomplishing whatever strategic moves you design. Right now, the game is too one-dimensional in this regard - mostly because it's too lethal. It's hard to take risks, either big or small, when failure is outright destruction. Units not being durable enough means that there is no back and forth to movement or board position. The whole game becomes whether your strategy is "alpha-strike" to cripple the enemy right away, or "rush the objective" and get an insurmountable lead in points early on.

Anyway, I think the gameplay can be improved both both ends - that is from the victory conditions on one hand, and the detailed nuances of tactics and attack resolution on the other. The game needs to be less lethal, players need to have more tools and choices at their disposal, and the victory system better designed.

ProHammer (in my biased opinion) provides a blue print for how to get there. I don't think many of the ideas are fundamentally incompatible with 9th edition - but it does mean 9th edition will need to be more complex in some areas, and will likely take a bit longer to play. That's a fine trade-off IMHO.

I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.

Also just a quality of life thing too...The command phase should just be changed to something called the abilies phase and occur at the end of the movement phase.

Tycho,

I am not telling you to get good. I am saying that I like that we need to be flexible in how we achieve victory through the Secondaries. Its OK if you don't like that, although I would find that to be an odd point of view. Do you only want one path to victory? If you don't care, why are you apparently upset about how Secondaries work?

Some armies are indeed struggling right now. The Secondaries can certainly work against Astra Militarum, but they have other things working against them. A gunline is not a path to victory. We'll see what their Codex brings. I don't think that the Tau struggles are due to the Kill Secondaries. I've said that I expect the Psychic Secondaries to get a rework. I'm not sure how that makes me salty?

Cheers,

T2B

I think for the first run of the Secondaries, GW did okay, but it's very clear that they need to be fixed up in the GT/CA 2021 pack.

The most serious issues IMO:

-Lack of Elite kill secondary. One of the main reasons armies like Space Marines can do so well right now, is there is often not a good choice of secondary selection against them. This needs to be fixed.

-Pyschic/Anti-psyker secondaries. These should just go away in my opinion. Getting an automatic 15 VP just because you are playing against Thousand Sons or Grey Knights is just bad design. The kill one is also much better than the psychic action one, further exacerbating this issue.

- Stacking secondaries. This can probably be fixed by tuning up and balancing the secondaries, but in cases where you can do stuff like stack assassinate and abhor the witch creates a pretty poor situation for some armies that can't really build their army well without running into these. Thousand Sons and Daemons hate this one quite a bit.

Those are my major grievances, but they also need to tune the ones that are currently available as well.

Again, I don't think this was a terrible first turn, besides the glaring omission of an anti-elite one, but I do expect better changes for the next mission pack.

EDIT: I should add that I'm not a big fan of codex secondaries. These should be removed in the GT2021 Matched play missions.

I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.

Agree with a lot of this. It's like I said earlier - you have one secondary that requires you to fight your way onto an objective, hold that objective, do NOTHING while on said objective and you get ... a point.... Meanwhile, in that same game - "Huuuurr Duuuurrr - I shot my anti tank gun at a tank - 5 points for me!"

I don't actually mind "killing" style secondaries, but in general, anything that requires a choice, anything that carries opportunity cost, should be pointed much higher than a thing you were going to do anyway.

I am not telling you to get good. I am saying that I like that we need to be flexible in how we achieve victory through the Secondaries. Its OK if you don't like that, although I would find that to be an odd point of view. Do you only want one path to victory? If you don't care, why are you apparently upset about how Secondaries work?

What you seem to be missing (or ignoring?) is the fact that there are too many armies who simply cannot win via secondaries. Not only that, but because of the inherent structure, will almost certainly auto-lose BECAUSE of the secondaries, and there's not a lot of play around that for a good chunk of those armies. Tau, Drukahri, CSM (to an admittedly lesser extent), GSC, Astra Militarum, Tsons, etc etc,. They are all severely penalized by the current cropping and the heck of it is - a new codex won't fix that.

Unless of course, Tsons get a codex with a wierd rule that says "Your sorcerers can only be counted for a single secondary each time they are killed", or Astra Militarum get something that says "Your opponent must drop two tanks to get credit for one kill on Bring it Down" etc etc. That's pretty silly too though, so I don't really see it happening. The issue is the current set of secondaries is practically tailor made for one grouping of armies, and becomes borderline exlusionary to the rest.

Some armies are indeed struggling right now. The Secondaries can certainly work against Astra Militarum, but they have other things working against them. A gunline is not a path to victory. We'll see what their Codex brings. I don't think that the Tau struggles are due to the Kill Secondaries. I've said that I expect the Psychic Secondaries to get a rework. I'm not sure how that makes me salty?

