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 Daedalus81 wrote:
Sure, I won't contest that. Sitting still or shuffling isn't going to be as sexy as fighting. You're still able to set up future moves though, which I think is a fundamental tactic even if it doesn't have the AA feel to it.

No one said anything about decisions not directly being combat related not being interesting. If this were true euro games as a genre wouldn't exist.

I was going to post a Warmachine comparison in my previous post but didn't because direct comparisons tend to derail threads but lets go with it.

First decision you need to make in Warmachine on your turn is focus allocation. This single decision has nothing to do with combat directly but encompasses many different decisions you'll have to make that will effect your turn. You need to decide what spells to upkeep, what you want your warjacks to do, how much focus they'll need to do it, what spells you want to cast, if you should use your feat etc. And this is before you even roll a die.

40k could probably benefit from having character auras etc cost CP to turn on during the Command Phase. Probably having to "buy" strats during the Command Phase for use during the turn would be good as well. It would make the game much more interesting if you had to buy your command rerolls before you even roll the dice.

Not that any of this is really relevant to the OP. Not sure how we ended up here.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Niiai wrote:


I disagree that tyranids are suppose to be a horde army. If it is, it is false advetising. Tyranids in 8th and 9th edition are a gunline army. (If you want to justefy it from a fluff perspective after the chaos chasmn (the first time the hive mind actually got hurt) the kronos are focused on shooting, because they loose to much materials in a melee fight against daemons.)

Tyranids do not work as a horde army. Play them as shooty. False advetising.

Disagree all you want, that's what the fluff is. Given that my whole point was about how GW doesn't give any army a real identity related to its fluff I'm not sure what your point is.

The Tyranids are 100% a horde army. Any attempts to say otherwise is just silly.

Now, just because the rules of the game make playing said horde unrewarding/non-interactive/a complete waste of time, doesn't mean that Tyranids aren't a horde.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The Tyranids are 100% a horde army. Any attempts to say otherwise is just silly.

Now, just because the rules of the game make playing said horde unrewarding/non-interactive/a complete waste of time, doesn't mean that Tyranids aren't a horde.

Dingdingding

Racerguy180 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The Tyranids are 100% a horde army. Any attempts to say otherwise is just silly.

Now, just because the rules of the game make playing said horde unrewarding/non-interactive/a complete waste of time, doesn't mean that Tyranids aren't a horde.

Dingdingding

The issue with 'Nids isn't if they're a horde army or not, it's if they're a melee army or not. The fluff can go either way for them on the one issue, but everything about 'Nids screams "I'ma come bite your face off!" while in practice they only work as a gun line.

The Newman wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The Tyranids are 100% a horde army. Any attempts to say otherwise is just silly.

Now, just because the rules of the game make playing said horde unrewarding/non-interactive/a complete waste of time, doesn't mean that Tyranids aren't a horde.

Dingdingding

The issue with 'Nids isn't if they're a horde army or not, it's if they're a melee army or not. The fluff can go either way for them on the one issue, but everything about 'Nids screams "I'ma come bite your face off!" while in practice they only work as a gun line.

it's almost like if you base a whole bunch of armies fluff on how scary they are in a particular area, but then 100% of the fluff outside of their respective codex is them LOSING in that particular area in various escalatingly ludicrous scenarios, it becomes difficult for them to have any kind of in-game identity at all, and the only weapons that the game designers allow to be good are those that aren't shown in the various fluff pieces to be inferior by way of their basically 100% loss rate.

Gee, I wonder why we've got all these chaos/xenos factions with 'Super Duper Scary In Melee" as their core identity, yet all their melee weaponry tends to cap out just below 'the swords that bladeguard veterans carry' in terms of stats, even if it's a weapon carried by a 120+ point HQ unit or something.

In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

Nids can totally win a significant conflict, so long as their victory is pyrrhic.

That was the whole point of the exterminatus-Inquisitor who nuked planets in the face of the Tyranid advance - though in this case you'd have to have Bellysaurus Coal magic up a reality bomb to close the eye of terror mega-bio-phage-thing to cause the Hive Mind great pain with every planet taken, etc. etc.

I'm sure you could magic something up in the fluff. It's not like it's unprecedented in recent lore.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

Nids can totally win a significant conflict, so long as their victory is pyrrhic.

That was the whole point of the exterminatus-Inquisitor who nuked planets in the face of the Tyranid advance - though in this case you'd have to have Bellysaurus Coal magic up a reality bomb to close the eye of terror mega-bio-phage-thing to cause the Hive Mind great pain with every planet taken, etc. etc.

I'm sure you could magic something up in the fluff. It's not like it's unprecedented in recent lore.

