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Jarms48 wrote:
I really want a return of universal special rules. The only issue with them was that GW didn't add them to a units data sheet, so you had to keep flipping between rulebook and codex.

Now that we have abilities on every unit datasheet USR's would be fine. Saves from every faction having their own rule for the same thing.

They are getting better about standardizing the effects, but yes standardizing the names as well would be nice if only to smooth conversation when discussing what units do.


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 BlaxicanX wrote:
Every faction having their own rules for the same thing is good because it prevents a domino effect from buffing/nerfing individual units or armies. There are some rules that are completely fine on one unit or army but overpowered or useless on another. The granularity of units having their own rules allows for tweaking at will without effecting others.

It's also why unit types being a core rule was trash. Since "infantry" had to move 6'' you were stuck with units like Eldar and daemonettes moving at the same speed as Ogryn and Necrons.

I think the point is more than if you have a rule that ignores wounds call it "Feel No Pain" in every place in comes up so people know what it is at a glance. We don't need USRs to be our only source of rules, but commonly repeated rules should share common names.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...You actually have to think about movement in 40K, too, but people like to pretend that all you do is move towards the objectives.

I mean, in 9th you occasionally have to move to get range on someone, I guess?

Movement ties heavilly into line of sight and melee. I mean it's the main foundation that allows for creative play with move blocking, working with line of sight and threat ranges, and even melee.

It's simple which gives it a lot of freedom for creative application. Plus movement as a stat we got away from a list of USRs and unit types that you had to know to know how far things could move. Now it's just on the datasheet so there is less obfuscation to learning what something does.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


As opposed to just needing Battlescribe to play 7th?

You live in a different reality it seems.

I don't remember ever bringing another book besides the BRB and my codex. The only time i remember people bringing in other books was imperial armor, which really doesn't even count.

Why does Imperial Armour "not count"?

Because imperial armor isn't a requirement to play the game. They were optional rules, for specialist models that in themselves were exorbitantly more expensive than their standard counterparts. If you wanted to play with IA they were mandatory, but were in no way shape or form required to play for any faction. If you wanted to play competitively and engage in the ultra super serious list building waac meta death stars, sure, but most people did not have IA.


Were they apart of the bloat? Yes. Were they as necessary? No.

Psychic awakening is different in my opinion as well, as that was an expansion for a codex. Something that for many is considered necessary, especially if you want to stay competitive with the current 9th edition codices as compared to a languishing 8th edition one.


Imperial armor was kind of outside of all of this except for tournament play.

You do realize that some factions had all of their rules in IA, don't you? The R&H rules in IA13 were the best rules gw wrote since 3.5. And the additional units it gave for CSM were just as important as any PA book, because that was all we got, as we were stuck with the garbage 6th edition codex, except for that short period of time at the end of 7th when we had Traitor Legions. IA13 was the only thing that kept me playing through 7th, because it actually had units I liked, instead of the stuff that the main studio tried to cram down our throats in their formations. The work fw turned out in 6th and 7th was hands down above anything gw proper did. And it had nothing to do with "WAAC tournament play". I never played tournaments and I still.

Chaos had rules, you just didn't like them. That's Ok, and I feel for you. Chaos has been treated terribly in 40k, and by GW, but IA was not necessary to the same degree as psychic awakening is to a codex. It was something that contributed to the bloat in a much more optional way.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

I think the point is more than if you have a rule that ignores wounds call it "Feel No Pain" in every place in comes up so people know what it is at a glance.

That is emphatically not the argument being asserted ITT.

Also, having the same name for a rule that might not work the same across all factions is a terrible idea, especially considering that these days the rule is often more faction-specific in how it comes into play then it used to.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

I think the point is more than if you have a rule that ignores wounds call it "Feel No Pain" in every place in comes up so people know what it is at a glance.

That is emphatically not the argument being asserted ITT.

Also, having the same name for a rule that might not work the same across all factions is a terrible idea.

But do they work differently because they're MEANT to work differently, or because of shoddy writing? Sorta like the old Chapter Master rerolls versus Cawl rerolls.

Not to mention, let's say Unit X is totally broken with Rule Y, but Unit Z has Rule Y and is fine. Here's what you can do!

