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It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.

 Da Boss wrote:
It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.

sure, but I at least kind of get it in DnD where at the end of the day combat is just 'you play the world's worst skirmish miniatures game for a little bit to resolve who dies and who lives when the stabby stabs happen and you get back to the role playing."

In 40k the combat system...is the game.

Well I guess the internet uproar worked considering GW felt the need to release an emergency balance update.

Here is hoping more frequent updates will help to ever so slightly (and not nearly enough) curb the game a bit.

This is a weird reason to start balancing the rules, to deal with fan backlash over a tyrannical stance on IP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sort of a half arsed one at that

macluvin wrote:
This is a weird reason to start balancing the rules, to deal with fan backlash over a tyrannical stance on IP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sort of a half arsed one at that

Still done with more effort and conviction from GW than warhammer plus

macluvin wrote:
This is a weird reason to start balancing the rules, to deal with fan backlash over a tyrannical stance on IP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sort of a half arsed one at that

TBF theres also been a lot of fan (read: youtube influencer) backlash over the game imbalance as well.

Really? I don’t pay attention to the influencers. I thought the deal was they say good stuff about GW product and GW gives them free product XD

There are also influencers that do not receive anything from GW and therefore they can criticize them openly.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
It's a bit like disadvantage and advantage only counting once in d&d, where it's just as hard to do something while blind, exhausted and cursed as it is to do so when just exhausted.

sure, but I at least kind of get it in DnD where at the end of the day combat is just 'you play the world's worst skirmish miniatures game for a little bit to resolve who dies and who lives when the stabby stabs happen and you get back to the role playing."

In 40k the combat system...is the game.

Sorry for a little derailment, but I recently came back to DnD and this is hilarious...because it's true!

 blood reaper wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

What I would give for this rule to be official.

Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.

We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.

While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.

tneva82 wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

What I would give for this rule to be official.

Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.

We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.

While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.

That was because you as the player HAD to take the model that was seen as the casualty. the_scotsman's solution is to give the defending player the option of taking any model off the table as a casualty, just as now, but if they remove all the ones in line of sight the sequence ends.

So if you want to protect that vulnerable dude in the open you now have the choice of sacrificing models that can't be seen or you remove the visible dude and everyone else is safe. In no way is this worse for the player getting shot at.

tneva82 wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

What I would give for this rule to be official.

Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.

We have had that sort of rule. Do you enjoy getting your special weapons sniped by rhino sniping? Use rhino's to block LOS, snipe specific model.

While sure it would reduce # of models lost...it would make all the special models from squads die even faster than others. Basically kill any unit like tactical squad, any squad with special melee weapons etc to do the work.

The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.

Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.

This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.

macluvin wrote:
Really? I don’t pay attention to the influencers. I thought the deal was they say good stuff about GW product and GW gives them free product XD

Some of the last goonhammer articles about tournament winning lists had stuff akin to "yadda, yadda, boooooring." in the "Why is this list interesting?" fields for adMech and drukhari lists. They won so many games they just ran out of stuff to write about them.

 Jidmah wrote:

macluvin wrote:
Really? I don’t pay attention to the influencers. I thought the deal was they say good stuff about GW product and GW gives them free product XD

Some of the last goonhammer articles about tournament winning lists had stuff akin to "yadda, yadda, boooooring." in the "Why is this list interesting?" fields for adMech and drukhari lists. They won so many games they just ran out of stuff to write about them.

Goonhammer is generally more positive than I am about 40K, which admittedly is not a high bar, but they aren't afraid to occasionally call out when something's terrible.

There are really two issues here. Skew builds,and lethality.

Any game system where you can build a new lists with a faction they do really well versus certain matchups tend to have 1+ unfavorable match ups. When they run into that match up their chance to win goes down. Venom spam DE into freebooter buggies is a good example of this. For reference there were 16 freebooter lists at so cal, only 1 made it to the top 8. Freebooter buggies is pretty hard countered by deathwing terminators or other large tough unit builds.

In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.

First turn lethality.

40k has had first turn lethality problems for a long time. It is the reluctance to have an unit activation system opposed to I do all my stuff and you take it then you do all your stuff and I take it. If they had alternating activations the first turns would still be highly lethal but it would be more mutual lethality.

