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It's funny that you'd mention that all those rules are right there in the codex, but they're not. The entire Datasheet isn't even in my codex.

The point is that GW hasn't actually fixed any of their original problems. They've just reformatted them, like someone who moved data from Excel to Access when they were told the data was wrong. The fact that it looks different and may or may not be more accessible doesn't make it less wrong...

Cynista wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Cynista wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Cynista wrote:
When individual units had about 10 universal special rules on their datasheet

Boy you must hate 9th edition.

6th and 7th were much worse than now

Really? My Keeper of Secrets has:
Daemonic
Shining Aegis
Ritual Knife
Sinistrous Hand
Daemonic Ritual
Delicate Precision
Greater Daemon
Mesmerizing Aura
Quicksilver Swiftness
Psyker
Locus of Swiftness

which is exactly 11 "abilities" on the datasheet - now granted, some of them are granted by wargear options which are mutually exclusive, but if we include loadout then we're dropping two rules to remember but adding three more:
Living Whip
Witstealer Sword
Snapping Claws

for a total of 12 rules to remember on a regularly-kitted Keeper of Secrets. Add in the Exalted keyword (from the stratagem) and you get two more that aren't even on the datasheet (from the list of Realm Racer, Quicksilver Reflexes, Blessing of the Dark Prince, Lightning Flayer, Battle Rapture and Fearseeker).

But those aren't USR's. You can read exactly what they do there in your codex, unlike the USR era, which was the whole point. And the KoS is an outlier, there are a few like that in 9th but not as many as previous editions - yet.

Keywords are kind of like USR's though, just better implemented

Having a USR be an actual USR doesn't stop you from printing the rules text on the datasheet.

Wound allocation shinanigans stand out for me as my most hated rules ever. Like having a character or squad leader with a better save in a unit tanking hits and using look out sir to pass off any hits that bypass their saves. Also equipping all models in a multi-wound unit differently and spreading wounds out between them so no-one dies.

Agreed with previous sentiments on random distances or unit abilities, when previous editions had set distances or point costs.

Also the old Jam on triple-1s rule for the assault cannon.
We had a dreadnought battle royale at my flgs and mine jammed on the first round...glad when they got rid of that and increased the shots fired.

The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

The wound system they have now is sort of attempting a similar outcome with less fuss, I think.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

The wound system they have now is sort of attempting a similar outcome with less fuss, I think.

Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.

Also, I never really liked Sweeping Advance/Consolidating into combat. This is likely because I played Guard at lower points levels and was used to playing Dawn of War (where I could get a squad of Guardsman into CC, activate automatic reinforcement, and come back five minutes later to find the squad still alive), so playing against solid CC units felt like I was playing the game on a timer: either I wiped all the major CC threats, or they got into CC with me and I got to ask my opponent if he wanted to roll anything or if I should just save us both the time and remove the unit from the board as soon as the charge connected.

Last mention: Monstrous Creatures getting to have better rules than vehicles with none of the weaknesses. Differentiation is fine, but when I want to play a tank army, I expect to at least be comparable to a Nidzilla-style massive monster list w/r/t damage soaking and firepower.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.

I'd like to see a hybrid system.

Something like AP X/-Y.

X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.

So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Imo it had it's place and worked pretty well before the game inflated beyond it. One of the things it did really well was reinforce the "bring the right tools for the job" design paradigm. It also provided for a stronger differentiation between 'levels' of weapon and armor.

Kind of? You're not wrong, but what stands out the most to me when I remember it was how a Battle Cannon treated Space Marine power armor the same as an Ork t-shirt save, but a Terminator squad would see the Battle Cannon the same as they saw a lasgun. Bringing in some modifiers probably would have fixed that, but it didn't prevent the sudden cutoff from feeling strange.

I'd like to see a hybrid system.

Something like AP X/-Y.

X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.

So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.

^Oooh, I like this.

Edit: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?

Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.

 Insectum7 wrote:
So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?

Cover comes in two parts:

Cover Save
You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.

AP Negation
This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.

So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
The old AP system really was awful. Just totally binary and nonsensical.

Something like AP X/-Y.

X is the armor it punches through, no save allowed.
-Y is how much it modifies the actual save by, if X isn't good enough to ignore it entirely.

So Bolters could be AP 5/-0. Ignores Guard saves and worse, but doesn't affect heavier armor at all.
Heavy Bolters could be AP 4/-1. Ignores Carapce armor, and dings Power or Terminator armor.

^Oooh, I like this.

Edit: So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?

Interesting idea.

I always liked the AP system for the most part. What we did in ProHammer was make it so that if AP = Sv, you still get a save but with a -1 modifier. It was a compromise that didn't require re-profiling every weapon in the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.

I agree with this too. I don't like that flyers were introduced into the main codexes in particular.