Conspiracy hat on, our now very accurate rumour list seems to indicate nid book/models are right at the back of the bus which seems very odd. I've been wondering if nids are getting the crons treatment for 10th in the core box and having all the core plastics replaced, but much like crons this would necessitate a "big conflict/win" for the nids to have as the setting.

Dudeface wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

Nids can totally win a significant conflict, so long as their victory is pyrrhic.

That was the whole point of the exterminatus-Inquisitor who nuked planets in the face of the Tyranid advance - though in this case you'd have to have Bellysaurus Coal magic up a reality bomb to close the eye of terror mega-bio-phage-thing to cause the Hive Mind great pain with every planet taken, etc. etc.

I'm sure you could magic something up in the fluff. It's not like it's unprecedented in recent lore.

Conspiracy hat on, our now very accurate rumour list seems to indicate nid book/models are right at the back of the bus which seems very odd. I've been wondering if nids are getting the crons treatment for 10th in the core box and having all the core plastics replaced, but much like crons this would necessitate a "big conflict/win" for the nids to have as the setting.

Eh, slight modification there -- the very accurate rumor list doesn't mention Nids *at all*. I'd agree that they're back of the bus, but I'm not assuming any new models until I have a reason to assume so (outside of what looks to be a kill team release since we have seen Nids rumor engine pics).

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

Planets are important in the setting because they have story’s on them, a no name planet is only irrelevant if there is no story to tell there.
A galaxy is huge, so the Tyranids could eat up planets indefinitely and G wouldn’t run out, but that could set up a fun Meta Narative as they consume and get into conflicts as they push in.

Put mini story’s into white dwarf, little scenarios that can be used to draw upon for big events every 10 years or so. Use the storyline itself to flesh out the worlds of the imperium, the parts of the galaxy effected and the political climate in the area is between the different races fighting.
It can be done, and other games even do it. And would be a perfect thing for a white dwarf Artical every few months.

It also would take like 200 years for GW to run out of content, I sure tyranids players would get a kick out of there Faction identity being used in such a way.

You have splinter fleets and other infiltration themes to put them in other parts of the galaxy as well, so I don’t think it would really be that hard to do once they get a format down.

Apple fox wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

A galaxy is huge, so the Tyranids could eat up planets indefinitely and G wouldn’t run out.

Which is exactly the problem with 40k. They just invent whatever, whenever so there's no stakes. Nothing is at risk because whenever an NPC faction like nids they pull out some gak like:

The Flubbrish spinter fleet enters the Muftymoo Sector and consume the Space Giraffe's homeworld. Nothing is heard from the Space Giraffes chapter again.

Yep. Big W for the nids there. All those very important things that weren't at all made up on the spot to make nids sound very scary are sure to have a big impact. Its not like they can just make up a bunch of sectors or space marine chapters to make things sound impressive without actually being impressive.

They could always have a carnifex beat the crap out of an Avatar of Khaine, that seems to be the goto for making Space Marine Captains sound awesome.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
They could always have a carnifex beat the crap out of an Avatar of Khaine, that seems to be the goto for making Space Marine Captains sound awesome.

Did that not happen? There was fluff involving the Swarmlord that had him send a brood of carnifexes at something to kill it. I can't remember if it was the invasion of Ultramar or something else.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

A galaxy is huge, so the Tyranids could eat up planets indefinitely and G wouldn’t run out.

Which is exactly the problem with 40k. They just invent whatever, whenever so there's no stakes. Nothing is at risk because whenever an NPC faction like nids they pull out some gak like:

The Flubbrish spinter fleet enters the Muftymoo Sector and consume the Space Giraffe's homeworld. Nothing is heard from the Space Giraffes chapter again.

Yep. Big W for the nids there. All those very important things that weren't at all made up on the spot to make nids sound very scary are sure to have a big impact. Its not like they can just make up a bunch of sectors or space marine chapters to make things sound impressive without actually being impressive.

In that case, sectors can have a narative, planets can be retaken. Battles can be lost, leading to other planets be put into more difficult to defend positions.
Making the planets important in the narrative.
Stakes, the entire setting has no stakes other than GW running out of plastic to sell or a reason to sell it.
They make stuff up, and then create the story’s that make the planets, sectors and narative have value.
As planets fall, the sector gets more desperate and the narrative of the tyranids advance is pushed.

We as players know that it won’t come for many many years, realistically ever. But that’s the narrative the tyranids have, they can do something with it. Or let 40k be shallow and soulless.

If all you have is big super important super battles, you don’t have anything but a shallow and worthless setting.

