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 Charistoph wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

Then you haven't played a lot of games then. WarmaHordes is replete with this. X-Wing pretty much requires you to know what possible cards your opponent MAY be able to use so you can have cards to exploit or counter them. Most games that have seen regular growth for a decade or more have this concept as the developers add new things to be keep them fresh. Heck, even Battletech has this if one allows certain tech areas to be explored. That doesn't even consider the other Warhammer games of Fantasy and Age of Sigmar.

But neither of those games have army sizes you can expect to see in 40k and also have consistent keywords, USRs and language across the rules. All things 40k lacks.

40k has a clunkier system than both of those combined with larger armies, so even more moving parts to keep track of. It is utterly mind-boggling (not to mention bores me to tears) how much you are expected to keep track of in 40k compared to other games of similar-sized armies.

I think you are right. Sometimes it sounds as if people wanted to have both a dynamic rule set like infinity, with a lot of over laying rules and traits and options, but with ease of playing draughts at the same time.

Big multi model games should be less focused on stuff like true LoS and what happens to one specific model on the table, when both armies run around with 50+ per side. The flexibility, special rules for unique models etc should be limited to games like kill team.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Firstly, again you've said people are saying its too complex when a majority of people have said that the issue is not complexity, its bloat and rules spread over too many sources. Please stop beating that strawman.

YOu sAId "ComPLeX", sO youR arGUMenT dOeSN'T coUNT!
Who is the one strawmanning here? I don't give a feth what label you put on your whining.

Secondly I am interested in a solution. The solution is for GW to write a better game that has meaningful decisions to make during the game that doesn't require homework or foreknowledge of every rules combo of every faction to play a fun game.

And there we have it. There are easy ways around the problem, but you simply reject them. I'd also like to point out how silly it is to whine about one or two hours of "homework" in a game that forces you to spend hundreds of hours on painting and building rules.

You are simply not interested in any solution but your own. And this is the problem. In this thread, and most likely in your games.

Since the world won't change for you and you are refusing to adapt, the only logical consequence for you should be to abandon the game. Anything else is just self-inflicted pain.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

Then you haven't played a lot of games then. WarmaHordes is replete with this. X-Wing pretty much requires you to know what possible cards your opponent MAY be able to use so you can have cards to exploit or counter them. Most games that have seen regular growth for a decade or more have this concept as the developers add new things to be keep them fresh. Heck, even Battletech has this if one allows certain tech areas to be explored. That doesn't even consider the other Warhammer games of Fantasy and Age of Sigmar.

But neither of those games have army sizes you can expect to see in 40k and also have consistent keywords, USRs and language across the rules. All things 40k lacks.

40k has a clunkier system than both of those combined with larger armies, so even more moving parts to keep track of. It is utterly mind-boggling (not to mention bores me to tears) how much you are expected to keep track of in 40k compared to other games of similar-sized armies.

I was about to say this. People keep saying you can ask your opponent what their stuff does bit in 40k if you want a really comprehensive explantion you'll be sitting there a while and god help you trying to remember the one hour verbal lecture. Warmachine you're dealing with maybe 2 or 3 units with WYSIWYG, a solos/CAs that grants a USR or two. 40k has armies two or three times the size with units with variable wargear that isn't always represented.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

You can't have it both ways. If you want to know all rules of the game, you need to invest some time to learn them.

Imagine a MtG player complaining about an opponent playing a card he didn't know. He would be laughed out of the community.

The thing is... in 9th, just like in MtG, you don't need to know every single card or stratagem. You just need to know what is possible in general and what to look out for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think in general this topic would be much more valuable for everyone involved if we were to switch to sharing solutions for the "I don't want to run into gotchas" problem instead of people just whining about how unsolvable the problem is.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

You can't have it both ways. If you want to know all rules of the game, you need to invest some time to learn them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think in general this topic would be much more valuable for everyone involved if we were to switch to sharing solutions for the "I don't want to run into gotchas" problem instead of people just whining about how unsolvable the problem is.

