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ccs wrote:
Slightly annoyed that things that should be general wargear/upgrades (melta-bombs etc), general abilities (overwatch for ex), or unit specific abilities take tge form of strats,

Otherwise I don't really feel one way or another about them.

Wait, even melta bombs are strats now? I'm lost for words...

Voss wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Umbros wrote:
AOS does it much much better.

A set of generic command abilities that can be applied to any unit (if in range of a character/leader), that offer tactical flexibility, at a cost. Everyone shares the abilities, they offer play and counterplay. Not reliant on memorising pages of them.

AoS did for sure hit it out of the park with their CP system. But it would be very hard to do that to 40k.

It wouldn't, at all. How in the world would it be hard?
There's a much smaller pool of command points on a per turn basis, and plenty of characters and unit leaders to spend them. Make them appropriate to the units rather than massive game changing stuff like fight twice or shoot twice (or stupid gotcha crap), and its just a matter of tweaking specific mechanics at a cost.

Well for 1, pregame strats, you will have to still have the full pool from building to start playing.

I am not a fan of Stratagems. I end up just unlocking warlord traits and relics , junk like that. I would gladly trade all the CP left over after building a list for more units during the army building phase.
40K isn't 40K any more and I don't like that.
Really would prefer something like 1 or two strats available to play per 500 points, one use only and all the unit costs lowered.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Toofast wrote:

ccs wrote:
Slightly annoyed that things that should be general wargear/upgrades (melta-bombs etc), general abilities (overwatch for ex), or unit specific abilities take tge form of strats,

Otherwise I don't really feel one way or another about them.

Wait, even melta bombs are strats now? I'm lost for words...

Yes, the strat only works with a few units that have the Melta-bomb keyword. I think that's only5 or so SM units.

I don't like how stratagems are implemented, I'm against CPs as wel. I'd remove the whole CP/stratagem system simply by making detachments and pre-game abilities and bonuses (such as additional traits or relics, deep strike for units that don't have it natively, etc..) cost points.

Then some of the stratgems would simply be special rules for the specific units that can use them or flat bonuses to their native stats. Some other stratagems would be army-wide special rules instead. Ork staratgem "Ramming Speed" could be an army-wide ability that can be used once per turn on any vehicle for example, or a special ability only available on a few specific vehicles (which can be used multiple times in the same turn then) instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warhead01 wrote:


Yes, the strat only works with a few units that have the Melta-bomb keyword. I think that's only5 or so SM units.

And only 3 (boyz, kommandos, tankbustas) in the ork codex .

the_scotsman wrote:they make me feel like Im playing a game of yu-gi-oh with EXTREMELY expensive cards.

The general lifespan of units that i spend 40+ hours painting that then get removed in a single volley of shooting also helps to enhance that "this is an extremely extremely expensive CCG with unnecessary props" feeling.

Vankraken wrote:Gives me MtG flashbacks of "I'm attacking with my creature and will tap a forest to play giant growth". I got into 40k to get away from that mess so anything that feels like it is automatically sapping a lot of the fun from the hobby. Needing to memories a bunch of faction specific stratagems feels a lot worse than trying to remember all the USRs and unit type rules back in past editions.

That said I also dislike taking unit functionality and attaching them to the whole stratagem system. Shouldn't need to use command points to throw an EMP grenade and apparently the Tau only have 1 EMP grenade available per turn (logistical drone has to deliver it I guess). This sort of "use a resource to do an ability" also feels like Company of Heroes with using munitions to pull a panzerfaust out of thin air. It works fine in that game but I don't like it in a table top game, especially when said game involves list building where your equiping your models before the battle.

^ This. i absolutely hate where the game has gone. If i wanted this type of game i would have played something other than 40K.

The current people running/writing and managing 40K do not even understand their own universe.

The game was meant to be a silly fun place to play with friends where your dudes did the things they would do in the universe. . this is why our group has gone back to playing 5th ed with a few house rules so the game can be fun again. it is no surprise that many of our favorite codexes come from 3rd, 4th or 5th editions.

