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 kirotheavenger wrote:
Timmy haphazardly gluing a plasma pistol to the side of his boltgun is not a good look though, and it's requiring a separate skill.
You should not be required to be a converter in order to be a wargamer.

No, but if you want those weapons, you have to convert. This is the way it was for several years. So what if they don't "look" like the rest of the DG plasma? CSMs scavenge and repurpose gear all the time. Break out some putty and blend them together (I mentioned plasma pistols as a PG is far too large to be mated up with a bolter. I would have thought that was obvious, but clearly not...). Want the exact one? Then that's a you problem, and not a GW one. They gave you the options, same goes for any other kit in the past, it is up to you, the person who wants to make the army "your guys" to work out that solution.

Games are a community driven thing. I guarantee there will always be a "converter guy" and/or a guy with a large bits box in any given group. We had three such in our group (I am one of them) and one now works for Forgeworld, so yeah. It IS kinda a learned skill in this hobby. Ask them to convert them for you if you cannot. Buy me a can of coke from the shop across the road and I'll do it quite happily. Like, what I mean when I say community- back in 5th edition I had needed some Wulfen conversions for my SWs, though to do it I needed some Beastmen Gor heads, I've never played Beastmen, ever so I asked the guy who played them if he had any spare heads and we traded some bits. You're never on your own in this hoby, yet this site makes you think you are and have to scrounge every bit yourself.

You could get creative. One player round here (personally, I thought this was a bit janky, but whatever...), when the 4th ed CSM dex simply said "combi weapon" and did not specify which exact type, used the vehicle gargoyles slung under the guns as the combi part; so he, if he so wished could choose each game. Not one I would use, but it was a solution.

Push comes to shove, if you are that desperate for them to be "exact" then green stuff casts are a thing, as are Thermoworx and blue stuff. GW themselves have shown you in the past how to do green stuff casts of small items. It is not hard to do.

The solution to the problem of a new player not being able to build all the options with the basic kit was to... maybe have less options but have all of them in the box instead of making this mess of units without any kind of gameplay purpose.


Instead of having your plague marines having 5 different meele weapons and 8 different ranged weapons give them the option of 1-2 meele weapons and 2-3 ranged ones. And leave more freedom to the unit champion, as always. Nobody complaints that assault terminators have just only two meele options. Two clearly defined meele options with totally different rules that make for a (historically quite bad in rules) but thematically solid unit.

If anything, your post is a rather strong argument for GW to continue down that road.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Timmy haphazardly gluing a plasma pistol to the side of his boltgun is not a good look though, and it's requiring a separate skill.
You should not be required to be a converter in order to be a wargamer.

It can be a good look, depending on the skill of the builder. And you're not required to be a converter in this case. Combi-plasma bits exist so you can also just buy enough of those parts, either separately or through complete kits, to build the models you want. Or GW could provide those bits in the first place.

Their current "solution" seems to be the worst of all worlds.

I do not think this is a new trend, just for the essentially monopose kits e.g. body 42 goes with leg 43 and back 44 and you can't mix them without extensive conversion work. The death guard have the unfortunate circumstance of being designed like that while CSM are more multi-part.

What's the next book to come out? That will help reveal if this is the typical GW one off or a paradigm shift. Similar to how inexplicably death guard subfactions don't get special rules, just WLT/Relic/Stratagems whine necron dynasties get actually rules.

Maybe I'm just imbued in GW nuspeak, but I don't really struggle with reading the rules. They are logically laid out to me. Its undoubtedly somewhat arbitrary that you can have say 1 plasma gun guy and 1 blight launcher guy but not two of each (or one plasma, one melta etc) - but I don't find it complicated to understand.

I can understand annoyance if you've traded or converted 5 Terminators all with combi-plas and now you can't run them WYSIWYG. But to some extent, I'm hostile to such anyway.

Admittedly I don't know where this leaves things like scourges - because a unit which can only take one dark lance, splinter cannon, heat lance etc would seem even more useless than scourge already appear. But maybe they could be pointed - or get rules - such that it works. I guess we'll see.

I certainly don't like there being element of pay to win elements in unit construction - looking especially at say Tau Commanders/Crisis Suits. But I'd have thought GW could just sell "Battle Suit weapon sprues" which have 3-6 of each weapon. Rather than getting say 1 cyclic ion blaster and 1 airburst frag projector in the commander box. But I suspect there just wouldn't be enough sales to bother with. Other options are to just remove such weapons from the game - but I can't see GW doing that, and the outcry would be louder.

