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 Kanluwen wrote:

 Toofast wrote:

I'm just waiting to meet all these casual players that love power levels and fluff campaigns and never play competitively. I've been playing on and off for 20 years in several states and a couple other countries. I've played in Warhammer stores, FLGS, basements, garages, and hipster bars. Everywhere I've played, it seems like 1850/2k points and matched play missions or tournament missions are the standard. There might be one guy in the group that says "hey guys I'm new, can we do power level and just play a quick casual game?" but that is a rare exception rather than the rule.

Sup?

I have zero interest in Points. Points are ABSOLUTE TRASH. They're a false sense of balance. They also encourage the absolute dumpsterfire that is the faux-comp scene, which basically amounts to copy/paste tourney lists.

I regularly play Power. I have a group of people that I played with regularly prior to COVID and a few of the members having new lil' ones joining their families. We played nothing but Power, with a few people also playing points in tourneys locally.

Now you've met one. Understand that it's entirely likely you're not "meeting all these casual players that love power levels and fluff campaigns and never play competitively" because Power is still, effectively, a new system and it's treated with extreme derision by people like yourself who continually act as though points are the sacred cow of gaming.

Oh I know you guys exist, you're just the vast minority. Sure, points don't perfectly balance a game. Power level just does an even worse job because it doesn't distinguish between a squad with basic weapons and the same squad loaded up with melta or plasma guns. "Points suck for balance" is a valid argument but power level is even worse, it just caters to the players who don't care about balance. At that point, why even have a power level? Just eyeball your opponents collection and throw approx that many models on the table. Hell you don't even need to roll dice, whoever makes the loudest laser sounds wins that round of shooting. The better WAAAGGGHHH wins close combat.

There's a lot of people dropping comments about how the books are invalid after 6 months, but the only thing invalidated is the tourney pack? The crusade and campaign content isn't "removed" when the next one starts.

Can we stick to seasons and let points vs PL be its usual gakshow elsewhere?
Pretty sure there's an active thread about it.

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

A post so over the top that I'd call it comedy if I didn't know better.

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

I don’t think too highly of the last bit. Ward was just a fluff writer, working to spec. It’s well-known that GW wanted an Ultramarines codex out of the 5e Codex, but changed course mid-voyage to a generalist Space Marines codex. Hence stuff like the spiritual liege gak.

This plays into a warped perception of Ward. Do I think Grey Knights should be their own army? No. They don’t even have anti-tank, they’re so poorly designed. But that’s another convo entirely. The point is this - the Ward hate is a 4chan meme that saw it’s day in the sun and doesn’t need to be dragged up again.

 Toofast wrote:

Oh I know you guys exist, you're just the vast minority. Sure, points don't perfectly balance a game. Power level just does an even worse job because it doesn't distinguish between a squad with basic weapons and the same squad loaded up with melta or plasma guns.

lol, because points does a great job of preventing that right?

It's almost like points has resulted in a situation where plasma has become a de facto "it's always there for you" thing now...and maybe, just maybe the problem is plasma being too easily obtainable because of legacy rules being catered to for tourney players?

"Points suck for balance" is a valid argument but power level is even worse, it just caters to the players who don't care about balance. At that point, why even have a power level? Just eyeball your opponents collection and throw approx that many models on the table. Hell you don't even need to roll dice, whoever makes the loudest laser sounds wins that round of shooting. The better WAAAGGGHHH wins close combat.

Why even have points, just eyeball your opponent's list and call it for whoever has the more optimized list?

Frankly, pretending that people playing with Power "don't care about balance" is a bit disingenuous. Maybe "balance" isn't number-crunching things to the point of requiring spreadsheets to decide your next purchase but rather it's ensuring both players have a good time?

Crazy thought, I'm sure.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Maybe "balance" isn't number-crunching things to the point of requiring spreadsheets to decide your next purchase but rather it's ensuring both players have a good time?

How dare you ensure that a good time is had by both parties! If your opponent isn't leaving the game in tears you aren't having fun the right way.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't know why you're talking about Sisters.

New rules can be published on Warhammer Community and/or White dwarf not always in new books - no reason the new Marine figure rules could not be the same

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Toofast wrote:

Oh I know you guys exist, you're just the vast minority. Sure, points don't perfectly balance a game. Power level just does an even worse job because it doesn't distinguish between a squad with basic weapons and the same squad loaded up with melta or plasma guns.

lol, because points does a great job of preventing that right?

It's almost like points has resulted in a situation where plasma has become a de facto "it's always there for you" thing now...and maybe, just maybe the problem is plasma being too easily obtainable because of legacy rules being catered to for tourney players?

