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 Daedalus81 wrote:


I would say your experience is isolated to your army. It's too easy to play and that gets boring. GW very clearly needs to do something about DE. I don't know what that next step should be, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, because DE sticking to the top is getting tiresome. I haven't had the luxury of playing DE with TS and I'm unsure what GK is capable of in that regard either ( and not enough data yet ).

No, it super isn't just isolated to my DE, it's all my armies but especially the weaker/underpowered ones.

GSC: Everything I put down on the table must be hidden out of LOS during deployment or it can and will be instantly destroyed turn 1. Everything in reserves must deep strike turn 2 or it'll essentially have arrived too late to do anything to influence the course of the game, which is over for all intents and purposes by top of turn 3. 5CP/12 is essentially accounted for at the beginning of a game, as I have never not used both A Perfect Ambush and Lying In Wait.

Grots: all the movement in my grot army is pre-determined - dreads advance towards the enemy, kanz and tanks move towards the enemy and shoot rokkits at elites/tanks, buzzgob always gives +1 to hit to kanz turn 1 and either to kanz or dread turn 2 if kanz are dead, Ghaz always calls waagh turn 2 into turn 3, the only thing that varies is what objectives the min grot squads are trying to sneak onto and which actions theyre performing.

Harlequins: everything tries to hide out of LOS again in deployment, all transports try to move towards an enemy elite/character/vehicle and shoot melta pistols at them, haywire bikes jump over terrain and try to haywire something, turn 2 everything wants to be in melee combat and empty transports move to cover objectives.

There's no 'narrative' to any given game because 3/4 of at least one player's army is just dead by top of 3. the average number of actions/decision points you get with any given unit is 1.25, maybe 1.5 if your army is really designed to have staying power.

It doesn't matter how much I try to set up interesting funky scenarios, that's just always how it turns out. Buddy wants to bring chaos knights against my admech+knights and have a cool robot smackdown? the game goes like this:

-chaos knight charges across the whole board, charges my knight, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into a helverin, kills it instantly
-all my shooting goes into the chaos knight that killed my knight, kills it
-my max-size unit of punchy robots rolls into a chaos knight midboard, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into the max size unit of punchy robots, kills all of them, then a knight charges into the other helverin, killing it instantly.
-all my shooting goes into a wardog, kills it
-all my opponent's shooting kills my onager - I have a techpriest and a unit of shooty robots left, we call the game, top of 3.

it's not like this was better in 7th, either, when the knight swords were D-weapons so a wraithknight vs knight duel would just look like the WK always swinging first cus higher initiative and then having the damage to one-shot the knight 3 times over, but it's just always been so sad when you compare the way an epic duel between giant robots goes in 40k compared to a system like Titanicus, where something getting critted and destroyed instantly is this crazy "OH gak" once in a game moment, instead of just...the expected outcome of anything shooting or charging anything else.

This level of lethality works great for a fast-moving card game or an RPG where you want combat to be smooth and easy to resolve but it's absolute misery in a hobby where you want rules to represent a unit you spent a combined total of 20 hours painstakingly painting up.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Am I the only one who wishes GW would just bring back the old force org rules (1-2 HQ, 0-3 Elites, 2-6 Troops, 0-3 Fast Attack, 0-3 Heavy Support) and do away with the detachment system?

You're not. 7th ruined the FOC by the inclusion of Formations. 8th further kept the FOC meaningless by letting you just take more detachments so you could still bring whatever you wanted.

9th at least had the sense to make detachments cost CP, but then gave everyone more CP, and had CP regenerate during the game.

I'd make a new FOC:

2-4 HQ
0-6 Elite
3-8 Troops
0-4 FA
0-4 HS
0-2 Flyer
0-3 Fortification
0-X Dedicated Transports

And either leave it at that, or make you pay per FOC for extras. No extra detachments.

As for Rule of Three, it's a solution to an old problem that somehow still lingers in this game. So many units have their own datasheet or come in squadrons, that Rule of Three doesn't really matter. I believe the entire impetus for the Rule of Three were Tyranid armies bringing multiple flying Hive Tyrants in Supreme Command detachments. Well, the 5 HQ Supreme Command detachment doesn't exist, and Flying HTs are scarcely viable... so why do we need that rule anymore?

Been giving it some thought the past couple days as I've been reading some relatively heated responses.

But my 2 cents is "Peak 40k" is the people you play with, less so the system.

I think there's a lot to be said about the approach / response of people in correlation to fun.

That said, I think the appeal of 9th to me - is crusade - as I like more narrative battles, though as advised I'm gonna muck about with a few basic 500 matched lists and get a handle on things.

Would I play 4th and 3rd and 2nd still, for nostalgias sake, absolutely.

Id not say "peak" is a specific system and more just having a chilled out bunch of players that enjoy the hobby, whatever edition it came to them in.

On that note, I'm gonna go watch some more winters video's.

 Ordana wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Back in y old days your units had a stat and weapon profile and so did your opponents units with maybe 1 universal special rule that was in the rulebook for everyone to see.

How far could an Eldar jetbike move?

5th edition rulebook page 53 'unit types'.
Jetbikes move as bikes so 12" and Elder jetbikes get to move an extra 6" in the assault phase.