"Unit X no longer has Rule Y. It instead has Rule W," where Rule W is a similar, but notably weaker version of Rule Y.

Also, one could have technical names in addition to the fluffy names-so old Disgustingly Resilient could be "Ignore Wounds (5+)-Digsutingly Resilient"
New DR could be "Damage Reduction (-1)-Disgustingly Resilient"

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

I think the point is more than if you have a rule that ignores wounds call it "Feel No Pain" in every place in comes up so people know what it is at a glance.

That is emphatically not the argument being asserted ITT.

Also, having the same name for a rule that might not work the same across all factions is a terrible idea, especially considering that these days the rule is often more faction-specific in how it comes into play then it used to.

Well then I misunderstood the argument and that's my fault.

Not wanting to argue the same topic yet again, I'll just answer to the OP:

I think you should have split the poll into separate threads (or used a poll tool that's not as bad as dakka's) since you are kind of missing some factors that made 7th as bad as it was.

If I had to list the factors that made 7th bad, it would be these:
- Core Rules were not horribly flawed, but flawed. Outside of technical writing issues, challenges were better than 6th but still a horrible thing, USR were badly implemented especially in combination with ICs, removing casualties from the front and the deny mechanic not accounting for psyker armies are just a few examples of the things that cannot be reasonable considered "good" rules. These were just from the top of my head, if I went through the book, I could probably find more.
- Low quality releases with zero playtesting. The absolutely did not give a feth about the quality of some of the released books. Especially the supplement which shall not be named clearly showed that no one, not a single person, had bothered to play the rules and formations in that book even once. They just wrote that gakky book at their desk and tossed it to printing without picking up a single ork model. Similar things happened to a lot of other armies. Especially fun in combination with bloat, terrible balance and no FAQ.
- Terrible balance. Some of the codices were just ridiculously powerful while others at the same time barely could build a coherent army at all. And no matter how bad issues in 8th/9th were, GW at least acknowledged those problems and fixed them. In 7th GW did jack.
- No FAQs or Errata whatsoever. The writing was much worse than it is now and many rules were genuinely unclear and required house-rulings. There were situations in the game which simply weren't handled by the rules.
- Bloat, so much bloat. Codex, supplements, campaign books with formations, expansions with formations and unit upgrades, books full of psychic powers, paid and free PDF downloads with formations, apocalypse books, white dwarf rules and more. I once counted over 40 separate rules sources just for Space Marines, not counting things like GK or LotD. Anyone claiming that 8th with its maximum of 5 books per army (many just 2 or 3) is even remotely in the same ballpark is a hypocrite and/or an idiot.
- Clear intention to rip off customers affecting ruleswriting. Not just the Wraithknight story is proof of this, but also things like a separately sold datasheet for some units or how every ork formation required you to buy more models than any sane person would already have from previous editions.

TL;DR: Core rules weren't great and bloat was bad, but neither made 7th the worst edition ever.

IMHO 7th had worse core rules, more bloat, worse codexes and worse points costs (stuff too cheap on average).

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


As opposed to just needing Battlescribe to play 7th?

You live in a different reality it seems.

From the one where people needed to memorize 450 pages of rules to play a game rendered unplayable by charts that somehow had Chapter Approved the edition before GW brought the "Chapter Approved" name back and was entirely made up of things that were simultaneously 2++ deathstars and armed only with D-weapons, yes, clearly.


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ERJAK wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...You actually have to think about movement in 40K, too, but people like to pretend that all you do is move towards the objectives.

I mean, in 9th you occasionally have to move to get range on someone, I guess?

This mostly just tells people that you're not very good at the game...

I'm terrible at the game. I insist on using models I like rather than buying a new army every six months, which means I deserve whatever I get.

Right. Because we see so many games where we hear about the winning player's masterful outmanuevering of thier opponent ... Oh wait no. We don't. When tables were big enough, and units were slow enough that you could get caught out of position, movement mattered. In the days where a deployment mistake, or an error in an early movement phase could potentially leave a unit out of the fight or unable to get to an objective, movement mattered. Now? No. Not so much. Everything can get to everything and you pretty much know where things are going. It's almost impossible to truly get "out of position" for most armies, and even then, you have a lot of strats to fix it. It's about jamming midfield and controlling the objectives, and by the time that's happening there's often not enough room to truly manuever anyway. What matters in 9th is absolutely not movement. It's TIMING. Too many are getting the two confused IMO.