"Points suck for balance" is a valid argument but power level is even worse, it just caters to the players who don't care about balance. At that point, why even have a power level? Just eyeball your opponents collection and throw approx that many models on the table. Hell you don't even need to roll dice, whoever makes the loudest laser sounds wins that round of shooting. The better WAAAGGGHHH wins close combat.

Why even have points, just eyeball your opponent's list and call it for whoever has the more optimized list?

Frankly, pretending that people playing with Power "don't care about balance" is a bit disingenuous. Maybe "balance" isn't number-crunching things to the point of requiring spreadsheets to decide your next purchase but rather it's ensuring both players have a good time?

Crazy thought, I'm sure.

"Plasma is too easily obtainable. To fix that, let's make them free instead!" What a great idea, why didn't I think of that?

Folks, let's please move on from the points vs PL discussion.


As for the season thing, I would have preferred that we just get a year for the GT mission pack, unless they are going to be substantially different. The 20->21 had mostly secondary changes, but overall it wasn't substantial. While we know the new missions are going to have big changes, I am curious to see how big the changes will be with a 6 month rotation.

That being said, with us paying for points now every six month, I also think it means that we should have some better expectations on balance now. Quarterly dataslate changes and bi-yearly paid points updates means we shouldn't be in another Drukhari situation again.

I do think there is a lot of room here to do cool stuff with the missions specific to each "Warzone", but I'm not sure if we are going to see that or not.

 oni wrote:
Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

Let's not go overboard, oni. That comparison is deeply unfair...

...to Matt Ward.

It's bad enough GW are already charging us for points updates. Now that they plan to do it twice a year it seems like a bad joke. Every other game I can think of offers points and missions for free, often more frequently than GW. The current missions feel pretty samey already and GW have shown no inclination to change them radically. Charging for "new" ones twice a year is hardly a brilliant value proposition.

Then there's the fact we're still waiting for a lot of Codices and they're going to release a bunch of Warzone books before completing the Codex line up. I really couldn't care less about GW's attempts at a continuing story for 40k as it never seems to really impact any gameplay in a meaningful way and the quality of writing is usually mediocre at best.

This seems like nothing more than a blatant cash grab to me as the extra value is deeply questionable.

 Toofast wrote:

"Plasma is too easily obtainable. To fix that, let's make them free instead!" What a great idea, why didn't I think of that?

Oh sweet summer child, that wasn't what I said. But if it makes you feel better let me spell it out for you:

Plasma is a crutch. It needs to be cut down in its availability, dramatically, across Imperial factions. The stuff is supposed to be rare now. Guard Infantry Squads have zero reason to be toting them en masse. Scions shouldn't be able to rock as many of them as they can. Skitarii Rangers just flatout shouldn't have them (they're more of a fit for, y'know, Vanguard).

Cut Plasma Guns from Special Weapon lists. Give them their own slot in squad organization setups.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Screw it, more stuff is fun, it isn’t compulsory, and keeps the meta moving.

Putting aside that not everyone cares what the 'meta' is, you say that more stuff is fun? Chapter Approved used to be fun.

Chapter Approved used to not only be about errata and FAQs but also adding more interesting ways to play the game, new army lists, quirky ideas, putting in new scenarios and generally enhancing the game experience. Now Chapter Approved is a sterile wasteland of tournament rules (and mostly reprinted core rules). The fun has gone from CA. The creativity. The narrative. It’s just all tournaments all the time.

And we shouldn't have to pay for points updates. They should be in the free errata FAQs. If they're including the new points alongside the Chapter Approved books I can only surmise that it's because they're afraid that without them the CA book won't sell. If they made Chapter Approved more appealing to everyone, we wouldn't have that problem.

tneva82 wrote:
As gw won't invalidate models the story updates are just saturday cartoon level where bad guys get beaten but not killed and they retreat swearing "i'jl get you next time" and stalemate continues.

This is true.

Ghaz's last adventure saw him getting decapitated. He walked it off, probably whilst saying "Iz get yooz next time, Ragnar! Next time!".

 Kanluwen wrote:
Points are ABSOLUTE TRASH.

Oh man... not this nonsense again. Points are better than Power Levels. Power Levels are even worse at creating balance. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could see one as better than the other. They're both bad, but one is worse.

Love that this approach has finally been made formal. We can now plan for four boxed sets per year- two KT and two 40k. Excellent. Any degree of predictability to an annual release schedule alleviates a ton of anxiety.