Right there in the rulebook for everyone to read on a lazy sunday afternoon.
Was your point that it was harder to know then compared to now where I can show you their profile but then you don't see that they have a special rule to always advance 6" and who knows what stratagem shenanigans?

I think certain unit types coming with certain abilities and stats like M6/12, JSJ or Hammer of Wrath was dumb because you sometimes had to look in your codex, look one place in the main rules to find out where in the main rules the actual thing you were looking for were. I also think reading the core rules shouldn't take a whole afternoon, I'd rather some of the complexity of the rules shoved into datasheets using universal language and into supplements like Chapter Approved where you can find a more complicated set of missions.

An average reader can read the 9th edition core rules in an hour, that's about the amount of time it takes to write a couple of 500 pt lists and get terrain and models ready, by the time the newbie you set to read the rules is finished you'll be ready to play, 9th is convenient and fun to teach.

Stratagems should be part of your army list so both you and your opponent have them on hand. 9th has massive flaws, but I think it has more potential than 5th did even if 5th had better execution of its design.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As for Rule of Three, it's a solution to an old problem that somehow still lingers in this game. So many units have their own datasheet or come in squadrons, that Rule of Three doesn't really matter. I believe the entire impetus for the Rule of Three were Tyranid armies bringing multiple flying Hive Tyrants in Supreme Command detachments. Well, the 5 HQ Supreme Command detachment doesn't exist, and Flying HTs are scarcely viable... so why do we need that rule anymore?

And Tau Commanders, and Malefic Lords, and arguably Storm Ravens.

The Rule of 3 is a sensible hedge on the fact GW can't get balance right.

I mean you think DE are bad now - I'm constantly lamenting we never got to see the 14~ Ravager armies back in 8th, due to Rule of 3 coming out a month or so before the DE Codex.
I don't own 14 ravagers, I never would own 14 ravagers - but the implosion of an edition would have been something to behold.

Arguably the rule of 3 does what your FOC does - but being less severe given the expanded nature of the rosters these days. I guess you could double down, say you hate MSU, go big or go home, allow all vehicles to squadron up etc - but yeah. As it stands I think you'd be placing a major restriction on what people could take, with limited balance implications to speak of. Saying for example to Ork players "okay I see you've got 10 Fast Attack or Heavy Support units, but you can only ever bring 4, the end full stop" isn't the game be more balanced, its just making the game more lame.

IMO if there is the rule of 3, there shouldnt be a FOC at all.
Just design the armies in a way that you're incentivised to bring a bit of everything

To reinforce the scotsman's point, I played a Imperial Guard Steel Legion Mechanized Infantry company into 1k sons recently (using their 9th book) and it was basically:

1top) I move up with chimeras to the central objectives, everything is out of los.
1bottom) he moves up with 1 psyker and 1x mutalith vortex beast, deletes a chimera and contests the other objective

2top) I delete his mutalith, can't target the psyker because "YOU CAN'T TARGET ME" stratagem employing a bodyguard unit out of LOS. I reclaim the center objectives.
2bottom) He deletes a chimera, moving most of his stuff out of cover now. I lose the center objectives.

3top) I delete his other mutalith vortex beast, and reclaim the central objectives.
3bottom) he deep strikes 10x terminators, deletes a chimera, then charges my tank commander with a DP. I vengeance-for-cadia&defensive gunners&overwatch his DP to death. I lose the central objectives.

4top) my mob of infantry that fell out of chimeras moves up and claims the central objective; I delete a rubric squad. I reclaim the central objectives.
4bottom) his terminators and rubrics evaporate my mob of infantry. Psykers evaporate the tank commander. I lose the central objectives.

5top) I move my last chimera onto the central objectives with sporadic infantry support from the ragged 1s and 2s of guardsmen left alive (including my company commander). 75% of my army is gone, and it's a performative effort to move onto the objectives and get swept off again.
5bottom) he is unable to regain the objectives, but is able to sweep me off.

We tied the game, but it really did boil down to "important thing got deleted each turn" and "wave attack the objectives" where a "wave" is *more separate units than he has ability to target* (even if each of those separate units, if together, were smaller than a single IG squad).

Both of our armies were pretty savaged. I had 3 basilisks left that had been shelling the whole game, he had 10 terminators that I screened essentially back to his DZ and a bunch of psykers. I had some officers and some scattered guardsmen.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I would say your experience is isolated to your army. It's too easy to play and that gets boring. GW very clearly needs to do something about DE. I don't know what that next step should be, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, because DE sticking to the top is getting tiresome. I haven't had the luxury of playing DE with TS and I'm unsure what GK is capable of in that regard either ( and not enough data yet ).

No, it super isn't just isolated to my DE, it's all my armies but especially the weaker/underpowered ones.

GSC: Everything I put down on the table must be hidden out of LOS during deployment or it can and will be instantly destroyed turn 1. Everything in reserves must deep strike turn 2 or it'll essentially have arrived too late to do anything to influence the course of the game, which is over for all intents and purposes by top of turn 3. 5CP/12 is essentially accounted for at the beginning of a game, as I have never not used both A Perfect Ambush and Lying In Wait.