We already have alternating activations in assault, it is doable.

So the original contention is that no army should be able to table any other army in a single turn ever?? Good luck with that.

 Geemoney wrote:
So the original contention is that no army should be able to table any other army in a single turn ever?? Good luck with that.

Not back to back like we just saw...

 Geemoney wrote:
So the original contention is that no army should be able to table any other army in a single turn ever?? Good luck with that.

It's probably not healthy for any wargame to be able to inflict 90% casualties with the first volley of fire.
History is full of battles where one side took that kind of punishment, but only with the first salvo? This is like a fundamentally immersion-wrecking experience, and I think it really isn't too much to ask that this kind of result maybe shouldn't be possible.

blaktoof wrote:
There are really two issues here. Skew builds,and lethality.

Any game system where you can build a new lists with a faction they do really well versus certain matchups tend to have 1+ unfavorable match ups. When they run into that match up their chance to win goes down. Venom spam DE into freebooter buggies is a good example of this. For reference there were 16 freebooter lists at so cal, only 1 made it to the top 8. Freebooter buggies is pretty hard countered by deathwing terminators or other large tough unit builds.

In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.

First turn lethality.

40k has had first turn lethality problems for a long time. It is the reluctance to have an unit activation system opposed to I do all my stuff and you take it then you do all your stuff and I take it. If they had alternating activations the first turns would still be highly lethal but it would be more mutual lethality.

We already have alternating activations in assault, it is doable.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried a game using alternating activations? Either in all phases, or just in the shooting phase?

My experience with it is limited to a series of games in late 6th / early 7th (fully acknowledging the game was very different.) While I enjoyed it, my main take away was that the player with the most units had an advantage. There was this "final word" aspect to each turn, where the excess units would dogpile on one or two units from the opponent's army.

Not saying this couldn't work, but curious about whether it's actually a solution to lethality. Losing an additional unit each turn due to an army's ability to target more things might just be a wash.

The few times I tried it in 8th it worked best going phase by phase. We tried one time doing it unit by unit doing their full turn sequence but it caused some strange interactions with some stratagems.

There is some favoring of large MSU, but it still seemed to be much less than letting a whole army do everything.

If I did it again in 9th I would want to adopt some rules in terms of alternating. Such as allowing the player with less units the ability to pass or activate a second unit before the other player can for every x amount of units difference. Or alternatively activating units in PL blocks, like 20 or 25 PL worth of units you can move then opponent etc. This would put more balance into how much effect you can get per an activation between a large unit or some multiple small units combining up to 25 PL.

 the_scotsman wrote:

The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.

Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.

This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.

It's 9th edition, it always gets better: That's a nice unit you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone used strategic line of sight blocking to specifically target the models in the middle, to cause the two halves to lose coherency.

I mean, it's not like the people who played the game when you could do line-of-sight sniping worked through all of the different ways the rules could be changed, or anything.

blaktoof wrote:
If I did it again in 9th I would want to adopt some rules in terms of alternating. Such as allowing the player with less units the ability to pass or activate a second unit before the other player can for every x amount of units difference. Or alternatively activating units in PL blocks, like 20 or 25 PL worth of units you can move then opponent etc. This would put more balance into how much effect you can get per an activation between a large unit or some multiple small units combining up to 25 PL.

Yeah. I have a feeling 40k AA would require eliminating the turn sequence and allowing units to move / shoot / charge / fight / psyk-out as an activation itself.

The power level thing is an interesting idea, but I see it less as a points issue and more as a # of activations issue. A stronger model will still be subject to limitations around the number of units that can be targeted, while a larger number of units will have incentives to focus on the stronger unit.

While there's ways to compensate for those mechanics, it remains a sea change from where we are with the game. I'm looking for the convincing argument this impacts "lethality" in a positive way.

 solkan wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

The simplest possible solution to it is just - exactly what I proposed. Allow the defender to remove casualties, and IF no models are ever visible, saves stop.

Opponnet wants to rhino snipe a special weapon? If it's more important to you that the weapon survives, remove other models from the unit. If its less important, remove just the special weapon and then the rest of that unit's shooting is wasted.

This puts all the cards in the hands of the defending player, and removes rhino-sniping as an issue entirely. Easy.

