Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Most 'oldhammer' people hold up 5th as the best 40k has ever been, not 7th.

I see 7th; particularly all it did wrong with stuff like formations, held up almost as a strawman by proponents of 9th more often than people saying they dislike 9th.

Not only that, there was A LOT of broken combos that didn't involve formations. Of course formations played a huge role in making 7th one of the worst editions ever, but it wasn't just that. Summoning, re-rollable invulns, weapons with high rof that automatically wounded vehicles on 6s, invisibility, D weapons, etc... other than overpowered units were a problem. Power creep was much higher than now, even without formations. Especially for those armies that didn't have any of those broken combos or even a single powerful formation. Orks say hi .

Ok, so just because 7th edition was a huge pile of garbaje that makes 9th edition nuggets a mitchellin guide grade meal??

No, its just fast food... At best is servizable.

Weren't formation an equlizer intreduced to balance the fact that eldar armies were running around with death machines that were 100-150pts undercosted, and the only way to balance this was for GW to give other more free points. Plus it drove sells of stuff, as everyone needed to buy models for those free things formations gave.

Eldar got some of the best formations.
What's that? I get 2+ WS/BS on all my Aspect Warriors if I just spam Warp Spiders like I was going to do anyway? Boy I love fluffy rules!

7th really empthasised the "Forge the Narrative". As in, it's all about a fun and fluffy time, balance isn't important.
A lot of formations were really fluffy. It encouraged Marines to run a balanced mechanised battle company for example.
They were just hideously OP because balance was never the point. Their idea for how to encourage a balanced mechanised Battle Company was to give you all the transports for free if you took a battle company. That could never be exploited in any way, right?
Some formations were utter gash. Throwing together units that barely synergised at all and handing out negligible buffs as an incentive.

It's part of why I say balance is so important regardless. Arguably the worst 40k has ever been was when they put narrative first instead of balance.

 Sim-Life wrote:
But if some units are overwhelmingly good that they render other units not worth taking then the internal balance isn't that good. And "better than previous editions" isn't really much of a defence. Drinking pee is better than eating poo but it doesn't make drinking pee good just because you don't have to eat the poo anymore.

We are not talking overwhelmingly good. For your casual game you can take MM Devastators (in a pod), or you can take Eradicators or you can take MM attack bikes or Sternguard with combi-melta (in a pod) and they will all perform good enough. If you go to a tourney your first pick would be the MM attack bikes, as they are (determined by mathhammer or experience) the superior choice. You can use the others, but they are less "point and click" and/or require a specific sub-faction to work as well. The 1st place Iron Hands player of this month's Into the Hellstorm tournament for example took 2 squads of MM Devastators for all their melta needs.

Personally I think 5th had the best codizes in terms of options and flavour so far, so that is my standard to compare it to. 5th was good, but not everybody had an updated codex and 4th edition codizes just plain sucked.

That is intersting. I only know pre 8th stuff from stories. In the end, if someone starts in 8th, 9th or 10th, it is not going to matter too much for them that 7th or 6th were way worse.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

I think it is fair to say 9th is better than 7th.

Yep, 9th is the better edition. Now my Corsairs army can finally... oh. Right.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Eldar got some of the best formations.
What's that? I get 2+ WS/BS on all my Aspect Warriors if I just spam Warp Spiders like I was going to do anyway? Boy I love fluffy rules!

7th really empthasised the "Forge the Narrative". As in, it's all about a fun and fluffy time, balance isn't important.
A lot of formations were really fluffy. It encouraged Marines to run a balanced mechanised battle company for example.
They were just hideously OP because balance was never the point. Their idea for how to encourage a balanced mechanised Battle Company was to give you all the transports for free if you took a battle company. That could never be exploited in any way, right?
Some formations were utter gash. Throwing together units that barely synergised at all and handing out negligible buffs as an incentive.

It's part of why I say balance is so important regardless. Arguably the worst 40k has ever been was when they put narrative first instead of balance.

