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So far, it's always been "reduce damage by one, to a minimum of one". I do think a flat reduction of damage (without a minimum) could be a good way to represent exceptionally tough units (titans, land raiders, etc). We all know it'd start out that way, and then GW will hand it out like candy to all sorts units, which also results in them giving lots of weapons a higher damage stat, etc.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Can they make Wraithseers HQ choices again so we can do all-Wraith armies...

It's a ForgeWorld kit, so never going to happen.

On Titans and other stuff? One could adopt the Void Shield rule from Titan Legions.

Basically, to drop a shield you needed at least a -1 save modifier. This prevented massed Bolter and other super weedy weapons stripping shields, making Titans that little bit more survivable.

In 40K? You could say weapons with AP0 or AP-1 can only do a single point of damage regardless.

I'm hoping the Nightspinner also gets a more reliable number of shots as opposed to 2d6.

Twilight Pathways wrote:

Still missing the point of the lance profile. What actual use is there for it? My initial thought was linked fire would make it a perfect monster and tank killer, but it's now focused profile only. That makes a Falcon a superior anti-tank option, and multiple fire prisms go infantry hunting, and that just doesn't feel right.

The Black Adder wrote:

 Galef wrote:

warpedpig wrote:
...as in elite troops.

I think using the CORE keyword is how GW plans to achieve this moving forward.
I have no doubt that DAs will be CORE, whether they stay Troops or move to Elites.

CORE is now how GW wants to represent units that are main-stay fluff units. Troops, it seems, are just units GW wants you to field to represent the most common members of any given faction.

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I'm not sure GW had a good idea what it wants to do with core. They just shoved it on everything that was infantry or a dreadnought in the marine codex.
I'm not sure why terminators are considered more mainstay than predators. They applied it sparingly with necrons, but then gave in when they needed to apply a general buff to the army and dumped it on a load more units, but oddly not on the units that make up the actual core of an army. For admech they decided to give it to ballistari but not onagers.

GW had an article about ‘Core’ in Dec’s WD.

They outright stated it was a game mechanics thing almost entirely divorced from fluff.

They gave the example of Space Marines where vehicles are not Core as they wanted to dissuade ’parking lot’ gameplay but Dreads are as they felt that didn’t warp gameplay as much.

Necrons getting more core added for balance reasons is entirely in line with this.

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

Removing the minimum of 1 is a change that couldn't really have made at the start of 9E, as not all factions had access to updated weapon profiles like heavy bolters. However once the cycle of codex updates is complete it's a viable option. I think there should be an exception for melee weapons though, at least with a certain AP value. Weapons like power swords should still be a threat.

Hopefully tomorrow we get the Fast Attack leaks for Vypers and Windriders.

warpedpig wrote:
Hopefully tomorrow we get the Fast Attack leaks for Vypers and Windriders.

They posted a schedule on day 1. Tomorrow is the new Avatar rules and Friday is something related to Kill Team.

For vehicle and monster design space, they really need to just bump toughness. If Leadership can go to 11 now, vehicles ought to go higher than 8

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

So... what was the point of doing away with the S/T table, again?

 Albertorius wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

So... what was the point of doing away with the S/T table, again?

I mean we do still have a S/T table, you might be thinking more of AoS. The main difference is that the variance across wounding has been flattened because you need to be double someone's profile to wound them on 2's or be wounded on 6's. And 6's always wound.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

So... what was the point of doing away with the S/T table, again?

I mean we do still have a S/T table, you might be thinking more of AoS. The main difference is that the variance across wounding has been flattened because you need to be double someone's profile to wound them on 2's or be wounded on 6's. And 6's always wound.

Yes, in the sense that it's still a formula, but if we a) are not using the fact that now you can go over S/T 10 and b) there is a need to, once again, set a limit for stuff that won't damage... those were the two main points of that change.

Seems kinda pointless, by now.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Is this a thing, that units have -1 damage, so in effect a d1 weapon cannot injure or damage them?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
-1 to a minimum of 1.

I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

So... what was the point of doing away with the S/T table, again?

I mean we do still have a S/T table, you might be thinking more of AoS. The main difference is that the variance across wounding has been flattened because you need to be double someone's profile to wound them on 2's or be wounded on 6's. And 6's always wound.

Yes, in the sense that it's still a formula, but if we a) are not using the fact that now you can go over S/T 10 and b) there is a need to, once again, set a limit for stuff that won't damage... those were the two main points of that change.

Seems kinda pointless, by now.

Oh I agree that GW really dropped the ball when it comes to the 8th ed revamp and their chances for more granularity. Unfortunately, they chose to stick with a 7th ed stat paradigm of T8 being the highest T baseline and since many armies are limited to S9 or 8 at best for ranged weaponry, they're basically in a tough spot now that if they suddenly start using higher T characteristics that the anti-tank weaponry like MM suddenly start wounding things on 5's. They'd have to errata weaponry across the board to make armies relatively equal to the alterations on toughness.

Why exactly would higher toughness help the design space?

Between modifiers to hit, wound and armour saves (and possible FNPs), then manipulation to the damage stat, I'm fairly confident you can do whatever you want.

Tyel wrote:
Why exactly would higher toughness help the design space?

Between modifiers to hit, wound and armour saves (and possible FNPs), then manipulation to the damage stat, I'm fairly confident you can do whatever you want.

Because if it's done correctly then you don't need those.

If a tank is T16 and you have actual AT guns with S16 (for example), then anything not an AT weapon will have a really hard time breaking that egg. As they should.

Tyel wrote:
Why exactly would higher toughness help the design space?

Between modifiers to hit, wound and armour saves (and possible FNPs), then manipulation to the damage stat, I'm fairly confident you can do whatever you want.