It's really amazing how you manage to keep misinterpreting what people say. No one WANTS to have to know all the rules. The entire point people are trying to make is the exact opposite of what you seem to think it is. 40k is NOT a game for having extensive rules knowledge, it's a game for mucking about.

Also, MtG is a false comaparison. It has MASSIVE tournaments, multiple official varients that are widely accepted by the community, ban lists etc It's a totally different beast. When GW runs tournaments with $50,000+ prizes and just outright bans certain units from being used, then you'd have a point.

 slave.entity wrote:
For a lot of people the "homework" is the game.

As always the important thing to remember is this: all kinds of people play 40k for all kinds of different reasons. There is no simple way of making an objective judgement on the quality of a game without first understanding the specific type of player playing it, and more importantly, what they want out of it.

Im starting to believe there is a strong overlap between people who love the current incarnation of 40k, corporate layers and BDSM aficionados.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Chess is a game using mirror "factions", 40k is a game involving completely different factions. Is there someone who really wants identical factions just for the sake of balance and to avoid "homework?".

To avoid gotchas just read a dedicated article, it's way faster than explaining stuff from the opponent and fast enough to be considered. Take the new ork codex for example: what do you really need to know to avoid gotchas? Maybe how the kill rig works and the Ramming Speed stratagem, that's it.

What about the infamous Drukhari codex? Keep in mind that Strife models fight first, Incubi can make you fight last, and that hellions/reavers have a stratagem to inflict mortal wounds just by flying over a model. Done. It really isn't hard to avoid gotchas, there are so few of them possible with 9th codexes.

I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

Exactly. Why is homework of this kind a good thing? Why are people defending it? It doesn't lead to a more tactically engaging game or increase meaningful decision making. Many other games manage to have diverse factions and units without resorting to byzantine collections of disparate systems to do so.

The Slaanesh example earlier shows how bad GW are at writing their rules. One of Slaanesh's defining traits in 40k is denying Fall Back, which is fine. A couple of their units can do it but both do it in different ways. Why? Not only does that approach require more work from GW, it increases the possibility of a feels-bad gotcha because an opponent may get the two abilities mixed up even if they remember they exist. I cannot figure out why people would think this is a desirable trait in a game.

Its called Stockholm Syndrome

 slave.entity wrote:
For a lot of people the "homework" is the game.

As always the important thing to remember is this: all kinds of people play 40k for all kinds of different reasons. There is no simple way of making an objective judgement on the quality of a game without first understanding the specific type of player playing it, and more importantly, what they want out of it.

I think the problem is that GW doesn't seem prepared to acknowledge that all kinds of different people play their game. They've tried to position 40k as everything to everyone, but all they seem to manage to do is irritate tournament players with a continuing lack of interest in balance, irritate new players with price hikes, irritate old players with edition churn and a lack of updates for any of their stuff, and irritate narrative players with no model->no rules and a seeming push towards tournament-focused design. I know their sales figures are going up but I'm increasingly reading that as the Steam game with high sales and a tiny percentage of people with any actual play-time; there are people who decide to start and then realize all the minis they liked are terrible and don't play, people who had no intention of playing, people who start playing on their kitchen table with a heavily doctored version of the rules and never make the transition to playing with other people, and the small core of hardcore tournament people who spend all their spare time gushing about how this is the best edition ever while buying a new army ever six months.