In terms of building a fluffy army, I certainly preferred the Formations and particularly super-Formations (like the Necron Decurion) to 8th and 9th's mess of different detachments.

Of course, as you say, where it fell apart was the balance. Not helped, I imagine, by the fact that GW completely changed how Formations worked about halfway through the edition. So the early books had massive formations with minute benefits, whilst later books gained colossal bonuses. As an example, the Necron book (printed after the change) had a super-formation that gave +1 to RP rolls (effectively giving almost every model 4+++ FNP+1), and this was in addition to the effects of individual formations - like Destroyers rerolling all to-wound and armour penetration rolls and Wraiths being able to get RPs. Meanwhile, the DE book (produced before the change) had a formation that basically dictated your entire 2000pt army (including many dubious options) and in return you got . . . +1 to the garbage PfP table, which you lost if your regular, T3, no Eternal-Warrior Archon died. That was it. It wasn't comprised of smaller formations, so you didn't get the benefits of those as well. It was just one massive formation with a really crap bonus.

In spite of all that, I still think it's a shame that Formations have disappeared altogether as I really liked the structure of the later Formations. Could have been nice to see that without such game-changing buffs.

We have Armies of Renown, which are the same kinda thing as Formations. You don't see them because they're pretty much all gash.
They dictate which units you take, they cost CP to use, and they don't even give any benefits; just offer a couple of strats which you can spend even more CP on.

30k has a pretty good interpretation of Formations.
Their army doctrines can be very limiting but also give good buffs.
There are definitely still bad formations, but there aren't any OP ones.

"Armies of Renown" are nothing like Formations.

Formations actively had more restrictions in many cases. Armies of Renown are still fairly loose in terms of army composition.

Additionally, last time I checked, "Armies of Renown" don't give you 600-ish points worth of free transports like Formations did.

I did say same kind if thing.
I even explained in that very comment how they were nothing like formations.

Lets not fall into that classic internet trap of just looking to prove someone wrong and be civil about this.

They do the same kind of thing is to say that they lay out the structure of an army (or a portion thereof) with restrictions and/or requirements, and give some benefit for complying with that.

I don't feel that 40k is *complex* per say, but it is cluttered. The pieces are simple but they are scattered, disorganized, and labelled in counterintuitive ways.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
You said internal balance was better than previous editions then moved your stance to its better than previous editions IF YOU PLAY CASUALLY. There was a very clear goalpost shift.

"Okay units" can still work in a tournament, they are just not "best in slot", as only one unit can be that by definition. If I gave the impression that "okay" is for casual only, I apologise. That was not my intention.

But if some units are overwhelmingly good that they render other units not worth taking then the internal balance isn't that good. And "better than previous editions" isn't really much of a defence. Drinking pee is better than eating poo but it doesn't make drinking pee good just because you don't have to eat the poo anymore.

I think it is fair to say 9th is better than 7th.

I also think that doesn't refute that 9th is flawed.

Your post hits it on the head - a lot of the posts saying "9th isn't bad" are doing so by implicitly setting 7th as the goalpost for "good" (and then being like "so because 9th isn't that bad, the only way you could dislike it is if you don't play!" or some variation).

It is possible for a player to dislike the game at the end of 7th AND dislike 9th edition.

"At least your gak sandwich is on rye, not on wheat" is unconvincing.

7th edition almost killed 40k. No one anywhere is saying that 7th is a standard for 'good'.

 Ordana wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
You said internal balance was better than previous editions then moved your stance to its better than previous editions IF YOU PLAY CASUALLY. There was a very clear goalpost shift.

"Okay units" can still work in a tournament, they are just not "best in slot", as only one unit can be that by definition. If I gave the impression that "okay" is for casual only, I apologise. That was not my intention.