Like others have said- a couple pages of 20 or so USRs=good, built-in unit special rules=good.

As for the stratagem/resource mechanics question-i despise them with a passion.

 Blackie wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:


Yes, the strat only works with a few units that have the Melta-bomb keyword. I think that's only5 or so SM units.

And only 3 (boyz, kommandos, tankbustas) in the ork codex .

Just 3 in the SM book by my count. Tactical, Assault and Vanguard squads.

Decent strat, but a poor replacement for the grenade assaults of earlier editions.

Some make me feel good, generally ones that are a little bit silly and not particularly effective. Things like orbital bombardment or that battle sisters one where you can make an immolator automatically explode in a ball of flame. But to be fair, those still don't really NEED to be strategems.

The stratagems that you get the most use of tend to make me feel dirty, like some combo I ran on a squad of rubrics which ended up with me hitting on 2's rerolling 1s and wounding on 2s against necron warriors. Granted a good chunk of this combo wasn't even stratagems, but it still pushed me right into "your necron warriors are dead and you can't do anything about it" territory.

AOS does it better with command abilities. There are limitations on how many you can use at once, you need a commander to give the command, and the abilities are pretty tame. It might seem a little bit dull in comparison, but hey, my units get to do a few more things before they meet their inevitable demise, which I think ends up being way more cinematic than units evaporating in a storm of fire because their enemies remembered to put the super ammo in their guns.

I really like strats.

Equipment ones are kinda weird, so they aren't perfect. But I think they allow you to really express the character of the army over time.

I do understand people's concerns. I feel like GW should perhaps set limits on how strats work in matched, because most of the people who hate them feel that way because of the impact they have on Matched play.

Restricting these strat limits to Matched play would make all the Matched players happy without raining on the parade of all the people who see these as part of their army's identity and use them to drive narratives.

PenitentJake wrote:
I really like strats.

Equipment ones are kinda weird, so they aren't perfect. But I think they allow you to really express the character of the army over time.

I do understand people's concerns. I feel like GW should perhaps set limits on how strats work in matched, because most of the people who hate them feel that way because of the impact they have on Matched play.

Restricting these strat limits to Matched play would make all the Matched players happy without raining on the parade of all the people who see these as part of their army's identity and use them to drive narratives.

Question would then be, Would you like strats more/less if they were datasheet abilities?

The problem is that that they would then be too easy to abuse.

If you have them as CP activated datacard abilities, there's really not much difference.

I make my own card for both units and strats anyway, so it is a normal thing for me to put strat cards face down on unit cards.

Anxious.

That's a weird thing to say, I get that, but that is truly how they make me feel.

They seem like this extra layer of nonsense heaped upon the game, most of which was either stuff that was Wargear (and should be again), or special rules that should be inherent to units (or whole armies).

The anxiety comes from the fact that there are just so damned many of the things (DG have, what, nearly 40 of them that Jid put into 7 categories... that's heaps for one army!!! ) that it's just too much to have on top of an already needlessly complicated (and yet somehow still shallow) game. They're counter intuitive, especially reactionary ones like Transhuman. It, and any strat like it, are the ones I hate the most: "This squad is somehow strangely more resistant to damage because I, as the commander of this force, expended an abstracted strategic resource, but only for this turn!"

And they're frustrating because they represent the classic excess of GW and their continued ability to take fantastic concepts and feth up its execution.

Strats are a good idea.
Their implementation is not.

Seeing as you asked:
It made me feel like GW reworked their rules at the core and had a fresh start to make a good game on a solid set basic mechanics... and then immediately went back to piling on a load of bloat in a way that was easy to shake up.

That, the obvious lack of balance in the new codexes (including errata sent out between printing and release) and GW's continued gakky business practices to (that makes me feel like the games, lore and their fans are being taken advantage of).