Tycho wrote:

Right. Because we see so many games where we hear about the winning player's masterful outmanuevering of thier opponent ... Oh wait no. We don't. When tables were big enough, and units were slow enough that you could get caught out of position, movement mattered. In the days where a deployment mistake, or an error in an early movement phase could potentially leave a unit out of the fight or unable to get to an objective, movement mattered. Now? No. Not so much. Everything can get to everything and you pretty much know where things are going. It's almost impossible to truly get "out of position" for most armies, and even then, you have a lot of strats to fix it. It's about jamming midfield and controlling the objectives, and by the time that's happening there's often not enough room to truly manuever anyway. What matters in 9th is absolutely not movement. It's TIMING. Too many are getting the two confused IMO.

Because whole games are not won or lost on a singular maneuver. This isn't a massive battlefield where sweeping behind the enemy line disrupts the supply chain.

I played a game where I anchored a side of the board with a C'Tan against 10 terminators and some support. The C'Tan was also WWSWF. I didn't move him out. When he was close to my objective I moved out to block and slow him for another turn. Meanwhile across the board I operated with the rest of my army. Once the C'Tan was dead the terminators were so out of position ( even for a homer ) that they would never draw a line of sight on the rest of my army.

So, I baited the unit by leaving my objective open and placing a high value and dangerous unit on that side. I restrained my desire to "earn points back" to tie up 35% of his army with 15% of mine. I made use of terrain to prevent him from drawing LOS to my other units once his unit was free to come after them.

Not every game plays like that and what happens depends on the opponent, their list, and terrain.

The only reason you got caught 'out of position' in older editions was because there was no pre-measuring and the person better at using other info to determine range fared better. That or their army was simply faster or had things like assault grenades to make your position pointless.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
It's the exact same game mechanic as unit types and USRs. Any argument that applies to rigid BRB-defined movement characteristics is going to logically apply to BRB-defined USRs and unit types as well.

This makes absolutely no sense given that movement is now a datasheet characteristic. Sure back in 7th and prior it's a valid argument, but not anymore.

So, I baited the unit by leaving my objective open and placing a high value and dangerous unit on that side. I restrained my desire to "earn points back" to tie up 35% of his army with 15% of mine. I made use of terrain to prevent him from drawing LOS to my other units once his unit was free to come after them.

And there's nothing inherent to your example that is specific to this edition (this edition being the one where "movement finally matters"), except possibly the smaller board size allowing for better blocking. But again, even that was possible in other editions.

The only reason you got caught 'out of position' in older editions was because there was no pre-measuring and the person better at using other info to determine range fared better. That or their army was simply faster or had things like assault grenades to make your position pointless.

That's certainly ONE reason why it might happen. One among MANY other possibilities. The simple fact is, movement matters considerably more when there aren't multiple objectives everywhere, that pretty much every unit can (easily) get to, and mistakes are legitimately punishing. In 9th, you can pretty much reach everything you need, it's very hard to make a mistake that takes a unit out of the battle (due to movement errors - forced or otherwise). Timing is what really matters in 9th. That's fine to a point. It's not necessarily negative. It's just different.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


As opposed to just needing Battlescribe to play 7th?

You live in a different reality it seems.

I don't remember ever bringing another book besides the BRB and my codex. The only time i remember people bringing in other books was imperial armor, which really doesn't even count.

Why does Imperial Armour "not count"?

Because imperial armor isn't a requirement to play the game. They were optional rules, for specialist models that in themselves were exorbitantly more expensive than their standard counterparts. If you wanted to play with IA they were mandatory, but were in no way shape or form required to play for any faction. If you wanted to play competitively and engage in the ultra super serious list building waac meta death stars, sure, but most people did not have IA.


Were they apart of the bloat? Yes. Were they as necessary? No.

