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Voss wrote:

 oni wrote:
Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.

That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.

Which are about as useful as the pts in an 8th Ed marine codex.
The current crusade system is a joke.

Tourney-Hammer indeed.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Voss wrote:

 oni wrote:
Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.

That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.

"Can the lore so we can write more rules!" seems to be a strange way of approaching the book for people who supposedly care about the lore/narrative, no matter what those rules are.

Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?

Except there is still a fair amount of background included, rather than the pretty much none at all of 3rd Ed.

Voss wrote:
...Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?

Oh, sure, but the Crusade rules read to me like "narrative" rules dragged kicking and screaming out of people who would really rather be writing tournament rules. They're half-baked, don't fix any of the problems with casual play that the tournament focus of the main game creates, and don't support non-tournament-legal stuff in any way. Saying "but Crusade..." isn't an all-solving answer to people complaining about GW gutting casual/narrative play to focus on competitive play.

(It's not the fault of the "dirty tournament players", it's the fault of the design team who thinks the rest of us have stopped existing.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Voss wrote:
...Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?

Oh, sure, but the Crusade rules read to me like "narrative" rules dragged kicking and screaming out of people who would really rather be writing tournament rules. They're half-baked, don't fix any of the problems with casual play that the tournament focus of the main game creates, and don't support non-tournament-legal stuff in any way. Saying "but Crusade..." isn't an all-solving answer to people complaining about GW gutting casual/narrative play to focus on competitive play.

(It's not the fault of the "dirty tournament players", it's the fault of the design team who thinks the rest of us have stopped existing.)

Ah. I'd previously only seen enthusiasm for the Crusade rules. I hadn't caught the current of resentment from narrative players.
Personally, I've found the focus on 'narrative play' since 7th bad for the casual pick-up game players. I figured it was more of that.

Though I'm not sure what you mean by the designer's preferring to write 'tournament rules' and 'tournament focus.' I can't think of any point that was _ever_ a real goal of the GW teams.

Voss wrote:
...Ah. I'd previously only seen enthusiasm for the Crusade rules. I hadn't caught the current of resentment from narrative players.
Personally, I've found the focus on 'narrative play' since 7th bad for the casual pick-up game players. I figured it was more of that.

Though I'm not sure what you mean by the designer's preferring to write 'tournament rules' and 'tournament focus.' I can't think of any point that was _ever_ a real goal of the GW teams.

It's not universal, by any means; there are plenty of people who do like Crusade and sound like they're reading a marketing brochure when trying to convince me it's great.

I talk about the designers preferring to write "tournament rules" and "tournament focus" because of what I see as the emphasis on taking anything cinematic, exciting, or unpredictable out of the game to cater to competitive play. I don't see 8e/9e as any better-balanced or easier for new players than 3e-7e, balance is still often nonsensical and the rules are still very complicated; the removal of scatter, random reserves, vehicle facings/damage tables, and falling back are far more about making the game more predictable for competitive players than making it easier for new players.

Voss wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Voss wrote:

 oni wrote:
Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.

That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.

"Can the lore so we can write more rules!" seems to be a strange way of approaching the book for people who supposedly care about the lore/narrative, no matter what those rules are.

Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?

Crusade isn't for narrative folks.

Crusade is for casual folks and competitive folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".

A progression system is a "pinch" of narrative, just a bit of flavor to an otherwise exactly-the-same game. It's like adding a slice of cheese on top of a flatbread and going "voila, pizza!" while actual pizza connoisseurs are rolling their eyes and going back to making real pizza with all the same usual ingredients they did. Though if they like the flavor of cheese you picked they might steal some of it to add.

Crusade completely fails as a casual game mode though.

It's easier and more straightforward to play a Strike Force game using the GT Mission Pack than it is to play a Crusade game right now.

I do like/miss the unit entries - they paint a picture for the "why" of the unit in the 40K universe. I feel that fluff is critical to the heath of the 40K gaming ecosystem. Otherwise I could play Bolt Action if I just want to paint and push 28mm figures around. I've lost track of the Dark Angels Codexes I've bought over the years. When they come out all I care about at first is the rules - I know the fluff! But then I sit back in my chair and see how the fluff has deepened and developed. And not everybody is buying their seventh Dark Angels Codex. Some are buying their first!