Auto correct hates me tonight :,(

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
They could always have a carnifex beat the crap out of an Avatar of Khaine, that seems to be the goto for making Space Marine Captains sound awesome.

Did that not happen? There was fluff involving the Swarmlord that had him send a brood of carnifexes at something to kill it. I can't remember if it was the invasion of Ultramar or something else.

shush youre not supposed to reveal the fact that the emperor told belisarius cawl to make the Super-Salamanders a special primaris chapter of space marines entirely composed of Avatars of Khaine, secret GW employee forum lurker #58!

The Carnifexes going after an Avatar was during the Siege of Iyanden IIRC. The Avatar was awoken to destroy the Swarmlord, challenged it to single combat, then the Swarmlord threw like 6 Carnifexes at it because the Swarmlord isn't stupid.

Ah, lol.

Sorry, it's hard for me to remember the number of times an Avatar has gotten punk'd by X to prove how cool X was.

It is the only time the Avatar getting wrecked actually makes sense from my memory.

Apple fox wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
In fairness that's a problem with the scale of 40k's universe. Nids can't win any significant conflict because if they do then by the nature of their fluff they'll snowball and kill everything. At the same time nids eating Planet Noname XVI isn't exactly a big win because random planets get eaten/destroyed/exploded all the time in 40k.

Honestly I don't know why they didn't have them win the Devestation of Baal, it was the right time for fluff shake ups, the star system is garbage so they couldn't use it as a staging ground to snowball and its it not like Space Marines NEED their home planets for anything.

A galaxy is huge, so the Tyranids could eat up planets indefinitely and G wouldn’t run out.

Which is exactly the problem with 40k. They just invent whatever, whenever so there's no stakes. Nothing is at risk because whenever an NPC faction like nids they pull out some gak like:

The Flubbrish spinter fleet enters the Muftymoo Sector and consume the Space Giraffe's homeworld. Nothing is heard from the Space Giraffes chapter again.

Yep. Big W for the nids there. All those very important things that weren't at all made up on the spot to make nids sound very scary are sure to have a big impact. Its not like they can just make up a bunch of sectors or space marine chapters to make things sound impressive without actually being impressive.

In that case, sectors can have a narative, planets can be retaken. Battles can be lost, leading to other planets be put into more difficult to defend positions.
Making the planets important in the narrative.
Stakes, the entire setting has no stakes other than GW running out of plastic to sell or a reason to sell it.
They make stuff up, and then create the story’s that make the planets, sectors and narative have value.
As planets fall, the sector gets more desperate and the narrative of the tyranids advance is pushed.

We as players know that it won’t come for many many years, realistically ever. But that’s the narrative the tyranids have, they can do something with it. Or let 40k be shallow and soulless.

If all you have is big super important super battles, you don’t have anything but a shallow and worthless setting.

Auto correct hates me tonight :,(

Yes, they can do that but they don't. They just throw names no one has ever heard before at things and hope it sounds cool. I'll be honest I don't understand your point and it sounds like you're agreeing with me because GW acts as if all the battles ARE big important battles. Remember Vigilus? I don't. It took me 5 minutes of googling to remember what it was called. It amounted to nothing but was hyped up by GW as a major battle ground but when all was said and done everything returned to the status quo. I'm sure the same will happen once the Octarius supplements rum their course.

And again, why are we even talking about this? What does it have it have to do with the OP?

I feel like it's up to us at a certain point to take the narrative threads we've been given and decide if we want to make anything of them in our game world.

For example, we've got some factions/ sub-factions that we know are stuck entirely in the Imperium Nihilus. That's cannon.

But if we want to, say limit the amount of Blood Angels that can join an Imperial Onslaught Army consisting of multiple detachments which happens to be fighting in the other half the Imperium, that's gotta be on us through mutual consent with our opponents, because you don't want to be the Blood Angel player who gets excluded from a campaign because of the rift.

If we suddenly decide that after the fall of Cadia, pure Cadian armies become a rarity- there's cannon to support that, but again, the decision to do it has to be on us.

The Ynarri haven't yet assaulted Slaanesh's realm looking to recover the final cronesword in the lore... But GW has set up the story if you want to fight the battle yourself.

I didn't see how the BSF storyline ended because there wasn't enough in the final expansion to compel me to buy it. But Taddius, Pious and Gottfrett all visited my Sisters on the way to the BSF and fought a few small battles with them. Now that the business at the BSF is wrapped up, I expect they'll be returning for a more permanent tour of duty. But again, it was all on me to set that up and make it happen.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Which is exactly the problem with 40k. They just invent whatever, whenever so there's no stakes. Nothing is at risk because whenever an NPC faction like nids they pull out some gak like:

The Flubbrish spinter fleet enters the Muftymoo Sector and consume the Space Giraffe's homeworld. Nothing is heard from the Space Giraffes chapter again.