Psychic awakening is different in my opinion as well, as that was an expansion for a codex. Something that for many is considered necessary, especially if you want to stay competitive with the current 9th edition codices as compared to a languishing 8th edition one.


Imperial armor was kind of outside of all of this except for tournament play.

....Lol, what?

How are you allowing yourself to draw this line between "IA is only optional, only necessary if you're a WAAC tournament bro" but "buying PA is necessary and needed if you ever want to play a functional game!!!"

Almost all the rules introduced in PA are completely, fully optional. The only ones that arguably were not, were the ones you just got for free, and if you didnt lose them you were leaving stuff on the table, like the GK's Tides of the Warp.

Everything else was something you'd take in place of stuff you could just do out of the codex. going through the armies I own:

-Drukhari - Blood of the Pheonix added custom traits. I did not use those custom traits - i continued to use the codex traits. Then, when my codex did come out, I had the custom traits there in the book. Yippee, I went and saved myself buying that PA book by....not using the optional thing in it.

-GSC - PA added custom traits, psychic powers, and new stratagems. I did not use either of those things, kept using the regular traits out of the codex, selected my powers from the regular list in the codex, and didn't bother memorizing the new stratagems to use them, just spent my CP on the codex strats. Funnily enough, I've never had any problems managing to run out of CP in a GSC list in 9th, so they weren't necessary.

-Thousand Sons - PA added "mini-subfactions" that you could take to add a warlord trait, a psychic power, some stratagems, and a relic. now this one I did bu-nope, I didn't, I went on youtube and wrote down the rules with a piece of paper and pencil for free. All told they took nearly the back and front of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

-Deathwatch - I don't think PA added anything, honestly? I don't think Dw were in PA. If they were, I totally missed it. Guess that content wasn't necessary to keep playing them, huh?

-Admech - again I didnt actually track it. I think it was like weird warlord traits, some new strats, and rules for the new models. I didnt pick up any of the new stuff so I didnt buy the PA. Bizarre how I was still able to play the admech army I have.

-Harlequins - rules came in a white dwarf for seven bucks, which did meet the "worth it" threshold for this consumer, so I dutifully went out and voted with my wallet for good, substantial white dwarf rules for xenos factions! Good rules too. But also optional, everything harlequins got from PA you coud just...choose to not use and spend your army's resources of CP/relics/traits elsewhere.

This is like a DnD supplement thing to me. Just because I play a druid, and a new book comes out with new spells for druids and a new druid subclass doesnt mean I'm REQUIRED to buy that book. I have more than enough druid spells to fill me up to capacity, and i'm already using a subclass right now, so unless I want to make a change I'm unlikely to buy the thing for that...

Tycho wrote:
That's certainly ONE reason why it might happen. One among MANY other possibilities. The simple fact is, movement matters considerably more when there aren't multiple objectives everywhere, that pretty much every unit can (easily) get to, and mistakes are legitimately punishing. In 9th, you can pretty much reach everything you need, it's very hard to make a mistake that takes a unit out of the battle (due to movement errors - forced or otherwise). Timing is what really matters in 9th. That's fine to a point. It's not necessarily negative. It's just different.

I remember a vast number of 5th-7th games where most of my opponent's army wasn't moving at all outside of lining up shots.

As someone playing two low-ranged armies with base movement 5", I can also assure you that I can't reach everything on the board, at least not until the game ends. A unit of deathshrouds, boyz or plague marines deployed in a bad position might not contribute anything to the battle until it's essentially over. Even units with 10" like scrapjets or winged daemon princes can't just be anywhere at will.

Of course, things like bikes or fast vehicles can be anywhere, but that's kind of the point of them, right? I think perception gets warped a bit from how many of those units are currently very popular in tournament games. But many of those units were at least as fast, if not faster in previous editions, so the point is kind of moot.

There's no reason Universal Special Rules need to be restricted to 12 pages of solid rules.

Star Wars Legion uses USRs, each unit datacard has both the USR and it's wording (unless there's not enough space to write out the rule, in which case they focus on the more niche ones).
That's a great way of doing things, and it's what 40k could do.

When it comes to USRs, it's absolutely possible to have our cake and eat it too.