Having said that, what is the correct ratio of rules to fluff in a Codex? My 9th Ed Space Marines Codex has about 90 pages of fluff and 100 pages of rules. Would I want to trade 10 pages of rules for 10 more pages of fluff? Probably not.

I do have to say that I found the fluff section of the Necrons Codex a little underwhelming. Maybe its just that Necrons fluff is underwhelming, but I would have liked to have learned more about the units and less about the dynasties. Your mileage may vary!

T2B

 Bosskelot wrote:
Crusade completely fails as a casual game mode though.

It's easier and more straightforward to play a Strike Force game using the GT Mission Pack than it is to play a Crusade game right now.

Which just means Crusade failed at its intended purpose. After all, it was billed as a way to buff your army that you can bring to a casual pickup game against any old player, from the most cutthroat competitive player to good friends without much difficulty.

Warhammer Community wrote:What’s more, you’re not even limited to your local gaming group – you can use your Crusade force in any games you choose to play, be they friendlies against your regular opponents or competitive matches against hardened tournament veterans. In essence, provided you’re using the Crusade rules and your opponent is happy to have a game, every battle counts!**

(from https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/02/join-the-crusadegw-homepage-post-1/)

I hang on to all my old codices specifically for the art and the lore. I was just thumbing through my copy of Freebooterz just the other day for this very reason.

Yet another reason to never buy GW's printed material.

Haven't bought a 9e codex yet, as I can't game right now. But buying $40+whatever for a book without large unit entries is not very appealing.

A part of me wasn't sad. Not because I don't care about the lore, but because I wanted to hear in depth stuff like why the unit was originally created, its intended role on the battlefield, its history etc. but what you usually got was a page of hype about how awesome the unit was.

Having said that I do find myself having to continuously refer back to previous codexes to find out more about the lore (be it units or subfactions), or even to find out what a sub-factions paint scheme is supposed to be. It seems a common theme in both AoS and 40K that they are only showing off the studio army and not even bothering to show a single painted example for each sub faction. I think they cut a lot of stuff to compensate for the increasing size of codexes thanks to crusade rules and other stuff.

It does seem a bit pointless to continuous rehash the same background every codex though - there are only so many ways to write the same thing with different words and the 8th edition eldar codex literally had most of the fluff copy and pasted out of the 2nd edition codex (which also explains why it was of above average quality for GW fluff).

It would kind of make sense to have an overview of the faction in the codex for a general flavour of them and then release a full background book of in-depth high quality background that purely focuses on lore and history - maybe 1 book for xenos, 1 for chaos and 1 for imperium.

 Unknown_Lifeform wrote:
A part of me wasn't sad. Not because I don't care about the lore, but because I wanted to hear in depth stuff like why the unit was originally created, its intended role on the battlefield, its history etc. but what you usually got was a page of hype about how awesome the unit was.

Having said that I do find myself having to continuously refer back to previous codexes to find out more about the lore (be it units or subfactions), or even to find out what a sub-factions paint scheme is supposed to be. It seems a common theme in both AoS and 40K that they are only showing off the studio army and not even bothering to show a single painted example for each sub faction. I think they cut a lot of stuff to compensate for the increasing size of codexes thanks to crusade rules and other stuff.

It does seem a bit pointless to continuous rehash the same background every codex though - there are only so many ways to write the same thing with different words and the 8th edition eldar codex literally had most of the fluff copy and pasted out of the 2nd edition codex (which also explains why it was of above average quality for GW fluff).

It would kind of make sense to have an overview of the faction in the codex for a general flavour of them and then release a full background book of in-depth high quality background that purely focuses on lore and history - maybe 1 book for xenos, 1 for chaos and 1 for imperium.