Yep. Big W for the nids there. All those very important things that weren't at all made up on the spot to make nids sound very scary are sure to have a big impact. Its not like they can just make up a bunch of sectors or space marine chapters to make things sound impressive without actually being impressive.

If it were in the context of a supplement all about the Muftymoo Sector, or a full length novel about the Space Giraffes, and it ended with the twist that the Tyranids win and the Space Giraffes are wiped out, that might actually be kinda fun and cool.

The problem isn't that GW creates new planets/chapters/etc out of thin air for the sake of stories. That's why the setting is a giant sprawling galaxy in the first place, it's fine. The problem is only mentioning these victories in dry one-sentence off-hand references and expecting anyone to care.

Introduce the newly-invented locales and characters, set them up, characterize them, get us invested in their story, and then when the 'Nids win it has impact. It's not universe stakes, it's narrative stakes that matter.

PenitentJake wrote:
I feel like it's up to us at a certain point to take the narrative threads we've been given and decide if we want to make anything of them in our game world.

For example, we've got some factions/ sub-factions that we know are stuck entirely in the Imperium Nihilus. That's cannon.

But if we want to, say limit the amount of Blood Angels that can join an Imperial Onslaught Army consisting of multiple detachments which happens to be fighting in the other half the Imperium, that's gotta be on us through mutual consent with our opponents, because you don't want to be the Blood Angel player who gets excluded from a campaign because of the rift.

If we suddenly decide that after the fall of Cadia, pure Cadian armies become a rarity- there's cannon to support that, but again, the decision to do it has to be on us.

The Ynarri haven't yet assaulted Slaanesh's realm looking to recover the final cronesword in the lore... But GW has set up the story if you want to fight the battle yourself.

I didn't see how the BSF storyline ended because there wasn't enough in the final expansion to compel me to buy it. But Taddius, Pious and Gottfrett all visited my Sisters on the way to the BSF and fought a few small battles with them. Now that the business at the BSF is wrapped up, I expect they'll be returning for a more permanent tour of duty. But again, it was all on me to set that up and make it happen.

sure, you can. In fact, let's say that we wanted to do just that. Let's take a Ynnari list that includes the three signature ynnari characters and make up a quick narrative battle with them invading the realm of slaanesh. it's narrative, so I'm gonna use power levels.

Masque of Slaanesh 5
Shalaxi Hellbane 13
Keeper of Secrets 12
30x daemonettes 12
30x daemonettes 12
30x daemonettes 12
Hellflayer 4
10 seekers 10
10 seekers 10
5 fiends 10


vs

Visarch 5
10x wyches 6
10x incubi 8
5x hellions 4
Raider 6
Raider 6

Yncarne 15
Yvraine 6
5 rangers 3
10 Windriders 11
10 Windriders 11
10 Shining Spears 15
Vyper 3

OK. these seem like fairly fluffy, fairly light, not WAAC list setups I would assume. But here's the problem: let's say I, as a fluffy narrative player, think that a slaaneshi daemon crone world would probably be a fairly open, blasted landscape, devastated by the ravages of chaos in the eons since the fall of the eldar, I set up a few rocks, a couple shattered eldar spires, the one webway gate Yvraine's forces will be popping out of, maybe a few twisted plants and stuff for Dense Cover but it's not going to be an urban cityscape, I want a cool narrative battle on an open field where the eldar and daemons are clashing in a lightning strike with epic character battles to the backdrop of these large armies kind of going at each other.

The eldar player deploys pretty far back, clustered around the webway portal as that's where the Ynnari forces would be charging onto the battlefield from, and also tactically they know the slaaneshi forces are quite fast, so theyre not going to deploy right on up on the deployment line. The slaanesh daemons win the roll to go first, and basically they advance up the battlefield, try to make some long charges, but they fail.

the Eldar forces leap out of their transports - this is the exact epic clash of armies the players wanted! the wyches line up to square off against some daemonettes and yvraine and the Masque of Slaanesh line up for an epic character duel, the hellions move up to attack some seekers, the shining spears and Yncarne move towards a keeper of secrets and the Visarch and his Incubi face off against Shallaxi Hellbane.

Shooting from the 20 windriders kills 30 daemonettes. Shooting from the wyches, hellions, and vyper kills another 21 daemonettes. OK, fifty daemonettes down in one shooting phase, that's a little high, but now it's the charge phase, this is the exciting part!