Interesting poll results, by the way:

34 people think 9th is more bloated than 7th
36 people think 9th is just as bloated as 7th
83 people think 9th is less bloated than 7th

So while the majority of the people think that 9th is better regards to bloat, a high number of people feel like it didn't do a better job than 7th.

48 people say 7th had the better core rules
12 people say the core rules were equally good
93 people say 9th has the better core rules

This is a lot less close, almost twice as many people think that 9th than people who think 7th is better. The high number of people preferring 7th's core rules also makes sense - quite a few people are sorely missing armor facings, templates and other things that had a long tradition in 40k.


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
There's no reason Universal Special Rules need to be restricted to 12 pages of solid rules.

Star Wars Legion uses USRs, each unit datacard has both the USR and it's wording (unless there's not enough space to write out the rule, in which case they focus on the more niche ones).
That's a great way of doing things, and it's what 40k could do.

When it comes to USRs, it's absolutely possible to have our cake and eat it too.

I think the USR topic has been discussed to death.

The general consensus is that the best solution is having all the rules on the datasheets anyways, but with unified names and keywords for things that work the same. Meanwhile, they should avoid rules that are only slightly different than others for no real reason but being different.

A central register of USR is unneeded and counter-productive as long as GW insists on selling books.

 Jidmah wrote:

Tycho wrote:
That's certainly ONE reason why it might happen. One among MANY other possibilities. The simple fact is, movement matters considerably more when there aren't multiple objectives everywhere, that pretty much every unit can (easily) get to, and mistakes are legitimately punishing. In 9th, you can pretty much reach everything you need, it's very hard to make a mistake that takes a unit out of the battle (due to movement errors - forced or otherwise). Timing is what really matters in 9th. That's fine to a point. It's not necessarily negative. It's just different.

I remember a vast number of 5th-7th games where most of my opponent's army wasn't moving at all outside of lining up shots.

As someone playing two low-ranged armies with base movement 5", I can also assure you that I can't reach everything on the board, at least not until the game ends. A unit of deathshrouds, boyz or plague marines deployed in a bad position might not contribute anything to the battle until it's essentially over. Even units with 10" like scrapjets or winged daemon princes can't just be anywhere at will.

Of course, things like bikes or fast vehicles can be anywhere, but that's kind of the point of them, right? I think perception gets warped a bit from how many of those units are currently very popular in tournament games. But many of those units were at least as fast, if not faster in previous editions, so the point is kind of moot.

Gun lines were a problem inherent to the codexes and not so much to the core rules, but even then, I played a really mobile Tau army all the way through 5th and 6th. No gunlines for me.

I play the same armies as you in 9th. I am not having the same problems getting things to the places I need them. It's just so much easier than it ever has been. I mean sure, if you're deploying Terminators that move 5" to your backline and expecting them to get ... anywhere ... that's a problem. But that's not really how they should be played either is it?

 Jidmah wrote:
Interesting poll results, by the way:

34 people think 9th is more bloated than 7th
36 people think 9th is just as bloated as 7th
83 people think 9th is less bloated than 7th

So while the majority of the people think that 9th is better regards to bloat, a high number of people feel like it didn't do a better job than 7th.

48 people say 7th had the better core rules
12 people say the core rules were equally good
93 people say 9th has the better core rules

This is a lot less close, almost twice as many people think that 9th than people who think 7th is better. The high number of people preferring 7th's core rules also makes sense - quite a few people are sorely missing armor facings, templates and other things that had a long tradition in 40k...

I'd love another poll where you asked these people whether they actually played 7th. I'm reasonably convinced that the people who pop into threads to tell me you needed to memorize 450 pages of rules to play 7th and there were Chapter Approved points updates didn't actually play 7th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Interesting poll results, by the way:

34 people think 9th is more bloated than 7th
36 people think 9th is just as bloated as 7th
83 people think 9th is less bloated than 7th

So while the majority of the people think that 9th is better regards to bloat, a high number of people feel like it didn't do a better job than 7th.

48 people say 7th had the better core rules
12 people say the core rules were equally good
93 people say 9th has the better core rules

This is a lot less close, almost twice as many people think that 9th than people who think 7th is better. The high number of people preferring 7th's core rules also makes sense - quite a few people are sorely missing armor facings, templates and other things that had a long tradition in 40k...

