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yukishiro1 wrote:


They've traded actual depth for fake depth caused by bloat.

To be fair 40k has been light on depth for many years. It is a complicated game with all the list building and combo faff, but not complex in the strategies and tactics used. Which is actually ideal for its targeted age market. A bunch of adults saying it isn't as fun as when they were 12 are perhaps missing the point.

Now GW aren't doing the adult games they used to (WFB was aimed at a slightly old gamer for much of its history, and Warmaster and Epic are more like the more adult wargames out there), but they do have other games you can play that are more about the game than the list, and of course there are many better game systems you can use your models in.

For a giggle try 'what a tanker' with your Leman Russ and predators!

I'm feeling better about it that I was maybe six months ago, when it felt like 9th was a half-ready edition. Couldn't have happened at a better time though as I wasn't able to play any games anyway.

Now the Codex hose seems to be ramping back up to blasting out at a pretty decent rate, I feel like the whole thing is quite rapidly starting to feel less half-baked.

My only real reservation about 9th is just *how much* rules stuff there is going on, stacked atop the core rules. I like to hop from painting project to painting project but it seems like there's so much to keep track of in terms of individual faction rules that it's not really feasible to hop between armies to play games without spending half your time leafing through the book. Like, I was thinking about putting together a little AdMech army but everything I've seen/heard about the rules seems *terrifyingly* confusing.

 Nazrak wrote:
I'm feeling better about it that I was maybe six months ago, when it felt like 9th was a half-ready edition. Couldn't have happened at a better time though as I wasn't able to play any games anyway.

Now the Codex hose seems to be ramping back up to blasting out at a pretty decent rate, I feel like the whole thing is quite rapidly starting to feel less half-baked.

My only real reservation about 9th is just *how much* rules stuff there is going on, stacked atop the core rules. I like to hop from painting project to painting project but it seems like there's so much to keep track of in terms of individual faction rules that it's not really feasible to hop between armies to play games without spending half your time leafing through the book. Like, I was thinking about putting together a little AdMech army but everything I've seen/heard about the rules seems *terrifyingly* confusing.

My most recent game was against new admech, and it honestly wasn't as insane as I thought it was going to be. The new 'Doctrinas" take the place of canticles on the units that get them and are generally simpler, and mostly the style of the army is just 'each big unit has some kind of techpriest hanging out nearby tossing out some kind of boost to that unit'.

Comparative to keeping track of what the actual AP stat of every weapon ends up being due to doctrines and the effects of super-doctrines, I find admech easier to figure out as an opponent than 3.0 marines.

Just personal opinion there though.

yukishiro1 wrote:


They've traded actual depth for fake depth caused by bloat.

That's GW design philosophy in a nutshell. All width and no depth.

Cyel wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


They've traded actual depth for fake depth caused by bloat.

That's GW design philosophy in a nutshell. All width and no depth.

Ech. It works and people like it unfortunatly. Look at how popular Skyrim and Fallout 3/4 are compared their previous, deeper games. People like it for whatever reason.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Cyel wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


They've traded actual depth for fake depth caused by bloat.

That's GW design philosophy in a nutshell. All width and no depth.

Ech. It works and people like it unfortunatly. Look at how popular Skyrim and Fallout 3/4 are compared their previous, deeper games. People like it for whatever reason.

For the very same reason as with 40k, the new models look much better and therefore attract a wider audiance that just want their games/movies/whatever to look good and nothing else

Absolutely. People want stuff that looks good; games don't have the appeal of shiny, beautiful miniatures, otherwise we'd all be playing games with chits.

CEO Kasen wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Just a reminder to everyone that AoS is happy to accept refugees!

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that you can play an older edition or games from other companies.

May I recommend Grimdark Future if you want to play alternating-activation beer-and-pretzels 40K using your - or anyone else's - existing minis, or Infinity if you want a mind-boggling tactical challenge with actual depth instead of just the illusion of it?

I'd rather give up gaming completely than play a game with Alternate Activation.

I just went back to playing 3rd Edition and I've never been happier.

Why the dislike of AA?

In many ways I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than sit through 45 minutes of having my opponent walk all over me with nothing to do as is standard for a 40k game.

Imho AA:
- it is too much bookkeeping (tokens to remember which unit did what, ...)
- it slows the game down (with IGOUGO you plan during your opponent's turn and act quickly when it's your turn)
- it doesn't work well with amounts of units that are different in size (I activate one unit, a 5 pts infantry squad, and then you activate a 600 pts knight)
- it doesn't work well with very different amounts of units (5 units in a knights army vs 25 in a guard army)
- wouldn' fix much because IGOUGO is not the reason for a lack of balance in 40K. Power creep and poor playtesting are the main reasons for that

Rihgu wrote:

The entirety of Infinity's tactical depth for the years I played it was "fireteam HMG go brrr" and "skirmisher with template go brrr". You'd also get the special treat of "MSV + smoke go brrr" almost every game. Which absolutely sucked as a TAG/HI player.

