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 Sim-Life wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Space Marines are pretty fundemental to the 40k setting.

Gamewise, they provide heavy armoured infantry which are pretty fundamental to this sort of diesel punk grimdark setting that 40k is.

If you were to completely reset 40k, ignoring all existing collections, one could argue that Space Marines should be reduced to a sub-faction, not dissimilar to Tempestus are now. To represent their small strike force nature.

They were fundamental in 40k because of the Horus Heresy but thats where their role in the setting ended for the most part. Most of the planets in the Imperium will never be set foot upon by a space marine. Many citizens of the Imperium think they're literal angels. Even most Guardsmen will never see one. They're figures of myth and legend and that is far more interesting than them being an army of Space Super Heroes driving Tonka toy vehicles.

I know that within the setting, Space Marines are pretty niche units.
What I meant was that Space Marines are hugely fundemental to the setting for outside observers. It'd be like removing the Enterprise and asking if Star Trek was really any different. It's just one ship in a whole galaxy, right? Or removing Jedi from Star Wars, there were only like 2 in the original trilogy, they won't be missed.

 Cybtroll wrote:
I don't think reducing the faction number by itself will be inherently positive. I get that maybe you can reduce bloat and get a better balance in the system, but you can do that without having to sacrifice standalone codexes.

I know that the hearsay usually is "there are too many faction" "the game is too complex to be balanced" and similar bullshits.
It's false. If my company (which is slightly smaller than GW) can sell and maintain a software with more than 10 million of lines of code without crashes, there is not reason a game system can't do the same (also we are held accountable at much higher standards).

True, true. *A company* could surely handle this many factions, most people just don't trust GW to do it

But you do have a point. During matches there is always the same number of factions.

I think the biggest trimming that can be done is to sunset some of the old units like in the Space Marine codex. It's a codex so big that it literally trips over itself. The book is currently rather awkward in its number of units.

Otherwise I'd love to see some unification like we've seen in AoS.

People still throw angry noise at GW for removing the Squats.
Removing models / units from the Marine range in general for the sake of 'streamlining' will cause just as much rage, if not more.

I think that's why GW chickened out from removing Firstborn, which has led to this ridiculous ballooning of Space Marine units to the point there's 2-3 units at least competing for each army role.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think that's why GW chickened out from removing Firstborn, which has led to this ridiculous ballooning of Space Marine units to the point there's 2-3 units at least competing for each army role.

It doesn't help that there's an insane amount of duplication in the HQ section, where every separate sculpt appears to have its own entry.

Instead of just having, say, Primaris Lieutenant - which may be armed with weapons A, B, C, X, Y, Z... You have distinct entries for Primaris Lieutenant With Bolt Gun, Primaris Lieutenant With Pistol And Sword, Primaris Lieutenant Pointing At Enemy, Primaris Lieutenant Scratching His Arse and so on...

They wouldn't have to remove the range. Could still sell it as some collectible range for people to paint and collect. Just remove them from the codex. Hell, they could throw all the sunset units into their own codex for posterity.

The thing is GW isn't going to "stop" making miniatures for their own ranges and if anything it feels like they've ramped up production on certain ranges that just can't really handle it.

That or they start to make clear distinctions between the different "factions". Firstborn buffers can only buff firstborn marines, and primaris buffers can only buff primaris marines. Just to get away from this endless combinational nightmare they are sinking into.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Space Marines are pretty fundemental to the 40k setting.

Gamewise, they provide heavy armoured infantry which are pretty fundamental to this sort of diesel punk grimdark setting that 40k is.

If you were to completely reset 40k, ignoring all existing collections, one could argue that Space Marines should be reduced to a sub-faction, not dissimilar to Tempestus are now. To represent their small strike force nature.

They were fundamental in 40k because of the Horus Heresy but thats where their role in the setting ended for the most part. Most of the planets in the Imperium will never be set foot upon by a space marine. Many citizens of the Imperium think they're literal angels. Even most Guardsmen will never see one. They're figures of myth and legend and that is far more interesting than them being an army of Space Super Heroes driving Tonka toy vehicles.

I know that within the setting, Space Marines are pretty niche units.
What I meant was that Space Marines are hugely fundemental to the setting for outside observers. It'd be like removing the Enterprise and asking if Star Trek was really any different. It's just one ship in a whole galaxy, right? Or removing Jedi from Star Wars, there were only like 2 in the original trilogy, they won't be missed.

