Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Common man, you are asking me to believe GW won't screw this up? I won't post a laundry list here, but suffice to say, GW has horrendously messed up FAR easier things than this.

Also, this would surely slow down the game, which they are trying to avoid. Every time you attack a tank you would need to confirm you are shooting the side you want, and your opponent agrees, then roll to hit, then do the rolls for type of hit, then roll for damage or glancing, then damage. This is made even worse with re-rolls.

PenitentJake wrote:
Lots of nostalgia for AV's. Kinda ignores some things that I remember quite clearly from those days:

Arguing over what facing you hit, because at 45 and 135 degrees, it's really a crap shoot. Keep in mind, that the arcs that determined AV ALSO determined which weapons could fire, so you had to argue about facing both when shooting and when being attacked.

Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Monsters had no facings, and no AVs, so they were better against AT than vehicles.

And my own personal least favourite thing about the old system? One penetrating hit could destroy the vehicle. That's right, ONE.

Imagine 5 lascannon shots vs a titan maniple with av's. My five dudes shoot; all 2k points of your army are gone. What do we do in turn 2?

Even if a vehicle wasn't destroyed outright by a penetrating hit, they could be absolutely crippled- you could become immobile for a turn or the full game or have a weapon permanently destroyed, and again, a single penetrating hit could do that.

These are the things I remember about the AV system.

Superheavies were much more resilient than that. So an Imperial Knight couldn't be taken out in one shot, though an Armiger (if translated back) would probably be able to.

And in 7th, the odds of one-shotting an AV 14 vehicle (Land Raider, Leman Russ on the front, Monolith, etc.) with a Lascannon hit was less than 3%. Factor in hit chance and it gets worse, obviously.

PenitentJake wrote:
Arguing over what facing you hit, because at 45 and 135 degrees, it's really a crap shoot. Keep in mind, that the arcs that determined AV ALSO determined which weapons could fire, so you had to argue about facing both when shooting and when being attacked.

This could largely have been rectified if GW actually codified weapon mountings and fire arcs properly for each vehicle.

Working out facings on most vehicles was pretty simple. Again it just needed GW to provide diagrams showing where the 'corners' of the model were.

PenitentJake wrote:
Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Heaven forbid that you have to think about positioning.

PenitentJake wrote:
Monsters had no facings, and no AVs, so they were better against AT than vehicles.

So fix monstrous creatues (eg. a mechanic for taking multiple wounds from high strength hits).

PenitentJake wrote:
And my own personal least favourite thing about the old system? One penetrating hit could destroy the vehicle. That's right, ONE.

Shocking that an anti-tank weapon could destroy a tank. Whereas now dedicated anti-armour weapons have to grind down targets with weight of fire...

7th is an horrible example, because it had the HP system. Lascannons were crap and no one took them, meanwhile a Grav Cannon had a good chance of one-shooting a AV14 vehicle.

EDIT: The problem with the AV system is the root problem of most 40k issues. GW wants a game in which you can bring a 400+ model list or a few super-heavies. Both kind of lists cannot interact with each other with the old AV.

PenitentJake wrote:
Lots of nostalgia for AV's. Kinda ignores some things that I remember quite clearly from those days:

Arguing over what facing you hit, because at 45 and 135 degrees, it's really a crap shoot. Keep in mind, that the arcs that determined AV ALSO determined which weapons could fire, so you had to argue about facing both when shooting and when being attacked.

Wrong. Weapon arcs and armor facing had no relation. Additionally, there is a much better method to implement armor facings than the one GW chose, but instead of trying to improve they just abandoned the whole idea.

PenitentJake wrote:
Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Wrong - you may struggle to shoot them both at the same target, but Power of the Machine Spirit meant you could easily use both at the same time.

PenitentJake wrote:
Monsters had no facings, and no AVs, so they were better against AT than vehicles.

Yes, but worse against small arms (until GW lost the thread and started giving them 2+ saves and a T higher than 6). And it depended on the monster - Daemon Princes in 4th-6th could be one-shotted by something like a Demolisher Cannon but not by something like a lascannon. Depends on the weapon-to-target pairing.

PenitentJake wrote:
And my own personal least favourite thing about the old system? One penetrating hit could destroy the vehicle. That's right, ONE.

That's how vehicles are, in combat. Typically, they're very alive until they're very not. It just a different damage resolution mechanism. Right now, a single multi-melta could blow up a single Leman Russ. Removing armor facings didn't fix this.

PenitentJake wrote:
Imagine 5 lascannon shots vs a titan maniple with av's. My five dudes shoot; all 2k points of your army are gone. What do we do in turn 2?

