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Tiberias wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
What is this constant babble about burden of knowledge? Just ask your opponent what his unit does before you decide to send your nobz in or not.

Uhm, they will probably only tell you 50% of it's capabilities when it's a pick-up game with strangers.

What is that even supposed to mean? If I ask the person I'm playing with a straight up queation like: "what special rules does that unit have right now if it charges me?" and they answer along the lines of "well, it might be better now in combat, but you'll never know exactly unless you try...muhahaha" I'd immediately pack my things and leave. What the hell kind of people are you playing with?

I play with opponents who are both extremely open, and also pretty crafty regarding their rules. In my last game that actually prompted this thread, we were playing Admech vs all wych-cult Drukhari. And we each had little plastic labels denoting stuff like special rules/stat changes. At one point, the game board had:

-1-2 tokens next to every Drukhari unit saying things like "S+1" "A+1" etc for Combat Drugs
-A token next to my score sheet showing this turn's bonus combat drug
-tokens for the warlord traits I'd given to my HQs
-tokens for the relics I'd given to my HQs
-3 tokens for the 3 Power from Pain army-wide rules in effect, plus 1 for Blade Artists
-a token next to each admech unit showing whether it was from Ryza or a custom forgeworld that reduced I think your strength and toughness if you were near them
-2 tokens for the skitarii doctrine and the admech canticle currently active
-a token for the special relic hiding in one of my opponent's squads
-a token for the techpriest upgrade power thingy that adds Moar Auras to Aura Man (two-sided, so he could flip it over from red side to blue side when Aura 1 changed to Aura 2)

it was, frankly, an utter and complete nightmare, and all this for a game that really actually only lasted about 2.5 turns, eveyrthing on my side was basically wiped out by my turn 3. I made an average of 1 decision with each of my units, since turn 1 I had transports, turn 2 I hopped out from transports, and then by turn 3 I had next to nothing left. Just an absolute trainwreck of a "Wargame" experience, it was like getting together to do competitive by-hand tax filing.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

The most recent travesty of that is the completly unnecessary and careless attitude of GW torwards R&H / LatD.

Why? Did anyone expect necrons to get such an extensive model release (again, not talking about the rules for necrons...those were lackluster in certain aspects like destroyer cults)?
Past tendencies are in no way a safe or reliable indicator for the quality of future releases. But if we are playing that game, let me offer a counter prediction: considering GWs willingness to go back on it's roots with black templars regarding the rules and the models, which are very closely modeled after 3rd edition artworks, there is a clear possibility that GW is going to do the same with Chaos Space Marines. I'm not claiming my prediction to be true at all, but it's as valid as yours.

See, i don't question your argument, i question it only partially in a specific case.

See f.e. the discussion off the at the time upcoming 7th (or was it 6th) edition chaos marine codex, which granted us wannabee obliterators, dinobots and the warpsmith.
The only Codex the designers at the time talked about as inspiration was 4th, and only that one, which got praised as the be all end all of all chaos dexes.... which anyone remotly familiar with the faction can point out to them was an unmigitated shitshow. There has been nothing impliying that GW has changed in its perception of that factions history and identitiy and indeed it has been the most consistent faction in regards to its history to this date by gw.

I can't argue with that, but I'm still hopeful for a decent Chaos Space Marine codex. The leaks have been true to the letter so far as evidenced by all the black templar stuff, so there is a decent chance we'll truly get a sizeable chaos release in 2022 with a dedicated world eaters codex supplement....that's never happened before and if it turns out to be really true, then GW has shown some willingness to go in a space marine-esque direction with chaos marines as far as supplements and sub-faction rules are concerned. Screw all the discussion about rule bloat...I want to see codex supplements for world eaters, emperors children and night lords with at least one special unit for each like red butchers for world eaters. I wanna see a dedicated traitor guard or "lost and the damned" codex. I believe all these things are doable if GW sees the potential of these factions to grow the IP and make them money.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

In some ways the 3.5 -> 4e chaos transition is strongly related to OPs question.

Does it enhance your game experience to have a 3.5 like system where any given unit can skew considerable distances in performance for reasons such as their shoulder pad icon, compared to 4e* where stuff like limits on raptors and obliterators were not locked out behind the colour of your paint but equally your blue painted raptors were no better than your red or green painted raptors.

(*4e of course took it further with actual units and wargear being culled above and beyond the freebies and wombo-combo potential)


I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
What is this constant babble about burden of knowledge? Just ask your opponent what his unit does before you decide to send your nobz in or not.

Uhm, they will probably only tell you 50% of it's capabilities when it's a pick-up game with strangers.

What is that even supposed to mean? If I ask the person I'm playing with a straight up queation like: "what special rules does that unit have right now if it charges me?" and they answer along the lines of "well, it might be better now in combat, but you'll never know exactly unless you try...muhahaha" I'd immediately pack my things and leave. What the hell kind of people are you playing with?