40k 8th edition was my first major edition change since I stared with GW games (what AoS was doing was... not that) and I was thoroughly disillusioned.
Despite my starry eyed hopes it was clear that GW had no intention of making a good game.

I sold my armies, gave away my books and stopped playing GW games.
Never had a reason to regret this and plenty of confirmation (like this thread) that it was a good decision.

Stratagems do make me feel. Exasperation is most common.

The thing that I dislike most about stratagems is how they obfuscate unit capabilities behind special powers that are not on the datasheet, instead buried in the back of the book in a giant list with no apparent order. In order to know what a unit can do (other than asking someone who knows the army inside and out) you've got to scour that list to find the relevant stratagems. It's a lot more work than when you could just look at a unit entry and flip to the weapon reference in the back if needed.

The thing I dislike second-most is that the one-per-turn limit makes for weird scaling effects. I'm incentivized to take a unit of Hive Guard to benefit from Single-Minded Annihilation, but not two units because I can only use the stratagem once, and a single unit of 6 is far more useful than 2 units of 3. That's the sort of mechanic that gets in the way of my immersion and doesn't feel like a wargame.

The core concept of resource-based abilities is reasonable enough, and fairly common in wargames nowadays, but the implementation in 40K is totally incoherent. Stratagems are a mix of command abilities, out-of-battle resources and support, special abilities for your units, and wargear, leaving it totally up in the air as to what a CP actually represents. Requesting orbital bombardment for some reason leaves your troops unable to shoot a charging enemy. Only one unit is allowed to use meltabombs per turn no matter how dire the situation. Units stop being able to perform their signature abilities if their compatriots elsewhere on the battlefield go all-out. In many cases, it feels like GW uses the CP cost and once-per-turn just to balance out abilities that are too powerful to have always on, regardless of whether those restrictions make logical sense in context. The whole system needs a re-work.

I HATE that only one vehicle can use Smoke Launchers in a turn, because it's a Strat.

Yeah I just don't get the narrative logic of stratagems.

My chaos character killed your astropath with a single punch, so I use Chaos Boon.

What's that? Later my mook lieutenant solo'd Guilliman in an epic, totally unexpected result?

Too bad. The gods were too busy rewarding the other guy for smacking a blind nerd around.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I HATE that only one vehicle can use Smoke Launchers in a turn, because it's a Strat.

That is dumb AF... should be a once per game wargear option that stops the vehicles from shooting or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Toofast wrote:

ccs wrote:
Slightly annoyed that things that should be general wargear/upgrades (melta-bombs etc), general abilities (overwatch for ex), or unit specific abilities take tge form of strats,

Otherwise I don't really feel one way or another about them.

Wait, even melta bombs are strats now? I'm lost for words...

A strat they didn’t even bother adding to the chaos space marine codex. I wonder if any of this is them trying to set a precedent for some weird bypass of no models no rules by tacking the rules onto a strat rather than a hypothetically nonexistent model?

Interesting conjecture re no model no rules end-run with strats.

At core, the corruption is in putting marketing in charge of game design.

I am slowly and sadly entering the 'eff GW with a ten-foot pole' camp. Love the drug, hate the pushers. Time to grow one's own.

 DarkBlack wrote:
Seeing as you asked:
It made me feel like GW reworked their rules at the core and had a fresh start to make a good game on a solid set basic mechanics... and then immediately went back to piling on a load of bloat in a way that was easy to shake up.

That, the obvious lack of balance in the new codexes (including errata sent out between printing and release) and GW's continued gakky business practices to (that makes me feel like the games, lore and their fans are being taken advantage of).

40k 8th edition was my first major edition change since I stared with GW games (what AoS was doing was... not that) and I was thoroughly disillusioned.
Despite my starry eyed hopes it was clear that GW had no intention of making a good game.

I sold my armies, gave away my books and stopped playing GW games.
Never had a reason to regret this and plenty of confirmation (like this thread) that it was a good decision.

