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The thread regarding the new datasheets for Plague Marines and Blightlord Terminators got locked, and I'd like to get a feel for the Dakka community opinions on this issue.

The TLDR for that thread is that the datasheets in the new codex for those two units (one of which being the main unit in the army) are significantly different than the 8E versions. No longer is there any squad level limitation on special or heavy weapons, the limitation is what can be built in a specific box of minis, while following the enclosed instructions. GW seems to be assuming players will only have access to this one box (and are incapable of using different arm combinations not in the instructions!), despite huge amounts of Plague Marine figures being released in 3 different starter sets just a few years ago, the new Heroes set, and the older legacy models.

So I think it is fair to consider what would happen if this becomes a trend. Chaos Havoks come with instructions to build two shoulder fired weapons (AT) and two hip fired weapons (General Purpose or Anti Infantry). SoB Retributors are similar, but restricted by the guns in the box rather than poses. Tau Commanders, DE Scourges, Skitarii, Scions, and any number of other units come with one of each gun upgrade in the box. Chaos Marines, IG Infantry, and other kits don't include all of their 8E options at all. And if you follow that logic, quite a few units that were merely "OK" become unplayable even in a casual game in 2021.

So, I'm interested in hearing your opinion on this. Please stay on topic. If you want to talk about 3D printing, piracy, other wargames, or the latest boogeyman, by all means start another thread to do so.

I don't understand the logic. My friends and I bought 2 boxes of havocs each so we could have 2 squads of 4 of the same weapon (with one of them being 4 chainguns). Thats 220 dollars worth of models. If anything they are losing out on a lot of money by making the rules like this.

If its a 'help new players be less confused' thing then that is doing a newbie a disservice because a '1 of everything' build is awful advice and putting yourself at a disadvantage. Also GW needs to stop kidding themselves with their playerbase. The nerds interested in plastic sci-fi miniatures can handle a meaty ruleset.

Is it a balance thing? I'd say no. Not only is the rest of the Death Guard book strong I've had 5 combi-melta blightlords throughout all of 8th and they're only ok. Its easy to screen their 12 inch range and they still have 5 shots wounding leman russes on 4+s. I guess combi-plasma was really bad or something? Why can't that just warrant a point change?

It seems like every time GW takes a step forward they also step on a rake. I honestly cannot believe that Age of Sigmar had a 'make your own hero' creator with POINTS VALUES and 40k is doing stuff that is anti-hobby. I've already had my mega armor warboss moved to legends because they don't sell any models and conversions are a no-no for orks apparently? (lol wtf thats why we play orks). Someone has their head up their rear in the 40k team.

Jesus, I drop out of the hobby for a year or two and this is what happens?

Back to 2nd Ed. it is, then.

Other: Your poll is a mess of conflicting and unrelated options.

Also 'No instructions, no rules' isn't what's going on in any way.


The DG 'options checklist' is problematic on many levels:
its a textual mess.
it doesn't address balance
it randomly invalidates existing squads for no apparent reason (but lets people build stronger squads)
its limiting on a hobby level, but not a game level, which is a baffling concept.

going forward, it has the potential to absolutely ruin armies.
if its a 'paradigm shift,' its an act of pure spite to start it here after the first two factions of the edition.

It sucks, and makes me feel bad and my eyes rain.

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
It sucks, and makes me feel bad and my eyes rain.

Echoing this. It's... It's bad. Real bad.

I think Voss nailed it really. If it ends here, w/DG it’s bad enough. If it gets carried to the other books it’s just awful. Would be enough to finally put me out of GW for good. Especially since the “GW Favorite Son” got to skip it ...

 Don Savik wrote:

If its a 'help new players be less confused' thing

have you SEEN the ungodly hell that is the Plague Marine wargear listing in the codex?

if I were a new player I'd nope out the instant I read that gak.

I will not stand for it. Its fething horrible and IMO just second to destroying Fantasy.

I will be writing them regularly until this changes.

I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised. Customization in 40k has been dying a slow death as long as I've been playing. In five years they'll probably have removed options entirely so they can print Sigmar-style stat cards (only three times the size so they can fit the paragraphs of special rule required to explain how your Intercessors' three different gun models actually all do the same thing).

I'm indifferent to the change. I do wish there was something similar to firstborn with this.

Changes like this, which limit building to the box (and certain wargear), makes the game easier to be adapted to Power Level instead of points, and for army building I'd love if power level was the standard for the game.

Right now, with all the options, and with certain weapons being better than others, leads to pl not being as well suited for matched play games.

If GW wants me to built the models with the exact weapons they give me, in the exact ways they give me, with the exact parts they give me... just sell me the dam models prebuilded and prepainted.

I have more freedom building Ikea's furniture.

Quite an embarrassment if such restrictions are how little they think the consumer can understand/manage when trying to play a frankly a very basic wargame.

Putting aside the threat to creativity and choice, what this will do is put more balance ramifications into the hands of the model/sprue designers who are probably quite divorced from the rules writing and game balance process (or what passes for such at GW).