Wrong. What you'd do is stop playing by the wrong rules and instead use the rules for superheavies that were considerably more durable than normal tanks (and couldn't be one-shot after mid-5th).

PenitentJake wrote:
Even if a vehicle wasn't destroyed outright by a penetrating hit, they could be absolutely crippled- you could become immobile for a turn or the full game or have a weapon permanently destroyed, and again, a single penetrating hit could do that.

You're right! A way of interacting the game that wasn't "Kill the Model, or Don't", how terrible! such woe! Truly, a travesty!!

PenitentJake wrote:
These are the things I remember about the AV system.

Good thing you remember poorly or it would've been a gakky system.

The worst part of the AV system was figuring out arcs, but the industry has moved on from the antiquated system of dividing a vehicle into 90-degree sectors.

One of the common, popular ones is to simply give vehicles a Front and Rear armor value. Arc is defined by drawing a line across the front hull of the vehicle. If you're wholly behind that line, you use the Rear value, otherwise you use the Front value. Fewer values to balance, fewer arguments over arcs.

If people really don't like tanks being alive or dead in binary fashion, that's why we had Hull Points. It's a reasonable fix for the unlikely but memorable/annoying cases where a vehicle dies on the first hit or survives absurd numbers of hits. Or hey, they could keep the T/W/Sv system as current, but have different Sv values for different arcs. Maybe a Leman Russ gets to be 1+ on the front and you really can't plink it to death with heavy bolters. There are options.

Could GW mess it up? Sure. That doesn't make it a bad concept, especially when GW is more willing than ever to try to improve the game.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
Arguing over what facing you hit, because at 45 and 135 degrees, it's really a crap shoot. Keep in mind, that the arcs that determined AV ALSO determined which weapons could fire, so you had to argue about facing both when shooting and when being attacked.

This could largely have been rectified if GW actually codified weapon mountings and fire arcs properly for each vehicle.

Working out facings on most vehicles was pretty simple. Again it just needed GW to provide diagrams showing where the 'corners' of the model were.

PenitentJake wrote:
Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Heaven forbid that you have to think about positioning.

PenitentJake wrote:
Monsters had no facings, and no AVs, so they were better against AT than vehicles.

So fix monstrous creatues (eg. a mechanic for taking multiple wounds from high strength hits).

PenitentJake wrote:
And my own personal least favourite thing about the old system? One penetrating hit could destroy the vehicle. That's right, ONE.

Shocking that an anti-tank weapon could destroy a tank. Whereas now dedicated anti-armour weapons have to grind down targets with weight of fire...

+1.
I'd prefer to return to the old AV system. Bring back the old wounding chart while we're at it.

I've got zero desire to go back to AV, Fronts, hull points or anything like that.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

I guess my question now is 8th did away with "Facing" right? All vehicles were perpetually always facing in the exact way needed to fire all it's weapons on any target in range. So how do we bring back AV without destroying the perpetual "Facing" problem?

There is no problem. Left, Right, Front, etc are simple concepts. You learn then when you're a very small child.
Otherwise we have to treat our fellow gamers as small children & (re)teach them basic concepts.

While I could like implementation of a facing system, I hate the old AV system.

Better implement something more modern and adapt it into the wounding system instead of having an entirely different system for it.

While we are at it, if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

The AV system and facings isn't coming back. IDK why this is ongoing in the FAQ thread.

If you want that kind of thing you can still play Heresy.

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

PenitentJake wrote:


Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Literally untrue. You can see this by moving the actual sponsons on the model. Then you will notice their lines of fire actually converge and only have a blind spot about 8-10 inches in front of the vehicle.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

It also would apply to the old AV system, but I have additional issues with that system aside of the Knight problem.

But yes, as long as a player can bring an all super-heavy list, small arms will have to be able to harm such list in some way, even if being extremely inefficient at it.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

Fair enough about the wounding chart and not AV. . . .

But S4 not being able to wound T8 would IMO be a GOOD thing, and it still wouldn't necessitate the removal of Knights.

 Tyran wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

It also would apply to the old AV system, but I have additional issues with that system aside of the Knight problem.

But yes, as long as a player can bring an all super-heavy list, small arms will have to be able to harm such list in some way, even if being extremely inefficient at it.

This is only true in a world where killing the enemy is the only way to interact with the game.

Give light infantry some way to interact with superheavies that isn't just "I kill it with rifles. LOTS OF RIFLES" #meme would be the optimal way to do that. Not suddenly making tanks the size of houses vulnerable to riflemen.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

and the problem is?

 kodos wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

and the problem is?