Grots: all the movement in my grot army is pre-determined - dreads advance towards the enemy, kanz and tanks move towards the enemy and shoot rokkits at elites/tanks, buzzgob always gives +1 to hit to kanz turn 1 and either to kanz or dread turn 2 if kanz are dead, Ghaz always calls waagh turn 2 into turn 3, the only thing that varies is what objectives the min grot squads are trying to sneak onto and which actions theyre performing.

Harlequins: everything tries to hide out of LOS again in deployment, all transports try to move towards an enemy elite/character/vehicle and shoot melta pistols at them, haywire bikes jump over terrain and try to haywire something, turn 2 everything wants to be in melee combat and empty transports move to cover objectives.

There's no 'narrative' to any given game because 3/4 of at least one player's army is just dead by top of 3. the average number of actions/decision points you get with any given unit is 1.25, maybe 1.5 if your army is really designed to have staying power.

It doesn't matter how much I try to set up interesting funky scenarios, that's just always how it turns out. Buddy wants to bring chaos knights against my admech+knights and have a cool robot smackdown? the game goes like this:

-chaos knight charges across the whole board, charges my knight, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into a helverin, kills it instantly
-all my shooting goes into the chaos knight that killed my knight, kills it
-my max-size unit of punchy robots rolls into a chaos knight midboard, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into the max size unit of punchy robots, kills all of them, then a knight charges into the other helverin, killing it instantly.
-all my shooting goes into a wardog, kills it
-all my opponent's shooting kills my onager - I have a techpriest and a unit of shooty robots left, we call the game, top of 3.

it's not like this was better in 7th, either, when the knight swords were D-weapons so a wraithknight vs knight duel would just look like the WK always swinging first cus higher initiative and then having the damage to one-shot the knight 3 times over, but it's just always been so sad when you compare the way an epic duel between giant robots goes in 40k compared to a system like Titanicus, where something getting critted and destroyed instantly is this crazy "OH gak" once in a game moment, instead of just...the expected outcome of anything shooting or charging anything else.

This level of lethality works great for a fast-moving card game or an RPG where you want combat to be smooth and easy to resolve but it's absolute misery in a hobby where you want rules to represent a unit you spent a combined total of 20 hours painstakingly painting up.

Titanicus has way fewer models. Like...10? It damn well better not be as lethal.

That knight game is a great example of learning your opponent and what not to do. Why stand in charge range? Why let robots be in easy charge range? Of course a 400 to 500 point knight is going to slap 150 points. Of course 600+ points of robots plus character support is going to slap a knight. I do feel like you're embellishing a bit as well where he easily removes 42 wounds of robots in a single turn after half his army ( two knights ) were dead.

It sounds more like you brought a bunch of high power units and ignored the mission entirely and/or secondaries became all kill focused, because of the lists.

You don't have to get on objectives immediately. You don't have to make sure everything that can shoot is shooting. You don't have to deepstrike by turn 2. Those are general statements - GSC are really rough right now so that could be true and more pressing opponents are going to change what you can and can't do. I'm not a fan of Rukks dropping bombs and I would still like to see a penalty to shooting out of LOS, but I manage just fine for now.

Less lethal is really a matter of perspective.

5 old marines standing still ( so, double tap ) kill 1.8 Boyz. 5 5th edition marines killed 1.7 with one shot and 3.4 when double tapping.
An old TLC took a Killa Kan out of the game 40% of the time ( and if you're immobilized in a squadron...lol ). The current TLC takes one out 18% of the time.

Dem nostalgia glasses. What people experienced was more melee since stuff like Boyz were so cheap and Rapid Fire was restricted, so it took a couple turns for units to get into each other and then they died pretty fast unless no one brought a power fist against marines and then you just stood there in a pile the rest of the game. Various points through history brought units able to close the distance fast and/or hit hard ( more in 5th forward though ).

I liked the FOC, I like the extra structure it gives. I thought it was a huge improvement when they brought it in in 3e and was disappointed when it went away.

the FOC was not the problem, but what units were in the specific slots

one army having all good units in support while others got 1 good in each of elite, support and troops

and it was a random choice and changed on the fly

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
To reinforce the scotsman's point, I played a Imperial Guard Steel Legion Mechanized Infantry company into 1k sons recently (using their 9th book) and it was basically:

1top) I move up with chimeras to the central objectives, everything is out of los.
1bottom) he moves up with 1 psyker and 1x mutalith vortex beast, deletes a chimera and contests the other objective

2top) I delete his mutalith, can't target the psyker because "YOU CAN'T TARGET ME" stratagem employing a bodyguard unit out of LOS. I reclaim the center objectives.
2bottom) He deletes a chimera, moving most of his stuff out of cover now. I lose the center objectives.

3top) I delete his other mutalith vortex beast, and reclaim the central objectives.
3bottom) he deep strikes 10x terminators, deletes a chimera, then charges my tank commander with a DP. I vengeance-for-cadia&defensive gunners&overwatch his DP to death. I lose the central objectives.

4top) my mob of infantry that fell out of chimeras moves up and claims the central objective; I delete a rubric squad. I reclaim the central objectives.
4bottom) his terminators and rubrics evaporate my mob of infantry. Psykers evaporate the tank commander. I lose the central objectives.