Hey Rihgu, not gonna derail this thread with a deep reply, but rest assured Infinity has changed for the better since the days of N3. HI and TAGs are strong as hell now, fireteam sectorials are often out of favour vs flex vanilla lists, hacking has been streamlined and is way more relevant, crits are still powerful but now punish LI disproportionately compared to heavy armour, every army's had a balance pass and generally the game feels tight as hell. Just saying.

 Aenar wrote:
Imho AA:
- it is too much bookkeeping (tokens to remember which unit did what, ...)
- it slows the game down (with IGOUGO you plan during your opponent's turn and act quickly when it's your turn)
- it doesn't work well with amounts of units that are different in size (I activate one unit, a 5 pts infantry squad, and then you activate a 600 pts knight)
- it doesn't work well with very different amounts of units (5 units in a knights army vs 25 in a guard army)

bookeeping is actually less than with phases and alternating turns, yet no one uses tokes to mark which units moved/shoot/charged
the time a player needs to think about his next step is nothing any game system can change, yet it is how often you need to touch your models and the amount of dice rolling that slows games down
the other 2 points are not a problem at all, at least of the designer of the game knew what he was doing, so yes if GW would make a game with AA they would screw it up

 Aenar wrote:

- wouldn' fix much because IGOUGO is not the reason for a lack of balance in 40K. Power creep and poor playtesting are the main reasons for that

AA is not meant to fix anything but the player downtime and Alpha Strike
there are other solutions to this but the one that fits a modern SciFi game best is AA, that GW does not play their own game is a problem that can not be fixed by writing different rules but only by not using rules from GW

 Bosskelot wrote:
40k is in a much better state than AOS anyway, regardless of any problems 9th has.

Sure it is....

Nurglitch wrote:Absolutely. People want stuff that looks good; games don't have the appeal of shiny, beautiful miniatures, otherwise we'd all be playing games with chits.

I buy the models to paint, the fact that I can also play a game with them is an added bonus.

I've played many games with just chits, would they have been better if the had cool models to go along with...hell yeah!

 kodos wrote:

 Aenar wrote:
Imho AA:
- it is too much bookkeeping (tokens to remember which unit did what, ...)
- it slows the game down (with IGOUGO you plan during your opponent's turn and act quickly when it's your turn)
- it doesn't work well with amounts of units that are different in size (I activate one unit, a 5 pts infantry squad, and then you activate a 600 pts knight)
- it doesn't work well with very different amounts of units (5 units in a knights army vs 25 in a guard army)

bookeeping is actually less than with phases and alternating turns, yet no one uses tokes to mark which units moved/shoot/charged
the time a player needs to think about his next step is nothing any game system can change, yet it is how often you need to touch your models and the amount of dice rolling that slows games down
the other 2 points are not a problem at all, at least of the designer of the game knew what he was doing, so yes if GW would make a game with AA they would screw it up

 Aenar wrote:

- wouldn' fix much because IGOUGO is not the reason for a lack of balance in 40K. Power creep and poor playtesting are the main reasons for that

AA is not meant to fix anything but the player downtime and Alpha Strike
there are other solutions to this but the one that fits a modern SciFi game best is AA, that GW does not play their own game is a problem that can not be fixed by writing different rules but only by not using rules from GW

Dude. Most GW games are alternating activations nowadays in one form or another with exception being their two flagships. Titanicus, Necromunda, Aeronautica, Middle-Earth, Apocalypse...

To Aenar's points about unit disparity: why not use a version that works, then? Straight one to one activation isn't the only way to do it. You could activate single units, detachments of multiple units, designated squadrons, commanders that activate units around them, divvy up activation points for chosen parts of your army, randomize their acting order, use alternating phases... there's plenty of design space beyond straight chess moves.