Wayniac wrote:
What's the next book to come out?

Dark Eldar is most likely, but SoB is a possibility - we've seen the 'Piety and Pain' battlebox with the new Lelith and the Palatine, and the Paragon Warsuit was shown at the weekend.

beast_gts wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
What's the next book to come out?

Dark Eldar is most likely, but SoB is a possibility - we've seen the 'Piety and Pain' battlebox with the new Lelith and the Palatine, and the Paragon Warsuit was shown at the weekend.

I'll be rather annoyed if Retributor squads get changed to 0-2 of each heavy weapon to match the box. Should know within a couple months. In the meantime, I'm holding off on buying another squad of MM Rets until their next Codex is out.

beast_gts wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
What's the next book to come out?

Dark Eldar is most likely, but SoB is a possibility - we've seen the 'Piety and Pain' battlebox with the new Lelith and the Palatine, and the Paragon Warsuit was shown at the weekend.

Dark eldar is certainly next, that's been explicitly said.

Sisters, Orks and Ad Mech are contenders for after DE, as we've seen models (or bits of models) for all 3.

And therefore we need to keep the emails up and stop purchasing codices until they rectify their mistake. I don't CARE if Death Guard was the only army hit. They shouldn't have been hit to begin with.

There is a difference between being *required* to convert a unit, being required to convert certain options for a unit, and needing to convert certain loadouts for a unit.

For large portions of Warhammer history there were units with rules and no model at all. X on a bike/mount was pretty common. A lot of what third parties sold was stuff like that. This is being required to convert to play a unit, and it is well gone. There have also been units, usually characters, with options that required converting. A certain weapon or piece of visual wargear that was not included in the kit and generally needed to be taken from another unit. This is also gone.

Finally, there is needing to convert certain loadouts. The blightlord terminator kit comes with one of each option, but to have a unit with multiples of that option kitbashing/converting is required. Buying a bunch of kits also works but is varying degrees of impractical depending on the unit. However, this is only for someone who wants to up how many of an option they have within a unit. No converting is required to use any of the options, at all. Saying such is extremely disingenuous at best. Now maybe spamming a certain option is really good, but that can and does change with points/weapon profile updates or even just shifting meta. If a unit is not viable without spamming a certain option that is a balance problem and not even addressed by limiting the options.

However, there is something to be said about being able to build any version of a unit from its kit and ideally every kit would come with enough options to do that. But it is impractical. A devestator kit with 5 of every weapon option would result in ridiculous amounts of wasted sprue space, for example, and that will always be true. I find the approach of limiting units strictly to the numbers in the box to be a flawed solution, but when it comes to the launch of new kits it is what it is. What it not cool is changing an existing unit from the previous paradigm to the new one, and invalidating a ton of people's existing collections when they do.

Things change over time and options are invalidated, people get that. There will be grumbling but it is what it is. When there is a new kit. Forcing that change out of the blue on a unit that has had it's current kit for years is a far cry from that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Forcing that change out of the blue on a unit that has had it's current kit for years is a far cry from that.

and still happened before

those things change usually with a new Codex, not with a new kit
most people just don't recognise those changes as the majority also gets new models with the new Codex or the rules change in a way that the old layout is crap anyway and people don't want to keep it

but forcing the change with a new Codex without giving people a new kit or making the new loadout better happens with each new Edition
but now it happens with a more popular army on a basic unit

This.
KFF big mek with a KMB, PK or any other wargear? Saga of the Beast put and end to that, even purged the option to field those models through legends.

If you built your deff dread with four klaws back in 2010 just to make it look nice, congratulations, 8th editon's ork codex has made that model illegal to field.

Did you buy the official rokkit upgrade sprue to put rokkits on your battlewagons and trukks? Guess what, those models are illegal now.

Your nob with waaagh! banner you build between 4th and 7th had any gear besides a PK or kustom shoota? Or you gave that Waaagh! banner to a nob on warbike, which was a really common thing to do? 8th edition index made sure you can never field that model again unless you break it appart.

Did your kanz have two shooting weapons or two melee weapons? 7th edition's codex made that illegal.

I could go on and on with examples like this, and I've not even touched conversions where you would just take gear from one kit and attach it to another, like KMB kanz or PKs for tankbusta nobz.

People have willingly tolerated that trend for years now and told players to suck it up when they were affected.
I fail to see why it has suddenly become such a huge issue, when it clearly was tolerated before.