It's about bringing the 2+/6+ wound brackets into play regularly and then gives you more room to spread the weapon strengths out to match giving more options.

Dudeface wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Why exactly would higher toughness help the design space?

Between modifiers to hit, wound and armour saves (and possible FNPs), then manipulation to the damage stat, I'm fairly confident you can do whatever you want.

It's about bringing the 2+/6+ wound brackets into play regularly and then gives you more room to spread the weapon strengths out to match giving more options.

While at the same time you can do more stuff in the middle.

Whilst, yes, actually using Toughness values above 8 would be a good start, I think that damage manipulation is something that can work well along side it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Whilst, yes, actually using Toughness values above 8 would be a good start, I think that damage manipulation is something that can work well along side it.

By damage manipulation you mean reducing damage as the example above?

Maybe, but I'd personally prefer a general rule, like (for example on the top of my head, not real ^^) if the target's T is triple the attack's S, the attack can't damage.

I'll be honest, I'm really not a fan of damage-manipulation as a baseline rule because it feels like you're having to tack on more rules just to make the game functional.

To me at least, it just feels like "Yeah, we made a lot of stuff 2-wounds, even though it should really be 1-wound, thus we had to give a lot of weapons D2 to keep them effective, but that made them too effective and so now we're giving vehicles and such -1 damage to make those weapons less effective . . ."

To me, it seems the obvious solution is instead to not inflate the wound stats of infantry to the point where a lot of weapons need to become D2.

Anyone else scared that if all these rumors pan out that Eldar units will either be really expensive to begin with? Or if they aren't, they'll get severe points increases at the next Chapter Approved?

Because I worry that's gonna be the case

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This is probably not the place for it, but i'd like to see the next edition of 40k go more the Kill Team v2 + Apocalypse + AoS combined route for toughness.

There are a few really elegant mechanics in those game systems that missed the 8th/9th edition boat but could really make things feel more epic. For example:

Kill team: Units have a defense stat that determines how many ranged attacks they can save against. Vehicles could just have a huge defense stat to represent their ability to shrug off a large amount of firepower.

Apocalypse: Weapons have a SAT and SAP value to indicate Strength against Tanks and Personnel respectively. Certain weapons have a high SAP indicating they are strong against infantry but a low SAT stat representing this weapons innefective use against vehicles.

OT: I would imagine you'll see a lethality increase almost across the board. Where units were underperforming they'll see a corresponding pts increase to go with their newfound lethality.

If a unit was already good at killing, Shining spears for example, then chances are it'll either stay the same or have a small increase.

Then there are the outliers, stuff that was so overpriced no-one ever took it because the balance was all wrong even though the stats and rules were good. Say Wraithlords. Those are likely to come down a lot imo. If you look at stuff like marine dreadnaughts etc they hover around 100ppm before weapons with varying degrees of survivability.

I think they're doing a decent job on pointing generally, but some stuff is clearly way off and takes a while to get right. Sometimes they never get it right; Then they nerf it

Weapons should be classified for different purposes. Antitank would be a -2 to hit infantry for example. But easily hits and damages tanks.

Anti personnel weapons would have no effect against tanks. Etc.

All these silly wound / toughness / damage modification mechanics are bandaids for a poorly designed system.

How hard is it to have clear lines between what kills infantry vs tanks. Can’t be that hard.

 Galef wrote:
Anyone else scared that if all these rumors pan out that Eldar units will either be really expensive to begin with? Or if they aren't, they'll get severe points increases at the next Chapter Approved?

Because I worry that's gonna be the case

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Less models to buy and paint, sounds like a win to me

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Anyone else scared that if all these rumors pan out that Eldar units will either be really expensive to begin with? Or if they aren't, they'll get severe points increases at the next Chapter Approved?

Because I worry that's gonna be the case

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Less models to buy and paint, sounds like a win to me

Gotta agree, that's a positive for me.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
It's a ForgeWorld kit, so never going to happen.

And yet, most of plastic custode range is pretty much invalidated in 40k by ugly, pay to win FW gak (I especially like termies with eye lenses so wide the user must be seeing with ears). Go figure

Really, wraithseer (and all resin custodes) should be just upgrade options to plastic minis, not their own units, but otherwise the same datasheets (like ogryn bodyguard or GK walker HQ). That way players wouldn't be gatekeeped by FW availability and could choose it they want to convert plastics or get 'official' resin model.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm still debating whether that second part is required for balance or not. There's an argument to be made that reducing to 0 damage increases the design space, and allows you to show that certain types of units are immune to certain types of weapons (ie. Landraiders vs Laspistols).

Certainly, and that's why MuH uSr whining so prevalent in certain threads here is so dumb. There is place for several durability rules, depending on unit, to better balance them. It's almost as if 'bespoke' rules actually had a (GASP!) point

Also, why would a Land Raider be immune to laspitols anyway? You can still destroy tracks/optics/guns with it no problem. There is little functional difference between mission killed tank that withdrawn (or was abandoned) and the one that was killed for real in the game, but people for some reason always cling to one interpretation as if they didn't get the point of abstraction in rules.

Dudeface wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Anyone else scared that if all these rumors pan out that Eldar units will either be really expensive to begin with? Or if they aren't, they'll get severe points increases at the next Chapter Approved?

Because I worry that's gonna be the case

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Less models to buy and paint, sounds like a win to me

Gotta agree, that's a positive for me.

That's a plus for new players, sure.
But I look at it as more hard choices and more models shelved because I can't fit as many in.

Small scale example would be if I could take 20 Guardians, a Farseer, 2 Fire Prisms and a unit of Scorpions before, but now all those units increased in points might mean I have to drop the Scorpions out of the list entirely.
Probably not a huge deal, but it is still sad.

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Just player higher point games.