I play with opponents who are both extremely open, and also pretty crafty regarding their rules. In my last game that actually prompted this thread, we were playing Admech vs all wych-cult Drukhari. And we each had little plastic labels denoting stuff like special rules/stat changes. At one point, the game board had:

-1-2 tokens next to every Drukhari unit saying things like "S+1" "A+1" etc for Combat Drugs
-A token next to my score sheet showing this turn's bonus combat drug
-tokens for the warlord traits I'd given to my HQs
-tokens for the relics I'd given to my HQs
-3 tokens for the 3 Power from Pain army-wide rules in effect, plus 1 for Blade Artists
-a token next to each admech unit showing whether it was from Ryza or a custom forgeworld that reduced I think your strength and toughness if you were near them
-2 tokens for the skitarii doctrine and the admech canticle currently active
-a token for the special relic hiding in one of my opponent's squads
-a token for the techpriest upgrade power thingy that adds Moar Auras to Aura Man (two-sided, so he could flip it over from red side to blue side when Aura 1 changed to Aura 2)

it was, frankly, an utter and complete nightmare, and all this for a game that really actually only lasted about 2.5 turns, eveyrthing on my side was basically wiped out by my turn 3. I made an average of 1 decision with each of my units, since turn 1 I had transports, turn 2 I hopped out from transports, and then by turn 3 I had next to nothing left. Just an absolute trainwreck of a "Wargame" experience, it was like getting together to do competitive by-hand tax filing.

Well in this particular post it seems to me that your main issue was that the game was really lopsided and offered you with little decisions because all your units were dead after a turn. But the lethality of the game does not necessarily have something to do with dedicated special rules that makes units feel distinct.

I've said in multiple threads that I think the extreme proliferation of high AP weapons across all factions and especially for shooting weapons was a big mistake on GWs part. I still believe that going for a fixed to hit value like 3+ instead of a comparative WS/BS was a mistake and that greatly increasing the strength of both melee and shooting weapons, while at the same time effectively capping toughness at 8 was a big mistake also. But in my opinion these are general systemic flaws of 40k that started to accumulate since 8th edition and it does not necessarily have anything to do with how many factions get special rules or lots of subfaction rules. (Though let me be clear that 8th and 9th did a lot of good things and previous editions also had big systemic issues)

I also fully agree that you have to keep track of a lot of stuff in 9th during a game, but I welcome these things more than a "streamlined" ruleset where generic melee unit of faction X fights generic melee unit of faction Y and there are no special rules to distinguish them. The overall 40k unit profile system is too basic to offer enough distinction between units and (in parts at least) represent their lore on the table. This started in 8th with the removal of WS/BS and initative and all the multitudes of special rules and sub faction rules is in part a reaction to that.
And you HAVE to represent the lore of a faction on the tabletop at least in some part. The factions and units have to feel distinct from each other in some way, especially with the multitude of available factions in 40k. If 40k had a statblock that went from 1-20 or at least 1-15, you could differentiate the different factions and units a lot better on their datasheet, but the way the game is written and designed now you kinda have to use a multitude of special rules to represent uniqueness, because the unit profile is too limiting. Edit: a D10 system would also help in that matter, but that is never going to happen realisticly.

A.T. wrote:
I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

I remember Gav Thrope being completely bamboozled by a simple ice cream metaphor.

A.T. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

In some ways the 3.5 -> 4e chaos transition is strongly related to OPs question.

Does it enhance your game experience to have a 3.5 like system where any given unit can skew considerable distances in performance for reasons such as their shoulder pad icon, compared to 4e* where stuff like limits on raptors and obliterators were not locked out behind the colour of your paint but equally your blue painted raptors were no better than your red or green painted raptors.

(*4e of course took it further with actual units and wargear being culled above and beyond the freebies and wombo-combo potential)


I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

You'll be hard pressed to find a CSM player who played with the 3.5 Codex who thought that the 4th edition codex was better in any way. I'm not saying that they don't exist, but I've never met one.

How many years ago was the 4th edition CSM Codex released?

(Also, D10s? D12s my dude, D12s)

I think it's certainly strange for GW to champion the idea of unit dataslates that include all the rules for a given unit (who has time to look up USRs?), only to then add layer after layer of invisible bonuses.

Similarly, it's vitally important that each unit's wargear be restricted to what is actually in the kit, yet there's no comparable requirement regarding Warlord Traits, Relics, Masteries, Cryptek Arkana, Combat Drugs, Psychic Powers, Adaptive physiology etc, etc.


As for whether it improves my experience, no but it's something I can live with. At least with (invisible) static bonuses I have a chance to learn what a given unit does. What pushes it over the edge for me is the optional bonuses, primarily in the form of stratagems. They're an awful mechanic that should have been the very first thing 9th removed from the game.

 the_scotsman wrote:


I play with opponents who are both extremely open, and also pretty crafty regarding their rules. In my last game that actually prompted this thread, we were playing Admech vs all wych-cult Drukhari. And we each had little plastic labels denoting stuff like special rules/stat changes. At one point, the game board had:

-1-2 tokens next to every Drukhari unit saying things like "S+1" "A+1" etc for Combat Drugs
-A token next to my score sheet showing this turn's bonus combat drug
-tokens for the warlord traits I'd given to my HQs
-tokens for the relics I'd given to my HQs
-3 tokens for the 3 Power from Pain army-wide rules in effect, plus 1 for Blade Artists
-a token next to each admech unit showing whether it was from Ryza or a custom forgeworld that reduced I think your strength and toughness if you were near them
-2 tokens for the skitarii doctrine and the admech canticle currently active
-a token for the special relic hiding in one of my opponent's squads
-a token for the techpriest upgrade power thingy that adds Moar Auras to Aura Man (two-sided, so he could flip it over from red side to blue side when Aura 1 changed to Aura 2)

it was, frankly, an utter and complete nightmare, and all this for a game that really actually only lasted about 2.5 turns, eveyrthing on my side was basically wiped out by my turn 3. I made an average of 1 decision with each of my units, since turn 1 I had transports, turn 2 I hopped out from transports, and then by turn 3 I had next to nothing left. Just an absolute trainwreck of a "Wargame" experience, it was like getting together to do competitive by-hand tax filing.