Agreed to old AP system, which sucked.
Also vehicle rules in 6/7th Edition, armor facing might have worked before, but giving all vehicles 3-4 hull points made the whole system useless, especially compared to monsters. The gap between walkers and monsters was so vast GW even sold their new Walkers (dreadknight, Riptide) as monsters because they realized this.
Tank shock...
The whole psychic phase was a mess in 6/7th.
Old WS System, because it looked complex until you realized in 90% of all cases you hit on 3s or 4s.
Random traits and psychic powers.
Old CC rules, you couldn't do anything but watch until one side was dead.

Another vote for the old AP system. It never made sense to me in what it was trying to model- having a gun completely ignore Space Marine armor like it doesn't exist but ping off Terminator armor no differently from a rifle didn't make sense. I get that from an effects standpoint it strongly reinforced picking the right weapon for the right job, but the old AP3 problem really damaged the verisimilitude for me.

I prefer the modifier system, but it has its own issues in its current implementation- partly stemming from too much mid-range AP, partly from how it was retrofitted onto a stat model designed for the old system, partly from its nature as a linear modifier. It's a step in the right direction, but still kind of a clunky mechanic when the most common infantry profile in the game and main battle tanks have the same level of armor, and GW can't decide whether 'more armor' is represented as Toughness, Wounds, or Save. Just look at Gravis conferring higher T and W but no change to Sv, or a Chimera and Russ having the same save despite very different levels of armor protection.

A different game might streamline the process by folding armor penetration into the wound roll; maybe do an AP-vs-Armor comparison and have the outcome be a modifier (eg, AP is lower than Armor but more than half, so you get a -1 to wound). But I can't see 40K doing that anytime soon.

There's a bunch of them:

- Instant Death
- Challenges
- Scatter Dice
- MCs being Vehicles +1
- Move = Heavy Weapons hitting on 6s
- Absurd Psychic Powers like Invisibility
- Rolling for Psychic Powers and Warlord Traits

 Insectum7 wrote:
Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.

Well it will mostly be based around infantry based models.

It boils down to which target is the best for that weapon.

A HB is MEQ > GEQ > Attack Bike > TEQ
An AC is GEQ > MEQ > TEQ <> AB

A HB would much rather prefer T4 > T5 > T6+ than T3
The AC would instead go T3 > T5 > T4 > T6 > T7+ -- why did I say T5 before T4? It is the next strongest model that the AC doesn't lose advantage on.

Meanwhile the Executor HB loves TEQ and MEQ, but would rather die than shoot an Attack Bike or GEQ.

That feels a lot to me like granularity that makes each weapon stand out in its own way. Of course this is just how I personally perceive these things.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?

Cover comes in two parts:

Cover Save
You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.

AP Negation
This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.

So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.

Maybe I'm not seeing it. Is the Cover save an unmodifiable save in addition to the normal armor save?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
So how about Cover? Decreases the first AP level? Eg: Your Bolter example becomes AP6/-0?

Cover comes in two parts:

Cover Save
You get this number as a save. It can be modified with bonuses like Going To Ground, USRs, and such, or penalized by enemy weapons or USRs. A crater would give a 7+ (no save, unless you have a USR to boost it or Go To Ground), a thin forest or fence might give a 6+, a dense forest or ruined wall a 5+, and fortified positions could give a 4+.

AP Negation
This reduces the minus value of a weapon's AP, to a minimum of zero.

So a crater would be 7+/0.
A forest would be 6+/1 or 5+/1, depending on how dense it is.
A ruined wall would be 5+/2.

Maybe I'm not seeing it. Is the Cover save an unmodifiable save in addition to the normal armor save?

Instead of. NOT in addition to.

The random table of random warp stuff from the 6th or 7th ed, roll lots of dice for no reason or result (apart from random Farseer splodes), cheers Jervis

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

And most importantly:
- Losing track of abstractions. If "this guy fights betterer after a charge" is Furious Charge, then Hammer of Wrath (this guy slaps better after charging) doesn't need to exist. They're abstracting the same phenomenon generally (i.e. "charging = good for this unit") Like Ogryns having Hammer of Wrath instead of Furious Charge - what really changed there, abstraction wise?

Hammer Of Wrath is specifically meant to be the impact of the bike / jetpack guy / whatever slamming into the other unit, hence happening before any of the other actions of the combat take place. Whether that's worth picking out as being different enough to warrant a different rule to 'this unit fights better when charging' is another matter, but the distinction was always there.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Flyers and Super Heavies moving from specialist games onto the main table is my biggest bugbear. Even normal scale vehicles break the sense of immersion when an infantry unit can only move the length of a vehicle in a turn and a vehicle can only move twice its own length, but a baneblade could take a slow unit two full turns to clear. It all feels cheap and silly and makes everything feel like a game when it could feel like more.