It's not the same thing.

The Killa Kan rules don't say "One model per three must have a Big Shoota, one model per three must have a Rokkit Launcher and one model per three must have a Skorcha".

It's the very same thing. Rules change, legal options get curbed for no apparent reason outside of kit limitations, models become illegal.

The only reason why a quad-klaw dread is illegal now because the box doesn't have four klaws.

The only reason why kans can't double up on weapons anymore is because the box doesn't have enough arms to do so.

Every time there's a new (non-space marine) codex it seems there's a post pointing out a unit has lost options and decrying the end times of creativity in the hobby.
Then people forget about it because it only actually affects a small number of people in the hobby, relative to those throwing money at moar Space Marines.
And then we repeat the process with the next codex.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Every time there's a new (non-space marine) codex it seems there's a post pointing out a unit has lost options and decrying the end times of creativity in the hobby.
Then people forget about it because it only actually affects a small number of people in the hobby, relative to those throwing money at moar Space Marines.
And then we repeat the process with the next codex.

....As long as that codex is not another space marine codex.

Then we typically see Vaporware units added on to try and convince people to buy in like the Fangs of Merkel.

the_scotsman 795635 11041889 wrote:

Then we typically see Vaporware units added on to try and convince people to buy in like the Fangs of Merkel.

I so hope this was a joke, because I laughed durning classes.

It's not the same thing.

The Killa Kan rules don't say "One model per three must have a Big Shoota, one model per three must have a Rokkit Launcher and one model per three must have a Skorcha".

Yet. They don't say that yet, because orks don't have a 9th ed codex. Who knows what is going to happen if they get one. In fact why would any army, other then marines, be exempt from this limitations to be honest.

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Forcing that change out of the blue on a unit that has had it's current kit for years is a far cry from that.

and still happened before

those things change usually with a new Codex, not with a new kit
most people just don't recognise those changes as the majority also gets new models with the new Codex or the rules change in a way that the old layout is crap anyway and people don't want to keep it

but forcing the change with a new Codex without giving people a new kit or making the new loadout better happens with each new Edition
but now it happens with a more popular army on a basic unit

Can you provide some examples? There were attempts made above but none of them are analogous to what happened with DG.

 kodos wrote:
...those things change usually with a new Codex, not with a new kit...

...No, usually with a new kit. GK got five different kinds of Nemesis weapon, Psilencers, and Purifiers with 2 heavy weapons per five when they got new kits in 5e, the only change to the loadout that's happened since is taking away the ability to put Nemesis staves on every model in 7th, which came back in 8th. Windriders got scatter lasers and the ability to put a heavy weapon on every model with the new kit in 7th, hasn't changed since. Harlequins got new weapons added and the fusion pistol limit raised from 2/squad to anyone in their 7e Codex, and the loadout's remained constant since.

so you tell me GK got a kit in 5e but their loadout changed in 5th, 7th and 8th

so 3 times with Rules/Codex VS 1 time with the kit is "usually with a new kit"

 kodos wrote:
so you tell me GK got a kit in 5e but their loadout changed in 5th, 7th and 8th

so 3 times with Rules/Codex VS 1 time with the kit is "usually with a new kit"

I tell you that the loadout changed dramatically with a new kit and very slightly with a new Codex, yes. Usually when there isn't a new kit a unit might get one item shuffled around a bit, when there is a new kit what the options are and how they work will change dramatically.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Forcing that change out of the blue on a unit that has had it's current kit for years is a far cry from that.

and still happened before

those things change usually with a new Codex, not with a new kit
most people just don't recognise those changes as the majority also gets new models with the new Codex or the rules change in a way that the old layout is crap anyway and people don't want to keep it

but forcing the change with a new Codex without giving people a new kit or making the new loadout better happens with each new Edition
but now it happens with a more popular army on a basic unit

Can you provide some examples? There were attempts made above but none of them are analogous to what happened with DG.

Nice handwaving. If anything, DG got off easy.

Time for an unpopular point of view (which seems to be my specialty on Dakka).

Many are the comments in threads of all stripes about the lethality of the game. And perhaps one of the reasons for that is that it was possible to design a squad with enough identical weapons to vaporize a knight in one turn, or decimate large infantry squads in one turn.

Forcing a unit to diversify it's load out minimizes this effect. On the plus side though, it would help ensure that every unit has the capacity to deal with anything, rather than "This is a pure antitank unit that is useless against infantry."