5top) I move my last chimera onto the central objectives with sporadic infantry support from the ragged 1s and 2s of guardsmen left alive (including my company commander). 75% of my army is gone, and it's a performative effort to move onto the objectives and get swept off again.
5bottom) he is unable to regain the objectives, but is able to sweep me off.

We tied the game, but it really did boil down to "important thing got deleted each turn" and "wave attack the objectives" where a "wave" is *more separate units than he has ability to target* (even if each of those separate units, if together, were smaller than a single IG squad).

Both of our armies were pretty savaged. I had 3 basilisks left that had been shelling the whole game, he had 10 terminators that I screened essentially back to his DZ and a bunch of psykers. I had some officers and some scattered guardsmen.

I feel like you guys are painting a pretty disingenuous portrayal of how the game flows. You could have brought deepstriking units to threaten him. You could have pushed somewhere other than the center.

Perhaps you could have crashed a chimera into that psyker sticking his head out. You can't cast if you fallback and if he was going to take it out now he has to do so where it could explode in his face and if he fails to do so then you've potentially move blocked him. Doing this would probably sacrifice some direct control of the objectives, but offers and opportunity to slow him down. Maybe he could have focused on clearing your backfield in one particular area to allow his deepstrikers to penetrate further in.

His DP shouldn't have gone straight in. He should have found a path that maybe took an extra turn and allowed from a charge from behind cover.

There are decisions made - and not made - that influence the outcome of this game that you guys willfully omit to make your point.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Am I the only one who wishes GW would just bring back the old force org rules (1-2 HQ, 0-3 Elites, 2-6 Troops, 0-3 Fast Attack, 0-3 Heavy Support) and do away with the detachment system? Points are never going to be effective at balancing the game if you basically have no constraints for them to shape list-building to. The introduction of the "rule of 3" (which now goes to rule of 4 at certain points levels I guess) was necessitated by the lack of limitation on ones ability to spam (typically non-troop) units and the inability of repeat points adjustments to curtail the balance issues resulting from it. Easier to just cut out the middleman and do away with the entire listbuilding concept as it currently exists, you wouldn't need the rule of 3 if armies were capped at only being able to take 3 of any one slot type. I, for one, also miss the mandatory troop tax - in general I would like to see lists with more troops in them, not less.

The detachment system is the best part of 8th/9th as far as I'm concerned.
•Because of it I can actually run my all Dreadnought force nowadays, not just collect it as a project.
•Because of it I can run my completely awful, very thematic tyranid force that tries to emulate the movie Alien.
•I can finally make a dark Eldar free DE army....
•I can field more of my favorite nrcron units - hey. It's not my fault GW loaded up the elites & heavy slots with alot of cool models. I just want to play with as many of them as possible. Sadly though the
Rule of 3 gak robs me from fielding 6 Doomstalkers (and thus deprives my local shop of more of my $$).
•I can run assorted thematic soup lists - presuming I'm willing to pay the rules taxes.... (spoiler: I am willing)
+ I can still run the traditional force org limits if I want....
So no, I absolutely do not want a return to the previous system.

Besudes. As GWs interests have always been to sell me more models. they were always quite willing to provide options throughout 3-7th that swapped what slot units were in &/or made exceltions.

Armchair quaterbacking now Daed????
Or Capt. Hindsight?

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Titanicus has way fewer models. Like...10? It damn well better not be as lethal.

Yeah...almost like it's a better fething miniatures game for miniatures that take a long ass time to paint and cost a gak ton of money...

That knight game is a great example of learning your opponent and what not to do. Why stand in charge range? because fething sue me for not memorizing the entire codex of a faction I've never played before, and I didnt realize this relic combo'd with this WLT combo'd with that subfaction combo'd with that stratagem changed the threat range of a knight from 19" range to 26" range Why let robots be in easy charge range? Because theyd just killed a knight in melee Of course a 400 to 500 point knight is going to slap 150 points. That's not the problem, it's the incredible incredible ease with which you can remove 450pts of unit with...about 450pts of unit in 9th edition Of course 600+ points of robots plus character support is going to slap a knight. Yeah OBVIOUSLY, DUH you're going to be able to remove 75% of your value in a single turn with a unit, otherwise what would you have? Some kind of stupid "multi-turn wargame"???? I do feel like you're embellishing a bit as well where he easily removes 42 wounds of robots in a single turn after half his army ( two knights ) were dead.

It sounds more like you brought a bunch of high power units and ignored the mission entirely and/or secondaries became all kill focused, because of the lists. Actually, again,I complain because i feel like I put a gak-ton of effort into trying to make this game enjoyable and it just stubbornly refuses to be, we had custom objectives going in this game where each side got 2 T7 3+ 40W fortifications in their deployment zone, and whichever side had caused the most damage to them at the end of the game would win. It was so laughably easy for even a fairly small unit from one of our armies to chunk 10+ wounds off one of the fortifications that it was hardly an afterthought to destroying eachothers' army. One single armiger had a turn of shooting and melee'ing one of the objectives and it took 22 damage.

You don't have to get on objectives immediately. You don't have to make sure everything that can shoot is shooting. You don't have to deepstrike by turn 2. Those are general statements - GSC are really rough right now so that could be true and more pressing opponents are going to change what you can and can't do. I'm not a fan of Rukks dropping bombs and I would still like to see a penalty to shooting out of LOS, but I manage just fine for now.