You represent a lot of things with tokens that don't change over the course of the game.

Not everyone likes writing/ typing up unit cards; if you're a crusade player, you pretty much have to in order to track agendas and other quest tallies (ie. Redemption and Sainthood for sisters, etc). I've created spreadsheet templates to replace GW's Crusade cards, and I include all rules text for order and warlord traits and relics and other things that don't change throughout the course of the game on those cards. It works pretty well because I save the spreadsheet on the computer and track battle honours and scars, and just print before every game. During a game, I can pass around my cards as needed, which is way faster than flipping through a dex- even one that's been tabbed or bookmarked.

Note: I often condense rules text to simplify the process.

Strat cards are good too- I make my own so I can colour code them.

As for the "One decision per unit" part of the post, this feels... inaccurate? If every unit you had moved in your first turn, that's one decision right there. If they shot at anything, you're already up to two per unit. If any unit used a strat, that's three. If you suffered any casualties, which specific models you removed was four. And that's your first turn. It also sounds like you chose not to put anything in reserve, which is something that could have helped a bit in the mid-end game.

Now you can argue that some of those decisions were so obvious that you aren't counting them as decisions. I get that. If you had said that, I wouldn't be typing this. Sorry to fall down on semantics, but I find clarity assists with civility- people are more likely to react to hyperbole with hyperbole, and that escalates to a dumpster fire every time.

Tiberias wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

The most recent travesty of that is the completly unnecessary and careless attitude of GW torwards R&H / LatD.

Why? Did anyone expect necrons to get such an extensive model release (again, not talking about the rules for necrons...those were lackluster in certain aspects like destroyer cults)?
Past tendencies are in no way a safe or reliable indicator for the quality of future releases. But if we are playing that game, let me offer a counter prediction: considering GWs willingness to go back on it's roots with black templars regarding the rules and the models, which are very closely modeled after 3rd edition artworks, there is a clear possibility that GW is going to do the same with Chaos Space Marines. I'm not claiming my prediction to be true at all, but it's as valid as yours.

See, i don't question your argument, i question it only partially in a specific case.

See f.e. the discussion off the at the time upcoming 7th (or was it 6th) edition chaos marine codex, which granted us wannabee obliterators, dinobots and the warpsmith.
The only Codex the designers at the time talked about as inspiration was 4th, and only that one, which got praised as the be all end all of all chaos dexes.... which anyone remotly familiar with the faction can point out to them was an unmigitated shitshow. There has been nothing impliying that GW has changed in its perception of that factions history and identitiy and indeed it has been the most consistent faction in regards to its history to this date by gw.

I can't argue with that, but I'm still hopeful for a decent Chaos Space Marine codex. The leaks have been true to the letter so far as evidenced by all the black templar stuff, so there is a decent chance we'll truly get a sizeable chaos release in 2022 with a dedicated world eaters codex supplement....that's never happened before and if it turns out to be really true, then GW has shown some willingness to go in a space marine-esque direction with chaos marines as far as supplements and sub-faction rules are concerned. Screw all the discussion about rule bloat...I want to see codex supplements for world eaters, emperors children and night lords with at least one special unit for each like red butchers for world eaters. I wanna see a dedicated traitor guard or "lost and the damned" codex. I believe all these things are doable if GW sees the potential of these factions to grow the IP and make them money.

Oh i hope so, and i also anticipate the leaks which so far have been accurate that they atleast give LatD/R&H a second (actually 3rd) and hopefully final good establishment as a faction....
alas i can see gw fething up and just vomiting them into the csm codex without thought or care.

A.T. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

In some ways the 3.5 -> 4e chaos transition is strongly related to OPs question.

Does it enhance your game experience to have a 3.5 like system where any given unit can skew considerable distances in performance for reasons such as their shoulder pad icon, compared to 4e* where stuff like limits on raptors and obliterators were not locked out behind the colour of your paint but equally your blue painted raptors were no better than your red or green painted raptors.

(*4e of course took it further with actual units and wargear being culled above and beyond the freebies and wombo-combo potential)


I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

See H.B.M.C

H.B.M.C. wrote:

A.T. wrote:
I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

I remember Gav Thrope being completely bamboozled by a simple ice cream metaphor.

The last person that should be let remotly near to a CSM or Chaos codex in general is gav.

The cookie cuttering has indeed at the time become worse, because everyone and their mom knew thanks to the culling that DP + Wings + slaanesh, min csm and tripple tripplet obliterators were broken AF.
Indeed arguably worse than 3.5, at the cost of any and all faction identity or subfaction identity , making many players either just stop playing chaos or being drawn to what works on the table instead of "their" intended faction / subfaction.
In essence it was counterproductive.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Your hopes for chaos are unfounded.
Since 4th edition GW has crippled and watered down chaos identity for what it is supposed to be, taking away any and all tools necessary to represent the far flung slew of chaos in any shape and form

In some ways the 3.5 -> 4e chaos transition is strongly related to OPs question.

Does it enhance your game experience to have a 3.5 like system where any given unit can skew considerable distances in performance for reasons such as their shoulder pad icon, compared to 4e* where stuff like limits on raptors and obliterators were not locked out behind the colour of your paint but equally your blue painted raptors were no better than your red or green painted raptors.