 Aenar wrote:
Imho AA:
- it is too much bookkeeping (tokens to remember which unit did what, ...)
- it slows the game down (with IGOUGO you plan during your opponent's turn and act quickly when it's your turn)
- it doesn't work well with amounts of units that are different in size (I activate one unit, a 5 pts infantry squad, and then you activate a 600 pts knight)
- it doesn't work well with very different amounts of units (5 units in a knights army vs 25 in a guard army)
- wouldn' fix much because IGOUGO is not the reason for a lack of balance in 40K. Power creep and poor playtesting are the main reasons for that

Quick side-point - if you play other games you see different solutions to the above. Marking units is the most common, just like how I mark units in the fire phase in big 40k games.
The favourite of a lot of systems is to have randomised activation (deck of cards, chits out of hat for either units or sides etc.) with games having comparable decision time, but in practice games taking slightly longer.
But this ties into your last point, a lot of it is the feel you want and the other mechanics. 40k suffers from IGOUGO when games get big and alpha strike/firepower gets high. In games with lower lethality it is far less of a problem. As ever these design decisions are linked to other factors and currently GW seem to be in patching mode not systematic overview.

 Sherrypie wrote:


Dude. Most GW games are alternating activations nowadays in one form or another with exception being their two flagships. Titanicus, Necromunda, Aeronautica, Middle-Earth, Apocalypse...

To Aenar's points about unit disparity: why not use a version that works, then? Straight one to one activation isn't the only way to do it. You could activate single units, detachments of multiple units, designated squadrons, commanders that activate units around them, divvy up activation points for chosen parts of your army, randomize their acting order, use alternating phases... there's plenty of design space beyond straight chess moves.

And you can bet that if GW were to re write an entire edition to fit it, which would require indexs, massive rules changes etc, it would take two to three editions to implement, and you would a game just as balanced as 8th or 9th is. Maybe less. 9+year experimentation just to get more or less the same, doesn't sound like fun. And saying that "only" the flag ships aren't AA, and all the other games are, is like saying that in europe Football is somehow on the same level as curling or long distance or biathlon. Comparing to w40k or even AoS, something like Aeronautica doesn't even exist. And if there are people that like it, they are probably playing x-wing anyway.

 Sherrypie wrote:

Dude. Most GW games are alternating activations nowadays in one form or another with exception being their two flagships. Titanicus, Necromunda, Aeronautica, Middle-Earth, Apocalypse....

and most games with exceptions to the flagships are better balanced, have more diverse factions, more viable builds etc

so it would come down that those games written by freelancers that are just hired to write rules and than leave make better games than the 2 main studios do

in the end it does not matter what are the pros or cons to the specific system, but that the it will be a bad implementation of a good idea in the flagship games anyway

The reason for that is freelancers need good rules to be successful.
40k doesn't, it just needs to carry the torch that has grown to such prominence over 30-40 years.
It honestly doesn't matter how 40k's rules stack up to other games, many players get defensive and even genuinely angry if faced with the suggestion of playing another game.

Racerguy180 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:Absolutely. People want stuff that looks good; games don't have the appeal of shiny, beautiful miniatures, otherwise we'd all be playing games with chits.

I buy the models to paint, the fact that I can also play a game with them is an added bonus.

I've played many games with just chits, would they have been better if the had cool models to go along with...hell yeah!

Yes, and that's the secret sauce to GW's success. Instead of just selling games, or models, they sell a game with models, so they can sell you twice as much. But it's not just additive; the game is based on army-building (buying the same toy over and over) where people have incentive to buy the same product over and over. But I'd say that the people buying just for the models out-number the people buying just for the game, and possibly the people buying both to paint/build and to play. I still enjoy the models and the books and maybe that'll keep me around until I feel better about the game.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
The reason for that is freelancers need good rules to be successful.
40k doesn't, it just needs to carry the torch that has grown to such prominence over 30-40 years.
It honestly doesn't matter how 40k's rules stack up to other games, many players get defensive and even genuinely angry if faced with the suggestion of playing another game.

This. 40k is carried by its IP and miniatures. People will always find a way to make the game work, no matter its actual state or relative quality.

Honestly my feelings towards 9th are mostly positive but only as long as I stay away from the more competitive community. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with competitive, just that the amount of salt that comes out of that corner of the community has dragged down my enjoyment in the past.

Sometimes ignorance of how the game can be broken and the rage that generates is bliss.

 BertBert wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
The reason for that is freelancers need good rules to be successful.
40k doesn't, it just needs to carry the torch that has grown to such prominence over 30-40 years.
It honestly doesn't matter how 40k's rules stack up to other games, many players get defensive and even genuinely angry if faced with the suggestion of playing another game.

This. 40k is carried by its IP and miniatures. People will always find a way to make the game work, no matter its actual state or relative quality.

The exodus of players during 7th edition would seem to suggest otherwise.
There is a point where rules become bad enough that people simply quit.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Honestly my feelings towards 9th are mostly positive but only as long as I stay away from the more competitive community. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with competitive, just that the amount of salt that comes out of that corner of the community has dragged down my enjoyment in the past.

Sometimes ignorance of how the game can be broken and the rage that generates is bliss.