One of 40k's major flaws is that the only way of interacting with a model is to kill it (or not kill it) meaning that models which cannot be killed also then cannot be meaningfully interacted with.

Therefore, having an army that is unkillable by another army is basically the same as having an army that doesn't interact with the other army. That's bad for the game.

PenitentJake wrote:
Lots of nostalgia for AV's. Kinda ignores some things that I remember quite clearly from those days:

Arguing over what facing you hit, because at 45 and 135 degrees, it's really a crap shoot. Keep in mind, that the arcs that determined AV ALSO determined which weapons could fire, so you had to argue about facing both when shooting and when being attacked.

Well, they TOLD you how to handle things like that. If you couldn't agree, take it to a dice roll. In this case, whoever rolls higher decides wich facing got hit.
You could easily apply that to the weapons & avoid the argument.

PenitentJake wrote:
Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Yes, restricted fields of fire is the logical result of sponson weapons. Or hull mounted weapons. They have their purposes & reasons, but there's a reason turrets were developed....
How many WWI British Mk.V tanks do you think ever fired both sponsons at the same target? None.
How many German Stugs in WWII ever shot their hull mounted forward facing gun out their ass? None.

PenitentJake wrote:
Monsters had no facings, and no AVs, so they were better against AT than vehicles.

Eh. They were very much like characters in that. Just bigger & not prone to being insta-killed.

PenitentJake wrote:
And my own personal least favourite thing about the old system? One penetrating hit could destroy the vehicle. That's right, ONE.

As it should be.

PenitentJake wrote:
Imagine 5 lascannon shots vs a titan maniple with av's. My five dudes shoot; all 2k points of your army are gone. What do we do in turn 2?

"Well, that was a quick game. Want to play again?" Same as would happen with any other really quick fluke of a game.
Although this outcome vs a Titan Maniple is quite unlikely....

PenitentJake wrote:
Even if a vehicle wasn't destroyed outright by a penetrating hit, they could be absolutely crippled- you could become immobile for a turn or the full game or have a weapon permanently destroyed, and again, a single penetrating hit could do that.

As it should be.

PenitentJake wrote:
...Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs...

I'm baffled by this complaint. One of the central weaknesses of 40k, at least to me, is that you always get to fire every weapon in your army at maximum efficiency all the time (as GW slowly purges firing arcs, moving-and-firing penalties, short ranges, long tables, slow movement, line of sight block...). Maneuver and table positioning matters less and less as we go on, to the point that we might as well not even bother setting up minis, just roll all the dice and see who dies. Yes, fire arcs mean you can't fire every weapon at maximum efficiency automatically every turn. That's the whole point.

 Tyran wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

It also would apply to the old AV system, but I have additional issues with that system aside of the Knight problem.

But yes, as long as a player can bring an all super-heavy list, small arms will have to be able to harm such list in some way, even if being extremely inefficient at it.

Multiple ways that could be addressed. Make Knights more vulnerable to certain types of attacks, such as:

make infantry swarming them and planting grenades be actually effective
make sub-sections targetable so that smart application of heavy weapons can achieve strategic goals
make it so Knights can't hold objectives very well
or any number of other possibilities.

7th ed pulled the enormous mistake of actually removing the ability for multiple models in a unit to use meltabombs, etc. against vehicles in close combat, actively making things worse for factions that struggle against them. Ork Tankbustas, for example.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

and the problem is?

One of 40k's major flaws is that the only way of interacting with a model is to kill it (or not kill it) meaning that models which cannot be killed also then cannot be meaningfully interacted with.

Therefore, having an army that is unkillable by another army is basically the same as having an army that doesn't interact with the other army. That's bad for the game.

a knight is already effectively unkillable by small arms anyway... It wouldnt change much to just say straight up that stuff with S<=4 just cannot wound at all.

ccs wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
Your Land Raider had to pay for 2 twin-linked Lascannons, even though more often than not, you'd only get to shoot with one because of firing arcs.

Yes, restricted fields of fire is the logical result of sponson weapons. Or hull mounted weapons. They have their purposes & reasons, but there's a reason turrets were developed....
How many WWI British Mk.V tanks do you think ever fired both sponsons at the same target? None.
How many German Stugs in WWII ever shot their hull mounted forward facing gun out their ass? None...

The Land Raider specifically got Power of the Machine Spirit to let it fire at two different targets because there are people who find this frustrating. In 30k PotMS is available as a costed upgrade to a bunch of different tanks, because there are people who find this frustrating. Deleting armour facings/fire arcs wholesale just so you don't have to maneuver at all to fire all your guns all the time isn't the only answer to the problem.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

It also would apply to the old AV system, but I have additional issues with that system aside of the Knight problem.