You also know that many Star Trek and Star Wars productions have been popular without the titular "trademarks" of the franchise right? Deep Space Nine and Voyager immediately spring to mind for Star Trek. I don't know Star Wars that well but I don't think the TIE Fighter games featured Jedi particularly heavily and more recently and very notably The Mandalorian doesn't seem to focus very heavily on Jedi stuff outside of Green Gizmo. I could be wrong about that though as like I said, I'm not into Star Wars.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Or removing Jedi from Star Wars, there were only like 2 in the original trilogy, they won't be missed.

Best star wars released in the last 38 years, Rogue One, had no Jedi in it and I definitely not missed them .

If admech and darkmech can be run from a consolidated book, and eldar, craftworld, dark eldar, etc can be consolidated, why not Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines?

None, absolutely none. All this talk about rules bloat and faction bloat is just pure hypocrisy. It basically always boils down to: remove the factions I don't play or don't like, cause my faction doesn't get enough releases.

If GW had only ever made 4 factions, or suddenly removed some factions, the same people would be complaining that there are not enough factions and diversity.

The only real problem is that GW does not give the same support to each faction. They have the means to do it, but primarily focus on big releases for space marines instead because they are their cash cow.

How about appreciating that 40k is a setting with a plethora of awsome and unique factions to choose from.
I wouldn't want to play a game where the factions are streamlined to flavours of space marine, orks, eldar and chaos.

Telling individual stories without Space Marines, in a similar vein to Rogue One or Mandalorian, is absolutely fine. Indeed, this is already done and it's great.
But I don't think you could write them out of the lore and game and expect that not to turn a lot of people off.

I think trimming factions to remove some the massive skew in 40k would be beneficial.

Knights should definitely go - at least in their capacity as a stand-alone army of Super Heavies appropriate to use in "normal" size games.

Custodes can also go. Similar to the Knights though, leaving them as a sub-faction designed to include a small detachment amongst another army would be fine.

I also think Harlequins should go, they're one datasheet that have been stretched into an entire faction and it just doesn't go far enough.
You could fully commit to a Harlequin faction in the same way as Deathguard but even then I think they'd be too similar to the existing Eldar factions. So I think it'd best to condense them back into the Eldar codex like they used to be, as essentially another Aspect.

But where factions fit within the general framework of the game and are distinct enough to feel different I see no reason why they should be removed. What needs to be removed is all stuff within factions, like strategems and excessive special rules.

welp, looks like its time for this thread again, where a bunch of people get together and complain that a faction that got 15 seconds of attention 5 years ago doesn't deserve to exist at all (but ofc the faction that has as many boltgun weapons as Tau has fething ranged weapons is A-OK no problems here)

 the_scotsman wrote:
welp, looks like its time for this thread again, where a bunch of people get together and complain that a faction that got 15 seconds of attention 5 years ago doesn't deserve to exist at all (but ofc the faction that has as many boltgun weapons as Tau has fething ranged weapons is A-OK no problems here)

I don't know if it suits your grand standing or not but you'll notice removing the excessive Space Marines is leading the poll by some margin...

Karol wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
For those suggesting consolidations involving Inquisition:

Sororitas go with Hereticus
Death Watch go with Xenos
Grey Knights go with Malleus

So you can add the Inquisition Ordo into the appropriate dex (fail because if you like all flavours of Inquisition, you need 3 books)

OR you could put all six factions in one book, which would be fairly large book, but probably not more sheets than Marines, so probably doable.

Those are the only options that really make sense, because they are the only solutions that solve ALL of the Inq/ Chamber Militant issues.

Or leave DW, SoB and GK alone, and leave the inquisition stuff for the BL or maybe give them a unit entry that can be put in to any imperial army. Having GK,SoB and DW in the same book would more or less invalidate the majority of the armies. Why take GK or DW, when SoB have just more point efficient units? Why ask for DW or GK to be improved, when the counter argument is always going to be, inquisition codex is fine, just play with more SoB units.

Oh yeah, for sure. Remember, I don't actually advocate consolidating or removing any of the dexes; I was just responding to folks who were suggesting incomplete solutions, because if they started playing in 8th or later, they might not actually know which army is the chamber militant of which order.