(*4e of course took it further with actual units and wargear being culled above and beyond the freebies and wombo-combo potential)


I remember Gav Thorpe writing something to the effect of 'players defined the identity of their army by it's bonuses', so you'd never get an Iron Warrior raptor list for example. The more bonuses and combos you handed out the tighter the players would squeeze into the cookie cutter.

You'll be hard pressed to find a CSM player who played with the 3.5 Codex who thought that the 4th edition codex was better in any way. I'm not saying that they don't exist, but I've never met one.

Aye this.

3.5 had serious balance issues, not gonna talk that down, but 4th brought even worse excesses with that AND baseline took all faction identity and subfaction identity behind the shed.

PenitentJake wrote:
If you had said that, I wouldn't be typing this. Sorry to fall down on semantics, but I find clarity assists with civility- people are more likely to react to hyperbole with hyperbole, and that escalates to a dumpster fire every time.

You're typing it because whenever someone relates a negative game experience to you, you have a tendency to try and blame the negative experience on them, rather than accepting that the game has faults that can lead to a negative experience.

I feel like there are three questions being asked. Anyone feel free to correct me if not.

I really don't mind the layers of rules for Black Templars, especially considering that there are usually limiting factors to their organizational layout if the new books keeps foot step with the codex of the older editions. They are, for example, not allowed to use psykers and the selections of useable units in the old codex tended to be smaller than the larger Chapters. Personally I don't mind the rule complexity of 40k currently, but to be fair I get to play on average one game a week with fun, interesting, and good players so I usually gets heads up and experience with the varied stuff going on out there.

I like sub-factions, but they tend to be badly managed.as their power levels have always been rather varied. For casual games they are wonderful additions as you are not trying to crush your opponent and just wanting to have fun. For competitive gaming they are a /ignore thing unless you go to one of those rare "fluffy competitive" scenes of which none are where I live. In an ideal world all sub-factions would be equally balanced.

Are there too many Space Marine Chapters? I would say yes in this case, but truth be told this has always been a Space Marine game and at this point I'll just admit it. It hurts because my first army is Craftworlds, but Space Marines have always been the de facto faction. Hell, when I bought one of the early Epic 40k boxes it was just called Space Marine and all the little side games - like Space Crusade and Space Hulk - Space Marines have been the center of attention. Also, with rumors of a Horus Heresy box set I think it is just denial to ignore that the sci-fi setting is pretty much just Space Marines at this point. Even Forgeworld is mostly Space Marines at this moment. This is one of the reasons why AoS gladdens my heart as it really hasn't fallen prey to the Space Marine formula with Stormcast. If anything, with the releases of so many Stormcast chambers, Stormcast is mostly just for collectors who have the time and money to upgrade their army each and every edition iteration.

-3 tokens for the 3 Power from Pain army-wide rules in effect, plus 1 for Blade Artists

I have never tracked these things with tokens with the 8th edition and above. You had to do it with pain tokens with 5th edition as each unit had to track their kill counter, effectively making previous edition more token heavy for drukhari than this one.

PenitentJake wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:


I play with opponents who are both extremely open, and also pretty crafty regarding their rules. In my last game that actually prompted this thread, we were playing Admech vs all wych-cult Drukhari. And we each had little plastic labels denoting stuff like special rules/stat changes. At one point, the game board had:

-1-2 tokens next to every Drukhari unit saying things like "S+1" "A+1" etc for Combat Drugs
-A token next to my score sheet showing this turn's bonus combat drug
-tokens for the warlord traits I'd given to my HQs
-tokens for the relics I'd given to my HQs
-3 tokens for the 3 Power from Pain army-wide rules in effect, plus 1 for Blade Artists
-a token next to each admech unit showing whether it was from Ryza or a custom forgeworld that reduced I think your strength and toughness if you were near them
-2 tokens for the skitarii doctrine and the admech canticle currently active
-a token for the special relic hiding in one of my opponent's squads
-a token for the techpriest upgrade power thingy that adds Moar Auras to Aura Man (two-sided, so he could flip it over from red side to blue side when Aura 1 changed to Aura 2)

it was, frankly, an utter and complete nightmare, and all this for a game that really actually only lasted about 2.5 turns, eveyrthing on my side was basically wiped out by my turn 3. I made an average of 1 decision with each of my units, since turn 1 I had transports, turn 2 I hopped out from transports, and then by turn 3 I had next to nothing left. Just an absolute trainwreck of a "Wargame" experience, it was like getting together to do competitive by-hand tax filing.

You represent a lot of things with tokens that don't change over the course of the game.

Not everyone likes writing/ typing up unit cards; if you're a crusade player, you pretty much have to in order to track agendas and other quest tallies (ie. Redemption and Sainthood for sisters, etc). I've created spreadsheet templates to replace GW's Crusade cards, and I include all rules text for order and warlord traits and relics and other things that don't change throughout the course of the game on those cards. It works pretty well because I save the spreadsheet on the computer and track battle honours and scars, and just print before every game. During a game, I can pass around my cards as needed, which is way faster than flipping through a dex- even one that's been tabbed or bookmarked.

Note: I often condense rules text to simplify the process.

Strat cards are good too- I make my own so I can colour code them.