But if some units are overwhelmingly good that they render other units not worth taking then the internal balance isn't that good. And "better than previous editions" isn't really much of a defence. Drinking pee is better than eating poo but it doesn't make drinking pee good just because you don't have to eat the poo anymore.

I think it is fair to say 9th is better than 7th.

I also think that doesn't refute that 9th is flawed.

Your post hits it on the head - a lot of the posts saying "9th isn't bad" are doing so by implicitly setting 7th as the goalpost for "good" (and then being like "so because 9th isn't that bad, the only way you could dislike it is if you don't play!" or some variation).

It is possible for a player to dislike the game at the end of 7th AND dislike 9th edition.

"At least your gak sandwich is on rye, not on wheat" is unconvincing.

7th edition almost killed 40k. No one anywhere is saying that 7th is a standard for 'good'.

Then why is "it's better than 7th" supposed to excuse 9th?

Slipspace wrote:


You've already been told more than once that this utter bullgak assertion is utter bullgak. Instead of setting up your row of strawmen you could try to engage with the arguments.

I did. I gave pretty elaborate examples and they were just ignored.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"The only reason someone could disagree with me is because they don't actually play the game!" is a pretty damn arrogant stance to take. Granted, it's not outright insulting like Jid's "The only reason someone could disagree with me is because they're a drooling illiterate dimwit!", but it's not that much better.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
All united, however, by the absolute conviction that their opinions or their experiences represent universally applicable truths and the only reason anyone could possibly disagree is because they don't actually play or are otherwise an idiot.

C'mon man! Give Dae a break. After all, he stopped bothering with this thread... other than all the posts he's made since. Like the last one. And the one before that.

I'm not really putting any more vigor into it was my point.

Yes, my assertion was insulting. More than I intended it to be, but the reason is because I continually see people referencing 8th edition issues. Things that are addressed.

What else can I do, but point out that the judgment is using incomplete information?

That doesn't apply to *every* post here, of course.

I must say as someone who likes to defend 9th I get the impression that people who criticize it imply that 3rd - 7th were somehow less bloated with rules or had better balance, which is simply not true in my eyes. It might have been a different experience, more like a warsimulation, that I can get. But it wasn't very tactical since it also had 40Ks main problem of IGOUGO, it always had a much more bloated main rulebook than 9th, it just had lighter codizes instead (sometimes), but balance was all over the place which I don't feel is as bad anymore if you compare 9th codizes with each other.

While I can't address 3rd Edition's balance, it was less bloated with rules than what was available by the end of 8th.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I must say as someone who likes to defend 9th I get the impression that people who criticize it imply that 3rd - 7th were somehow less bloated with rules or had better balance, which is simply not true in my eyes. It might have been a different experience, more like a warsimulation, that I can get. But it wasn't very tactical since it also had 40Ks main problem of IGOUGO, it always had a much more bloated main rulebook than 9th, it just had lighter codizes instead (sometimes), but balance was all over the place which I don't feel is as bad anymore if you compare 9th codizes with each other.

In my experience imbalance and complexity are a linked trend; I started in early 4th, and every edition since has been more complex and less balanced than the last. The reason I bring up 7th so often is that that was the last time I feel like there was an underlying structure that I could use to produce a fun game with a few tweaks; if you play single-CAD-only (so no formations), 30k D rules, 30k Invisibility, no relics, and cap points spent on a single model at 25% of the game's points limit 7th works pretty well. I can't "fix" 8th or 9th for casual play with a few quick patches that way because the combo-based design means that unit stats, weapon stats, stratagems, relics, WTs, sub-faction traits, and super-faction traits exist in an impenetrable interconnected soup such that I'd probably have more luck burning it down and starting over than trying to disentangle what's actually broken from that mess.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I must say as someone who likes to defend 9th I get the impression that people who criticize it imply that 3rd - 7th were somehow less bloated with rules or had better balance, which is simply not true in my eyes. It might have been a different experience, more like a warsimulation, that I can get. But it wasn't very tactical since it also had 40Ks main problem of IGOUGO, it always had a much more bloated main rulebook than 9th, it just had lighter codizes instead (sometimes), but balance was all over the place which I don't feel is as bad anymore if you compare 9th codizes with each other.