The incubi use the 'hated enemy' stratagem to reroll wounds against Shallaxi Hellbane. But shallaxi causes -1 to hit AND -1 to wound, so they'll need to wound on a SIX, and they deal...oh, 20 damage on average. BUT WAIT, she ignores wounds on a 6, so she only takes... 16. Ok, Shallaxi is dead, that's the first activation, warlord killed I guess.

the slaanesh player won't be caught out like that again, no sir, they select their other keeper of secrets to seek vengeance against the shining spears! 6/10 die from the snapping claws and witstealer sword

10 wyches now fight 30 daemonettes - they rolled 2 combat drugs and got +1A +1S, so that's...oh, yep, 17 dead, we're down to 24 daemonettes total out of the 90 we started the turn with.

the seekers are selected now, and the ynnari player just picks the hellions up off the table, they know they're done.

Oh but now it's time for the epic character duel between Yvraine and the dreaded Masque of Slaanesh! How will it go??? The masque's unique defensive aura causes even the strongest duellists to falter, -1 to all hit rolls vs nearby daemonettes...but, oh, Yvraine's got SfD on now, so she's still hitting on 2s. And also +1A and +1S. She gets 4 wounds and the masque dies.

The Shining Spears attack, dealing their expected 7 damage, but the Yncarne actually gets lucky - not that lucky, but he gets 3 unsaved wounds instead of the expected 2. So that's a dead KoS (this is the first time I've projected damage that isn't the average rounded to the nearest 1)

the remaining daemonettes strike back, slaying the 10 wyches, and in the resulting morale phase both daemonette squads are under 1/2 strength so 16/90 daemonettes remain.

One single turn, 60/100 power level has been removed from the table, and this is I'll remind our "AA will fix everything" crowd, very close to Alternating Activation 40k - because the Slaanesh forces were always on fight first, so the combat phase was truly alternating. the daemons took LESS damage by being able to remove 6/10 spears and the hellions.

But the_scotsman, you forgot that you're playing crusade!

You just have to spin a narrative yarn about how the assembled army of slaanesh daemons evaporated nine seconds after the Eldar came out of the webway gate and it's now fun and engaging gameplay!

The scenario you describe is problematic, to be sure.

Here's how I'd handle it:

We know Slaanesh's realm is built in six concentric circles, and that each offers a specific vice to tempt invaders off the path that will carry them deeper into the realm. We also know that Slaanesh is likely to keep an artifact as valuable as the Cronesword at the center of the realm, though vanity might prevent the master of excess from hiding the prize within that central realm. Finally, we know that Slaanesh covets the Aedlari dead, and that this realm will be a grave to many, and a terror to any who invade.

So you have six realms to cross; each includes a Theatre of War designed to reflect the temptation offered by that particular realm. This likely manifests as a psychological malaise that interferes with the combat prowess of invaders, and/ or somewhat bolsters the defenders. Within each realm are remains of eldar heroes that serve as objectives. Eldar units that reach these objectives and perform an action to meditate upon them gain an immunity to the psychological oppression of the Theatre of War.

The Eldar player must win a game in the first ring in order to proceed to the second, and so on. A daemon victory holds the Eldar raiding force in place. I might also invent a scenario that allows the Daemon player to expel the raiders from the realm.

I'd Crusade it. I'd build an onslaught roster for the Eldar team, but games for the campaign would still start at 25PL + 5RP as standard. All Eldar Units for any battle must be chosen from the Onslaught Roster. Which ring of the realm each unit occupies is tracked, and only units that have advanced to a particular ring may fight within it. So if you start with 25PL; once they break through, you can decide whether your next battle is that same Patrol fighting in the next ring, or whether you try to move a different 25PL force inward from the outside ring to join the forces that broke through in the previous game.

If you want very little terrain because that's what you envision Slaanesh's realm to be, you make the psychological impact of Theatre of War interfere with ranged attacks. Units that manage to meditate with the remains of the dead become immune. It would also be a good idea to design one relic for each ring which can be found by the Eldar via a different action- so your eldar player has a choice: take the immunity to the psychological condition or go fishing for the artifact- or try to stay in place for two turns and do both.

As for advantages to the daemons- I think it would be helpful to create a Slaaneshi fortification or two and make sure that one is placed in every battle. As a limitation though, only forces under the thrall of Slaanesh may be used. I'd probably houserule in Slaangors and build a Slaanesh themed herdstone for one of the realms. I might also incentivize the Daemon forces holding units in reserve. There might be guest appearances by a small EC themed warband of CSM in particular realms as well.

I guess that my point is YOU are building this scenario, because GW hasn't written one that tells that story. If you don't want to use terrain to limit the ranged firepower of the invaders, there are other tools available to you. If you choose to use neither terrain, nor Theatres of War to make your custom narrative game interesting, that isn't really on GW, because you are the one designing the scenario/ campaign.