As for the "One decision per unit" part of the post, this feels... inaccurate? If every unit you had moved in your first turn, that's one decision right there. If they shot at anything, you're already up to two per unit. If any unit used a strat, that's three. If you suffered any casualties, which specific models you removed was four. And that's your first turn. It also sounds like you chose not to put anything in reserve, which is something that could have helped a bit in the mid-end game.

Now you can argue that some of those decisions were so obvious that you aren't counting them as decisions. I get that. If you had said that, I wouldn't be typing this. Sorry to fall down on semantics, but I find clarity assists with civility- people are more likely to react to hyperbole with hyperbole, and that escalates to a dumpster fire every time.

Ok, but, counterpoint here:

1) if I'm moving a transport, I'm making a decision with that transport, and not with the unit inside

2) I did have things in reserve, they tpically made one decision (where to place them down on the board and then what to target)

Generally, I dont see 'where to move' and 'what to target' as two separate decision points, particularly when I can go play...any other wargame, and have many many instances of models getting to act for 3, 4, 5 turns over the course of the game and basically self-evidently generating a more interesting and compelling narrative for me as a player.

Comparing 40k to say, Battlegroup in terms of 'things that can happen with a unit'

Battlegroup: I move my Motorized Infantry in their trucks to capture an objective with 2 small buildings. my opponent uses an ambush fire order with a tank to destroy 1 truck, causing 2 casualties to one of the infantry squads and leaving them pinned by the road, while the rest disembark and head into buildings. The next turn, HE fire and machine gun fire from enemy tanks kills 5 members out of 3 squads and pins 2/3 of them. I could use the officer in the unit to automatically rally one of the squads, but instead I use him to spot for artillery to target the tanks, and hope that the infantry squads can rally on their own - one does, but the one in the road and the other in the building fail. The rallied infantry squad opens fire on a german infantry squad a moderate distance away in another building, causing 1 casualty. The artillery knocks out one tank and pins another. The remaining tanks reposition away from the spotter round, and try to spot the officers out of the soviet infantry unit - the last one succeeds and kills them, but they dont fire on the rest of the infantry. On my turn again all my infantry rally, and the squad in the road is now unpinned, so it moves into some trees to gain cover and fires on the same german squad, pinning it. The infantry in the buildings go on ambush, anticipating the germans trying to move mobile infantry up to take their position.

etc, etc. My units take damage, but they continue to act, and make decisions based on the flow of the game, throughout the entire game.

In the average game of 40k, any given unit in my army does this:

-move up the board to get into position for optimal firing, shoot one time, then die in the following opponent's turn. Most units have either Deep Strike, or long range, or high movement enough to make that first part basically trivial on the tiny board 40k is fought on.

in any given game, the number of units I have in a 2000pts army that meaningfully act in 2 or more turns generally hovers around "2-3". And I blame a lot of that on the endless stackup of layers upon layers of overwhelmingly offensive as opposed to defensive special rules.

 jaredb wrote:
The Black Templar are already a successor chapter, I don't think you can be a successor to them.

To expand on the nitpick, Iron Hands successors are a thing and can take all of the bonuses listed other than the BT vow mechanic (which is non-cumulative with shock assault so only really grants early access to a doctrine).

Dedicating all available rules to buffing one dimension of your army then complaining that it is better than the unbuffed version is pretty strawmanish.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You'll be hard pressed to find a CSM player who played with the 3.5 Codex who thought that the 4th edition codex was better in any way.

I don't think there can be any argument that 3.5 had far more scope for customisation.

In the spirit of the thread though, if 4e had all the same options with non of the bonuses would it still have been recieved as poorly? How much of the 3.5 iron hands was being able to represent the servo arm kitbashed onto a model and how much was it about getting 30% more heavy firepower for example

Go back to the original post here: are black templars defined by their ability to inflict 135 points of damage rather than 18 in close combat? Is it enough to have all the thematic options available if they aren't outright better at using them, and how much of that 'doing it better' is seen as an armys character.

Not Online!!! wrote:
3.5 had serious balance issues, not gonna talk that down, but 4th brought even worse excesses

Odd you would single out a list of triple oblits given they were cheaper, tougher, and elite rather than heavy in 3rd.

 Nurglitch wrote:
How many years ago was the 4th edition CSM Codex released?

14.

 Insularum wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
The Black Templar are already a successor chapter, I don't think you can be a successor to them.

To expand on the nitpick, Iron Hands successors are a thing and can take all of the bonuses listed other than the BT vow mechanic (which is non-cumulative with shock assault so only really grants early access to a doctrine).

Dedicating all available rules to buffing one dimension of your army then complaining that it is better than the unbuffed version is pretty strawmanish.

I'm primarily complaining that the quantity of available rules I can use to buff one dimension of my army is enough to increase the combat power of that dimension SEVEN TIMES compared to the unbuffed version.

You know, especially considering that none of those availabe buffs have anything to do with the game situation, board state, miniature, etc and this is supposed to be a miniature game.

Other miniature games: Your unit's power starts at 1. If you attack an enemy in optimal range, your power is 2. If you attack an enemy in an optimal position, i.e. from behind, your power is 3.

40k: your unit's power starts at 1. If you declare that the unit is from an extra-fighty group, your power is 2. If you give your unit the trait "Super-stabby" your power is 3. If you use at-will ability "Its clobberin' time" your power is 4, and if you use at-will ability 'hit 'em again' your power is multiplied to 8.