A gunline is not a path to victory?

How about the problem is that Astra Militarum is not a path to victory? They practically bleed secondary points. Badly. And not only is there nothing they can do about it - it's not going to change with their codex. Everything they bring is almost directly targeted by one or more of the secondaries. They practically give up max points simply by existing and that should not ever be. "Wait and see" doesn't work here either. Do we expect their tanks will magically become that much harder to kill and still be affordable? Will they suddenly become a more elite style army that doesn't hemorrhage points? No.

The only way to fix most of this is to address the inherent imbalance in the secondaries themselves. Also - the "salty" part was in reference to your comment about "Triple Keeper" lists. You're perfectly happy to nuke entire codexes via a poor grouping of secondaries just to reign in one list you apparently don't like. It's crazy people think like that. Just fix what's wrong with that list. Don't hammer everyone else ...

 Xenomancers wrote:

I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.

Also just a quality of life thing too...The command phase should just be changed to something called the abilies phase and occur at the end of the movement phase.

Thanks!

I'm working on a ProHammer-ized version of 9th edition in earnest. So at some point, if one is willing to use a homebrew ruleset (that is compatible and uses the current codexes mind you) they might be able to play with a ruleset that addresses the lethality question. I'm tinkering around with the wound chart and how saving throws work - which is the fussiest part. Other rules, like going back to limited split firing, shooting declaration, etc. eare easy changes to implement yet do a lot to tone things down.

As far as objectives, I've tested a game where the primary objective scores points equal to the current game turn as follows:

Turn 1: no primary objective scoring
Turn 2: 2 points per criteria met (10 max potential)
Turn 3: 3 points per criteria met (15 max potential)
Turn 4: 4 points per criteria met (20 max potential)
Turn 5: 5 points per criteria met (25 max potential)

Overall, there are 70 points up for grabs, instead of 100, and these more limited points are weighted towards the later turns.

Additionally, the mission specific secondary was always in effect for both players. The points for this secondary was NOT adjusted by turn nor capped at only 15 points over the course of the game. This means the secondary objectives take on a bit more importance relatively speaking. But IMHO that's a good thing as they are the thing that is most unique about each mission, and designing a balanced list that can do those secondary objectives, regardless of which one gets rolled, is important.

yukishiro1 wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.

As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.

Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.

Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.

The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.

You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.

You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite.

[beginsarcasm]Yeah - but those dudes with tripkeeps deserve it though right? Feth the fallout and the fact that there are like 5 codexes that may as well not even exist in this edition ... lol/jk[endsarcasm]

Joking aside Tangtwo makes a good point here. What SHOULD secondaries be designed to do?

If we want to try to use them to balance the game itself, what we currently have is pretty wildly incorrect. If we want to use them to try and balance the primaries, we probably just need the mission specific secondary and can ignore all the others ...

From a game design standpoint, what's the optimal use case for secondaries?

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.

As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.

Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.

Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.

The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.

You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.

Triple Keeper isn't really a skew list. Daemons tend to take multiple Greater Daemons because they fulfil multiple roles in the army.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.

Punishing skew isn't punishing armies, it's punishing particular choices within an army. And again, these secondaries don't actually punish skew. They punish arbitrary stuff. Take a whole army of 3+wound elite infantry? You give up nothing. Take a balanced, diverse Thousand Sons army? You give up 24 points on kill secondaries minimum, just for the faction you selected.

I'm not sure Triple Keeper even is a skew list - but let's accept that at face value. The point is that the secondaries don't punish just that - they also punish someone who takes a typical Tsons army with 3 psyker characters too. Is taking 3 psyker characters in a Tsons list skew? Of course it isn't.

The kill secondaries right now are just garbage. They punish arbitrary things, not skew.

And actually, the reason you punish skew is not so much for balance per se in the sense of "this thing is overpowered, this thing is underpowered," it's to encourage people to take TAC lists so that match-ups aren't predetermined by looking at the armies each side brought. There are lots of possible skew lists that aren't overpowered in the abstract that will never-the-less totally destroy some other skew lists because it's a bad matchup - and that will get destroyed themselves if they come up against a hard counter. The game isn't fun that way, so it makes sense from a design perspective to try to encourage people not to bring the sorts of lists that are likely to be hard countered. With the complete removal of force org charts and in 9th even the need to take balanced battalions, secondaries become a logical place to encourage TAC lists - but again, the current secondaries don't do that. They just punish arbitrary stuff that has little or nothing to do with promoting TAC lists.

 Sasori wrote:


-Lack of Elite kill secondary. One of the main reasons armies like Space Marines can do so well right now, is there is often not a good choice of secondary selection against them. This needs to be fixed.