My solution to the Inquisition is to actually add an Imperial Agents codex. This would not only solve the Inquisition, it would also handle Rogue Traders, Assassins and maybe some unaligned units. Not only that, the potential for Inquisition related Crusade content is, quite frankly, the coolest potential content that might never get made this edition.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
welp, looks like its time for this thread again, where a bunch of people get together and complain that a faction that got 15 seconds of attention 5 years ago doesn't deserve to exist at all (but ofc the faction that has as many boltgun weapons as Tau has fething ranged weapons is A-OK no problems here)

I don't know if it suits your grand standing or not but you'll notice removing the excessive Space Marines is leading the poll by some margin...

Sure, but every other post is 'remove harlequins'. Why? Whose space are we taking up? Are harlequins not more distinct to eldar (don't wear armor, don't use guns, completely different suite of characters, only vehicle is a Dark Eldar transport/Eldar gunboat, jetbikes have different weapon loadouts+two riders) than ANY variant space marine is to normal space marines?

Death Guard and CSM are less distinct than Harlequins and Eldar. Harlequins vs Eldar is more like the distinction between Daemons and CSM.

Since their initial launch two editions ago, Harlequins have taken the following out of everyone else's release schedule:

-one codex book in 8th edition.

That's it. Total. Ever. That's all the upkeep of the harlequin range that has ever been necessary for anything.

Meanwhile you've all had to sit and wait through 3 marine codexes, 12 supplements, and 3x more plastic kit releases than the entire sisters of battle range.

You didnt even have to suffer our inclusion in a fething PA book, we snuck into a white dwarf and were grateful for the recognition of our continued existence.

Knights, meanwhile, just a reminder, 3 codexes, 2 upgrade kits, 3 new kits, several box games, and a whole slew of forgeworld releases.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Telling individual stories without Space Marines, in a similar vein to Rogue One or Mandalorian, is absolutely fine. Indeed, this is already done and it's great.
But I don't think you could write them out of the lore and game and expect that not to turn a lot of people off.

I think trimming factions to remove some the massive skew in 40k would be beneficial.

Knights should definitely go - at least in their capacity as a stand-alone army of Super Heavies appropriate to use in "normal" size games.

Custodes can also go. Similar to the Knights though, leaving them as a sub-faction designed to include a small detachment amongst another army would be fine.

I also think Harlequins should go, they're one datasheet that have been stretched into an entire faction and it just doesn't go far enough.
You could fully commit to a Harlequin faction in the same way as Deathguard but even then I think they'd be too similar to the existing Eldar factions. So I think it'd best to condense them back into the Eldar codex like they used to be, as essentially another Aspect.

But where factions fit within the general framework of the game and are distinct enough to feel different I see no reason why they should be removed. What needs to be removed is all stuff within factions, like strategems and excessive special rules.

Couldn't disagree more, especially about harlequins. They are a living example of how you can make a faction interesting both regarding rules and lore, even though they have fewer kits than most armies. They play distinct from other factions and while they have very few kits, those that they have are really good.

I don't think knights should go, but I will be the first to grant that their release has created problems regarding scale in 40k. Walkers that big were mostly reserved for apoc and the castellan managed to shape the meta for quite some time. I still think they can have a place though, given their rules are written competently.

....just give them some freaking infantry units already, with the knights. Release some knight world peasants and make them the 40k equivalent of Brettonians. its amazing how much more bearable just including the 'big dreadnought thing' mini-knight made them to play against in 9th edition.

 the_scotsman wrote:
....just give them some freaking infantry units already, with the knights. Release some knight world peasants and make them the 40k equivalent of Brettonians. its amazing how much more bearable just including the 'big dreadnought thing' mini-knight made them to play against in 9th edition.

I don't think simply adding infantry would solve it.

Pulling a bit from Battletech, having the Knights pulling a zellbrigen system could go a long way towards balancing some of their problematic areas at lower levels.
Taking advantage of the Combat Patrol etc markups for missions could go another way, simply disallowing Lords of War from them outside of specific Open/Narrative missions would be another good option.

Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

You purchase Endless Spells as part of your army and then cast them during the game. They persist until unbound by an enemy Wizard (or in AOS3, Priests can do it too), the spell crosses the edge of the battlefield when it is moved, or if the spell has a set expiration condition on its warscroll card.

Additionally, it is treated as a friendly model for all rules purposes(you'd think that a heckin' giant purple orb of DOOM! would terrify you at all times, but nah!) and they activated before either army at the start of a turn.