Less lethal is really a matter of perspective.

5 old marines standing still ( so, double tap ) kill 1.8 Boyz. 5 5th edition marines killed 1.7 with one shot and 3.4 when double tapping.
An old TLC took a Killa Kan out of the game 40% of the time ( and if you're immobilized in a squadron...lol ). The current TLC takes one out 18% of the time. You're arguing past me at this point, and pretending that I made a claim that an older edition of the game was better that I didnt actually mention in any way. Fifth edition - at least for certain types of units - was also ridiculously, stupidly lethal. My very first turn of my very first game of 40k was the unit of long fangs I'd spent 10+ hours painting getting flattened by the very first shot fired by one of my friend's four leman russ tanks. I also notice that you're both purposefully choosing a very underpowered unit into a fairly defensive target, ignoring all the various mostly offensive bonuses that units are always getting in actual games, and that makes for a very handy comparison when you're looking at an edition of the game that had NO subfactions NO relics NO stratagems NO auras NO warlord traits NO doctrines....

Dem nostalgia glasses. What people experienced was more melee since stuff like Boyz were so cheap and Rapid Fire was restricted, so it took a couple turns for units to get into each other Yeah it helps when your baseline fething trooper for the most common faction in the game isnt rocking a 30" full-power threat range on a 44" wide board, doesn't it? and then they died pretty fast unless no one brought a power fist against marines and then you just stood there in a pile the rest of the game. Various points through history brought units able to close the distance fast and/or hit hard ( more in 5th forward though ).

Racerguy180 wrote:
Armchair quaterbacking now Daed????
Or Capt. Hindsight?

If you can't reflect on a game and look for mistakes or opportunities then - and I don't intend for this to be insulting - I would consider that poor play. Barring that they then did have some similar thoughts and omit them to win a debate. I'm not particularly fond of either scenario.

 the_scotsman wrote:

It doesn't matter how much I try to set up interesting funky scenarios, that's just always how it turns out. Buddy wants to bring chaos knights against my admech+knights and have a cool robot smackdown? the game goes like this:

-chaos knight charges across the whole board, charges my knight, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into a helverin, kills it instantly
-all my shooting goes into the chaos knight that killed my knight, kills it
-my max-size unit of punchy robots rolls into a chaos knight midboard, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into the max size unit of punchy robots, kills all of them, then a knight charges into the other helverin, killing it instantly.
-all my shooting goes into a wardog, kills it
-all my opponent's shooting kills my onager - I have a techpriest and a unit of shooty robots left, we call the game, top of 3.

Would not disagree with the idea games can go this way. Would disagree with the idea most games go this way, or that it's not worth the effort to set up a game.

These are skew lists, I play a lot of them. Throughout most of 8th, I played a Chaos Gunline. 22+ lascannons firing from my table edge, with beatsticks lurking to smash anything that got close. Most games had me destroying the best units in my opponent's army turn 1 and overwhelming his ability to respond by turn 3.

It's not that 22+ lascannons are overwhelming in themselves, the reason that list succeeded was that no one prepares for 22+ lascannons. Eventually, I moved onto a Daemon Primarch list, which also did well because no one prepared for Daemon Primarchs. I'm catching opponents off guard and introducing minor variations when they find hard counters.

This is not representative of 40k generally, most people do not play these kinds of lists. Eventually, Orks / Dark Eldar / Imperial Knights flooded my meta and my gunline stopped working. There's limits to how long something can remain effective.

I'd be interested in your breakdown of a game vs another army. Like, you would not have the tools to destroy more than a couple Ork units a turn, your opponent would not be able to destroy as many Knights by turn 3.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


There are decisions made - and not made - that influence the outcome of this game that you guys willfully omit to make your point.

We're making the point because this is obviously a problem noticed by a huge number of people both familiar and not familiar with the rules, and it's frustrating that your only response is to deflect with whinging about how the example is disingenuous because this unit performed 15% above its expected effectiveness in a game with random dice, or you could have reduced the lethality of the game by sitting behind LOS blocking terrain until turn 3, then the game would have lasted until round 5, or whatever.

My group recently did a big Crusade campaign, and we had a ton of people making up hugely detailed battle reports, and it takes no time at all to find a million examples of this problem.

Battle Report 1 - Tau vs Ultramarines. Bottom of turn 2 the Tau take out a Redemptor, 2 Intercessor squads, and an Assault intercessor squad leaving a wounded captain alive to die to Overwatch top of turn 3

Battle report 2 - Tau vs Daemons, top of turn 2 greater daemons take out a Riptide, a crisis suit team, a breacher squad, and a commander leaving 5 fire warriors and a piranha standing on the tau side

Battle report 3 - Orks vs GSC/nids, bottom of turn 2 70% of the GSC player's army is obliterated leaving nothing but an allied big bug alive

the fact that if you set up two 40k armies 24" away from one another with no terrain, the army that went first would extremely trivially remove over 2/3 of the opposing army without the opponent being able to take a single action is a massive problem.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Titanicus has way fewer models. Like...10? It damn well better not be as lethal.