It's 9th edition, it always gets better: That's a nice unit you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone used strategic line of sight blocking to specifically target the models in the middle, to cause the two halves to lose coherency.

I mean, it's not like the people who played the game when you could do line-of-sight sniping worked through all of the different ways the rules could be changed, or anything.

It don’t change that much if you start removing models from a flank to maintain coherency and remove the middle models last.

blaktoof wrote:


In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.

That's the entire mentality of some tournament players, they don't care if they can be wiped out in one turn, they build their list in order to be those who can wipe out someone in one turn and hope to find those juicy opponents. They only care about placing high, and in order to do that a rock/paper/scissor list might be the best option.

Drukhari player hoped to find imperium, aeldari, chaos, necrons, etc... and it got orks instead. Orks player knew he had to counter drukhari and ad mech and brought a skew list that was extremely tailored against those. IIRC he played against 3 drukhari players in a row.

That's a risky gamble: tailor against the armies you think you can face more likely or those you absolutely need to be in advantage if you face them. Don't care if that list becomes unplayable or even flat out illegal next rounds of FAQs. Not the most common way to play 40k but nothing new at tournaments though.

 Blackie wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


In other words paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissor beats paper. If you have the option to skew so your list is all one thing, you will have a hard time when you run into a skew list that is all something that your skew rules have detriments instead of benefits for.

That's the entire mentality of some tournament players, they don't care if they can be wiped out in one turn, they build their list in order to be those who can wipe out someone in one turn and hope to find those juicy opponents. They only care about placing high, and in order to do that a rock/paper/scissor list might be the best option.

Drukhari player hoped to find imperium, aeldari, chaos, necrons, etc... and it got orks instead. Orks player knew he had to counter drukhari and ad mech and brought a skew list that was extremely tailored against those. IIRC he played against 3 drukhari players in a row.

That's a risky gamble: tailor against the armies you think you can face more likely or those you absolutely need to be in advantage if you face them. Don't care if that list becomes unplayable or even flat out illegal next rounds of FAQs. Not the most common way to play 40k but nothing new at tournaments though.

Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".

No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.

The point is tailored list shouldn't exist, pretty much like games determined after one turn. A likely loss is something that happens between TAC lists, when an army is more optimized than the other one or is run by a more skilled/lucky player.

No game should be decided after first turn is something I agree. But when one out of 50+ games is actually decided after first turn, to me it's pretty much like saying that no game is decided after first turn.

And some players design their list knowing in advance that they'll autolose against their hard counters. Or autowin against juicy opponents. Now where's the problem here? Having the options to tailor?

 Ordana wrote:
Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".

No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.

Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?

Because that's what happened.

The drukhari player literally tossed the game because he ran into a hard-counter, and that's the main reason why this was such a stomp. All other games this list played during the event weren't this one-sided, and he even lost a game despite placing first overall.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".

No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.

Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?

Because that's what happened.

The drukhari player literally tossed the game because he ran into a hard-counter, and that's the main reason why this was such a stomp. All other games this list played during the event weren't this one-sided, and he even lost a game despite placing first overall.

ehm, yes? Even under perfect conditions a 2k point army should not be killing 1800 points in 1 turn.

And saying no other game was this one-sided is a strait up lie. The semi final was also on stream. The Ork player went first and almost wiped a different DE list in his first shooting phase, he won the game half way through turn 1. The finals he could have potentially lost if he didn't win the roll-off to flee from combat with his Mek guns.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Playing against a list that counters you should be an uphill battle, a likely loss but maybe you can pull something out.
It should not be a case of 'You will be tabled after the first or second shooting phase".

No game should be decided after the first turn. period. full stop.

Not even if you intentionally brought none of the weapons can harm your opponent's units, they have the perfect weapons to kill you and not only do you leave every single one of your units out in the open with no cover whatsoever, but also move close enough to be in rappid fire/dakka range of every weapon, no matter how short ranged it is?

It's hilarious to me that we're 15 pages into this thread and it still needs to be said that the answer to this question is a resounding "yes". No game should result in the removal of 90% of an army in the first turn, barring some ridiculously unlikely statistical anomaly.

Uhm what? Are you serious?

You can easily build a marine all-melta list that one-shots every knight list in existence if the knight player cooparates.

So, limit meltas to 3 per army now?