In my experience imbalance and complexity are a linked trend; I started in early 4th, and every edition since has been more complex and less balanced than the last. The reason I bring up 7th so often is that that was the last time I feel like there was an underlying structure that I could use to produce a fun game with a few tweaks; if you play single-CAD-only (so no formations), 30k D rules, 30k Invisibility, no relics, and cap points spent on a single model at 25% of the game's points limit 7th works pretty well. I can't "fix" 8th or 9th for casual play with a few quick patches that way because the combo-based design means that unit stats, weapon stats, stratagems, relics, WTs, sub-faction traits, and super-faction traits exist in an impenetrable interconnected soup such that I'd probably have more luck burning it down and starting over than trying to disentangle what's actually broken from that mess.

I don't think that all of that stuff is as inextricable as you think. It just changes the balance, much like single-CAD-only, 30k D rules, 30k invisibility, no relics, and cap points spent on a single model at 25% of game points changes the balance. Some units that "depend" on stratagem support or sub-faction traits or whatever will be worse to use, just like units that relied on relics, invisibility, D rules, or whatever would be worse to use in your version of 7th ed.

But the other problem is that those strategems and traits and stuff are the game.
If you strip those out you're left with the 5 pages of core rules, which is pretty much a straight forward "roll dice, remove enemy models" attack resolution and nothing else.
That's not a good game.

At it's core, 40k was never something else since 3rd at least.

Still entertaining, though.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
But the other problem is that those strategems and traits and stuff are the game.
If you strip those out you're left with the 5 pages of core rules, which is pretty much a straight forward "roll dice, remove enemy models" attack resolution and nothing else.
That's not a good game.

That’s a conscious design choice though. Interestingly it was a total flop with apocalypse even though h the at turned the various design trends up to 11.

Rihgu wrote:
...I don't think that all of that stuff is as inextricable as you think. It just changes the balance, much like single-CAD-only, 30k D rules, 30k invisibility, no relics, and cap points spent on a single model at 25% of game points changes the balance. Some units that "depend" on stratagem support or sub-faction traits or whatever will be worse to use, just like units that relied on relics, invisibility, D rules, or whatever would be worse to use in your version of 7th ed.

If you try playing 9e with statlines only and no stratagems, WTs, etc., etc., you'll find that GW couldn't do the math when they were writing the statlines in the Indexes, and there are a lot of really basic things about the statlines (wound counts/damage counts, the to-wound table, how saves and AP are allocated, where stats cap out, what has an Invulnerable save, the relationship between ranges and move stats...) that are pretty badly broken from day zero. There are bits of subsequent bloat (the Blast rule, damage reduction) that exist only to avoid having to fix some of the bad math on the statlines. On top of that once you strip out the combo-game you're just playing Sigmar; you don't need to maneuver to get all your attacks off, everything's pretty uniformly effective against all targets, so we put our models down on the table and roll dice until someone dies.

I don't like the combo-play game in 9th, but it's also holding the game together at a pretty fundamental level. Quickly stripping off some of the bloat off of 7th makes it better, quickly stripping the bloat off of 9th just makes it worse.

...I'm suddenly wondering if the issue isn't that 9th is more complex than earlier editions but that the complexity is way less optional than it was before.

Heh, how to tell when someone doesn't play AoS.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
On top of that once you strip out the combo-game you're just playing Sigmar; you don't need to maneuver to get all your attacks off, everything's pretty uniformly effective against all targets, so we put our models down on the table and roll dice until someone dies.

I'm sorry, but this is insanely out of touch. As NinthMusketeer put it

Heh, how to tell when someone doesn't play AoS.