Yeah...almost like it's a better fething miniatures game for miniatures that take a long ass time to paint and cost a gak ton of money...

That knight game is a great example of learning your opponent and what not to do. Why stand in charge range? because fething sue me for not memorizing the entire codex of a faction I've never played before, and I didnt realize this relic combo'd with this WLT combo'd with that subfaction combo'd with that stratagem changed the threat range of a knight from 19" range to 26" range Why let robots be in easy charge range? Because theyd just killed a knight in melee Of course a 400 to 500 point knight is going to slap 150 points. That's not the problem, it's the incredible incredible ease with which you can remove 450pts of unit with...about 450pts of unit in 9th edition Of course 600+ points of robots plus character support is going to slap a knight. Yeah OBVIOUSLY, DUH you're going to be able to remove 75% of your value in a single turn with a unit, otherwise what would you have? Some kind of stupid "multi-turn wargame"???? I do feel like you're embellishing a bit as well where he easily removes 42 wounds of robots in a single turn after half his army ( two knights ) were dead.

It sounds more like you brought a bunch of high power units and ignored the mission entirely and/or secondaries became all kill focused, because of the lists. Actually, again,I complain because i feel like I put a gak-ton of effort into trying to make this game enjoyable and it just stubbornly refuses to be, we had custom objectives going in this game where each side got 2 T7 3+ 40W fortifications in their deployment zone, and whichever side had caused the most damage to them at the end of the game would win. It was so laughably easy for even a fairly small unit from one of our armies to chunk 10+ wounds off one of the fortifications that it was hardly an afterthought to destroying eachothers' army. One single armiger had a turn of shooting and melee'ing one of the objectives and it took 22 damage.

You don't have to get on objectives immediately. You don't have to make sure everything that can shoot is shooting. You don't have to deepstrike by turn 2. Those are general statements - GSC are really rough right now so that could be true and more pressing opponents are going to change what you can and can't do. I'm not a fan of Rukks dropping bombs and I would still like to see a penalty to shooting out of LOS, but I manage just fine for now.

Less lethal is really a matter of perspective.

5 old marines standing still ( so, double tap ) kill 1.8 Boyz. 5 5th edition marines killed 1.7 with one shot and 3.4 when double tapping.
An old TLC took a Killa Kan out of the game 40% of the time ( and if you're immobilized in a squadron...lol ). The current TLC takes one out 18% of the time. You're arguing past me at this point, and pretending that I made a claim that an older edition of the game was better that I didnt actually mention in any way. Fifth edition - at least for certain types of units - was also ridiculously, stupidly lethal. My very first turn of my very first game of 40k was the unit of long fangs I'd spent 10+ hours painting getting flattened by the very first shot fired by one of my friend's four leman russ tanks. I also notice that you're both purposefully choosing a very underpowered unit into a fairly defensive target, ignoring all the various mostly offensive bonuses that units are always getting in actual games, and that makes for a very handy comparison when you're looking at an edition of the game that had NO subfactions NO relics NO stratagems NO auras NO warlord traits NO doctrines....

Dem nostalgia glasses. What people experienced was more melee since stuff like Boyz were so cheap and Rapid Fire was restricted, so it took a couple turns for units to get into each other Yeah it helps when your baseline fething trooper for the most common faction in the game isnt rocking a 30" full-power threat range on a 44" wide board, doesn't it? and then they died pretty fast unless no one brought a power fist against marines and then you just stood there in a pile the rest of the game. Various points through history brought units able to close the distance fast and/or hit hard ( more in 5th forward though ).

I mean that sounds like a fine sort of objective for normal armies, but when you're packing two armies with heavy shooting and super strong melee ( I imagine the fort was auto-hit? ) then it seems like the outcome would be a given with those variables. Why not go back to the drawing board and make them T9 5++ vs shooting and make it so an infantry unit can immediately score the whole fort if it makes a successful charge and they aren't counter charged out by the next command phase?

Then you've got a mission that promotes defense as well as dragging out smaller units to try and sneak a victory in while keeping shooting from being a panacea to victory so you need to get close.

I don't think how fast models are removed is a good metric to enjoyment. I love my models, but pulling them off the table is part of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:

the fact that if you set up two 40k armies 24" away from one another with no terrain, the army that went first would extremely trivially remove over 2/3 of the opposing army without the opponent being able to take a single action is a massive problem.

Yes, I will not refute this. Terrain is massively important and I recognize people could be having different experiences if they try to fashion a table with more narrative. I think you can still make interesting looking tables, but it needs more care.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

It doesn't matter how much I try to set up interesting funky scenarios, that's just always how it turns out. Buddy wants to bring chaos knights against my admech+knights and have a cool robot smackdown? the game goes like this:

-chaos knight charges across the whole board, charges my knight, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into a helverin, kills it instantly
-all my shooting goes into the chaos knight that killed my knight, kills it
-my max-size unit of punchy robots rolls into a chaos knight midboard, kills it instantly
-all my opponent's shooting goes into the max size unit of punchy robots, kills all of them, then a knight charges into the other helverin, killing it instantly.
-all my shooting goes into a wardog, kills it
-all my opponent's shooting kills my onager - I have a techpriest and a unit of shooty robots left, we call the game, top of 3.