GW does that constantly.
I can't remember what edition it was, but GW started writing very basic minimalistic codexes as a new direction. That lasted for 2 or 3 books and then it was back to bloat and those unlucky few that got a minimalist book were stuck with it for years.

Was that 3rd edition?

I have the Ork and Imperial Guard codexes from that edition and they're slim softcovers.

 Ordana wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
Seeing as you asked:
It made me feel like GW reworked their rules at the core and had a fresh start to make a good game on a solid set basic mechanics... and then immediately went back to piling on a load of bloat in a way that was easy to shake up.

That, the obvious lack of balance in the new codexes (including errata sent out between printing and release) and GW's continued gakky business practices to (that makes me feel like the games, lore and their fans are being taken advantage of).

40k 8th edition was my first major edition change since I stared with GW games (what AoS was doing was... not that) and I was thoroughly disillusioned.
Despite my starry eyed hopes it was clear that GW had no intention of making a good game.

I sold my armies, gave away my books and stopped playing GW games.
Never had a reason to regret this and plenty of confirmation (like this thread) that it was a good decision.

GW does that constantly.
I can't remember what edition it was, but GW started writing very basic minimalistic codexes as a new direction. That lasted for 2 or 3 books and then it was back to bloat and those unlucky few that got a minimalist book were stuck with it for years.

The 4th ed dark angels book was a glaring example of this. It was the first official codex release for 4th. GW had declared they were going in a more streamlined simple direction.....it lasted for like 2 codexes and then it went the other way

Voss wrote:
(...)Make them appropriate to the units rather than massive game changing stuff like fight twice or shoot twice (or stupid gotcha crap), and its just a matter of tweaking specific mechanics at a cost.

that's pretty much the key point I'd say. doesn't matter if it's the current 40k system or AoS version, just get rid of the massive game changer and gotcha bs.

Stratagems are dreadful for the reasons that have been amply mentioned already. They're a large part of the reason why I don't play 40k anymore.

 krijthebold wrote:
Was that 3rd edition?

I have the Ork and Imperial Guard codexes from that edition and they're slim softcovers.

More like the second half of 4th ed. After putting get you by army lists in the 3rd ed rulebook, GW released a full round of those slim codices (though Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves just got a supplement to use with Codex Space Marines). After that, select codices got a second book for that edition and together with Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters that started bringing back large fluff sections to codices and provided a lot more wargear choices. This continued into 4th ed until GW swung around again and made a batch of blanderized books that sat between the old, decent ones and the new, more powerful ones that came with 5th ed and offered more options again.

The books here should be Dark Angels, Chaos Marines and Eldar, all of which did not get a warm reception at the time, as well as Codex Orks which while not amazing was not such a dire step down from the 3rd ed one, and Codex Chaos Daemons that existed because Daemons got kicked out of the Chaos Marine codex. That should be all of them, but my memory is a little hazy considering that was fifteen years ago. It was luckily only a brief period but sucked pretty bad for players of those armies, and is a case study for how GW has trouble going for half an edition before changing design paradigms.

 Geifer wrote:
Stratagems are dreadful for the reasons that have been amply mentioned already. They're a large part of the reason why I don't play 40k anymore.

 krijthebold wrote:
Was that 3rd edition?

I have the Ork and Imperial Guard codexes from that edition and they're slim softcovers.

More like the second half of 4th ed. After putting get you by army lists in the 3rd ed rulebook, GW released a full round of those slim codices (though Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves just got a supplement to use with Codex Space Marines). After that, select codices got a second book for that edition and together with Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters that started bringing back large fluff sections to codices and provided a lot more wargear choices. This continued into 4th ed until GW swung around again and made a batch of blanderized books that sat between the old, decent ones and the new, more powerful ones that came with 5th ed and offered more options again.