For me, this is EXACTLY the approach a company needs to take in order to sustain a persistent edition. I've said it before: the experiments of 8th and 9th have been leading us in this direction for five years; this is an indicator to me that we have arrived. I HATE edition churn- it's been the bane of this game and this company since the eighties. I would SOOOO very much prefer buying 4 campaign books per year, every year forever to an entirely new set of dexes every three years forever.

Perhaps if I only played one army I might feel differently. But I have chosen to play and collect many small armies rather than one or two large ones in order to facilitate campaign play for a circle of friends who like the game, but not enough to invest in it.

As a Crusader, I think the badge system popularized in the first campaign books is cool- you fight a battle in the Zone, your army gets a "Badge" that allows that Crusade content to stick to them even once they leave that theatre of war. I can see my future armies being modelled by detachment to fit the campaign setting- so you look at the army and you can see a detachment with consistent basing, trophies and upgrades depicting the gains from that particular campaign, but a second detachment may include veterens of a different theatre.

Anyway, from my perspective, it looks like GW's roadmap for the edition was that all dexes were to have been rolled out by now so that the formalization of the seasons system would roll out clean, replacing the dex driven sales model. Very unfortunate that it didn't happen that way, because I do agree that combining this with dex releases is overwhelming, and the drip feed of dex releases imposed by the Covid/ shipping/ Brexit trifecta has created game imbalance between haves and have nots. Had they been able to maintain the 2 dex per month pace declared in October of 2020, the level of discontent for the edition, or at least for certain issues within the edition, would be far lower than it is.

It looks like the edition is locked in for all of 2022 at least; a season system isn't necessary if you aren't going to let the edition breathe long enough to contain a few seasons.

PenitentJake wrote:For me, this is EXACTLY the approach a company needs to take in order to sustain a persistent edition.

What? How did you even get there from the information presented? Why in the world would GW give up on their edition churn?

It looks like the edition is locked in for all of 2022 at least; a season system isn't necessary if you aren't going to let the edition breathe long enough to contain a few seasons.

Declaring they're doing warzones every six months is entirely edition agnostic.
In fact, they're declaring in advance that they're not even thinking in terms of long term support, they can literally set everything in a current warzone on fire in six months and not care, because a new 'season' is opening, and _that_ is what they'll support (briefly).

If persistence is what you want, this new model should _terrify_ you. Limited book runs, limited release runs, when things are gone they're gone, and no point in bringing it back because that's last month's gak, sales have dried up, forward, ever forward!

There is not a single thing to suggest they're going to drop the codex model, or not do a new edition. Its just a pipedream

It isn't a guarantee- it may have sounded like I was implying that- sorry to be unclear.

What I meant was that a season system facilitates the possibility of a persistent edition by providing a reliable framework of releases to drive model sales in the absence of Codex releases.

I DO believe we're locked in for 2022, but beyond that, we'll see. And sure, seasons can be edition agnostic, I suppose. But announcing their formal institution does suggest a move toward consistency, and I believe an edition shift prior to an adjustment period to effectively establish seasons would undermine any consistency presented by the system itself.

All speculation, of course.

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

What's the role of Mike in this bi-annual conspiracy?

Voss wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:For me, this is EXACTLY the approach a company needs to take in order to sustain a persistent edition.

What? How did you even get there from the information presented? Why in the world would GW give up on their edition churn?

It looks like the edition is locked in for all of 2022 at least; a season system isn't necessary if you aren't going to let the edition breathe long enough to contain a few seasons.

Declaring they're doing warzones every six months is entirely edition agnostic.
In fact, they're declaring in advance that they're not even thinking in terms of long term support, they can literally set everything in a current warzone on fire in six months and not care, because a new 'season' is opening, and _that_ is what they'll support (briefly).

If persistence is what you want, this new model should _terrify_ you. Limited book runs, limited release runs, when things are gone they're gone, and no point in bringing it back because that's last month's gak, sales have dried up, forward, ever forward!

There is not a single thing to suggest they're going to drop the codex model, or not do a new edition. Its just a pipedream

I agree completely on the bold part. But then again, I don't see how the previous things you mentions would be bad for the game.
I'm all for a game that is routinely balanced and refreshed by the release of new missions and point updates, at least it doesn't get stale.

My only gripe is receiving point updates in physical books, since they'd already be obsolete once the book is released.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

What's the role of Mike in this bi-annual conspiracy?

Mission design, as mentioned in the second paragraph, if I'm not mistaken.

These seasons are just another reason why I feel no need to return to 40k.