Changes like this, which limit building to the box (and certain wargear), makes the game easier to be adapted to Power Level instead of points, and for army building I'd love if power level was the standard for the game.

Right now, with all the options, and with certain weapons being better than others, leads to pl not being as well suited for matched play games.

Barely anyone plays with Power Levels. And if one option is better than another option, their points values should be indicative of that. Hence why nobody plays with power levels, because it's a terrible way to balance a game.

AoS is a terrible game, and GW needs to stop trying to shoehorn 40K into that awful system.

This almost feels like a Deckard Voiceover situation. Some suit in PR at GW came down to the game designers offices one day, and said

"WHEW, it STINKS down here, this is why I never come down here. RIGHT, YOU LOT, THE NERDS!

I have received no less than ninteen letters from Constance Shibboleth in Crumpetham-upon-Statfordshire that her son Nesbit constructed his boxes of plague marines with all the fancy weaponry just as the instructions said, and now he's inconsolably crying and threatening to bomb his elementary school because YOUR RULES made HIS KIT, "Illegal" or somesuch. I demand you re-write the rules for these Deathed Guards to allow for all the available optionery to be playable! GOOD DAY SIRRAHS"

and then the game designers looked at one another and said

"But if we do that bruv the rules are gonna be unreadable"

"I don't know old chap let's just write them out and they'll surely see that it's a completely crazy mess and they'll never publish it."

In the case of Blightlords, the rules don't even correspond to the contents of the box. The basic loadout is 5 combi-bolters + 5 swords, but the box only contains the parts for 4 combi-bolters and 3 swords. This rule is arbitrary, bad, and discourages both customization of equipment and conversions. It needs to be changed. Even if it's only for Death Guard, that's too much.

Voss wrote:
Other: You're poll is a mess of conflicting and unrelated options.
Also 'No instructions, no rules' isn't what's going on in any way.

Fair enough. I agree that it doesn't seem to be a balance issue. I disagree about the instructions because it fits almost perfect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerInstructions/comments/7eb0rj/death_guard_plague_marines_imgur/

Outside of the Champ who has no Plasma Gun option in the kit, every single entry seems dictated by a variant in these instructions.

In 8E you could take any 2 plasma/melta/belcher/spewer/launcher. Now its 1 plasma/melta/belcher, 1 spewer, 1 launcher for 3 total, but split up because those are separate variants.

In 8E you could have any 2 flail/cleaver, now one of each because there is one variant build for each in the instructions.

In 8E you could have any number of axes (just the axe). Now you cannot have a second axe unless you also take the mace, despite having multiple knife arms leftover depending on how you built the others. And you can only have one dual knife guy because theres only instructions for one.

I think they did the datasheet based on the instructions, then added the champ plasma gun after a proofread. I could be wrong, but it seems more likely than improbable ballistics on a Carcano rifle, 5G mind control or what have you. Is it just a coincidence?

 Brutus_Apex wrote:


AoS is a terrible game, and GW needs to stop trying to shoehorn 40K into that awful system.

To each their own. Myself, and lot of folks really enjoy Age of Sigmar. I prefer it over 40k, personally and I know a lot of folks who think the same.


It'd be good for 40k, if all the options were equal in value, instead of certain weapons being better than others.

Gw is just trying to wrong more money out of players, that's all they do. They have zero respect for players and simple see them the way a leech sees people: Things to such every drop of blood you can out of.

 jaredb wrote:
...To each their own. Myself, and lot of folks really enjoy Age of Sigmar. I prefer it over 40k, personally and I know a lot of folks who think the same.

The thing that baffles me is that we have AoS. People who like AoS can play it, have a good time, it's great. People who like 40k and don't like AoS should have a game they like that they can play and have a good time. Turning 40k into AoS is great for people who like AoS, yay, woo, good for them, but it's terrible for people who don't like AoS.

 jaredb wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:


AoS is a terrible game, and GW needs to stop trying to shoehorn 40K into that awful system.

To each their own. Myself, and lot of folks really enjoy Age of Sigmar. I prefer it over 40k, personally and I know a lot of folks who think the same.


It'd be good for 40k, if all the options were equal in value, instead of certain weapons being better than others.

Then those folks should play AoS. To each their own.

It's perfectly fine if some weapons are better than others, as long as you have to pay the appropriate points for them. It should be possible to create a barebones squad with basic weapons, or one with some weapons with more "punch", as long as that punch has the right price.

Customizable weapons loadouts have been a thing in 40k for as long as I've been playing (since 3rd), and it's one of the things a lot of us find fun about it. There's no reason to change that just to make it more like another game that someone else likes more. Not when that game is still there for those that prefer it.

Any thing from GW along the lines of "no model no rules" is simply ridiculous.

Here is why:

The most powerful rules available to most factions currently all come from traits and relics. Which for the most part dont have corresponding models. So any notion that modelling somehow is related to rules writing is just ridiculous at this point.