PenitentJake wrote:

I guess that my point is YOU are building this scenario, because GW hasn't written one that tells that story. If you don't want to use terrain to limit the ranged firepower of the invaders, there are other tools available to you. If you choose to use neither terrain, nor Theatres of War to make your custom narrative game interesting, that isn't really on GW, because you are the one designing the scenario/ campaign.

I disagree with this point. A well-designed game offers the flexibility to run different types of games in different terrain set-ups without having to house rule anything. There will likely be a minimum level of terrain required but if you need to saturate the table with terrain to make it playable that's a design flaw, especially when it's not very specifically called out as a requirement in the core rules.

The scenario put forward doesn't even hinge completely on the lack of terrain. It also highlights how ridiculously lethal close combat can be as well. If your response to any criticism about the game is "just change the rules to suit" all you're doing is highlighting how bad the core rules are.

Slipspace wrote:

I disagree with this point.

As is your right, but some context might be helpful. Conversation meanders on Dakka, slipping off topic in places and picking it up in others.

So the post you quoted is part of one of those turns in the path. Sim-Life and Applefox started an interesting side conversation about fixed universe events, and setting vs. story concepts. The complaint was that GW hasn't actually cannonized story events that severely impact one faction, or a group of factions, because the status quo needs to be maintained in order to allow people to continue using models they purchased in games taking place in the "Now" of the timeline. Here are some selections from the tangent:



My response was that I understand why GW can't official disturb the status quo, but they create story hooks that allow us to do it on our own, with our own groups of like-minded players. But WE have to take responsibility for that, because if any of it became official, it would alienate large chunks of the playerbase. The recovery of the Cronesword from Slaanesh's realm was one example I posted.

Scotsman, who has a real hankering for narrative matches, and a real knack for coming up with fluffy ideas, picked up the Slaanesh ball and ran with it. Being a skillful poster, he also bent it back to the OP by pointing out that terrain could be an issue in the scenario, because parts of Slaanesh's realm ARE described as open meadows. I suggested Theatres of War as a non-Terrain based solution to lethality.

This is a suggestion I have made to Scotsman before. He described a battle on Fenris, and he and his opponent both agreed that Fenris was not thematically suited to the dense urban terrain that could otherwise have been used to mitigate lethality. I pointed out that snowstorms ARE thematically suited to Fenris, and could address lethality in lieu of terrain.

There we go. Context established.

Slipspace wrote:

A well-designed game offers the flexibility to run different types of games in different terrain set-ups without having to house rule anything.

I brought houserules into my post because we were in the context of special narrative scenarios to begin with- We were discussing a key battle which would move the Ynarri narrative thread forward from where GW left it after Blood of the Phoenix. I suggested that for me personally, one battle wouldn't accurately convey the magnitude of the story event, so I'd make a campaign out of it.

Theatres of War are not necessarily house rules. If you want to avoid houseruling- and there are many great reasons to do so- you can simply find a Theatre of War that suits your needs and use it as written. If you have Pariah, it is the best source for Theatres of War from the PA series. If you don't, White Dwarf is full of them. They are not houserules.

Slipspace wrote:

There will likely be a minimum level of terrain required

I think that this is Scotsman's specific point though- the narrative of some games does not fit with the minimum guidelines. And to be fair to everyone here, GW's terrain guidelines this edition could have been stronger. The book actually falls short of saying "Completely fill one quarter of the table with terrain, including a balance of all Keyworded terrain types, then distribute this terrain across the table as you see fit." This is a guideline that has been used in previous editions, but it tends to work.

The difficulty for Scotsman is that the height restrictions on Obscuring and Dense mean that terrain that is guaranteed to include those keywords isn't appropriate to every battlefield. Now I don't have access to my BRB ATM, so I'm not sure how it's worded- If it says all terrain 5" or taller is Obscuring, that doesn't prevent players from assigning Obscuring to terrain that is less than 5" tall should they choose to do so. If on the other hand, it says terrain MUST be 5" tall to confer obscuring, that's a different story, and it compounds Scotsman's trouble.

Slipspace wrote:

but if you need to saturate the table with terrain to make it playable that's a design flaw, especially when it's not very specifically called out as a requirement in the core rules.

As described above, I think the actual problem that we're addressing isn't that it's necessary to saturate the table with terrain, it's that some of the most useful terrain Keywords typically apply to pieces of terrain that don't fit the narrative needs of certain battles.