Stop making your rules worth less than the paper they're printed on. Stop focusing on army building aura buffing scheneigans, and start returning the game to one that's actually you know, a war game.

Oh wait, But the META!

feth off with this meta gak, and maybe you wouldn't need to sell new point values every 6 months?

 wuestenfux wrote:

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

What's the role of Mike in this bi-annual conspiracy?

Mike is responsible for managing the competitive and tournament facing aspect of the hobby, such as as tournament mission packs which are now biannual.

Dudeface wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 oni wrote:
It's gakky, but not surprising.

The current mission design is so horrible, so complete trash, and has created such a stale and unbalanced game that this is GW's shoot-from-the-hip answer to try and get players back to the table. After all, GW fuels itself off of player hope. Hope that the next time/thing will be better.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

What's the role of Mike in this bi-annual conspiracy?

Mike is responsible for managing the competitive and tournament facing aspect of the hobby, such as as tournament mission packs which are now biannual.

It's certainly a paid job.
As a biologist he came from a much different angle.

 Aenar wrote:

Voss wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:For me, this is EXACTLY the approach a company needs to take in order to sustain a persistent edition.

What? How did you even get there from the information presented? Why in the world would GW give up on their edition churn?

It looks like the edition is locked in for all of 2022 at least; a season system isn't necessary if you aren't going to let the edition breathe long enough to contain a few seasons.

Declaring they're doing warzones every six months is entirely edition agnostic.
In fact, they're declaring in advance that they're not even thinking in terms of long term support, they can literally set everything in a current warzone on fire in six months and not care, because a new 'season' is opening, and _that_ is what they'll support (briefly).

If persistence is what you want, this new model should _terrify_ you. Limited book runs, limited release runs, when things are gone they're gone, and no point in bringing it back because that's last month's gak, sales have dried up, forward, ever forward!

There is not a single thing to suggest they're going to drop the codex model, or not do a new edition. Its just a pipedream

I agree completely on the bold part. But then again, I don't see how the previous things you mentions would be bad for the game.
I'm all for a game that is routinely balanced and refreshed by the release of new missions and point updates, at least it doesn't get stale.

My only gripe is receiving point updates in physical books, since they'd already be obsolete once the book is released.

Its not the missions that makes 40k stale, its the bland rules, excessive book keeping and bloat that does that.
Also updating points and FAQs isn't a problem either, its that they're charging for it thats the problem. And again, if it was part of their subscription service we wouldn't even be discussing it, its the fact that they'll charge £/€/$50 every 6 months for the privilege that people have issue with. Thats without even getting into the discussion about whether or not its even worth balancing the game with points when it would be better overall to balance stats and special rules to match the points.

PenitentJake wrote:
Love that this approach has finally been made formal. We can now plan for four boxed sets per year- two KT and two 40k. Excellent. Any degree of predictability to an annual release schedule alleviates a ton of anxiety.

For me, this is EXACTLY the approach a company needs to take in order to sustain a persistent edition. I've said it before: the experiments of 8th and 9th have been leading us in this direction for five years; this is an indicator to me that we have arrived. I HATE edition churn- it's been the bane of this game and this company since the eighties. I would SOOOO very much prefer buying 4 campaign books per year, every year forever to an entirely new set of dexes every three years forever.

Uuh...you realize gw won't stop pressing print money that is new edition?

These are in addition to new editions.

40k 10th edition 2023.

tneva82 wrote:
40k 10th edition 2023.

by now I am sure we see 10th in 2022

 kodos wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
40k 10th edition 2023.

by now I am sure we see 10th in 2022

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this, but I will be saddened and disappointed.

Not every codex will be updated by December 2022, I don't think. We already have reliable rumors through may of next year.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 kodos wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
40k 10th edition 2023.

by now I am sure we see 10th in 2022

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this, but I will be saddened and disappointed.

Not every codex will be updated by December 2022, I don't think. We already have reliable rumors through may of next year.

was there ever an Edition were every Codex was updated before the next one hit the shelf?
and just because there are rumours for new Codex books in May, does not mean a new Edition is released in June

 kodos wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 kodos wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
40k 10th edition 2023.

by now I am sure we see 10th in 2022

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this, but I will be saddened and disappointed.

Not every codex will be updated by December 2022, I don't think. We already have reliable rumors through may of next year.

was there ever an Edition were every Codex was updated before the next one hit the shelf?
and just because there are rumours for new Codex books in May, does not mean a new Edition is released in June

8th.

Yeah that was the promise of the "nuGW" that people coming back after the catastrophe of 7th believed in.

It appeared that GW had genuinely changed.