A.T. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
3.5 had serious balance issues, not gonna talk that down, but 4th brought even worse excesses

Odd you would single out a list of triple oblits given they were cheaper, tougher, and elite rather than heavy in 3rd.


Triple triplets AT. 9.

 Insularum wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
The Black Templar are already a successor chapter, I don't think you can be a successor to them.

To expand on the nitpick, Iron Hands successors are a thing and can take all of the bonuses listed other than the BT vow mechanic (which is non-cumulative with shock assault so only really grants early access to a doctrine).

Dedicating all available rules to buffing one dimension of your army then complaining that it is better than the unbuffed version is pretty strawmanish.

It's not a strawman, the question is whether those rules should be available in the first place. OP should have picked Imperial Fists Assault Marines vs Blood Angels Assault Marines and Imperial Fists Predators vs Blood Angels Predators, successor rules aren't really relevant and further discussion is only derailing the thread.

The question becomes "can Imperial Fists Assault Marines and Blood Angels Predators do the job they're meant to do?" If the answer is no then you could achieve the same thing by simply banning or restricting units that aren't viable, no need to give units more rules that players have to remember.

I really like Stratagems, I think they are a great way to give players more choice over how their army performs. Chapter Tactics are too simple and regimented to represent armies in 40k. Combat Doctrines are a relic of 8th when soup awarded CP instead of taking them away. Super Doctrines were needed because otherwise, everyone would just sit in Devastator doctrine all the time even if they were playing White Scars. I don't have a problem with relics, WL traits or combat drugs.

I don't think anyone is against the idea of a sybfaction having individual flavour, represented as unique rules, buffs or things it can do. The problem is that the scale of such "flavour" is way off, bordering on the ridiculous. Not only is there a problem with how much buffs you can stack, there are also inane things such as "shoot/fight twice" to make those buff stacks absolutely demented.

Time to tone it all down a notch

 Sim-Life wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
If you had said that, I wouldn't be typing this. Sorry to fall down on semantics, but I find clarity assists with civility- people are more likely to react to hyperbole with hyperbole, and that escalates to a dumpster fire every time.

You're typing it because whenever someone relates a negative game experience to you, you have a tendency to try and blame the negative experience on them, rather than accepting that the game has faults that can lead to a negative experience.

I do admit that the game has faults; I've criticized GW extensively for edition churn (even though the current is my favourite); I have criticized them for their failure to FAQ CSM into a playable state, for not updating CWE range, for not putting out enough new models for DE, for the Cursed City Debacle, for their high prices; I've criticized them for releasing campaign books while codices still remain to be printed; I FREQUENTLY criticizing them for giving Space Marines 2-3 x as many kits as any other faction.

I do tend to post more positive than negative- that's certainly true. And when I do post negative, it tends to also include some positivity- as a teacher and a lifelong youth recreation and mentorship specialist, the compliment sandwich concept has become an important component of my personality. You'll notice that in the piece you quoted, I actually acknowledge that my issue is semantics and apologize for it, and while I do suggest some things to Scotsman based on his post (ie. using unit cards rather tokens to indicate unchanging special rules associated with a given unit), I am not "Blaming" anyone for anything. If you see something intended as helpful suggestion which may improve someone's experience as blame, there isn't really much I can do to address that.

My most frequent responses involve reminding people who make suggestions for changes to the entire game that these changes may be most appropriate for Matched play, rather than the game as a whole. There was a really cool suggestion earlier in this thread about moving some of the bespoke layers of rules to narrative only; I'd totally support that, because I genuinely like those layers of bespoke rules, but I also play narrative exclusively.

I think that you might see some elements of the game as problematic that I genuinely enjoy. You might have a hard time believing that anyone likes those elements of the game because you dislike them so much. I get that. Sometimes it's really hard for me to look at suggestions from people who prioritize balance over all else and see the good in those suggestions because balance is a low priority for me. You may also find it difficult to believe that balance could be a low priority for anyone- I get that too.

If you tell me that you aren't enjoying the game, and I know that I enjoy it, and I suggest that you might try some of the things that I do with the game in the hope that this will improve your experience, is that blaming you, or making a friendly suggestion?

I can see how on a bad day, you might interpret it as blame- you want to voice your concerns about the game, and you either aren't interested in exploring potential solutions, or you think the best solution is one in which the game changes, not one in which you chose to play the game differently. This means that no matter how well intentioned my suggestions may be, you're not going to see them in a good light, because you don't want solutions like these. Again, I get that- I don't reply to you as often as I once did, because I know my types of suggestions typically don't appeal to you.

Where Scotsman is concerned though, he and I are aligned in a lot of our attitudes and opinions, and some of my suggestions might work for him. I remember in the 60 pages or so of threads discussing the DE dex, Scotsman often took the words right out of my mouth with almost every one of his posts. I've noticed that his level of satisfaction with the state of the game has dipped since then; he's at a place where the imbalance with DE and AdMech VS other 9th factions is starting to chip away- and I don't disagree with that either.

So let me ask you a question directly: Given Scotsman's post and summary of the game experience, do you objectively believe that with any of his units that survived three turns only made one decision in all three of those turns? And again, keep in mind here that choosing to do what appears to be the tactically best option available is still, by definition, making a choice (as is choosing to do nothing at all).

Because that is specifically what you are quoting and replying about. If some of my other posts have come across feeling like me blaming players, I sincerely apologize- it was never my intent to do that.