I don't think I can objectively judge 40k as "good" or "bad" in quality; those are wild oversimplifications. I do think GW's pattern of rules writing feels exactly the same to me right now as it did at the absolute nadir of 7th; bloat for bloat's sake, updates uneven in quality and quantity, trying to sell old minis by bundling them with new minis, edition churn for edition churn's sake. I think their rising sales figures have more to do with the fact that they've figured out how to sell the game without having to put any more effort into the rules than they did before: if they can get the loud voices in the competitive community on the Internet on side people will figure the game is good without ever having to read anything about it. And I think, objectively, the game is made worse for everyone by trying to be all things to all people and it'd be better for all of us (even for GW) if they were to acknowledge that 40k is "for" the tournament people and put more effort into the specialist games sphere (things like SWA, 30k, and KT) to try and give people who don't like the current direction of 40k something to do other than sit around the fringes of the community whining or buying other companies' games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

The homework might be fast, easy, fun even, but it's still a requirement I don't think anyone is denying - and that sets it apart from other games in a way that some people didn't sign up for and would prefer not exist.

You can't have it both ways. If you want to know all rules of the game, you need to invest some time to learn them.

Imagine a MtG player complaining about an opponent playing a card he didn't know. He would be laughed out of the community.

The thing is... in 9th, just like in MtG, you don't need to know every single card or stratagem. You just need to know what is possible in general and what to look out for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think in general this topic would be much more valuable for everyone involved if we were to switch to sharing solutions for the "I don't want to run into gotchas" problem instead of people just whining about how unsolvable the problem is.

I find Infinity's way, way heavier on mechanics that should lead to "gotcha" moments than 40k (public list vs. private list, Hidden Deployment where you write down where the model is rather than actually placing it, camo markers that could be any of a number of things) but it feels a lot fairer to me because almost nothing is faction-locked and you can interact with every mechanic in more ways. In 40k you have things like the miracle dice/fate dice where one faction has this huge, powerful dice-fixing mechanic that their opponents can't imitate without buying that army and can't interact with at all so it just feels like you're getting a big middle finger from the rules writers. Having an Oniwaban pop out of hidden deployment with a dodge-engage and monofilamenting your TAG down on the next reaction looks like a gotcha, but at least for me the reaction is "I guess I should have swept that bit of the board" rather than "what the hell was I supposed to do about that, then?"

 Jidmah wrote:
If you want to know all rules of the game, you need to invest some time to learn them.

Which would be way easier if there were fewer rules, like in earlier editions (3rd/4th).

The game would also be more forgiving of not knowing all the rules if the 'wombo-combo' combinations weren't so lethal either.

 Blackie wrote:
Chess is a game using mirror "factions", 40k is a game involving completely different factions. Is there someone who really wants identical factions just for the sake of balance and to avoid "homework?".

Were factions identical in the 1st-7th edition? If people could pick their own Stratagems from a set of generic Stratagems armies would get more flavour options, not less. If you wanted to study the best combinations of units and Stratagmes in that system you still could, but you only need to read the core rules and the matched play rules, not 20 codexes and 15 supplements. Tonnes of people want Knights gone because they're too different, too hard to balance, I think they can work as long as they are below A tier in terms of competitiveness. For me the line stops at 200 Stratagems, anything more than that is too much and I'd prefer the number to be around 30 and each one after that needs to have a damn good reason for existing.

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I suppose the standout for me is that 40k is the only game where this sort of homework is "required" (if I want to avoid gotchas) despite the existence of many other games that also have diverse and distinct factions.

It's super required in Yugioh, there are so many lines of text in a deck's worth of cards that unless you know all 300 cards in the meta then games will go at a snail's pace. I quit Yugioh for other reasons, keeping up wasn't so bad, but getting back in? Not going to happen. I suppose the same is true for comp 40k, I don't see myself going back to that until points are balanced and someone curbs the Stratagem bloat.

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Undercosted as an explanation has its limits though. There is a point where a lot of things could become good by being undercosted. Make a termintor 12pts, and suddenly they will become the best unit marine can take. DE may cost less, then what other armies get for their points, but they also have very powerful rules. A wych unit that would just be cheap, wouldn't be as important, as wych unit which is cheap and can trade up thanks to the rules it has. Same with succubi or Drazh.
GK have a, potential, librarian build which turns him to a super nova for a turn. But it costs pts, requires casts, which can fail etc. He is still very good for the points he costs. But it is no where near to the old succubi with infinite number of attacks.