This is something I have learning about any kind of game.

When I play for fun a new game with my friends I'll avoid looking at any kind of forum or tactica advice like the plague. Because the most fun anyone has in a game is when both you and your friends know literally nothing about it, are learning together and making a mess of everything.

 Galas wrote:
When I play for fun a new game with my friends I'll avoid looking at any kind of forum or tactica advice like the plague. Because the most fun anyone has in a game is when both you and your friends know literally nothing about it, are learning together and making a mess of everything.

My group did that for 8th, I think if we'd let someone solve the meta for us the game would have gotten stale pretty quickly with how imbalanced the indexes were.

 Ordana wrote:

The exodus of players during 7th edition would seem to suggest otherwise.
There is a point where rules become bad enough that people simply quit.

Wasn't this how WFB died? Long streaks of no updades, gigantic entry barrier with single units being made out of 4 boxs or more, and unbalanced that big that some armies weren't worth to be played outside of heavy comp settings?

But I'd say that the people buying just for the models out-number the people buying just for the game, and possibly the people buying both to paint/build and to play. I still enjoy the models and the books and maybe that'll keep me around until I feel better about the game.

I can't imagine someone spending 800$+ on a w40k army to never play it. And if people exist that have such money there are better looking models and armies that cost less then those in w40k. And even if there were people that just bought armies to have them and do nothing with them, they would never generate as much income as those who have to buy 15 centurions and 3 new walkers because it is THE way to play their factions, only to be forced to rebuy the army or buy another army 6 to 9 months later.

Karol wrote:

I can't imagine someone spending 800$+ on a w40k army to never play it. And if people exist that have such money there are better looking models and armies that cost less then those in w40k. And even if there were people that just bought armies to have them and do nothing with them, they would never generate as much income as those who have to buy 15 centurions and 3 new walkers because it is THE way to play their factions, only to be forced to rebuy the army or buy another army 6 to 9 months later.

You don't need to be rich to collect minis.
Some people's hobbies are to collect or paint minis, not to actually play the game.
"better looking models" is purely subjective.
The number of purely casual players greatly outnumbers the number of competitive players that chase the best army.

Karol wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

I can't imagine someone spending 800$+ on a w40k army to never play it. And if people exist that have such money there are better looking models and armies that cost less then those in w40k. And even if there were people that just bought armies to have them and do nothing with them, they would never generate as much income as those who have to buy 15 centurions and 3 new walkers because it is THE way to play their factions, only to be forced to rebuy the army or buy another army 6 to 9 months later.

I mean, you'd be wrong, people who just buy and paint models absolutely exist.

They generally don't make whole armies - often they're buying the big "spectacle" models that gw has been doing more and more lately. GW has stated that they are a gigantic fraction of their overall sales.

People who already own 2000+ points of stuff, like most of the people on this forum, are generally the lowest priority for gw from a sales perspective.

Aenar wrote:Imho AA:
- it is too much bookkeeping (tokens to remember which unit did what, ...)
- it slows the game down (with IGOUGO you plan during your opponent's turn and act quickly when it's your turn)
- it doesn't work well with amounts of units that are different in size (I activate one unit, a 5 pts infantry squad, and then you activate a 600 pts knight)
- it doesn't work well with very different amounts of units (5 units in a knights army vs 25 in a guard army)
- wouldn' fix much because IGOUGO is not the reason for a lack of balance in 40K. Power creep and poor playtesting are the main reasons for that

As somebody who plays DUST 1947 regularly that is an alternating activation game with a reaction mechanic that is also scale with 40K i can say from experience that you are wrong on every single point.

1.there is no bookeeping
2.the game is actually faster
3.unit size is irrelevant
4.different army wide unit size also doesn't matter
5.it fixes alpha strikes and keeps both players actively playing even when it is not their activation.
6.bonus-the rules are much better written and balanced than current 40K.-Andy Chambers is just a better game designer than anybody currently working on GW.s flagship game

 the_scotsman wrote:

I mean, you'd be wrong, people who just buy and paint models absolutely exist.

They generally don't make whole armies - often they're buying the big "spectacle" models that gw has been doing more and more lately. GW has stated that they are a gigantic fraction of their overall sales.

People who already own 2000+ points of stuff, like most of the people on this forum, are generally the lowest priority for gw from a sales perspective.

If they don't buy whole armies, then they are less important to GW then people who actually buy models to play the game. The number of people, and the income they generate, for GW, that buy single units for what ever reasons they has to be lower then what is generated by people who have to buy or rebuy 2000pts to start playing the game. And yeah I did come to the conclusion, not so long ago, that GW does not seem to care much about people that have already bought an army.