The books here should be Dark Angels, Chaos Marines and Eldar, all of which did not get a warm reception at the time, as well as Codex Orks which while not amazing was not such a dire step down from the 3rd ed one, and Codex Chaos Daemons that existed because Daemons got kicked out of the Chaos Marine codex. That should be all of them, but my memory is a little hazy considering that was fifteen years ago. It was luckily only a brief period but sucked pretty bad for players of those armies, and is a case study for how GW has trouble going for half an edition before changing design paradigms.

My friends and I (the ones having gone back to 4th edition anyways) are letting players choose what codices they want to use.

For example, I'm playing Chaos Daemons whilst a buddy is using the 3.5 dex for his 1k sons.

To add on to my previous thoughts on Stratagems. I do wish we had a deck of universal stratagems, more than we got from the main rule book. and only a few more but faction specific in every codex. I think something like this would support playing with CP's or as I had wished , just drawing a few at random for once per game plays. If I were smarter I'd sort that out. But I also used to enjoy Maelstrom of war cards, which I felt really spiced up 7th and was my go to.
I keep thinking about how 9th reminds me of 2nd, and with my lack of winning a single game it really reminds me of 2nd...
I'm sure more competitive players would find it too "dull" though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Stratagems are dreadful for the reasons that have been amply mentioned already. They're a large part of the reason why I don't play 40k anymore.

 krijthebold wrote:
Was that 3rd edition?

I have the Ork and Imperial Guard codexes from that edition and they're slim softcovers.

More like the second half of 4th ed. After putting get you by army lists in the 3rd ed rulebook, GW released a full round of those slim codices (though Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves just got a supplement to use with Codex Space Marines). After that, select codices got a second book for that edition and together with Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters that started bringing back large fluff sections to codices and provided a lot more wargear choices. This continued into 4th ed until GW swung around again and made a batch of blanderized books that sat between the old, decent ones and the new, more powerful ones that came with 5th ed and offered more options again.

The books here should be Dark Angels, Chaos Marines and Eldar, all of which did not get a warm reception at the time, as well as Codex Orks which while not amazing was not such a dire step down from the 3rd ed one, and Codex Chaos Daemons that existed because Daemons got kicked out of the Chaos Marine codex. That should be all of them, but my memory is a little hazy considering that was fifteen years ago. It was luckily only a brief period but sucked pretty bad for players of those armies, and is a case study for how GW has trouble going for half an edition before changing design paradigms.

My friends and I (the ones having gone back to 4th edition anyways) are letting players choose what codices they want to use.

For example, I'm playing Chaos Daemons whilst a buddy is using the 3.5 dex for his 1k sons.

Nothing wrong with that. As bad as those 4th ed Chaos codices were in isolation, when combined with the 3.5 one and Eye of Terror you may perhaps get the most comprehensive depiction of Chaos you can get for any single set of core rules thanks to the relative stability and compatibility of the rules in 3rd, 4th and 5th ed. Old legions, new renegades, pure Daemons and Lost and Damned. Anything Chaos got after that pales in comparison.

Pancakey wrote:
Does the mechanic of activating a strategem in game make you feel?

I voted no for the sole purpose of them slowing the pace of the game.

I'd like to see all stratagems moved to pregame before totally removing them, and maybe leaving in the reroll one since it's not too bad I guess. But still.

Really depends on the army.

Some armies have borderline broken strats that are used every single game, some armies have garbage.

As an example, my Ork army uses predominantly pre-battle strats. And those are allowing me multiple warlord traits and relics. After that I occasionally use maybe 3-4 strats depending on circumstance. I use the 3D6 charge strat, I use Tankbusta bomb strat, I might use fight after death on a warboss if he gets killed before swinging. After that...there isn't much I spend CP on.

So yeah, some armies have broken Strats, some are just left with situational strats or abilities that were turned into strats.

I personally think that stratagems are okay on paper, but mishandled in practice.

Each army should get some pre-game ones. Upgrades to your list, redeploy some units, reserves, etc.

Then get rid of all of the other strats and make them part of the data sheets either as once per game abilities or as toned down versions if they're able to be used more than once.