Also the indices are from 8th edition, so I don't see how they relate to 9th. Hasn't every army been updated from the indices? Every army I play has changed quite a bit from the indices, between stat lines and rules (not even counting sub factions, relics, stratagems, etc)

You know, it just occurred to me that if you don't battleforge your armies, you get one CP per turn, no detachment or army purity rules.

Huh. Paint one dude a different colour and half the problems that everyone's been complaining about... just disappear.

Go figure.

PenitentJake wrote:
You know, it just occurred to me that if you don't battleforge your armies, you get one CP per turn, no detachment or army purity rules.

Huh. Paint one dude a different colour and half the problems that everyone's been complaining about... just disappear.

Go figure.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a joke.

Ssssshhhhhhhh,
You CANNOT mention modes of play that don't involve 2katched play doucheness!

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I must say as someone who likes to defend 9th I get the impression that people who criticize it imply that 3rd - 7th were somehow less bloated with rules or had better balance, which is simply not true in my eyes. It might have been a different experience, more like a warsimulation, that I can get. But it wasn't very tactical since it also had 40Ks main problem of IGOUGO, it always had a much more bloated main rulebook than 9th, it just had lighter codizes instead (sometimes), but balance was all over the place which I don't feel is as bad anymore if you compare 9th codizes with each other.

In my experience imbalance and complexity are a linked trend; I started in early 4th, and every edition since has been more complex and less balanced than the last. The reason I bring up 7th so often is that that was the last time I feel like there was an underlying structure that I could use to produce a fun game with a few tweaks; if you play single-CAD-only (so no formations), 30k D rules, 30k Invisibility, no relics, and cap points spent on a single model at 25% of the game's points limit 7th works pretty well. I can't "fix" 8th or 9th for casual play with a few quick patches that way because the combo-based design means that unit stats, weapon stats, stratagems, relics, WTs, sub-faction traits, and super-faction traits exist in an impenetrable interconnected soup such that I'd probably have more luck burning it down and starting over than trying to disentangle what's actually broken from that mess.

Easiest fix for casual 40k has always been to avoid the most powerful and oppressive units, it's much better than changing rules. Works perfectly even in 9th.

Rihgu wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
On top of that once you strip out the combo-game you're just playing Sigmar; you don't need to maneuver to get all your attacks off, everything's pretty uniformly effective against all targets, so we put our models down on the table and roll dice until someone dies.

I'm sorry, but this is insanely out of touch. As NinthMusketeer put it

Heh, how to tell when someone doesn't play AoS.

Also the indices are from 8th edition, so I don't see how they relate to 9th. Hasn't every army been updated from the indices? Every army I play has changed quite a bit from the indices, between stat lines and rules (not even counting sub factions, relics, stratagems, etc)

There are a lot of numbers and assumptions about numbers (the narrow T7/3+ or T8/3+ of almost every vehicle, for instance) that were wrong in the Indexes that haven't changed at all.

As to Sigmar I've never played it with people who are serious about it; every time a new edition happens some people at the game store I hang out at get all excited and we all pull our armies out and give it a go, and the shove-minis-into-the-center-then-roll-dice-until-someone-dies gameplay feels a lot like 8e WHFB somehow, and then we all get bored and stop. I'm sure if you're playing at a tournament level and only playing with the most optimal stuff there's a game there, but at a casual level it's really dull. Though you could tell me that it's a great game if I just bought different models, somehow I think I'd laugh my ass off at that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:
...Easiest fix for casual 40k has always been to avoid the most powerful and oppressive units, it's much better than changing rules. Works perfectly even in 9th.

But the most powerful and oppressive things in 7th were specific rules, so we could find them easily and turn them off. The most powerful and oppressive things in 9th are combos, which you need to understand thoroughly to figure out what actually makes it OP and how to fix it. I feel like I'd have to become a tournament player to gain the knowledge and expertise to be able to play 9th casually, which sort of defeats the point of wanting to play casually at all, which is why I keep accusing 9th of being written for the tournament players.