Ther is also the question of balance, in the aspect of what it is balanced against. If DE go down from almost 70% win rate to low 60%, which is still huge, but are considered balanced only against armies with similar rule sets and win rates, then players get in to trouble, if they play one of those unupdate armies, or they play something that is not a pre build list decied by GW how faction X should be run. The don't worry about DE, Ad Mecha will fix them, is not a fun thing to expiriance, if you don't play either of armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


I find Infinity's way, way heavier on mechanics that should lead to "gotcha" moments than 40k (public list vs. private list, Hidden Deployment where you write down where the model is rather than actually placing it, camo markers that could be any of a number of things) but it feels a lot fairer to me because almost nothing is faction-locked and you can interact with every mechanic in more ways. In 40k you have things like the miracle dice/fate dice where one faction has this huge, powerful dice-fixing mechanic that their opponents can't imitate without buying that army and can't interact with at all so it just feels like you're getting a big middle finger from the rules writers. Having an Oniwaban pop out of hidden deployment with a dodge-engage and monofilamenting your TAG down on the next reaction looks like a gotcha, but at least for me the reaction is "I guess I should have swept that bit of the board" rather than "what the hell was I supposed to do about that, then?"

When all or most factions are OP, then no faction is OP. The problem with w40k is that often the difference between a good army and a bad army is very big. To a point where casual lists from good codex are better then tournament lists of other factions. And this shouldn't happen, people shouldn't be forced to play a super optimised specific list, because nothing else out of their codex works. And it goes both ways. For armies which are or were bad, or armies which had that one golden build, like tau drone farms, and everything else being not worth taking.

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

So why not have a million Stratagems? Why not make up new Stratagems as you play? What's the right amount?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

The "gotcha" in 40k is "this army is just better than mine and there's nothing I can do about it" more often than it's "this army has this one weird trick and I have tools I can counter it with next time," at least for me.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

So why not have a million Stratagems? Why not make up new Stratagems as you play? What's the right amount?

Because a million is a "bit" too many to remember, and probably wouldn't fit in all of the books . And, probably for the same reason you don't get to make up your units stats on the fly? Somewhere between "more than 1, but less than a million".

Are we done being silly and hyperbolic now?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

The "gotcha" in 40k is "this army is just better than mine and there's nothing I can do about it" more often than it's "this army has this one weird trick and I have tools I can counter it with next time," at least for me.

That isn't a "complexity" problem, it's a balance problem. And I agree with you it's a problem.

Would someone like to do a list of these wombo-combo gotchas, because I really don't think there are that many.

 vict0988 wrote:
If people could pick their own Stratagems from a set of generic Stratagems armies would get more flavour options, not less. If you wanted to study the best combinations of units and Stratagems in that system you still could, but you only need to read the core rules and the matched play rules, not 20 codexes and 15 supplements.

I really like the fact that all factions have sub-factions and that those factions and subfactions all play differently, so I was inclined to react negatively to this. I thought about it a bit more before I posted, re-read your post a few times. If strategems are your bugbear, I suppose there are ways you could tame them down- after all, it doesn't seem like you're also suggesting removing the other pieces of the faction/ sub-faction uniqueness equation.

If we kept our subfaction and army rules, a bespoke WL trait, and a bespoke relic, each subfaction could still have enough to feel different than the others. Maybe we have the generic list + one bespoke one for each subfaction, and maybe a pool of four bespoke strats to choose from at the faction level.

Now that strats have become such a part of faction/ sub faction identity, I'd very much miss them. Blessed bolts, deadly descent, defenders of the faith... Those are awesome bespoke strats that give certain units the power to perform truly heroic actions. I think a lot would be lost by eliminating these, and they are too powerful to be datacard abilities, so leaving them the way there are is the easiest solution, even if you did end up shunting many of the others into a generic list.