I'd love another poll where you asked these people whether they actually played 7th. I'm reasonably convinced that the people who pop into threads to tell me you needed to memorize 450 pages of rules to play 7th and there were Chapter Approved points updates didn't actually play 7th.

I mean how many people that keeps complaining about how bad is 9th (and was 8th) in this forum has played more than 5 games of any one of the two editions? I think it would be a non insignificant number of posters.

 Galas wrote:
I mean how many people that keeps complaining about how bad is 9th (and was 8th) in this forum has played more than 5 games of any one of the two editions? I think it would be a non insignificant number of posters.

Kind of a pointless metric given that for most of 9th's life cycle people haven't been able to play.

 Galas wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Interesting poll results, by the way:

34 people think 9th is more bloated than 7th
36 people think 9th is just as bloated as 7th
83 people think 9th is less bloated than 7th

So while the majority of the people think that 9th is better regards to bloat, a high number of people feel like it didn't do a better job than 7th.

48 people say 7th had the better core rules
12 people say the core rules were equally good
93 people say 9th has the better core rules

This is a lot less close, almost twice as many people think that 9th than people who think 7th is better. The high number of people preferring 7th's core rules also makes sense - quite a few people are sorely missing armor facings, templates and other things that had a long tradition in 40k...

I'd love another poll where you asked these people whether they actually played 7th. I'm reasonably convinced that the people who pop into threads to tell me you needed to memorize 450 pages of rules to play 7th and there were Chapter Approved points updates didn't actually play 7th.

I mean how many people that keeps complaining about how bad is 9th (and was 8th) in this forum has played more than 5 games of any one of the two editions? I think it would be a non insignificant number of posters.

Gotta disagree in that you don't need to have a ton of games of 8th/9th to be able to give a valid opinion about aspects of the edition. For example every game of 8th I've played has been dreadfully dull, shallow, and I didn't have fun with the game regardless of winning, losing, or even a "close" battle and that's with running multiple games with multiple armies (Orks, Tau, Space Marine, IoM Inq + Scions). The 10th time playing the game didn't make my opinion when playing the 2nd game that 8th feels as shallow as a puddle any more or less valid. 9th didn't make nearly any changes to the things that I didn't like about 8th so I don't need to bang my head against that wall X number of times to know that it's probably not the kind of experience that I'm looking for.

I don't say that one has to play 8th or 9th to know it is bad, or where it is bad.

At the end of the day, once you have played a couple of wargames you can know just by reading the rules the general feeling of a game even if the more subtle aspects are just shown when actually playing it. Like with videogames.

But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

Ah, right. Gotcha.

 Galas wrote:
I don't say that one has to play 8th or 9th to know it is bad, or where it is bad.

At the end of the day, once you have played a couple of wargames you can know just by reading the rules the general feeling of a game even if the more subtle aspects are just shown when actually playing it. Like with videogames.

But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

Fair enough.

I will say that a lot of people on the internet go about describing 7th as being nothing but a hellscape of meta WAAC lists stomping people into the ground. Personal experience of playing during that era was never such an extreme environment. I mean the power imbalance was quite real but most people seemed to be mindful enough to not try and curb stomp newbies, fluffy lists, and weaker faction armies. It does make me wonder if some of the hatred of 7th is clouded by other people's opinions more than their own experiences.

 Vankraken wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I don't say that one has to play 8th or 9th to know it is bad, or where it is bad.

At the end of the day, once you have played a couple of wargames you can know just by reading the rules the general feeling of a game even if the more subtle aspects are just shown when actually playing it. Like with videogames.

But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

Fair enough.

I will say that a lot of people on the internet go about describing 7th as being nothing but a hellscape of meta WAAC lists stomping people into the ground. Personal experience of playing during that era was never such an extreme environment. I mean the power imbalance was quite real but most people seemed to be mindful enough to not try and curb stomp newbies, fluffy lists, and weaker faction armies. It does make me wonder if some of the hatred of 7th is clouded by other people's opinions more than their own experiences.

Peoples opinions may be clouded by their opinions, more at 11.