Whether or not this is anti-player, it feels anti-player. Converting has been part of the hobby and this is actively discouraging said part. Moreover, if a new kit was designed along side the rules it might feel appropriate, but writing new rules to lock in an existing kit feels short sighted. After all, the contents of the box are not the fluffiest build possible so restricting options undermines another pillar of the hobby.

As for making 40k AoS in Space, I fine with alternate flavor, but do not want a replacement. If GW offers stock 40k and a Space General's Handbook with free data sheets, that would be cool, but no 40k proper would be disappointing. Does GW not want to bother with 2 games and just wants the one GW game in fantasy and space editions?

 jaredb wrote:

It'd be good for 40k, if all the options were equal in value, instead of certain weapons being better than others.

But they aren't equal in value. Treating them as if they were makes no sense whatsoever. And the game can't function if they were, as you'd have to stat anti-tank weapons as equal to anti-infantry weapons, which would make them wildly less effective at taking out tanks and monsters.

It also has nothing at all to do with the problem at hand, which is the incoherent list of restrictions for Death Guard, which doesn't at all make them less powerful. It just makes a weird Tetris minigame out of assembling models.

The poll has as many superflous lines for options as the Plague Marine wargear list.

I hate the change, but I adapted before and will do so again. It just sucks for any CC squad. "Dude, the game takes long enough, did you really had to give every Plague Marine a different weapon?" "Yeah, I had to." :/

Grubsnik wrote:
Jesus, I drop out of the hobby for a year or two and this is what happens?

Back to 2nd Ed. it is, then.

You could have stayed and seen it coming.
Horror show mismanagement...

I ignore GW ... like most all “leadership” in the contemporary world, GW’s is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
GW rules will become a sad meme.
Nice enough models but increasingly less reason to care.

In the poll, I voted other.
Where is the option for worried, don’t play deathguard, and will continue as before ignoring GW IP-protecting nonsense “rules”?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I will not stand for it. Its fething horrible and IMO just second to destroying Fantasy.

I will be writing them regularly until this changes.

Exalted in advance.

It's hilarious how this poll exclusively assumes that DG are the first army to be affected by this and that other armies aren't.

[x] It does affect me, I don't like it, and my orks have been affected by this exact treatment since 2014.

Welcome to xenos land my dear chaos friends.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
It also has nothing at all to do with the problem at hand, which is the incoherent list of restrictions for Death Guard, which doesn't at all make them less powerful. It just makes a weird Tetris minigame out of assembling models.

Without excusing the mess of a rule they created, this is the one thing which is absolutely not true. If you assemble plague marines or blight lords according to their instructions, no matter which options you pick, you will end up with a legal unit. This was not the case with the previous codex, where you could build either box in away that fielding it was illegal without additional models.

I don't think this IS a thing going forward, and THAT as much as anything else is what should annoy us. Ever since we started seeing this trend in 8th edition GW has been incrediably inconsistant.

Let's compare this to the codex space marines. I'm going to focus on the space wolf pack kit here for a moment as I've recently assmbled one eneugh to remember it's special weapons options. the kit itself includes 2 plasma guns as the only special weapons, if GW was treating grey hunters like plague marines, then grey hunters would ONLY be able to take special weapons. but that's not the case. and in 8th edition we saw this as well, it seemed almost RANDOM if your codex would get hit with the "only whats in the box" or not. (case in point, GW clawed common conversions back, but gave grey knights rules for a grandmaster in a dread knight) so yeah thats what irritates me how inconsistant GW is about this. meanwhile some armies get hit by this worse then others. as some armies have a lot of specialist troops (eldar and primaris marines for example) so have few options at a squad level anyway. meanwhile others have tons of options and that inevitably leads to messy situations

 Jidmah wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
It also has nothing at all to do with the problem at hand, which is the incoherent list of restrictions for Death Guard, which doesn't at all make them less powerful. It just makes a weird Tetris minigame out of assembling models.

Without excusing the mess of a rule they created, this is the one thing which is absolutely not true. If you assemble plague marines or blight lords according to their instructions, no matter which options you pick, you will end up with a legal unit. This was not the case with the previous codex, where you could build either box in away that fielding it was illegal without additional models.

Well, people could hardly be blamed for that when GW themselves put an illegal unit of BLTs (not so now) on the cover of the box...

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
It also has nothing at all to do with the problem at hand, which is the incoherent list of restrictions for Death Guard, which doesn't at all make them less powerful. It just makes a weird Tetris minigame out of assembling models.

Without excusing the mess of a rule they created, this is the one thing which is absolutely not true. If you assemble plague marines or blight lords according to their instructions, no matter which options you pick, you will end up with a legal unit. This was not the case with the previous codex, where you could build either box in away that fielding it was illegal without additional models.

Well, people could hardly be blamed for that when GW themselves put an illegal unit of BLTs (not so now) on the cover of the box...

Your point being... ?

Voss claimed that assembling the models properly is harder now, which is objectively false.