When unbound/removed, they could be cast again but we don't need that for Knights/LOWs. Having them start off the field and effectively be played out of sequence could be a good balancing act.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Telling individual stories without Space Marines, in a similar vein to Rogue One or Mandalorian, is absolutely fine. Indeed, this is already done and it's great.
But I don't think you could write them out of the lore and game and expect that not to turn a lot of people off.

I didn't say write them out of the lore. I said they should be the semi-mythical literal angels of death that the lore presents them as. Not the participators in every pub brawl within a 1000 system radius that they currently are. And the topic isn't "what can we trim to make people happy and makes financial sense". It was simply "what would you trim"?

 the_scotsman wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
welp, looks like its time for this thread again, where a bunch of people get together and complain that a faction that got 15 seconds of attention 5 years ago doesn't deserve to exist at all (but ofc the faction that has as many boltgun weapons as Tau has fething ranged weapons is A-OK no problems here)

I don't know if it suits your grand standing or not but you'll notice removing the excessive Space Marines is leading the poll by some margin...

Sure, but every other post is 'remove harlequins'. Why? Whose space are we taking up? Are harlequins not more distinct to eldar (don't wear armor, don't use guns, completely different suite of characters, only vehicle is a Dark Eldar transport/Eldar gunboat, jetbikes have different weapon loadouts+two riders) than ANY variant space marine is to normal space marines?

Death Guard and CSM are less distinct than Harlequins and Eldar. Harlequins vs Eldar is more like the distinction between Daemons and CSM.

Since their initial launch two editions ago, Harlequins have taken the following out of everyone else's release schedule:

-one codex book in 8th edition.

That's it. Total. Ever. That's all the upkeep of the harlequin range that has ever been necessary for anything.

Meanwhile you've all had to sit and wait through 3 marine codexes, 12 supplements, and 3x more plastic kit releases than the entire sisters of battle range.

You didnt even have to suffer our inclusion in a fething PA book, we snuck into a white dwarf and were grateful for the recognition of our continued existence.

Knights, meanwhile, just a reminder, 3 codexes, 2 upgrade kits, 3 new kits, several box games, and a whole slew of forgeworld releases.

Disagree. Quinns and DG are both very indistinct from elder and CSM. Harlequins are just like another aspect warrior of the eldar - though it is more like an affliction than a path (in fact that is what they used to be). DG are literally just CSM. Nether deserves their own codex. ESP not before their parent codex comes out.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

You purchase Endless Spells as part of your army and then cast them during the game. They persist until unbound by an enemy Wizard (or in AOS3, Priests can do it too), the spell crosses the edge of the battlefield when it is moved, or if the spell has a set expiration condition on its warscroll card.

Additionally, it is treated as a friendly model for all rules purposes(you'd think that a heckin' giant purple orb of DOOM! would terrify you at all times, but nah!) and they activated before either army at the start of a turn.

When unbound/removed, they could be cast again but we don't need that for Knights/LOWs. Having them start off the field and effectively be played out of sequence could be a good balancing act.

So, you mean that LoW are supposed to be kind of uncontrollable environmental effects that might leave the battle early?

Sounds interesting for narrative games, but I'm not convinced for matched play.

Matched Play is effectively its own subgame at this point, and tourney organizers make crap up anyways. Let them figure it out--it is not my problem to have to figure out how to balance for a subgame where people crow about how list-building is a "skill".

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

You purchase Endless Spells as part of your army and then cast them during the game. They persist until unbound by an enemy Wizard (or in AOS3, Priests can do it too), the spell crosses the edge of the battlefield when it is moved, or if the spell has a set expiration condition on its warscroll card.

Additionally, it is treated as a friendly model for all rules purposes(you'd think that a heckin' giant purple orb of DOOM! would terrify you at all times, but nah!) and they activated before either army at the start of a turn.

When unbound/removed, they could be cast again but we don't need that for Knights/LOWs. Having them start off the field and effectively be played out of sequence could be a good balancing act.

So, you mean that LoW are supposed to be kind of uncontrollable environmental effects that might leave the battle early?

Sounds interesting for narrative games, but I'm not convinced for matched play.