Now before you jump on this, please understand that I don't like this fixed load out stuff any more than you guys do; I prefer to have the option of building that anti-tank unit that sucks against infantry if I want to, and I am prepared to accept all of the blame for it when my opponent brings 200 boys and not a single tank.

All I'm trying to do is provide a more realistic rationale for GW's decisions than the "They hate us, and want to ruin the game" rationale that seems to be going around.

I also feel like the previous customizability also incentivized buying extra boxes in order to make sure you had the load out you wanted. So the greed rationale for this decision doesn't work either; if anything, this is something they may have done to REDUCE accusations of being greedy.

I still, however, do fall into the camp that believes the decision is a bad one. Just pointing out that the motive for this bad decision may have been more player centric than some people are willing to admit.

Also trying to chip away at the complaint faction: complain for five years that the game is to lethal, you're likely to get solutions that limit lethality. Complain for decades that you have to buy multiple boxes of devastators to field four identical heavy weapons in a devastator squad, you're likely to get solutions that prevent you from having to do that.

Most posters, even those who complain constantly, do tend to propose solutions to the problems they identify, and I think those proposed solutions are the most valuable parts of their posts.

Anyway, just my two cents. Like I said, I still feel that the change is a bad one, even though I can see how GW may have thought they may have been doing the right thing.

They literally want you to buy an extra kit this has ZERO to do with balance.

PenitentJake wrote:
...All I'm trying to do is provide a more realistic rationale for GW's decisions than the "They hate us, and want to ruin the game" rationale that seems to be going around...

"Forcing mixed loadouts is necessary to tone down the lethality of the game!" isn't really any more rational than "They hate us, and want to ruin the game!". The one gives GW too much credit, the other doesn't give GW enough credit.

From a rational standpoint I don't think this loadout change has anything to do with the game at all; it's there because GW's finally going "enough is enough" at the secondary bits market (where you can pay $25 for a single authentic Reaper Chaincannon bit with no Havoc attached). They're not trying to ruin the game, they're trying to produce a game where you can buy one box from them and then you're done, you don't have to buy a bunch of extra stuff to get the loadout you want. It makes their prices seem more reasonable and makes the game more accessible for new players who buy a box and build all the cool stuff in it without digging around on the Internet to discover that their box would be so much better if they spent a bunch more money on aftermarket bits.

It's not how I'd build the game (I've covered how I'd reorganize SM sprues to give you more stuff for less effort in other threads), but it's absolutely a rational thing for a minis company to want to do that has nothing to do with either game balance or hating customers and wanting to ruin the game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 kodos wrote:
so you tell me GK got a kit in 5e but their loadout changed in 5th, 7th and 8th

so 3 times with Rules/Codex VS 1 time with the kit is "usually with a new kit"

I tell you that the loadout changed dramatically with a new kit and very slightly with a new Codex, yes. Usually when there isn't a new kit a unit might get one item shuffled around a bit, when there is a new kit what the options are and how they work will change dramatically.

so the same as with DG, got a new kit and there were big changes
now with the new Codex, just some items were shuffeld around

same as always and change is always there

I would be totally OK with the "Buy one box and every option for the kit is in the box"philosophy but if they want to do that, they SHOUL design the kits with that idea in mind. (Theres many kits that work like that, specially for Fantasy/AoS)

What they are doing now is applying that backwards for kits designed with other gameplay ethos and thats stupid.

Karol wrote:


I so hope this was a joke, because I laughed durning classes.

Dude. You should not be reading dakka in class.

 Jidmah wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Forcing that change out of the blue on a unit that has had it's current kit for years is a far cry from that.

and still happened before

those things change usually with a new Codex, not with a new kit
most people just don't recognise those changes as the majority also gets new models with the new Codex or the rules change in a way that the old layout is crap anyway and people don't want to keep it

but forcing the change with a new Codex without giving people a new kit or making the new loadout better happens with each new Edition
but now it happens with a more popular army on a basic unit

Can you provide some examples? There were attempts made above but none of them are analogous to what happened with DG.

Nice handwaving. If anything, DG got off easy.

The other examples were not the same thing. That is it, there is no hand waving. The GK one is closest, but it is still just one weapon option out of many in the kit and the second change was simply reversing the first one. I explained very clearly the different situations before, if you are unwilling or unable to comprehend them I can accept that, but it frustrates me that you would accuse my point of being invalid to cover.