Would not disagree with the idea games can go this way. Would disagree with the idea most games go this way, or that it's not worth the effort to set up a game.

These are skew lists, I play a lot of them. Throughout most of 8th, I played a Chaos Gunline. 22+ lascannons firing from my table edge, with beatsticks lurking to smash anything that got close. Most games had me destroying the best units in my opponent's army turn 1 and overwhelming his ability to respond by turn 3.

It's not that 22+ lascannons are overwhelming in themselves, the reason that list succeeded was that no one prepares for 22+ lascannons. Eventually, I moved onto a Daemon Primarch list, which also did well because no one prepared for Daemon Primarchs. I'm catching opponents off guard and introducing minor variations when they find hard counters.

This is not representative of 40k generally, most people do not play these kinds of lists. Eventually, Orks / Dark Eldar / Imperial Knights flooded my meta and my gunline stopped working. There's limits to how long something can remain effective.

I'd be interested in your breakdown of a game vs another army. Like, you would not have the tools to destroy more than a couple Ork units a turn, your opponent would not be able to destroy as many Knights by turn 3.

Yeah, you're definitely right, why my unit of robots could barely handle 33 ork boyz in a single round of shooting+combat, theyre really inefficient against light infantry only a 50% points return in a single round. Why if I had that kind of inefficient performance, the game might even last til the bottom of turn 3!

 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, you're definitely right, why my unit of robots could barely handle 33 ork boyz in a single round of shooting+combat, theyre really inefficient against light infantry only a 50% points return in a single round. Why if I had that kind of inefficient performance, the game might even last til the bottom of turn 3!

While I appreciate the sarcasm - realistically, you would be facing more than a mob of boys. It's unlikely you'd be able to reach a stalemate by turn 3.

A series of games against a Chaos Knight list says little about 40k in general.

This thread just makes me sad at how hard it is to get epic40k minis. It is the solution to the problem at hand.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I don't think how fast models are removed is a good metric to enjoyment. I love my models, but pulling them off the table is part of the game.

if the purpose of a wargame is representing using a tabletop system the way a particular type of fictional or historical battle should feel, then 40k is a more useful system for modeling waves of soldiers getting mowed down by machine guns in WW1 than any kind of fight between "space super soldiers."

No unit in 40k feels like an 'elite super soldier' - they die like absolute chumps faster than the cheapest shittiest conscript wave in any ww2 system.


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 Gregor Samsa wrote:
This thread just makes me sad at how hard it is to get epic40k minis. It is the solution to the problem at hand.

unlimited quantities of epic 40k minis cost exactly as much as a 3d printer plus 1kg of resin.

Wayniac wrote:IMHO the problem is and always has been that 40k is trying to be a company level game with huge army level assets. It's trying to appeal to everyone and not being able to specialize.

They really should have kept 40k as company level and then have Epic (or Apocalypse but Epic had smaller scale so it fit better) for actual large battles where you had huge superheavies and flyers and stuff. It would have been worlds better.

The problem with that is GW as a company. i own many epic armies and i love them, but individual "kits" in epic scale have no profit margin for GW the way they do for 28mm scale. in the same manner of going from a skirmish system to an army system with the game from 2nd-3rd. it requires players to buy a lot more GW models which is better for sales.

Notice they no longer support epic, BFG and other low profit margin games that do not tie into the main games where minis can be re-used.

chaos0xomega wrote:


The detachment system is the best part of 8th/9th as far as I'm concerned.
•Because of it I can actually run my all Dreadnought force nowadays, not just collect it as a project.
•Because of it I can run my completely awful, very thematic tyranid force that tries to emulate the movie Alien.
•I can finally make a dark Eldar free DE army....
•I can field more of my favorite nrcron units - hey. It's not my fault GW loaded up the elites & heavy slots with alot of cool models. I just want to play with as many of them as possible. Sadly though the
Rule of 3 gak robs me from fielding 6 Doomstalkers (and thus deprives my local shop of more of my $$).
•I can run assorted thematic soup lists - presuming I'm willing to pay the rules taxes.... (spoiler: I am willing)
+ I can still run the traditional force org limits if I want....
So no, I absolutely do not want a return to the previous system.

Besudes. As GWs interests have always been to sell me more models. they were always quite willing to provide options throughout 3-7th that swapped what slot units were in &/or made exceltions.

......




Yes they want to sell more models, most of us fell into that trap by just building different armies. i built what 7 from 3rd-5th before i learned my lesson?

As to your points, a couple i have experience with in the old FOC
1. master of the forge + dread talons means 95% of your army could be dreads in a normal force org chart. so that's not a new option.
2. my tyranid army was based on the warrior model that i love above all else in the nid list. and i could fill nearly the entire army with them as HQs, fast attack and elites.

aphyon wrote:
Notice they no longer support epic, BFG and other low profit margin games that do not tie into the main games where minis can be re-used.

You can't use Titanicus and Aeronautica in mainline 40k so....whaddya mean?

Racerguy180 wrote:

aphyon wrote:
Notice they no longer support epic, BFG and other low profit margin games that do not tie into the main games where minis can be re-used.

You can't use Titanicus and Aeronautica in mainline 40k so....whaddya mean?