 Jidmah wrote:
Interesting poll results, by the way:

34 people think 9th is more bloated than 7th
36 people think 9th is just as bloated as 7th
83 people think 9th is less bloated than 7th

So while the majority of the people think that 9th is better regards to bloat, a high number of people feel like it didn't do a better job than 7th.

48 people say 7th had the better core rules
12 people say the core rules were equally good
93 people say 9th has the better core rules

This is a lot less close, almost twice as many people think that 9th than people who think 7th is better. The high number of people preferring 7th's core rules also makes sense - quite a few people are sorely missing armor facings, templates and other things that had a long tradition in 40k.


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
There's no reason Universal Special Rules need to be restricted to 12 pages of solid rules.

Star Wars Legion uses USRs, each unit datacard has both the USR and it's wording (unless there's not enough space to write out the rule, in which case they focus on the more niche ones).
That's a great way of doing things, and it's what 40k could do.

When it comes to USRs, it's absolutely possible to have our cake and eat it too.

I think the USR topic has been discussed to death.

The general consensus is that the best solution is having all the rules on the datasheets anyways, but with unified names and keywords for things that work the same. Meanwhile, they should avoid rules that are only slightly different than others for no real reason but being different.

A central register of USR is unneeded and counter-productive as long as GW insists on selling books.

So... USR? You literally just described USR, and they can still be on datasheets.....


But back on topic, 9th is for sure missing some key rules that almost all other editions had, the problems with 7th can easier be changed with a few hours of work. I would rather have a updated better 7th with balances to armies. You can still remove templates and have some updates that did work in 9th even.

9th truly just feels like chess with giant units, every unit that matters is so freaking hyper strong they remove a unit, then I remove a unit, etc... taking away Invis and formations (played like that a lot) made 7th very fun actually, HH is just 7th still as well.

Tycho wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


As opposed to just needing Battlescribe to play 7th?

You live in a different reality it seems.

From the one where people needed to memorize 450 pages of rules to play a game rendered unplayable by charts that somehow had Chapter Approved the edition before GW brought the "Chapter Approved" name back and was entirely made up of things that were simultaneously 2++ deathstars and armed only with D-weapons, yes, clearly.


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ERJAK wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...You actually have to think about movement in 40K, too, but people like to pretend that all you do is move towards the objectives.

I mean, in 9th you occasionally have to move to get range on someone, I guess?

This mostly just tells people that you're not very good at the game...

I'm terrible at the game. I insist on using models I like rather than buying a new army every six months, which means I deserve whatever I get.

Right. Because we see so many games where we hear about the winning player's masterful outmanuevering of thier opponent ... Oh wait no. We don't. When tables were big enough, and units were slow enough that you could get caught out of position, movement mattered. In the days where a deployment mistake, or an error in an early movement phase could potentially leave a unit out of the fight or unable to get to an objective, movement mattered. Now? No. Not so much. Everything can get to everything and you pretty much know where things are going. It's almost impossible to truly get "out of position" for most armies, and even then, you have a lot of strats to fix it. It's about jamming midfield and controlling the objectives, and by the time that's happening there's often not enough room to truly manuever anyway. What matters in 9th is absolutely not movement. It's TIMING. Too many are getting the two confused IMO.

40ks core rules from 7th to 9th have never really been about maneuver. In 7th maneuvering was more important due to higher limitations on mobility and deep strike which made getting into and controlling a field of fire more important, but ultimately your maneuvering wasn't as impactful as I'd like to think it was 7th at it's core was really just a dice rolling game with tabletop tactics that were pretty rudimentary and vastly overpowered by the sheer output or durability of units as a whole. 8th and 9th basically remove that whole paradigm out of the game in favor of making placement automatic (this is literally one of, if not the worse part of 8th and 9th IMO).

What 40k lacks are mechanics that emphasize development and maneuver such as pinning, flanking, and morale.

I also believe that it's just going to be much, much, harder to make a good sci fi game based on outmaneuvering your opponent in 28mm. The Boards are just too small to accommodate the size of our forces to realistically give them access to the ranges and tactics used on a battlefield. 40k on an 6x4 board really shouldn't be any larger than a platoon sized game if we're looking for it to represent that. I think melee is a big kink in the machine. As it has been since 7th, maneuvering toward a melee unit is SUICIDE. If an enemy has a melee unit, there is practically no incentive to move toward the enemy. Melee stops the entire idea of an infantry advance in it's tracks because you'll only be punished for doing so.