Reminds me of a mission from Dawn Of War where a Titan's volcano cannon has been broken off and it keeps firing off in intervals and forms a trench on the map that runs down the centre so you have to time moving units through it to get to the enemy base.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

You purchase Endless Spells as part of your army and then cast them during the game. They persist until unbound by an enemy Wizard (or in AOS3, Priests can do it too), the spell crosses the edge of the battlefield when it is moved, or if the spell has a set expiration condition on its warscroll card.

Additionally, it is treated as a friendly model for all rules purposes(you'd think that a heckin' giant purple orb of DOOM! would terrify you at all times, but nah!) and they activated before either army at the start of a turn.

When unbound/removed, they could be cast again but we don't need that for Knights/LOWs. Having them start off the field and effectively be played out of sequence could be a good balancing act.

This idea married to 40k LoW sounds like really bad game design. You are clearly the type of talent GW s looking for. :(

ccs wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Hell, treating Knights and other LOWs as pseudo-Endless Spells could be an interesting option too.

Can you explain this for people who only buy endless spells as conversion bits for 40k terrain?

You purchase Endless Spells as part of your army and then cast them during the game. They persist until unbound by an enemy Wizard (or in AOS3, Priests can do it too), the spell crosses the edge of the battlefield when it is moved, or if the spell has a set expiration condition on its warscroll card.

Additionally, it is treated as a friendly model for all rules purposes(you'd think that a heckin' giant purple orb of DOOM! would terrify you at all times, but nah!) and they activated before either army at the start of a turn.

When unbound/removed, they could be cast again but we don't need that for Knights/LOWs. Having them start off the field and effectively be played out of sequence could be a good balancing act.

This idea married to 40k LoW sounds like really bad game design. You are clearly the type of talent GW s looking for. :(

Why?

The idea that more powerful elements that won't ordinarily work on the battlefield scale of 40k like artillery/orbital strikes, flyers and superheavies MUST be balanced such that a standard TAC list can and will be able to destroy them has seemed to cause a lot of problems.

Those elements being only available at certain times during the game, making them delayed assets or unreliable assets, would seem to make much more sense from a narrative coherence standpoint.

Certainly that's how planes have been handled in every world war 2 game I've ever played. The idea that your little platoon of infantry and tanks without specialized anti-aircraft weaponry will be able to fire at and destroy enemy air support or else that air support will infinitely circle around the battlefield, shooting something every single turn like a very very fast tank that ignores all terrain is just...silly.

Typically, you've got units whose job it is to improve their performance or reliability (spotters) that follow the rules for infantry and can be targeted by everything at your opponent's disposal, and destroying them is a way of indirectly destroying/impeding the plane or offmap artillery, but you rarely actually destroy or damage the plane as it comes in for a run unless you've both included anti-aircraft specialized weaponry or emplacements and you get fairly lucky.

 the_scotsman wrote:
...Why?

The idea that more powerful elements that won't ordinarily work on the battlefield scale of 40k like artillery/orbital strikes, flyers and superheavies MUST be balanced such that a standard TAC list can and will be able to destroy them has seemed to cause a lot of problems.

Those elements being only available at certain times during the game, making them delayed assets or unreliable assets, would seem to make much more sense from a narrative coherence standpoint.

Certainly that's how planes have been handled in every world war 2 game I've ever played. The idea that your little platoon of infantry and tanks without specialized anti-aircraft weaponry will be able to fire at and destroy enemy air support or else that air support will infinitely circle around the battlefield, shooting something every single turn like a very very fast tank that ignores all terrain is just...silly.

Typically, you've got units whose job it is to improve their performance or reliability (spotters) that follow the rules for infantry and can be targeted by everything at your opponent's disposal, and destroying them is a way of indirectly destroying/impeding the plane or offmap artillery, but you rarely actually destroy or damage the plane as it comes in for a run unless you've both included anti-aircraft specialized weaponry or emplacements and you get fairly lucky.

The problem I usually have with these kinds of suggestions is that unlike in a WWII game the line between "too big for Warhammer" and "not too big for Warhammer" is often incredibly arbitrary. Why is a Valkyrie out of scale but a Falcon isn't? Why is a Malcador out of scale but a Land Raider isn't? Personally I think it'd be better to actually go to the time and effort of integrating the big things into the game rather than saying "they're not well-integrated into the game, delete them."

I think ditching the Knights would be best until they can figure out how to make 500pts of Knight work as a live alternative to 500pts of infantry. I think 2nd edition Epic Space Marine had a system that could work.