On a sidenote, for all the complaints strats seem to generate, it might be interesting to poll how many different strats the average player actually uses. For most, I bet it's leass than 10, and for many, it's probably five or less.

 vict0988 wrote:

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife.

-1 to hit (or any other way to reduce/avoid damage) on a bike/fast unit and re-roll wounds (or any other way to increase damage) for a close combat oriented unit? Who doesn't have those? You should expect something like that even without knowing a single thing about that army.

Gotchas really are extremely limited in 40k. And someone who plays more than a game per month should quickly learn them, even without reading anything but his own rules before playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
Would someone like to do a list of these wombo-combo gotchas, because I really don't think there are that many.

No more than 3-4 per faction, really. And that's an overestimate to be sure to include everything.

Grimtuff wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Then you haven't played a lot of games then. WarmaHordes is replete with this. X-Wing pretty much requires you to know what possible cards your opponent MAY be able to use so you can have cards to exploit or counter them. Most games that have seen regular growth for a decade or more have this concept as the developers add new things to be keep them fresh. Heck, even Battletech has this if one allows certain tech areas to be explored. That doesn't even consider the other Warhammer games of Fantasy and Age of Sigmar.

But neither of those games have army sizes you can expect to see in 40k and also have consistent keywords, USRs and language across the rules. All things 40k lacks.

40k has a clunkier system than both of those combined with larger armies, so even more moving parts to keep track of. It is utterly mind-boggling (not to mention bores me to tears) how much you are expected to keep track of in 40k compared to other games of similar-sized armies.

I can count on one had the number of units in WarmaHordes who have only the consistent keywords on their cards, to say nothing about the variety each individual Battlegroup Controller provide to the army.

Each of the major factions also has more skus than any faction in 40K, aside from the Astartes. Thankfully, the hyper-competitive meta helps reduce the need to know all of them, as so many are considered trash tier that one will rarely see them on the table, except when it is someone new.

While the number of models may be smaller in WMH, the number of cards/datasheets are actually closer than you are thinking when comparing a Steamroller army to a 40K Tournament army.

I don't dismiss how clunky 40K is, I'm just saying that 40K isn't the only one that demands a fair bit of homework to avoid gotchas.

Sim-Life wrote:I was about to say this. People keep saying you can ask your opponent what their stuff does bit in 40k if you want a really comprehensive explantion you'll be sitting there a while and god help you trying to remember the one hour verbal lecture. Warmachine you're dealing with maybe 2 or 3 units with WYSIWYG, a solos/CAs that grants a USR or two. 40k has armies two or three times the size with units with variable wargear that isn't always represented.

And you can ask in WMH, too. And you dismiss everything the Battlegroup Controller provides along with their Jacks, and especially any Warbeasts (who add more spells to the Controller's list) as well as the Theme bonuses they are running with. While the number of models IS most definitely higher, one is more likely to be spamming units in 40K than WMH where one generally doesn't have the point structure to do so (aside from a few exceptions like Skorne's Exalted). However, the number of unique cards one will see in WMH is closer to the number of unique datasheets one will see in 40K than you are assuming.

vict0988 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Chess is a game using mirror "factions", 40k is a game involving completely different factions. Is there someone who really wants identical factions just for the sake of balance and to avoid "homework?".

Were factions identical in the 1st-7th edition? If people could pick their own Stratagems from a set of generic Stratagems armies would get more flavour options, not less. If you wanted to study the best combinations of units and Stratagmes in that system you still could, but you only need to read the core rules and the matched play rules, not 20 codexes and 15 supplements. Tonnes of people want Knights gone because they're too different, too hard to balance, I think they can work as long as they are below A tier in terms of competitiveness. For me the line stops at 200 Stratagems, anything more than that is too much and I'd prefer the number to be around 30 and each one after that needs to have a damn good reason for existing.

This reminds me of how Horus Heresy players would go on about how balanced it is compared to regular 40K. Then I'd just point out to them that they are largely dealing with the same units available per side with some minor variations. It just doesn't have the disparity between Custodes and Guardsmen that it has to worry about. At most it is closer to C:SM vs CA/C:BA/C:SW.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
...Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What about the infamous Drukhari codex?...