Edit: Rereading this post, there's something else I should mention. In life, not just forums, one of the things I've learned is that you can judge and discuss people's ACTIONS, but it is another thing entirely to speculate about their MOTIVES. It's often hard to separate the two, especially one there is emotional attachment to the discussion. But the truth is that people seldom do ANYTHING for just one reason, and people's motivations are as unique as their psychological footprint.

Now I'm not arrogant enough to say that I've NEVER posted anything on a forum that questioned someone's motivations- you could probably go back and find one or two examples of places where it happened. The point is that I try to avoid it, because assumptions about people's motives have complicated my life in the past; sometimes a person will do something that they see as a romantic gesture, and I'll screw it all up by assuming a motive that wasn't there, rather than just thinking about the action itself.

Maybe you yourself are also aware of the pitfalls of assuming people's motivations, and your response was just a slip up, like I am sure I have from time to time. But clearly, your post does make assumptions about my motivations- again, not claiming it's a habit for you, just that this is clearly what you are doing in this singular instance. It feels pretty arrogant to me when I say "I did this because..." and you immediately say "No you didn't, you did it because..." - it feels like you think you know me and my own mind better than I do, and trust me, you don't.

I thought the whole purpose of the anecdote given by the Scotsman was to highlight the sheer number of special rules that are optional buffs that can vary both from paint scheme to paint scheme and the wide spectrum of special rules that can vary within the same paint scheme. And furthermore how they really add very little depth to the game while inexplicably multiplying unit power, and my addition to this is how impossible it makes the game to accurately balance.
I May be wrong but I feel like everyone is taking the wrong point away from the Scotsman.

macluvin wrote:
I thought the whole purpose of the anecdote given by the Scotsman was to highlight the sheer number of special rules that are optional buffs that can vary both from paint scheme to paint scheme and the wide spectrum of special rules that can vary within the same paint scheme. And furthermore how they really add very little depth to the game while inexplicably multiplying unit power, and my addition to this is how impossible it makes the game to accurately balance.

It's that some players want this skew, the idea that the paint scheme has to come with special rules. That - for example - you can't have a 'real' white scars list unless they are better on bikes than the non-white scars.

Though I would note that while the scale of power between the two examples in the original post is huge I don't think it is all a 'paint to win' thing. A lot of this is modern 40ks weird bonus stacking system where a 100pt unit can become a 500pt unit if you stack cards on it, and the paint bonuses are really just a few more power-up cards stacked on top in many cases.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Triple triplets AT. 9

Classic 3.5 Iron warriors. 9x T5 obliterators as elites, a basilisk, and still three heavy support slots unused.
4e oblits were moved to heavy support.

People ragged on the Gav Thorpe quote earlier in the thread but it really does ring true.

If you give Blood Angels +1 to Assault Marines, "everybody" who wants to play Assault Marines is going to play Blood Angels, and "everybody" who wants to play Blood Angels is going to play Assault Marines. Unless, of course, Raven Guard get +2 to Assault Marines. Then the Blood Angels players will play Assault Marines but wonder why Raven Guard are better at their thing than they are...
Armies auto-Flanderize themselves.

To that end, I don't like all of these "hidden" bonuses based on paint scheme or whatever. If you really want Blood Angels to have really good Assault Marines, I think it's ultimately better to give them a unique unit that is *not* Assault Marines but are close enough, to represent the uniqueness of Blood Angel Assault Marines. We could call them Death Company or Sanguinary Guard or something. That way, people would know, looking at the unit, "oh, these are going to be choppier than the average Assault Marine! These are Death Company Assault Marines!"

Stratagems are nice for representing Fog of War type stuff and throwing a little uncertainty into things, but not as 40k implements them. Adeptus Titanicus I think handles it very well, where sure you can super boost your unit/drop an orbital strike/activate your trap card... once per game, in a way decided before the game starts.
As it currently stands, the only reason you *wouldn't* use many of the stratagems is because you don't have the CP to do so.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
If you had said that, I wouldn't be typing this. Sorry to fall down on semantics, but I find clarity assists with civility- people are more likely to react to hyperbole with hyperbole, and that escalates to a dumpster fire every time.

You're typing it because whenever someone relates a negative game experience to you, you have a tendency to try and blame the negative experience on them, rather than accepting that the game has faults that can lead to a negative experience.

So let me ask you a question directly: Given Scotsman's post and summary of the game experience, do you objectively believe that with any of his units that survived three turns only made one decision in all three of those turns? And again, keep in mind here that choosing to do what appears to be the tactically best option available is still, by definition, making a choice (as is choosing to do nothing at all).

Funnily enough Scotsman's response to you is about the same as I would say in response to this.
A decision space doesn't mean I can move 5" or 6" then fire at X or Y then I'm done. If you want to argue semantics then yes, they're decisions, but if you want to be pedantic then choosing to roll your red dice over your blue dice is also a decision. Does it change the way the game plays out in any way? Probably not. The decisions in 40k are obvious to the point where it's actually probably better to call them foregone conclusions, especially given how much redundancy the game allows for with dice rolls via strats and rerolls.

Also writing a list (and deciding whether things should be deep striking/transports/whatever) isn't the decision making people are referring to either because when you put the models on the board THAT is (or should be) the game and where decision making should matter the most.