I can understand you not liking LoWs and flyers in the game, but this particular complaint is confusing. Are you saying that unit movement stats should be higher generally, or that a slow moving unit (I'm guessing something like a terminator with M5) should be able to run around something like a Baneblade in less than 2 turns? How does that break immersion for you?

Sweeping Advances, Psychic dice pool, units acting on AI in the Assault phase, 2++ barricades, decurion detachments, wound juggling, instant death, strength D, tank shocks, vehicle damage table, hull points, overloaded main rulebooks, wound chart, summoning, invisibility, force org chart, Daemon randumb rules.

 vict0988 wrote:
Psychic dice pool

I both loved and hated this. I did enjoy the mini-game of trying to bait out deny dice, but I can see how it could be horribly one sided, too ( like playing against Vampires in fantasy with like 20+ dice ).

I want to echo a few that have been mentioned here:
-Formations and detachments were what made me quit 40k from late 7th ed til the start of 9th, they brought so much bloat and excessive complication into the game while being totally arbitrary. I actually like the system in 9th where everyone's on the same footing, no free rules are getting handed out and, if you want to load up on detachments, you're paying a cost for it.
-7th ed psychic powers had some insane, game-breaking BS in there.
-How binary AP was, it either worked or it didn't, the current gradient system is far better IMHO.
-Randomly rolling psychic powers, warlord traits, etc in 6th and 7th. My group always houseruled that you just got to pick them.
-Flyers. Holy crap, their introduction completely broke the meta in a bad way because they were practically un-hittable but you couldn't target them without wasting points which just weren't worth it most of the time.
-Instant Death made certain units almost useless (hi Tyranid Warriors) and made you feel crappy for RPing yourself as most generic HQs, because they'd get to combat and then get squashed by a powerfist instantly.

As for what I hated?
-Area terrain. One toe in a ruin or crater? Cool, now your Wraithknight/Riptide has a 4+ cover save.
-Jink. Reactive 4+ saves (or better) when your skimmer/flyer/bike gets shot at? These things made fragile skimmers more survivable than most main battle tanks in 7th ed.
-Weapon arcs. Maybe this one is a controversial dislike, but I just don't like how restrictive they were, especially with how many weapons are modelled (eg, flyers with guns that can't even hit anything unless it's straight ahead more than a foot away). If 40k was more tactical I could see this being more acceptable but I feel like there should be more abstraction like in the current game.
-6th/7th ed rules regarding transports and assaulting. It made having your Rhino explode in the enemy's phase beneficial because then you could actually assault in your own turn, which just made no sense. Assault in general got shafted in these editions, but this was a major reason why.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Ehh, no I very much disagree with that. Weapons can cover a much broader array of targets through the current wound system. There's much less of a difference between a S4 weapon and a S5 weapon vs. the targets they're meant to be shooting at. Against many "bands" of toughness they are the same. It also reduces the "right tool for the job" nature of the earlier system since you can knock wounds off vehicles with light anti-infantry weapons. It's pretty sloppy, imo.

Well it will mostly be based around infantry based models.

It boils down to which target is the best for that weapon.

A HB is MEQ > GEQ > Attack Bike > TEQ
An AC is GEQ > MEQ > TEQ <> AB

A HB would much rather prefer T4 > T5 > T6+ than T3
The AC would instead go T3 > T5 > T4 > T6 > T7+ -- why did I say T5 before T4? It is the next strongest model that the AC doesn't lose advantage on.

Meanwhile the Executor HB loves TEQ and MEQ, but would rather die than shoot an Attack Bike or GEQ.

That feels a lot to me like granularity that makes each weapon stand out in its own way. Of course this is just how I personally perceive these things.

Haha, well it does add some granularity when you're dealing with mid-range strengths v. toughness, but imo it's granularity that just doesn't make any sense (or is at least less intuitive than the previous S-T wound chart.) The older wound chart makes more intuitive sense (stronger gun wounds tougher models easier, full stop), plus it knocks out engagement potentials with extreme matchups (s3 can't wound T7, don't even roll). The only different "roll event" for a HB firing at a Guardsmen vs. Space Marine in the current system is the save, whereas in the older system the HB would be wounding the Guardsman on a 2+, giving two "roll events" differences.

Part of the increased weapon-differentiation of 8th/9th is the fact that they brought the Damage stat back. Imo the old wound chart plus the Damage variable is the ideal setup.

Every mutable genus/trait/doctrine/veteran skill system

 JNAProductions wrote:
Instead of. NOT in addition to.

But it is unmodifiable? Just looking for clarity.

Seems reasonable overall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
Every mutable genus/trait/doctrine/veteran skill system

You didn't like those?

The pinning rule and having to take leadership tests to shoot at not the closet target have been consigned to the dustbin of history with no tears being shed