You forgot lightning-fast reactions and re-roll wounds for Cult of Strife. Drukhari aren't strong because of gotcha stuff anyway, they are just undercosted.

Who is? The faction with the newest codex? But after they "gotcha" once, it doesn't work anymore, because you remember it after that. You touched a hot stove, you got burnt, you don't do that anymore. It's just memorization, and nothing helps your memory more than watching your favorite unit get nuked because you didn't know [FACTION (X)] can do (Y). The more you learn the better you get, that's true for games and life in general.

The "gotcha" in 40k is "this army is just better than mine and there's nothing I can do about it" more often than it's "this army has this one weird trick and I have tools I can counter it with next time," at least for me.

That isn't a "complexity" problem, it's a balance problem. And I agree with you it's a problem.

The complexity's led GW into doing a bunch of things I've never seen another minis game try and do, like the paint minis this colour->get free buffs to everything we clearly didn't consider the consequences of faction traits, because by being more complex they've made it even harder to balance.


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 Charistoph wrote:
...This reminds me of how Horus Heresy players would go on about how balanced it is compared to regular 40K. Then I'd just point out to them that they are largely dealing with the same units available per side with some minor variations. It just doesn't have the disparity between Custodes and Guardsmen that it has to worry about. At most it is closer to C:SM vs CA/C:BA/C:SW.

In a literal sense 30k does have the Custodes/Guardsmen disparity to worry about; there are Custodes, Guardsmen in many shapes and sizes, Daemons, the wackiness that is the 30k Mechanicum, and even Knights once you get outside of the Legions lists that are all written for 30k and at least theoretically balanced for 30k. Though I am kind of amused by the fact that the "30k is the most balanced thing ever!" people are usually the first to complain if you try and put a Cybernetica list down (your Troops are T7/4W/3+/5++ MCs), despite the fact that Cybernetica vs. SM is still more balanced than any game of 9th I've ever played...

(30k isn't "the most balanced thing ever," it just looks really balanced next to its contemporaries (6e-9e 40k) because the writers have been really disciplined about keeping stat creep under control, and because the external balance is actually pretty good even if the internal balance is pretty screwy in places.)

Its interesting that people are using WMH as a comparison actually since that game is basically dead due to a lot if the same things GW is guilty of.

Subfactions giving unique bonuses resulting in terrible balance? Check.
Uneven updates for each faction? Check.
Individual rules on every unit? Check.
SKU bloat? Check.
Lots of homework to be able to be comptetitive? Check.
Overpriced models? Check.
Annual changes to scenarios? Check.
Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.
Alternative systems within the company are better written but receive less attention? Check

Anything I forgot? I gave up on WMH after it they invalidated all my favourite lists by forcing me to play in their terrible themes so I'm not 100% up to date on stuff.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The problem for me WRT 9th is less so "being blindsided" (at this point I just accept my suffering in that arena), but rather the amount of time it takes to explain everything.

Like my example provided earlier, explaining the difference between those two Keepers of Secrets is kind of a long conversation, especially if my opponent asks how to counter them or what is meaningful about them. Even the poster who claimed to know a lot didn't really understand the significance there. Compound this a whole lot for every unit in my army (for example, the differences in ways that Friends and the Contorted Epitome prevent fall back and the different methods of countering them), and it starts to kind of be a slog.

Please don't spread false information. Look it up, if you can't remember it.

You provided two extreme examples of a unit that could gather a page worth of extra rules. I summarised what every rule did very shortly and then gave a short rundown of what the unit does without going into detail like "this is a +x to y". YOU even corrected the general summary, but it wasn't substantially longer, just showing that it IS possible to do instead of reading all of the idk 10 abilities word for word from the codex. Between the two extreme examples with their idk again, 17? special rules combined, there is ONE actual gotcha ability. You broadly overestimate the amount of detail your opponent needs to make a meaningful decision on how to approach your Keepers. Both are dangerous and both need dedicated firepower or melee presence to clear. It really doesn't matter much if after all the special rules, one takes 24,76% less damage from shooting and the other is 38,32% more effective in melee. And for a third time, those are extreme examples. How complex are CSM or SM characters for example?