Why is it pointless?
Remeber just because you might have 6 codexes sitting on your shelf full of art and fluff. It could be somebody's first codex ever.
So they are going to be paying some £30 for a bunch of data sheets that will be made redundant within 1 FAQ and pts adjustment ? Sounds.. not so great... At least now players can still enjoy reading old codexes like the example you gave. There will be zero icnentive to buy a codex if it has no value other then rules IMO. Because those rules have a life span of maybe 6months...

Truth be told, even the colour sections are getting slimmer and less useful.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Truth be told, even the colour sections are getting slimmer and less useful.

I really like my codex. The art and colour are great.

I shudder to think what the future will bring.

First, let my say that I do miss those unit entries. I also miss the graphic representations of the faction's organizational structure and the Sector map that shows you the locations of all the faction's assets.

Having said that, I LOVE the Crusade content and the fact that the rules section is bigger. It isn't just Crusade that makes it bigger either; we're getting more strats, which are better categorized and organized than they've ever been; we're getting more subfaction specific content, more relics, etc.

But I'm with y'all in missing the other stuff. I wouldn't sacrifice rules content to bring it back, because I'm really, really digging the extra rules content. Luckily, I keep my old dexes- that gets me my organizational charts and sector maps plus the unit entries for older units.

Since Crusade came up though, I've got to respond.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Crusade isn't for narrative folks.

Crusade is for casual folks and competitive folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".

Going to cut you some slack and assume that you are a narrative player who hangs and plays with other narrative players who also share your opinion. And maybe it doesn't do as much as your group wants it to do. And you're all entitled to your opinions.

But you don't speak for me. See, I've identified as a narrative player since 1989; I've written enough fan fic to fill a book, all of it based on what happened on the tabletop. I've got squads that have been hitting the table for two decades and I can still tell you which battle gave which purity seals to which squad members; I can tell you who the skulls on their bases belonged to and why they have bionics. Because my models didn't start with any of that- they earned it.

Few of the people in my group take it to the extremes I do, but all of us consider ourselves narrative players. And we are stoked about Crusade.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

A progression system is a "pinch" of narrative, just a bit of flavor to an otherwise exactly-the-same game.

If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you haven't been reading Crusade rules.

Our Agendas, the equivalent of secondaries, are faction specific, tailored to the background of our factions. Our Requisitions- the ways in which our armies can grow- are faction specific. Units can go through extreme changes in game, moving from one battlefield role to another. Our experience advances are faction specific; Deathwatch can earn roles that no other faction can earn; our Crusade relics are uniques, and some of them get more powerful over time as well. We have specific wounds, both physical and mental that other factions do not receive because they fight in different theatres of war against different types of opponents.

Ever field a Chapter Master?

Guess what? We've got the capacity to tell how, when and why our captains BECAME Chapter Masters.

Now it's true that there are rules for selecting advances randomly, and of course, some people will choose to go that route because they are hung up on balance or whatever. When you, or your group insist on playing that way, sometimes you're going to roll a result that doesn't fit what just happened on the battlefield or your sense of the character's identity. But that's certainly not GW's fault- they very clearly tell you that picking the result that best suits the story is also an option.

If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you are not very creative when it comes to figuring out how to use the toolbox you've been given. I've studied the tool box pretty damn extensively, and the crew I play with STILL manages to surprise me.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


It's like adding a slice of cheese on top of a flatbread and going "voila, pizza!"

Yeah, if one of the grains ground to make the dough got ground in the Red Scar fighting Tyranids, while another grain is a fresh faced Primaris unit sent to reinforce the chapter after the Hive fleet decimated it and the cheese went through four distinct aging processes to become the exact palate of flavours that was chosen to become a Watch Master. And don't get me started on the Proteus Vet who BECAME a Blackshield or the Dreadnaught who fought through all of his wounds until he could fight no more with such weak flesh, and donned flesh of ceramite and steel rather than abandoning his battle brothers.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

while actual pizza connoisseurs are rolling their eyes and going back to making real pizza with all the same usual ingredients they did. Though if they like the flavor of cheese you picked they might steal some of it to add.