I'd like to see 40k move toward a maneuver game, but it's not ever going to happen officially. I'm pretty much just praying that there will be a fan made or 3rd party game designed entirely around that for the intended use with 40k miniatures.

As it stands now Epic Armageddon is essentially that game.

 Galas wrote:
...But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

I'm attempting to question whether the "7th was an unplayable shithole" crowd played 7th because the kinds of things I hear from them are the furthest from my experience of any anecdotes I hear on this website. I don't agree with people who like 8th/9th, but we're more often than not disagreeing on opinion over what's fun while with the anti-7th crowd we're often disagreeing on some pretty fundamental facts like "how big the rulebook was". I'm not trying to claim that nobody's criticism of 7th is fair, I'm questioning whether criticizing 7th for consisting entirely of armies of D-weapons, 2++ deathstars, and free transports run with five hundred pages of rules that you couldn't even attempt to play without memorizing is criticizing 7th at all, or some hypothetical worst-case edition that bears only a superficial resemblance to 7th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Galas wrote:
...But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

I'm attempting to question whether the "7th was an unplayable shithole" crowd played 7th because the kinds of things I hear from them are the furthest from my experience of any anecdotes I hear on this website. I don't agree with people who like 8th/9th, but we're more often than not disagreeing on opinion over what's fun while with the anti-7th crowd we're often disagreeing on some pretty fundamental facts like "how big the rulebook was".

The problem with 7th was that the edge cases BROKE the game. The edge cases in 8th/9th are powerful, but they don't fundamentally change the way that the entire game system is interacted with on the same level that some of the SHENANIGANS in 7th were.

My community had little problems with the absolute HORSE gak death stars and unintentional rules interactions because we shut them down. It was so much easier to spot the people breaking the game.

The design philosophy for 7th was solid. The implementation was BAD. Whereas 8th and 9th are the exact opposite. Bad game design executed to a much better degree.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Galas wrote:
...But it was a reply to AnomanderRake trying to discredit the criticism of 7th based in how many games people played of it.

I'm attempting to question whether the "7th was an unplayable shithole" crowd played 7th because the kinds of things I hear from them are the furthest from my experience of any anecdotes I hear on this website. I don't agree with people who like 8th/9th, but we're more often than not disagreeing on opinion over what's fun while with the anti-7th crowd we're often disagreeing on some pretty fundamental facts like "how big the rulebook was".

The problem with 7th was that the edge cases BROKE the game. The edge cases in 8th/9th are powerful, but they don't fundamentally change the way that the entire game system is interacted with on the same level that some of the SHENANIGANS in 7th were.

My community had little problems with the absolute HORSE gak death stars and unintentional rules interactions because we shut them down. It was so much easier to spot the people breaking the game.

The design philosophy for 7th was solid. The implementation was BAD. Whereas 8th and 9th are the exact opposite. Bad game design executed very well.

See, I like this kind of discussion. I disagree, because I'd prefer to take the reasonable foundation executed badly and fiddle with it rather than the bad foundation that I don't think I can fix, but we're both expressing opinions based on facts rather than throwing out ludicrous hyperbole about how 7th had vastly more bloat than it actually did or that 9th has vastly more bloat than it actually does.

7ths largest failings were all because its codex's often did not mesh well with the basic rules, so GW essentially put the rules into the codexes. This has the benefit of preventing a single special rule, psychic power, or relic from unintentionally breaking the game, but it removes a lot of the complexity and the depth of the rule system. In many ways the system becomes the codex. Rules interactions become internal rather than external and we can see this illustrated with buff stacking and stratagems. The problem with this is that it makes it much harder to know the game as a whole, and to develop tactics around it. The game becomes increasingly unknowable, because the rules are more like guidelines rather than rules. It becomes a game about how your codex interacts with itself rather than how to use the terrain and knowledge of your enemy to destroy them. This is why the game itself feels like a listbuilding filter.