Slipspace wrote:

The scenario put forward doesn't even hinge completely on the lack of terrain. It also highlights how ridiculously lethal close combat can be as well. If your response to any criticism about the game is "just change the rules to suit" all you're doing is highlighting how bad the core rules are.

"Change the rules to suit what you are doing" isn't MY response to criticism- it's GW's design philosophy for 9th and to a lesser extent, 8th. It's why there are 3 ways to play. It's why there are four sizes of game. It's why there are typically more datasheets per faction than you will ever use in any one game. It's why there are dozens of published Theatres of War in White Dwarf and Campaign books. It's why Crusade doesn't proscribe a single campaign paradigm in the core Crusade rules, but instead provides different campaign paradigms in a variety of supplemental resources.

I understand that some people want a game that you can just open up a box and play, but for many of us, what makes 40k interesting is that it ISN"T that. Some of us really like world building/ campaign building/ scenario writing. If the game didn't give us opportunities and tools to do that, it would just be any other game. Smoother, more balanced, easier to play on the go... But more limited in possibilities.

PenitentJake wrote:
I understand that some people want a game that you can just open up a box and play, but for many of us, what makes 40k interesting is that it ISN"T that. Some of us really like world building/ campaign building/ scenario writing. If the game didn't give us opportunities and tools to do that, it would just be any other game. Smoother, more balanced, easier to play on the go... But more limited in possibilities.

I don't see how a reduction in the currently excessive level of lethality would limit your 'opportunities' or 'possibilities'.

Nor why a game requiring you to patch over its rules in order to make scenarios work is a positive. Good games are ones where you don't have to start inventing houserules in order to keep the game functional.

Slipspace wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

I guess that my point is YOU are building this scenario, because GW hasn't written one that tells that story. If you don't want to use terrain to limit the ranged firepower of the invaders, there are other tools available to you. If you choose to use neither terrain, nor Theatres of War to make your custom narrative game interesting, that isn't really on GW, because you are the one designing the scenario/ campaign.

I disagree with this point. A well-designed game offers the flexibility to run different types of games in different terrain set-ups without having to house rule anything. There will likely be a minimum level of terrain required but if you need to saturate the table with terrain to make it playable that's a design flaw, especially when it's not very specifically called out as a requirement in the core rules.

The scenario put forward doesn't even hinge completely on the lack of terrain. It also highlights how ridiculously lethal close combat can be as well. If your response to any criticism about the game is "just change the rules to suit" all you're doing is highlighting how bad the core rules are.

Yeah, let's say I decided on a game-wide rule that grants EVERY slaanesh unit light cover - whoops, that doesn't work, Light Cover doesn't even interact with daemons at all.

....OK, maybe I give them all the most cover protection that the core rules allow for, maybe I give every unit on the board Dense cover AND Light cover, always on all the time.

I um....so here's the thing...

...I was INCLUDING the masque of Slaanesh's '-1 to hit daemonettes' on ALL the shooting attacks the eldar units made against the daemonettes. I assumed PERFECT battlefield positioning, and NEGATIVE TO-HIT MODS ARE CAPPED, so even THAT doesn't alter the scenario, literally at all.

This is the problem. Right here. The core rules limit my freedom as a custom fluff-lovin' narrative-forgin' story teller so much by every unit statline being so hilariously lethal and every modifier having such a heavy cap at literally just -1 that you've essentially got two options

1) Strip away all the strategy layer crap. Just get rid of it. Army bonuses, doctrines, stratagems, traits, relics everything, just throw it out. This makes it a little bit easier to make a narrative that actually feels like a narrative. Pair with a good solid mission design, a much bigger than the minimum size board and generous terrain, and you've almost got the capability to tell some kind of interesting story where a fight between two characters might just go more than one single swing by one person

2) Basically completely change the core rules of the game in order to allow for a functional narrative game.

I recently did this with pretty good success with a Drukhari wych cult arena battle mission I did with my buddy. I altered the following:

-All drukhari units fight first (allowing the two players to have an alternating age of sigmar style melee combat phase, and then neutral units go after all drukhari units have gone)

-All 'sergeant' units and characters fight prior to any units fighting, and they roll to hit and wound each other simultaneously. Unsaved wounds done by one optionally cancel out the unsaved wounds caused by the other

-1000pts start on the battlefield battle round 1, battle round 2 each player gains a pre-made mercenary unit (incubi, scourges, harlequins, a solitaire, or mandrakes, all set to roughly equivalent points values) and battle round 3 remaining 500pts enters on the board

-Power from Pain uses the old 'pain token' system rather than going by battle round - so each unit friend or foe destroyed within 3" of a unit generates a Pain Token and gives them the rule equal to the # of tokens they have

-removed all subfactions, stratagems, relics, traits, and blade artists because feth that fiddly ass rule.