You guys in the "I need to know every rule of every unit of every army and all the stratagems and combos in order to have fun and don't get blindsided" camp really need to have an actual (non-tournament) game once in a while. Or maybe opponents who aren't donkey caves, I don't know?

I tell people who play with me if they are about to make a tactical mistake or forget a rule. I tell/remind them (just happened today) about Auspex Scan before they put the unit down. I let them cast a spell after they already shot with their first unit if they forgot about it.

Maybe it is just my local scene that is the outlier where I'm living in happy 40k land where the game is actually fun, while the rest of the world is playing in a Polish hellhole and the game just sucks. In that case I apologise to everybody

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its interesting that people are using WMH as a comparison actually since that game is basically dead due to a lot if the same things GW is guilty of.

Subfactions giving unique bonuses resulting in terrible balance? Check.
Uneven updates for each faction? Check.
Individual rules on every unit? Check.
SKU bloat? Check.
Lots of homework to be able to be comptetitive? Check.
Overpriced models? Check.
Annual changes to scenarios? Check.
Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.
Alternative systems within the company are better written but receive less attention? Check

Privateer must've done something else wrong since GWs been guilty of most of what you list before WMH ever existed.

ccs wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its interesting that people are using WMH as a comparison actually since that game is basically dead due to a lot if the same things GW is guilty of.

Subfactions giving unique bonuses resulting in terrible balance? Check.
Uneven updates for each faction? Check.
Individual rules on every unit? Check.
SKU bloat? Check.
Lots of homework to be able to be comptetitive? Check.
Overpriced models? Check.
Annual changes to scenarios? Check.
Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.
Alternative systems within the company are better written but receive less attention? Check

Privateer must've done something else wrong since GWs been guilty of most of what you list before WMH ever existed.

I imagine a key difference is that 40k is much older and well-established, and stemmed from a time when there was far less competition. Hence, it's far better known and far more people are likely to have invested in it in some manner.

There are also other aspects, e.g. (notwithstanding godawful recent policies) 40k was a lot more conversion-friendly, encouraging people to create custom models (which they'll likely feel much more attached to and inclined to use than off-the-shelf models). Plus it had extensive lore that (from what I've seen) seems to grip people much more than WMH's lore.

AnomanderRake wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
...This reminds me of how Horus Heresy players would go on about how balanced it is compared to regular 40K. Then I'd just point out to them that they are largely dealing with the same units available per side with some minor variations. It just doesn't have the disparity between Custodes and Guardsmen that it has to worry about. At most it is closer to C:SM vs CA/C:BA/C:SW.

In a literal sense 30k does have the Custodes/Guardsmen disparity to worry about; there are Custodes, Guardsmen in many shapes and sizes, Daemons, the wackiness that is the 30k Mechanicum, and even Knights once you get outside of the Legions lists that are all written for 30k and at least theoretically balanced for 30k. Though I am kind of amused by the fact that the "30k is the most balanced thing ever!" people are usually the first to complain if you try and put a Cybernetica list down (your Troops are T7/4W/3+/5++ MCs), despite the fact that Cybernetica vs. SM is still more balanced than any game of 9th I've ever played...

(30k isn't "the most balanced thing ever," it just looks really balanced next to its contemporaries (6e-9e 40k) because the writers have been really disciplined about keeping stat creep under control, and because the external balance is actually pretty good even if the internal balance is pretty screwy in places.)

At the time I was having those conversations, not even the Adeptus Mechanicus was out, so there were no rules for the Custodes. While I suppose one could use the Imperial Guard with the normal codex, I didn't hear of a lot of people using them in that setting.

ccs wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its interesting that people are using WMH as a comparison actually since that game is basically dead due to a lot if the same things GW is guilty of.