...I wouldn't describe Titanicus or Aeronautica as "currently supported."

 Gregor Samsa wrote:
This thread just makes me sad at how hard it is to get epic40k minis. It is the solution to the problem at hand.

They're pretty easy to find, actually:

https://www.onslaughtmini.com/

There's more out there, too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

aphyon wrote:

The problem with that is GW as a company. i own many epic armies and i love them, but individual "kits" in epic scale have no profit margin for GW the way they do for 28mm scale. in the same manner of going from a skirmish system to an army system with the game from 2nd-3rd. it requires players to buy a lot more GW models which is better for sales.

Notice they no longer support epic, BFG and other low profit margin games that do not tie into the main games where minis can be re-used.

What is Adeptus Titanicus, Aeronautica, Bloodbowl, and Necromunda if not games where minis can't be reused?

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


There are decisions made - and not made - that influence the outcome of this game that you guys willfully omit to make your point.

the fact that if you set up two 40k armies 24" away from one another with no terrain, the army that went first would extremely trivially remove over 2/3 of the opposing army without the opponent being able to take a single action is a massive problem.

Maybe quit using black powder musket tactics in a setting with machine guns?




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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
To reinforce the scotsman's point, I played a Imperial Guard Steel Legion Mechanized Infantry company into 1k sons recently (using their 9th book) and it was basically:

1top) I move up with chimeras to the central objectives, everything is out of los.
1bottom) he moves up with 1 psyker and 1x mutalith vortex beast, deletes a chimera and contests the other objective

2top) I delete his mutalith, can't target the psyker because "YOU CAN'T TARGET ME" stratagem employing a bodyguard unit out of LOS. I reclaim the center objectives.
2bottom) He deletes a chimera, moving most of his stuff out of cover now. I lose the center objectives.

3top) I delete his other mutalith vortex beast, and reclaim the central objectives.
3bottom) he deep strikes 10x terminators, deletes a chimera, then charges my tank commander with a DP. I vengeance-for-cadia&defensive gunners&overwatch his DP to death. I lose the central objectives.

4top) my mob of infantry that fell out of chimeras moves up and claims the central objective; I delete a rubric squad. I reclaim the central objectives.
4bottom) his terminators and rubrics evaporate my mob of infantry. Psykers evaporate the tank commander. I lose the central objectives.

5top) I move my last chimera onto the central objectives with sporadic infantry support from the ragged 1s and 2s of guardsmen left alive (including my company commander). 75% of my army is gone, and it's a performative effort to move onto the objectives and get swept off again.
5bottom) he is unable to regain the objectives, but is able to sweep me off.

We tied the game, but it really did boil down to "important thing got deleted each turn" and "wave attack the objectives" where a "wave" is *more separate units than he has ability to target* (even if each of those separate units, if together, were smaller than a single IG squad).

Both of our armies were pretty savaged. I had 3 basilisks left that had been shelling the whole game, he had 10 terminators that I screened essentially back to his DZ and a bunch of psykers. I had some officers and some scattered guardsmen.

So you had a back and forth game that came down to the wire and decimated both forces? I'm missing the bad here.

Is the goal to have them turn away from violence and have a nice tea party and talk about their feelings? Because while that does sound lovely, it's not really what 40k is about.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:

aphyon wrote:
Notice they no longer support epic, BFG and other low profit margin games that do not tie into the main games where minis can be re-used.

You can't use Titanicus and Aeronautica in mainline 40k so....whaddya mean?

...I wouldn't describe Titanicus or Aeronautica as "currently supported."

Oh, right. I guess the 17 items they sell for Aeronautica or the 48 for Titanicus is the same exact amount of support as the 0 items they sell for Epic or BFG

 kodos wrote:
Just because GW tries to sell it as "Tournament" Edition does not man it is one

“Who you gonna believe? Your eyes or me?”

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, I will not refute this. Terrain is massively important and I recognize people could be having different experiences if they try to fashion a table with more narrative. I think you can still make interesting looking tables, but it needs more care.

I've built a lot of terrain because I like terrain-heavy boards and find that restriction of LOS makes for more interesting games. Imagine my reaction when I found that monsters and vehicles outright can't enter the jungles I've made.

So every board is a balancing act between having lanes big enough for bigger models to move through, while still having enough LOS-blocking terrain for maneuver to matter. That means having at least 4" gaps, in a game where a basic infantryman can only move 6" in his turn- in practice, it means a lot of units caught out of cover, while vehicles and monsters are constrained to very specific paths.

Frankly, it sucks, and I much prefer the terrain rules in older editions- where terrain was traversible, and not only LOS-blocking but actually made a major difference to survivability. Terrain in 9th is too binary; either you're hidden, or you're visible and can be engaged at either full or near-full effectiveness.

I'll also echo the comments made about most armies playing on autopilot (my game plan is pretty well set before the game begins), and especially this:

 the_scotsman wrote:
This level of lethality works great for a fast-moving card game or an RPG where you want combat to be smooth and easy to resolve but it's absolute misery in a hobby where you want rules to represent a unit you spent a combined total of 20 hours painstakingly painting up.

It is just damned demoralizing to spend the time to paint up a squad of (expensive, $-wise) troops only to have them blown off the table turn 1 before they get to do anything.