Like at a certain point, sure, I'm having a great time, and the game functions far better than any 9th ed game i've played recently, but at what point am I not even playing 9th ed anymore? How many boards I gotta replace before I can say It's My Boat, I Stole It From That Theseus Guy Fair And Square?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I understand that some people want a game that you can just open up a box and play, but for many of us, what makes 40k interesting is that it ISN"T that. Some of us really like world building/ campaign building/ scenario writing. If the game didn't give us opportunities and tools to do that, it would just be any other game. Smoother, more balanced, easier to play on the go... But more limited in possibilities.

I don't see how a reduction in the currently excessive level of lethality would limit your 'opportunities' or 'possibilities'.

Nor why a game requiring you to patch over its rules in order to make scenarios work is a positive. Good games are ones where you don't have to start inventing houserules in order to keep the game functional.

Yeah, again another quick little reminder - you can do this with Age of Sigmar. You can create as zany a scenario as you want, there are LOTS of rules...

...but if you just want to show a friend how to play, you can throw miniatues down on an empty table, 24" apart, and you get something out of it that at least resembles "a game" and not "a single turn of competitive manual tax filing where one player puts all their miniatures away a unit at a time."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:

Slipspace wrote:



I think that this is Scotsman's specific point though- the narrative of some games does not fit with the minimum guidelines. And to be fair to everyone here, GW's terrain guidelines this edition could have been stronger. The book actually falls short of saying "Completely fill one quarter of the table with terrain, including a balance of all Keyworded terrain types, then distribute this terrain across the table as you see fit." This is a guideline that has been used in previous editions, but it tends to work.

The difficulty for Scotsman is that the height restrictions on Obscuring and Dense mean that terrain that is guaranteed to include those keywords isn't appropriate to every battlefield. Now I don't have access to my BRB ATM, so I'm not sure how it's worded- If it says all terrain 5" or taller is Obscuring, that doesn't prevent players from assigning Obscuring to terrain that is less than 5" tall should they choose to do so. If on the other hand, it says terrain MUST be 5" tall to confer obscuring, that's a different story, and it compounds Scotsman's trouble.

obscuring is a trait that appears on some types of terrain (e.g. Ruins, but not Sector Mechanicus terrain) which only kicks in IF the individual terrain piece is 5" tall. Ditto for Dense, but with 3". You can have a piece that is a Forest, but if it's 2.5" tall, it just...does nothing. It's got the trait that prevents you from climbing on top of it, and Dense but dense doesnt do anything.

RAW, even if you stacked up a triple-high zone mortalis setup, it wouldn't kick in as ZM individual pieces are only 3" tall.

PenitentJake wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

I disagree with this point.

I understand that some people want a game that you can just open up a box and play, but for many of us, what makes 40k interesting is that it ISN"T that. Some of us really like world building/ campaign building/ scenario writing. If the game didn't give us opportunities and tools to do that, it would just be any other game. Smoother, more balanced, easier to play on the go... But more limited in possibilities.

This is a bad take and I'm going to assume you miscommunicated your point.

PenitentJake wrote:
I understand that some people want a game that you can just open up a box and play, but for many of us, what makes 40k interesting is that it ISN"T that. Some of us really like world building/ campaign building/ scenario writing. If the game didn't give us opportunities and tools to do that, it would just be any other game. Smoother, more balanced, easier to play on the go... But more limited in possibilities.

Think of a game as a giant machine (it has mechanics after all).

Playing the game is running your armies through the machine and seeing what pops out the end.

In this metaphor, there are two ways a narrative designer can interact with the machine:
1) Pull levers on the existing machine to change bits and bobs of it.
2) Build entirely new parts of the machine (sometimes by cannibalizing from other parts!) from scratch.

It is superior game design to offer (1), as (2) is only a step or two removed from just rebuilding the entire machine (game) from scratch - and is actually harder than doing so, because repurposing existing mechanics is a greater hurdle than just scratching together your own from the ground up. There's no guarantee of balance, there's no guarantee the players will have fun (unless you're one of the players yourself, which poses a whole 'NOTHER set of problems...). Most importantly, there's no money in it - I'm paying GW over $100 for the gamut of their rules just to play my army, and probably up to $400 if I slavishly bought every campaign book that they will ever release this edition (Octarius 1 was $60 by itself).

If I am paying $400 for a machine, I don't expect to have to take it home and rebuild it to make it function. A well-designed $400 game will have all kinds of fun levers and stuff I can pull to adjust things WITHOUT making me rebuild them by cannibalizing other machine-parts and forcing them to fit into a new narrative context.