No bonkers powerful ones either, it ruins the game. Want to have a unit fight twice? Best take another one of that unit then.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah I just don't get the narrative logic of stratagems.

Despite disliking 40K's stratagems as they currently exist, I really liked Warmachine's analogous mechanic, because it was mechanically clean and it made sense.

Your spellcasters generate focus points each turn, ie magic. You spend focus to cast spells (all on the stat card, no book-flipping), to boost the spellcaster's combat ability, to boost the combat ability of magic-golem-robots under their command, or to command those magic-golem-robots to do special actions. This is all stuff that is done with magic in-universe and your spellcaster only has so much magic to spread around at any given time, so it makes sense. Your basic troops don't need (and can't get) focus, they do their own thing.

Meanwhile in 40K, if the structural composition of your army is too atypical then you'll have to choose between getting rewarded by the gods or firing smoke launchers, you are encouraged to blow these abilities on turn 1 to maximize damage, and it's really not clear what any of this represents.

AoS gets it more right, IMO, in that stratagems are mostly command abilities that are either universal or provided by specific characters. CP is generated per-turn, so it's more overtly a command mechanic, and super special abilities on units tend to be once-per-game rather than tied to the same resource. Less to remember, less alpha-strike-y, more logically consistent.

 catbarf wrote:


Despite disliking 40K's stratagems as they currently exist, I really liked Warmachine's analogous mechanic, because it was mechanically clean and it made sense.

Your spellcasters generate focus points each turn, ie magic. You spend focus to cast spells (all on the stat card, no book-flipping), to boost the spellcaster's combat ability, to boost the combat ability of magic-golem-robots under their command, or to command those magic-golem-robots to do special actions. This is all stuff that is done with magic in-universe and your spellcaster only has so much magic to spread around at any given time, so it makes sense. Your basic troops don't need (and can't get) focus, they do their own thing.

Meanwhile in 40K, if the structural composition of your army is too atypical then you'll have to choose between getting rewarded by the gods or firing smoke launchers, you are encouraged to blow these abilities on turn 1 to maximize damage, and it's really not clear what any of this represents.

AoS gets it more right, IMO, in that stratagems are mostly command abilities that are either universal or provided by specific characters. CP is generated per-turn, so it's more overtly a command mechanic, and super special abilities on units tend to be once-per-game rather than tied to the same resource. Less to remember, less alpha-strike-y, more logically consistent.

As bad as they are in 9th they are still miles better than in 8th. My go to example of how bad strats were is my Ork Lootas.

In 8th Lootas were garbage tier. They did too little dmg, had too little durability and were overly expensive. As an example, 25 lootas in 2 mobz averaged 50 shots and if you were badmoonz they averaged 22(ish) hits. 25 Lootas is 425pts. 22 Autocannon hits for 425pts was...yeah, bad. However! if you buffed them with a lot of CP this changed. 1st off, 1CP Mob Up, you could combine the 2 mobz of 15 and 10 lootas into 1 massive mob of 25, Next, exploding 5s, instead of just 6s giving you an extra shot you could buff this to be 5s as well (2CP) NEXT you spend 3CP on shoot twice, and finally you have 1 CP for a re-roll on # of shots and 1CP for grot shields when your opponent inevitably targets them for destruction.

So how many CP does it cost? 7-8CP turn 1 and 6-7CP Turn 2, at that point you were out of CP so don't worry about turn 3, so what do you get from that?

So before 425pts of Lootas = 22ish hits. With all that CP investment it went to about 50. 50 S7 AP-1 2DMG HITS was pretty good for 425pts (+ 90-120pts of grots)

So were Lootas good in 8th? Nope, they sucked horribly, but when you buffed them with your entire CP stash they became one of the best units in the game. And as such, GW priced them as if they were ALWAYS shooting twice, always had grot shields and always had exploding 5s.

Sadly, this mindset of Lootas being too good has persisted into 9th which is why Lootas are too my knowledge the worst Auto-cannon unit in the entire game.