And they might make a mean pizza. But they couldn't tell you where each ingredient comes from, and how it was ground, sliced or aged into its current form or by whom and when. They'd essentially pick all of their pre-processed ingredients from a list ready made to combine. They couldn't tell you who sliced it, because they don't care- as long as their peperoni tastes better than their opponent's peperoni, and come to think of it, the next time they do a taste test, if they're up against a vegetarian pizza, they might choose not to use that peperoni at all, because you know, they have access to every ingredient for every taste test, where the guy with the flatbread started with only a single type of grain and EARNED the rest of the stuff to make his flatbread taste the way it does from competing in other taste tests.

Maybe that's just my group. But one of us is obviously having more fun the other with Crusade rules, and I'm always looking for new chefs.

What's a Narrative player? I enjoy the narrative of the game, and I will do things to fit the narrative of my units even if it works against me. Even if its in a tournament - go for the epic moment. I make up a story about what is going on. I am into the lore of my armies (well, not yet for Necrons but I am trying...really trying).

I find that Crusade isn't different enough from tournament 9th to call it a meaningful attempt at narrative play. You like it, great, you can have your campaigns and watch your Captains grow into Chapter Masters, yay, but the core rules of the game (things like datasheets, stratagems, how reserves works, etc., all the stuff that's common to open/narrative/matched play) are written to be bland and predictable to make sure the tournament game plays smoothly. Bolting a narrative progression system on top of the bland and predictable foundation doesn't make the foundation less bland and predictable if you already thought the foundation was bland and predictable. In my playgroup people who like 9th don't play Crusade because it isn't different enough from tournament play to be an interesting alternative, and people who want to play narrative/non-tournament games don't like the core fundamentals of 9th, completely independent of whether Crusade exists.

It's an attempt, but what narrative players do is ignore & add rules/whatever. so calling something narrative while only adding rules to crappy mission designs and doubling down on secondaries does not narrative play make.

I was hopeful about crusade actually being a positive way forward with the game, right up until the first crusade supplement that had zero narrative hooks(story, maps, engagements, etc) and just piled on rules to a crappy foundation.

So I feel our group will just do what we did in 8th & play open war deck only. It's pretty easy to come up with a narrative when your everything is random and you apply a little "narrative common sense"(sayhipaul philosophy).

Lucky, I don't even have a 9E Codex.

GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

You didint get the SM book

 Argive wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

You didint get the SM book

I don't even play Marines, do they want me to buy the Marine book?

 Argive wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

You didint get the SM book

Nope, I was excited for my salamanders but when I saw what they were, I decided to shelve them for the foreseeable future. They will remain a modeling project until GW decides to remove their head from the proverbial astartes donkey-cave.

I was planning on the Sororitas & CSM but at this point I'm not too terribly excited and my Metallica forges will be cold.

 BlackoCatto wrote:

 Argive wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

You didint get the SM book

I don't even play Marines, do they want me to buy the Marine book?

GW wants everyone to buy marine books and marines models so the answer is actually yes .

However I was actually talking to Racer. He's a staunch Marine player so im surprised he hasn't jumped on board the choo-chooing marine train in 9th

 Argive wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:

 Argive wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW is not really making me want to buy any.....

You didint get the SM book

I don't even play Marines, do they want me to buy the Marine book?

GW wants everyone to buy marine books and marines models so the answer is actually yes .

However I was actually talking to Racer. He's a staunch Marine player so im surprised he hasn't jumped on board the choo-chooing marine train in 9th

I actually enjoy playing my Admech & Bloody Rose more, but do enjoy some hammer and anvil now and again but they're gonna sit out 9th. I'm not an donkey-cave. Since one of the most OP/disliked units in the game fits perfectly into my Army it pains me to not use them, but I don't like running roughshod over my fellow 40kers.

Well, in my opinion there is no difference between leaving out the unit fluff completely and having one more reprint of the exact same plague marine fluff since CSM 3.5.

And again, just because you have the same blurb for the 6th time, new players don't.

In other words, just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it does not matter.