But yes, as long as a player can bring an all super-heavy list, small arms will have to be able to harm such list in some way, even if being extremely inefficient at it.

Multiple ways that could be addressed. Make Knights more vulnerable to certain types of attacks, such as:

make infantry swarming them and planting grenades be actually effective
make sub-sections targetable so that smart application of heavy weapons can achieve strategic goals
make it so Knights can't hold objectives very well
or any number of other possibilities.

7th ed pulled the enormous mistake of actually removing the ability for multiple models in a unit to use meltabombs, etc. against vehicles in close combat, actively making things worse for factions that struggle against them. Ork Tankbustas, for example.

Not all factions units had meltabombs. Tyranids and Daemons never had such after all, in it wouldn't be very fluffy to give an hormagant one.

You need something more intrinsic to the system than a faction dependent wargear. And something more interactive than just objectives.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Therefore, having an army that is unkillable by another army is basically the same as having an army that doesn't interact with the other army. That's bad for the game.

did not know that there are armies without S8+ Weapons

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

and the problem is?

One of 40k's major flaws is that the only way of interacting with a model is to kill it (or not kill it) meaning that models which cannot be killed also then cannot be meaningfully interacted with.

Therefore, having an army that is unkillable by another army is basically the same as having an army that doesn't interact with the other army. That's bad for the game.

a knight is already effectively unkillable by small arms anyway... It wouldnt change much to just say straight up that stuff with S<=4 just cannot wound at all.

Yes, though this doesn't scale up with points cost. Back in the index days, iirc, 3000 points of conscripts would kill a 3000-point titan just by trading fire with it on planet bowling ball over 5 turns. I have not mathed out to see if this is true or not today.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Yes, though this doesn't scale up with points cost. Back in the index days, iirc, 3000 points of conscripts would kill a 3000-point titan just by trading fire with it on planet bowling ball over 5 turns. I have not mathed out to see if this is true or not today.

scaling is irrelevant IMO, no matter how many conscripts you throw at a titan, the titan should emerge unscathed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Therefore, having an army that is unkillable by another army is basically the same as having an army that doesn't interact with the other army. That's bad for the game.

did not know that there are armies without S8+ Weapons

S5+ actually since the proposition was to make anything that wounds on 6's now unable to wound.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Yes, though this doesn't scale up with points cost. Back in the index days, iirc, 3000 points of conscripts would kill a 3000-point titan just by trading fire with it on planet bowling ball over 5 turns. I have not mathed out to see if this is true or not today.

scaling is irrelevant IMO, no matter how many conscripts you throw at a titan, the titan should emerge unscathed.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree completely. I was illustrating how "effectively can't hurt" isn't actually true at higher points scales.

Like yeah, sure, its own points in conscripts wasn't likely to kill a Land Raider.

But its own points in conscripts was almost certain to kill a Warlord.

 Tyran wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
if we want the old wounding chart, then Imperial Knights would need to be discontinued as a faction, and we know GW is never doing that.

People say the craziest things . . . Like, why in gods name would the AV system necessitate the removal of Knights?

The old wounding chart is what they said.

Because, if Knights kept a Toughness value, and it stayed at 8, S4 and under couldn't wound them at all.

It also would apply to the old AV system, but I have additional issues with that system aside of the Knight problem.

But yes, as long as a player can bring an all super-heavy list, small arms will have to be able to harm such list in some way, even if being extremely inefficient at it.

Multiple ways that could be addressed. Make Knights more vulnerable to certain types of attacks, such as:

make infantry swarming them and planting grenades be actually effective
make sub-sections targetable so that smart application of heavy weapons can achieve strategic goals
make it so Knights can't hold objectives very well
or any number of other possibilities.

7th ed pulled the enormous mistake of actually removing the ability for multiple models in a unit to use meltabombs, etc. against vehicles in close combat, actively making things worse for factions that struggle against them. Ork Tankbustas, for example.

Not all factions units had meltabombs. Tyranids and Daemons never had such after all, in it wouldn't be very fluffy to give an hormagant one.

You need something more intrinsic to the system than a faction dependent wargear. And something more interactive than just objectives.

That's a very easy problem to fix by either providing infantry bonuses to attacking Knights in CC via some other way, or providing those factions with accessible anti-Knight options. This is a very solveable problem. Daemoninc or acidic attacks come to mind. Back in 2nd Ed Tyranids could upgrade large models with "Electro Fields" that shorted out the invulerable saves of opposing models, so being able to remove the Void Shields of Knights could even be an option if you wanted it to be. Where there's a will there's a way.