Subfactions giving unique bonuses resulting in terrible balance? Check.
Uneven updates for each faction? Check.
Individual rules on every unit? Check.
SKU bloat? Check.
Lots of homework to be able to be comptetitive? Check.
Overpriced models? Check.
Annual changes to scenarios? Check.
Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.
Alternative systems within the company are better written but receive less attention? Check

Privateer must've done something else wrong since GWs been guilty of most of what you list before WMH ever existed.

Well there was poor distribution practices which provided anti-incentives for people to carry it in the store. There was also the tournament-only crowd who pushed out everyone else (and I've seen this happen to local 40K groups, too).

Stratagems have largely killed 40k for me. Too many things to remember and I feel like the time they tried to save on is now replaced by having to search through the rule book for stratagems to use.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.

Trying not to post in this thread too much because I'm reaching my toxicity threshold. I'm trying not to read it but it's like a train wreck and I can't look away. This line in particular frustrated me.

Here's a link to the post that polled Dakkanauts on how they play:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/800389.page

And it is true (being Dakka General) that the Matched and Grand Tourney players do outnumber Crusaders and Open war players, but we are not statistically insignificant.

I had expected someone sensitive enough to comment about feeling Gaslit a page back to also be sensitive enough to acknowledge the existence of other members of the player base...

And yet here we are.

 vipoid wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its interesting that people are using WMH as a comparison actually since that game is basically dead due to a lot if the same things GW is guilty of.

Subfactions giving unique bonuses resulting in terrible balance? Check.
Uneven updates for each faction? Check.
Individual rules on every unit? Check.
SKU bloat? Check.
Lots of homework to be able to be comptetitive? Check.
Overpriced models? Check.
Annual changes to scenarios? Check.
Alternative methods of play no one cares about beyond a set way to play that is considered "standard"? Check.
Alternative systems within the company are better written but receive less attention? Check

Privateer must've done something else wrong since GWs been guilty of most of what you list before WMH ever existed.

I imagine a key difference is that 40k is much older and well-established, and stemmed from a time when there was far less competition. Hence, it's far better known and far more people are likely to have invested in it in some manner.

There are also other aspects, e.g. (notwithstanding godawful recent policies) 40k was a lot more conversion-friendly, encouraging people to create custom models (which they'll likely feel much more attached to and inclined to use than off-the-shelf models). Plus it had extensive lore that (from what I've seen) seems to grip people much more than WMH's lore.

In the end a lot comes down to models. Dakka likes to put many thoughts on rules but the most important aspect of a wargame are usually the models. And most WMH models look pretty crappy, are made from metal, are even more expensive than GW and are monopose. Add to that a focus on competitive play that's also not interesting for many people. WMH had good times because 6th and 7th Edition of 40K were pretty bad, but with 8th edition and bad decisions from PP it fell apart quickly.

Tyel wrote:
Would someone like to do a list of these wombo-combo gotchas, because I really don't think there are that many.

I dosent matter is the list is "short" (like in the few dozens) because it has to be updated every few weeks with every new update... 40K mutates faster than a XXXXXXX Virus!

Tyel wrote:
Would someone like to do a list of these wombo-combo gotchas, because I really don't think there are that many.

You mean supporting arguments with proof and looking for realistic solutions to help people enjoy the current version of 9th edition?

Silly Tyel, that's not what this thread is for. You are supposed to just blindly hate everything GW and personally attack everyone who thinks otherwise!


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Vatsetis wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Would someone like to do a list of these wombo-combo gotchas, because I really don't think there are that many.

I dosent matter is the list is "short" (like in the few dozens) because it has to be updated every few weeks with every new update... 40K mutates faster than a XXXXXXX Virus!

Uh-huh.

Remind me of all the wombo-combos gotchas in Codex: Orks?