I don't see, at least from a GK perspective how this would change anything. There are no non elite GK armies. Specialy now when GK don't have the +1W other marines have, but are costed as if they had them. Abhore the Witch is stupid, but at least an army with a farseer or librarian can't use. If AtW is gone, but there is an anti marine secondary, then it only gets worse. People will take the same secondaries vs GK, and just replace AtW with the superior anti marine one.

Unless of course, Tsons get a codex with a wierd rule that says "Your sorcerers can only be counted for a single secondary each time they are killed", or Astra Militarum get something that says "Your opponent must drop two tanks to get credit for one kill on Bring it Down" etc etc. That's pretty silly too though, so I don't really see it happening. The issue is the current set of secondaries is practically tailor made for one grouping of armies, and becomes borderline exlusionary to the rest.

Not sure about the 1ksons one. But what if IG stuff come in section. You would buy units as squads, and they would move and shot as squads. But for org chart or orders they would work in sections. 3x10 section and a Lt. Higher ranks officers could give order to bigger sections. So they would also give up 1 kill secondary only after the 31 models were dead. It could be balanced with both order limits, point costs of units going up the larger the section is, so sometimes it wouldn't be worth running 6 lemman Russes and a Cmd, because the ones after the 3ed would start costing double.

I think the kill secondaries should probably go.
Or just be massively nerfed. 1 tank, 1 point. 1 character 1 point. 1 psyker 1 point etc.

Really I think the point of secondaries - if they are to exist at all - is to give players a dilemma. Achieving them should force players to deviate from an optimised order of operations.

The problem with the kill secondaries is that they don't do this. Destroying your opponent's army is part of playing 40k. So you are essentially just getting points for playing. There is no trade off with say "kill tanks" or "kill characters" because if your opponent has a load of tanks or characters, you are almost certainly going to kill them. If you can't, its probably because you've been tabled and have probably lost that game regardless.

By comparison even something like Engage on All Fronts, while often a guaranteed 8-9+ points for certain armies, is reasonably hard to max out, and imposes questions on both the player and their opponent throughout the game. If you lose all your fast units - or you need them to hold/deny a primary objective - you are making a trade off.

The other way of looking at things is that everyone should have a gimme 15 point kill objective, that you would expect both players to max out in all but the most one-sided games. I think this was arguably the case in ITC. But beyond fairness... what's the point?

The only point I see to kill secondaries is to punish skew. But I'm also not sure that really even fits into GW's new "no force org charts! do whatever you want! freedom!" approach to list design. If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.

One thing I think would be really interesting is a system where you have only two secondaries, and you pick one, but *your opponent picks the other*. So that is how you encourage TAC lists, because if you go skew, your opponent will just pick something your list can't do hardly at all, and you get few or zero points from that secondary. You could have maybe 5-6 different options, with no kill secondaries, obviously - think more like engage on all fronts, or deploy scramblers, or slay the warlord, line breaker, etc etc.

It would instantly inject a bit of that "hard choices" thing that secondaries should actually be about.

BTW, said cheap IG characters are mostly not that good. The only one that is an immediate auto take being that of a the generic Company Commander, a needed component to make the army function at all.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The only point I see to kill secondaries is to punish skew. But I'm also not sure that really even fits into GW's new "no force org charts! do whatever you want! freedom!" approach to list design. If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.

One thing I think would be really interesting is a system where you have only two secondaries, and you pick one, but *your opponent picks the other*. So that is how you encourage TAC lists, because if you go skew, your opponent will just pick something your list can't do hardly at all, and you get few or zero points from that secondary. You could have maybe 5-6 different options, with no kill secondaries, obviously - think more like engage on all fronts, or deploy scramblers, or slay the warlord, line breaker, etc etc.

It would instantly inject a bit of that "hard choices" thing that secondaries should actually be about.

That's an interesting idea. It would require some finessing because some secondaries will not be possible at all and that feels wrong.

Perhaps each player chooses 4 options and their opponent chooses which 3 their opponent will use?

Well you would radically change the secondaries in that case, to make sure that every one is possible for every army. They would be all things any army can theoretically do, but your ability to realistically do so would depend on how balanced your army was.

It'd definitely require a lot cleverer system than the current one, so it may not be realistic.

If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.

That's at least partially what it comes down to for me. Not to mention the fact that some armies (like Astra Militarum) are actually MEANT to bring 12 tanks. Some armies HAVE to bring multiple spell casting characters. Those armies shouldn't be punished simply for existing. Whatever they should be, secondaries should absolutely NOT be something that's "great for a few, good enough for some, and utterly destructive to everyone else".