So yes, I objectively think he only made one decision in the game because I've done it myself when I play transport heavy lists when I use SoB transports loaded with DCA, Flagellants and Dominions. When you put the transport on the table you know it'll move turn 1, poop out it's contents turn 2 and then on turn 3 you have to hope whatever you delivered did what you wanted it to do and isn't dead. No one takes a transport decides "I'm going to keep this rhino as far away from my opponent as possible for some 4D chess tactical reason".

 the_scotsman wrote:
A thought occurred to me when reading the new Black Templars rules previews. Please note, this is not a 'black templars op' thread, just pointing something out regarding how much of a unit's power budget currently resides within rules external to the model itself.

You are more right than you realise, because many of those extra rules you mentioned appear to have no points cost. This is one of the reasons why there are so many mispointed (up or down) units on the release of each new codex.

Rihgu wrote:
As it currently stands, the only reason you *wouldn't* use many of the stratagems is because you don't have the CP to do so.

Or because you plan on using the CP you do have later, for other purposes, but people that hate Stratagems always forget that part.

EightFoldPath wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
A thought occurred to me when reading the new Black Templars rules previews. Please note, this is not a 'black templars op' thread, just pointing something out regarding how much of a unit's power budget currently resides within rules external to the model itself.

You are more right than you realise, because many of those extra rules you mentioned appear to have no points cost. This is one of the reasons why there are so many mispointed (up or down) units on the release of each new codex.

Balance was off before this, it's a lack of good testing.

 vict0988 wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
As it currently stands, the only reason you *wouldn't* use many of the stratagems is because you don't have the CP to do so.

Or because you plan on using the CP you do have later, for other purposes, but people that hate Stratagems always forget that part.

Is that not "not having enough CP to do so"? If I have 3 CP, and want to spend 5... do I "have enough"?

macluvin wrote:
I thought the whole purpose of the anecdote given by the Scotsman was to highlight the sheer number of special rules that are optional buffs that can vary both from paint scheme to paint scheme and the wide spectrum of special rules that can vary within the same paint scheme. And furthermore how they really add very little depth to the game while inexplicably multiplying unit power, and my addition to this is how impossible it makes the game to accurately balance.
I May be wrong but I feel like everyone is taking the wrong point away from the Scotsman.

^This.

The main problems I have with the current state of 40k as a whole are twofold and related.

1) unless you play 40k very, very continuously, the sheer quantity of rules present in the more recent codex releases results in some incredibly bewildering stackups of potential rules given the scale and scope of the game.

consider that in codex adeptus mechanicus, a basic HQ unit very regularly:

-grants a targeted buff to one unit
-grants a passive aura via a warlord trait
-makes a shooting attack with a special ranged weapon
-allows a stratagem to be used for reduced cost
-grants a passive aura via a purchased power
-swaps that second passive aura for a third passive aura by performing an action in the game

All that on a what, 100pt model? Out of your 2000pts army?

And also

2) as opposed to other miniatures games, where the state of the board, the sight lines you have to your target, your range, and the terrain are the primary modifiers in the damage your unit can deal and how hard they are to kill from their base stats, in 40k, so much of that has been shifted to abilities that you simply get to bake in to your army list before the game even starts. Obscuring Terrain is effectively the only thing that prevents me from being able to play 9th edition as a card game with the names of my units written on them and those units relative position (this unit is in front of this unit) written out.

 vict0988 wrote:
Or because you plan on using the CP you do have later, for other purposes, but people that hate Stratagems always forget that part.

It's a valid and indeed important point to take into account.
Recently someone was complaining about a Mordian Tank Commander getting loads of buffs and I countered that they had used about 5 or 6 CP in a single turn on a single unit which was a waste and a tactical error. In a Strike Force sized game that's half your pool gone and in an Incursion it's the entire pot. It's all well and good to throw every single buffing Strategem onto a unit in a vacuum but nobody plays in one and there are built in limitations to curtail these wombo-combos.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Insularum wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
The Black Templar are already a successor chapter, I don't think you can be a successor to them.

To expand on the nitpick, Iron Hands successors are a thing and can take all of the bonuses listed other than the BT vow mechanic (which is non-cumulative with shock assault so only really grants early access to a doctrine).

Dedicating all available rules to buffing one dimension of your army then complaining that it is better than the unbuffed version is pretty strawmanish.

I'm primarily complaining that the quantity of available rules I can use to buff one dimension of my army is enough to increase the combat power of that dimension SEVEN TIMES compared to the unbuffed version.

You know, especially considering that none of those availabe buffs have anything to do with the game situation, board state, miniature, etc and this is supposed to be a miniature game.

Other miniature games: Your unit's power starts at 1. If you attack an enemy in optimal range, your power is 2. If you attack an enemy in an optimal position, i.e. from behind, your power is 3.

40k: your unit's power starts at 1. If you declare that the unit is from an extra-fighty group, your power is 2. If you give your unit the trait "Super-stabby" your power is 3. If you use at-will ability "Its clobberin' time" your power is 4, and if you use at-will ability 'hit 'em again' your power is multiplied to 8.

Its a problem with any beer and pretzels game with additional rules content. Each new layer of rules adds more opportunities for force multipliers, and they're available for people looking for extreme cheese or people just doing what they think sounds cool.
Unfortunately, some armies have many layers of unfortunate combinations, and some are stuck in beer and pretzels land.

Sometimes we get a 'we didn't think people would use the rule like that' response from GW, other times, its apparently intended and fine, no matter what the consequences are (and fight/shoot twice should be _really obvious_ force multipliers)

Going by the responses to your scenario, many people _want_ the layers of extra cheese, regardless of a healthy game state.